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Knossos: An Object Based Approach

Clare Tandy, Jack Lindsey, Brian Zhang, Tyler Dao,
Harrison Hohman, Yelena Mandelshtam
Introduction
Knossos is an example of a particular type of archeological site. It was one that

was rediscovered, in a way similar to Pompeii in Italy or Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, a site

lost to modern understanding that was then excavated with the best contemporary

practices and purposes. These purposes have changed throughout time, however, and so

in the midst of the 20th century when Sir Arthur Evans went through with his plans for

excavation, the goals were more in line with restoration than preservation.

This is a key distinction from most modern archeological surveys, and while Evans and

his team were careful to catalog the items and list their location, as well as structuring a

timeline of Minoan civilization, the restoration of frescos and the conditioning of the site

with concrete to protect it from the rain lends a certain 20th century flavor to the 3500

year old site.

The site itself on the island of Crete, and is a remnant of the Bronze Age Aegean world,

of which the Mycenaeans were also a part. It was occupied starting in the 8th millenium

BCE, with the earliest palace dating to the 20th century BCE. It was abandoned between

the 14th and 12th centuries BCE, with the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages.

The aim of this website it to examine this site from the perspective of the objects found,

in order to gain an understanding both of the world they were produced in and of the

different interpretations put upon them from three different perspectives.

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Today, one can visit the remains of the palace at Knossos excavated in the early

20th century by Sir Arthur Evans. It's a compelling tourist attraction, with brightly

painted frescos and authentic artifacts visible for all to see.

But seeing it like this, one forgets the layers of history that were stripped away by this

and any excavation, and recreated with questionable restoration techniques. Visitors get a

glimpse of one perspective on what this history could have been like in a time that never

was.

The mythological perspective deals with exploring and interpreting the artifacts

found as they were related to the mythology of Knossos. Crete is most commonly known

for its story of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth and Theseus's efforts to slay it with the help

of princess Ariadne. The video to the right gives a concise retelling of this myth.

Through this lens, we want to draw any parallels between the artifacts and their

depictions and the mythology that they may have been alluding to, as this gives a

powerful insight about the Minoans and their beliefs and values.

Knossos is very much archaeological site, and thus to fully understand it we must

consider the perspective of an excavator. Sir Arthur Evans was a British archaeologist

and is inextricably linked to the Knossos site. As its chief discoverer, restorer, and

popularizer, his work framed much of the discussion about Knossos in the following

century. In many ways, Evans's work is a model for how to extract insights, and wonder,

from cryptic relics. He was able to deduce the existence of a Minoan civilization, and

much about its social structure, values, economics, and role in the ancient world from
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careful analysis of the art, architecture, relics, and tablets left behind at Knossos. At the

same time, we must be wary of deferring too much to the excavator's point of view.

Evans was human, and prone to adopting the most fantastic and aesthetically appealing

explanation for a given set of evidence. His restorations of the palace and its frescoes

sometimes appear to have infused the ancient site with 20th century elements. His

conclusions, though insightful, were also sometimes tenuous or even demonstrably

inaccurate -- for instance, he failed to realize that Crete eventually became part of

Mycenaean Greece. Subsequent archaeological analysis of the site has led to more

insights, but also comes with the same drawbacks. From the ruins of Knossos, we must

learn what we can, but also recognize what we cannot.

Minoan Seal Stones

You all may remember the idea of something called seal stones from our class

discussion, and that a fascination and desire to find more of these were one of the driving

factors behind Evans exploration of Crete. Evans had many other interests as well,

particularly Roman Coins, but he kept returning to these small engraved gems using

them, for example, in a memoir published in 1901 to argue for the place of the

Mycenaean tree cult in the World of the Mediterranean.

To you or I, in our modern perspective, these at first look like small stones, oddly

circular, with some strange shapes or hard to see designs carved into them. Some are part

of rings, and some themselves are made of gold. If we had a bit of extra knowledge about

rocks we might say that theyre made of semi-precious stones like jasper, agate,

amethyst, steatite, or one of many types of colored quartz. In terms of scale, theyre
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typically about 2 cm in diameter (approximately the size of a penny), with a lentoid shape

(imagine a squished lentil, circular from the top but sloping into the top and bottom on all

sides). Theyre a graspable size, smooth to the touch, and are reminiscent of coins or

small tokens used to play board games.

But the designs themselves usher the viewer into a world deeply enmeshed within its own

ritual and sense of meaning. There are images engraved on these stones that act as a

snapshot to something that appears religious or ritualistic for instance, one that Arthur

Evans described in his work on Mycenaean tree and pillar cults showed a female

votaryblowing a conch-shell or triton before an altar of the usual Mycenaean shape.

