Cretan civilization. Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations - ancient Greece Cretan civilization briefly

1. Prerequisites for the formation of a state in Crete. The oldest center of civilization in Europe was the island of Crete. In terms of its geographical position, this elongated mountainous island, which closes the entrance to the Aegean Sea from the south, represents a natural outpost of the European continent, extended far to the south towards the African and Asian coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Already in ancient times, sea routes crossed here, connecting the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean islands with Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa. Emerging at one of the busiest crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean, the culture of Crete was influenced by such diverse and separated cultures as the ancient “river” civilizations of the Middle East (Egypt and Mesopotamia), on the one hand, and the early agricultural cultures of Anatolia, the Danube lowland and the Balkan Greece - on the other. But a particularly important role in the formation of the Cretan civilization was played by the culture of the Cycladic archipelago neighboring Crete, which is rightfully considered one of the leading cultures of the Aegean world in the 3rd millennium BC. e. The Cycladic culture is already characterized by large fortified settlements of the proto-urban type, for example Phylakopi on the island. Melos, Chalandriani on Syros and others, as well as highly developed original art - an idea of it is given by the famous Cycladic idols (carefully polished marble figurines of people) and richly ornamented vessels of various shapes made of stone, clay and metal. The inhabitants of the Cyclades islands were experienced sailors. Probably, thanks to their mediation, contacts between Crete, mainland Greece and the coast of Asia Minor were carried out for a long time.

The time of the emergence of the Minoan civilization is the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennia BC. e., or the end of the Early Bronze Age. Until this moment, the Cretan culture did not stand out any noticeably against the general background of the most ancient cultures of the Aegean world. The Neolithic era, as well as the Early Bronze Age that replaced it (VI-III millennium BC), was in the history of Crete a time of gradual, relatively calm accumulation of forces before the decisive leap to a new stage of social development. What prepared this leap? First of all, of course, development and improvement

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productive forces of Cretan society. At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. In Crete, the production of copper and then bronze was mastered. Bronze tools and weapons gradually replaced similar products made of stone. Important changes occur during this period in the agriculture of Crete. Its basis is now becoming a new multicultural type of agriculture, focused on the cultivation of three main crops, to one degree or another characteristic of the entire Mediterranean region, namely: cereals (mainly barley), grapes and olives. (The so-called Mediterranean triad.)

The result of all these economic changes was an increase in the productivity of agricultural labor and an increase in the mass of surplus product. On this basis, reserve funds of agricultural products began to be created in individual communities, which not only covered food shortages in lean years, but also provided food for people not directly involved in agricultural production, for example, artisans. Thus, for the first time it became possible to separate crafts from agriculture and professional specialization in various branches of handicraft production began to develop. About the high level of professional skill achieved by Minoan artisans already in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. e., evidenced by finds of jewelry, vessels carved from stone, and carved seals dating back to this time. At the end of the same period, the potter's wheel became known in Crete, allowing great progress in the production of ceramics.

in the 3rd millennium BC. e. come into close contact with the population of the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, penetrate the coastal regions of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, and reach Syria and Egypt. Like other maritime peoples of antiquity, the Cretans willingly combined trade and fishing with piracy. Economic prosperity of Crete in the III-II millennia

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BC e. depended to a large extent on these three sources of enrichment.

The progress of the Cretan economy during the Early Bronze Age contributed to rapid population growth in the most fertile areas of the island. This is evidenced by the emergence of many new settlements, which especially accelerated at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Most of them were located in the eastern part of Crete and on the vast central plain (the area of \u200b\u200bKnossos and Phaistos). At the same time, there is an intensive process of social stratification of Cretan society. Within individual communities there is an influential layer of nobility. It consists mainly of tribal leaders and priests. All these people were exempt from direct participation in productive activities and occupied a privileged position in comparison with the mass of ordinary community members. At the other pole of the same social system, slaves appear, mainly from among the few captured foreigners. During the same period, new forms of political relations began to take shape in Crete. Stronger and more populous communities subjugate their less powerful neighbors, force them to pay tribute and impose all sorts of other duties. Already existing tribes and tribal unions are internally consolidated, acquiring a clearer political organization. The logical result of all these processes was the formation at the turn of the III-II millennia of the first “palace” states, which occurred almost simultaneously in different regions of Crete.

2. The first state formations. The era of palace civilization in Crete covers a total of about 600 years and falls into two main periods: 1) old palaces (2000-1700 BC) and 2) new palaces (1700-1400 BC) .). Already at the beginning of the 2nd millennium, several independent states emerged on the island. Each of them included several dozen small communal settlements, grouped around one of the four large palaces now known to archaeologists. As already mentioned, this number includes the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia in central Crete and the palace of Kato Zakro (Zakroe) on the east coast of the island. Unfortunately, only a few of the “old palaces” that existed in these places have survived. Later construction erased their traces almost everywhere. Only in Festos has the large western courtyard of the old palace and part of the adjacent interior spaces been preserved. It can be assumed that already at this early time the Cretan architects, who built palaces in different parts of the island, tried to follow a certain plan in their work, the main elements of which continued to be used subsequently. The main of these elements was the placement of the entire complex of palace buildings around a rectangular central courtyard, elongated along the center line always in the same direction from north to south.

Among the palace utensils of this period, the most interesting are the painted clay vases of the Kamares style (their first examples were found in the Kamares cave near Festus, where the name comes from). The stylized floral ornament decorating the walls of these vessels creates the impression of non-stop movement of geometric figures combined with each other: spirals, disks, rosettes, etc. Here for the first time the exceptional dynamism that would later become the most important distinguishing feature of all Minoan art makes itself felt. The color richness of these paintings is also striking. On a dark asphalt-colored background, the design was applied first with white and then with red or brown paint of different shades. These three colors

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made up a very beautiful, although restrained, color scheme.

Already during the period of the “old palaces,” the socio-economic and political development of Cretan society had advanced so far that it gave rise to an urgent need for writing, without which none of the early civilizations known to us could survive. Pictographic writing, which arose at the beginning of this period (it is known mainly from short inscriptions of two or three characters on seals), gradually gave way to a more advanced system of syllabic writing - the so-called Linear A. Inscriptions made in Linear A have reached us of a dedicatory nature, as well as, although in small quantities, business reporting documents.

3. Creation of a united pan-Critan state. Around 1700 BC e. The palaces of Knossos, Festus, Mallia and Kato Zakro were destroyed, apparently as a result of a strong earthquake, accompanied by a large fire.

This disaster, however, only briefly stopped the development of Cretan culture. Soon, on the site of the destroyed palaces, new buildings of the same type were built, basically, apparently, preserving the layout of their predecessors, although surpassing them in their monumentality and splendor of architectural decoration. Thus, a new stage began in the history of Minoan Crete, known in science as the “period of new palaces.”

was borrowed by them from the language of the pre-Greek population of Crete). In Greek myths, a labyrinth is a huge building with many rooms and corridors. A person who got into it could no longer get out without outside help and inevitably died: in the depths of the palace lived a bloodthirsty Minotaur - a monster with a human body and the head of a bull. The tribes and peoples subject to Minos were obliged to annually entertain the terrible beast with human sacrifices until it was killed by the famous Athenian hero Theseus. Evans' excavations showed that the Greek stories about the labyrinth had some basis. In Knossos, a