Above the altar is seen a group of three trees apparently cypresses, and immediately in

front of them the horns of consecration.' To the right of the altar is a rayed symbol, to the

left is apparently another altar base, with a conical excrescence, and behind the votary

another tree (Evans, 142). Their engravings frequently have images of bulls - a common

theme throughout the site as well as other animals, natural imagery or patterns, or

people often performing rituals. For people finding them in the ground, around their

homes it would have hinted at a world similar to but slightly different from their own

expectations and realities.

For an archeologist, these stones are just one example of many traditions of small items

intended to make impressions. They recall the cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia,

impressions of which were used to seal cuneiform tablets within clay envelopes and

imply authority and ownership. Similar cylinder seals were found on mainland Greece, in
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the Mycenaean civilization, as well as and small carved stones were used throughout

Hellenistic and Roman times and reimagined in Europe in the 19th century with the rise

of interest in the classical world. These stones also present several mysteries. Work has

been done on the presence of mysterious floating objects and people that raises questions

of iconographical interpretation (Kyriakidis). These floating objects have a stable form

across many different examples of the rings, but their interpretation remains inscrutable.

Kyriakidis suggested that one interpretation would be of constellations, which would be

consistent both with the forms of the objects and the evidence of Minoan seafaring

power. More broadly, they both raise and asnswer questions about visual representation in

the past and how religious and daily life was depicted.

Pithoi

When we see a large container like the ones in the image at the right, our first

instinct is that they should be used for storage and shipment. They seem like simple,

mundane objects. However, if we look deeper, these objects can actually tell us a lot

about the Minoan people.

In this case, our instinct does not turn out to be far off. Pithoi were large (often human-

sized) ceramic storage containers often used to store liquids or grains. The Minoans were

a naval power of the time, and it would be reasonable to believe that these containers

were used for trade.

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However, they are extremely heavy: the largest ones weigh in at several tons if fully filled

with water. The immense weight means that it is not feasible to move these containers

around when they have been filled with goods, and raises questions as to how the pithoi

were used. Such heavy objects are immovable when filled without more sophisticated

technology such as cranes, but there is no evidence that the Minoans had such

technology. Therefore, it's likely that they were used only for storage and not for

transportation. This hypothesis is furthered by the observation that the largest pithoi were

likely stored in holes inside the ground (where they would be even harder to lift out), and

that they are very often undecorated or decorated with only simple patterns, which could

suggest that they were not intended to be left out on display. Further evidence for their

usage as only long-term storage containers is the fact that only smaller pithoi, of weight

less than one ton when filled with water, have been found with shipwrecks.

One unexpected use of pithoi was discovered during excavation: Pendlebury (1939)

discusses several pithoi that were used as burial chambers, in which human remains have

been found. This could suggest that the Minoan culture was one that placed value in

reusing and repurposing things. Vavouranakis (2014) supports this by noting that storage

pithoi are often indistinguishable from burial pithoi, suggesting that they may indeed be

simply repurposed.

Simple objects like storage containers can give us a window into how people lived their

lives and what function the palace at Knossos served in the greater civilization. For

example, as mentioned before, we see that the same types of containers used for storage
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were also used as coffins for the dead. Further, the large number of these storage

containers (roughly 400 at Knossos) provides even more evidence to suggest that the

palace at Knossos was actually inhabited, as opposed to just serving as a temple or tomb.

Frescos

One of the great challenges that inevitably arises when studying a bronze-age

civilization like that of Knossos is that there simply isnt all that much source material

that directly reveals how their society operated. They do have a form of written script that

youll hear about in a minute but that written script was used for the sole purpose of

storage, supply and bookkeeping so what this means is that while it can tell us some

things, there is generally speaking very little written information that would reveal many

details about the society itself.

Due to that shortage, we have to look for physical artifacts to give us a truly good

idea about what went on in Knossos. One of the most valuable sources of that

information is in the frescoes that adorned the walls of the palace. They are perhaps the

best windows that we have into the beliefs, cultural practices and aesthetic tastes of

Knossos and the Minoan civilization at large

Now in addition to their broader social and cultural implications, the frescoes do

have just a raw, artistic value to them. They are very nice to look at and feature

interesting subjects, vivid colors and differing styles that reveals preferences of individual

artists.
But unfortunately when Arthur Evans arrived in 1900, the frescos were more or

less ruined. Years of damage from possible earthquakes, invasions, fires and the passage

of time itself eroded the frescoes to the point where they were nearly unrecognizable.

However, thanks to the sometimes questionable restoration work of Evans and his team,

the frescoes were recolored and moved to museums while reproductions were left on site.
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Now, the themes that the frescoes depict tend to be fairly consistent: there are

images of nature, feats of athleticism - both male and female as professor Shanks

described in an earlier lecture, and scenes of Minoan culture. There are no great displays

of power like in the frescoes of Greece Egypt and Rome there are no kings trampling

lesser beings, no images of oppressed slaves or slaughtered enemies most of the frescos

are in fact quite pleasant, frequently showing things like dolphins, flowers and smiling

aristocrats. This was quite exceptional in the ancient Mediterranean, where expensive art

was generally used as a display of power rather than as a medium for real artistic

expression. If nothing else, the juxtaposition of all this shows that the Minoans were a

society not held by the obsession with war, power and violence that so many others had.

They instead placed a high level of respect on art for arts sake. Art that could captivate

and inspire rather than be used as a source of fear.

When we combine this subject matter with the complete lack of defensive

fortifications that Knossos had, we can create an image of a society that was not terribly

war-like. Knossos clearly derived most of its power from trade, and by extension, control

of the seas, presumably with a strong naval presence.

These logical leaps are really indicative of how powerful the frescoes really are.

By examining them, and contemporary comparisons, and a few other details, we can

make the jump from wow look at these pretty frescoes to the frescoes mean that the

people at Knossos had an advanced navy and shipbuilding techniques.

Now to finish, Im just going to play this video that sort of tries to illuminate the

inspiration for the most famous of all the frescoes, that of the bull leapers and its kind

of hokey but I still thought it did a fairly good job of portraying how a single fresco can

paint us such a vivid scene and give us so much insight into the society.

Written Tablets
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Perhaps our most powerful tool in understanding ancient civilizations is the

written record. Though they may contain inaccuracies or exaggerations, written accounts

of a society can provide a rich context for understanding the other archaeological traces it

leaves. But in the case of Knossos, our job isnt quite so easy. When Arthur Evans first

excavated the site, he discovered tablets reflecting three writing systems a

hieroglyphic, pictorial style and two syllabic-based systems that he dubbed Linear A

and Linear B. All were, at the time, indecipherable, though pictographic elements in

each indicated that the writing was used primarily for administrative records, tallies of

goods, etc. Even this surface-level information offers insight to an outsider it tells us,

for instance the Minoans were a complex enough civilization to have their own written

language. Whats more, we can their civilization, like their writing, probably evolved

substantially over time, and that Knossos was a trade hub involved in the tabulating and

redistribution of various goods. Beyond that, though, the most striking thing about the

tablets to a casual observer must have been their mystery. Unintelligible text contributes

even more to our sense of distance from and inability to truly understand Minoan

civilization.

The tablets, of course, have more to offer, but only if we can understand what they

have to say. For a long time, no one succeeded in doing so, until Michael Ventris capped

a half century of painstaking work by deciphering Linear B and proving it to be an early

form of Greek. This flew in the face of the earlier, less-informed interpretation of the

tablets as products of a standalone Minoan civilization. Whats more, though Linear A

and Linear B use very similar symbols, it became clear they represented different

languages that is, Linear A is not Greek! Indeed, Linear B is rather poorly suited to
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writing Greek, suggesting that the Mycenaeans adapted the Linear A writing system to

their own language. This finding proved that, at least in its latter stages, Crete and

Knossos had been incorporated as part of Mycenaean Greece, but that the Mycenaeans

had sought to retain key elements of Minoan culture.

The translation of Linear B allows us to bring a historians eye to the study of

Mycenaean Crete. Linear B tablets, it turns out, exclusively describe administrative and

economic matters. Some describe how wheat should be rationed among different people,

some describe the process of making textiles, some tally workers being sent out on

assignments. They also give a sense of the structure of society in Mycenaean Crete

there was a King called the wanax, a second-in-command, and a nobility.

One of the most tantalizing finds from the Linear B tablets are two references to

the mythological significance of Crete. One tablet, for instance, references the shrine of

Daidalos Daidalos being the alleges architect of the legendary labyrinth housing the

Minotaur. Another describes an offering of one jar of honey to "the mistress of the

labyrinth who is referred to as one of the gods. Some scholars hold the opinion that

Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos in the Minotaur legend, was in fact a deity in the

original Minoan religion, and was incorporated into Greek mythology when the

Mycenaeans took control of Crete. We should be careful, however, in deducing too much

from references to a labyrinth Linear B tablets found on the Greek mainland, for

instance, contained drawings of labyrinths, suggesting that the concept was prevalent in

contexts other than the Minoan myth.

The use of Linear B tablets to understand life on ancient Crete has drawbacks,

however. For one, we only find the tablets at major palace sites, so they might give us a
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skewed perspective that over-emphasizes the role of palace leaders in a regular Minoans

life. Second, they might constitute an unrepresentative sample of writing on Crete we

are inclined to think that the Minoans and Mycenaeans used writing only for mundane

things like tallying goods, but truthfully we have no way of knowing that they didnt

produce other forms of writing, like literature anything written on papyrus or leather

wouldnt survive to the present day. And, most importantly, we have to keep in mind that

Linear A remains undeciphered! Though we like to think that what we know about

Mycenaean Crete might tell us something about how the Minoans lived before the

Mycenaeans arrived on Crete, the truth is that we have no way of knowing how strong

this link really is.

So what can the tablets found on Knossos really tell us about what the civilization

it held was like? In some sense, a lot we can learn a great deal about the transition of

power from the Minoans to the Mycenaeans on Crete, economics of the Mycenaean

civilization there, and the importance of the labyrinth myth to people of the time. In

another sense, though, they tell us very little, as Linear A and the earlier system of

Minoan hieroglyphs remain undeciphered, and so the actual Minoan language remains a

complete mystery to us. Fully appreciating the significance of the tablets does require the

scientific curiosity of an excavator and a fascination with the Minoan legend, but it also

requires humility of a layperson to admit that much about the Minoan civilization will

likely forever remain a mystery.

Snake Goddess
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During his excavation of the palace at Knossos in 1903, Sir Arthur Evans

discovered two female figurines holding snakes. The larger one he identified as the

Snake Goddess and the smaller one as her Priestess.

The Snake Goddess figurine stands at 34.2 centimeters long. It is a faience, which

was created by using glass paste fired up to very high temperature to create a glossy

finish. When it was found, only her torso, right hand, head and part of her hat was intact.

The rest, of the figurine you see are all reconstructions done by Evans and his partner.

The goddess figurine also has 3 snakes on it, one in her right hand, one looped around her

right ear and onto her breast and one around her waist.
To interpreting the significance of this figurine, I would first like to use the

modern world, outsider lens. So to most modern students without any context, many

guessed this figure was a ruler of their tribe or country, or that it represents someone, as

my roommate would describe it, who is one with nature. Not many guessed that it

might be a pagan goddess, reflecting todays religious outlooks. Currently, many of the

widely practiced religions are monotheistic, with a male God; thus not many initially

assumed that it was a Snake Goddess.

I also tried asking for peoples interpretation of the figurine with the context that it

was from Crete. Unsurprisingly, many linked the figuring to the myth of Medusa, a

gorgon that would petrify people. This makes sense given that Medusa is a very popular

mythological character, especially among those associated with snakes.

Now from a mythological perspective, Snake Goddess has been linked to Ariadne,

the princess of Crete from the mythology of the Minotaur. In the stories, Ariadne fell in

love with Theseus and helped him navigate the labyrinth. Afterwards, they left Crete

together, only for Theseus to abandon her on the Isle of Naxos. Eventually, Ariadne
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would meet and marry the God Dionysos there and become his high priestess, thus

becoming associated with snakes as those are a Dionysian animal.

The figurines could also represent a Snake Goddess that is worshipped by a cult in

Knossos. Further discoveries of goddesses and ritual equipment in Crete suggest this. The

connection of the goddess with snakes suggest an underworld aspect as the snakes are

seen as a spirit of the Netherworld. However, the ability of the snake to regenerate and

shed their skin also suggests a regeneration of changing seasons, which is important to

agriculture.
Meanwhile the bared breast and bell shape of the figurine suggests a connection

to fertility. Maybe the snake goddess was a fertility goddess that people prayed to for

bountiful harvest.
Finally, from a scholarly, archaeological perspective, the Snake Goddess figurine

is important since it is an embodiment of the characteristics that Minoans valued. It is an

idealized representation of them, with emphasis on elegance, fashion, luxury, innocence,

physical grace, sophisticated taste and refined manners. The figurines are also important

since it sheds some light onto the fashion of Minoan women, at least the upper class ones.

The model highlights tight bodice with bare breasts, woven or embroidered apron and

intricate skirt.
Many scholars also use the snake goddess as evidence that Knossos is a

matrilineal or matriarchal society. The fact that their main goddess was female along with

a lack of usual signs of male-dominated societies such as fortification and large public

sculptures support this.

Finally, to wrap up, I want to briefly talk about the authenticity of the

reconstructions made. There are some speculation as to whether or not the figurine is

actually a snake goddess or even holding snakes at all. Dr. Bonney, who wrote

Disarming the Snake Goddess noted that the spiral or candy cane like markings on the
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snake are not realistic patterns found on snakes. That and the fact that the snakes did not

have a head until renovated suggests that it may not have been a snake but was a rope or

coil instead.
Another source of uncertainty is the head and headdress of the smaller figurine.

When it was found, there was no head and had to be reconstructed. During that time, a

feline-figured headdress fragment was found near the figurine and Evans incorporated

that into the reconstruction. However, there is no way to know for sure if that was

actually the case. Also the credibility of such a fragment being present is also dubious

since Evans was very vague about his description of it and because it was not present in

his annotated sketches of the excavation while many of the other excavated things were.

Labyrinth Coin

The designs on the coins surely allude to the legendary Labyrinth at Knossos, in

which King Minos imprisoned the ferocious Minotaur. However, as these are labyrinths

and not mazes, there is some inconsistency with the myth of the minotaur. Nevertheless,

due to the clear presence of the minotaur on the flipside of some of the coins, we are still

led to believe that this labyrinth is at least a symbol of the myth of the minotaur.

Regardless of whether the labyrinth truly existed, the fact that it is present on so many of

the coins shows how central this myth was to the culture and life of the people living on

Crete.

The greek myth of the minotaur, among other historical evidence, indicates that

the Greeks feared the minoans, however the Minoans were not, by most indications, a

warlike people. Thus their power must have stemmed from wealth, which in turn came

from trade. In fact, some speculate that the palace found at Knossos was actually a trade
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center. This same palace is speculated by many scholars, including Arthur Evans, to be

the famous labyrinth which inspired the myth of the minotaur. In fact, note that the

symbol of a trade center would be a very fitting design for a coin.

It is undeniable that the mythology played a very important role in the designs of

these coins, but the logical inconsistency of the labyrinth and other historical evidence

highlight the possibility that the labyrinth may have been an actual place in Knossos, and

serves only as a symbol to the myth.

Conclusion

By examining these objects, and describing the different meanings they can have

when considered in different lights, weve shown the different sides of the stories that

every object has to share. Weve also highlighted the ambiguity of interpretation; whos

to say what is right in a given context?

By focusing on objects whose pasts have been blurred with modern

interpretations and reuses, from 19th century seal stones to re-painted frescos, weve also

emphasized that many of these questions have no clear answer because, to put it in

somewhat casual terms, nothing comes out of the ground clean.

But what this means, beyond a bit of dust, it that everything is attached to the

context of its history that stretches back into a time incomprehensible to the human mind.

To a certain extent we cannot imagine the past, the world of Knossos any more than we

can imagine the daily life at Vindolanda or the sight of Cleopatras barge sailing down the

Nile. By virtue of where, when, and by whom they were excavated the objects from

Knossos are linked not only with Bronze Age Mediterranean society but 20th century
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British Archeologists, the mythological past of Greece, and the views of modern tourists

who come, clutching cameras, to see evidence of a lost civilization.

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General Sources
Atkinson, Austen. "Knossos: Minos' Labyrinth." Lost Civilizations: Rediscovering
Ancient Sites through New Technology. London: Pavilion, 2002. 83-88. Print.

Hamilakis, Yannis. Labyrinth Revisited Rethinking Minoan Archeology. 41-55

Hopkins, Adam. Crete: Its Past, Present and People. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
Print.

MacGillivray, J. A. Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth.
London: Pimlico, 2001. Print.

Pendlebury, John D. The Archaeology of Crete. London: Methuen, 1979. Print.

Stokes, JL (19051906). "Pithos-fragments from Cameiros". The Annual of the British

School at Athens. 12.

Evans, Arthur. The Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult and Its Mediterranean Relations:
With Illustrations from Recent Cretan Finds. London: MacMillian, 1901.
Print. Archaeological literature.

Kenna, V. E. G. Cretan and Mycenaean Seal Stones. Archaeology, vol. 21, no. 3, 1968,
pp. 220220., www.jstor.org/stable/41667867.
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Myres, J. L. Arthur John Evans. 1851-1941. Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal
Society, vol. 3, no. 10, 1941, pp. 941968., www.jstor.org/stable/769189.

Riley, MB. "UC Team Discovers Rare Warrior Tomb Filled with Bronze Age Wealth and
Weapons." University of Cincinnati. University of Cincinnati, 2016. Web. 19 Mar.
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Vavouranakis, Giorgos. "Funerary Pithoi in Bronze Age Crete: Their Introduction and
Significance at the Threshold of Minoan Palatial Society." American Journal of
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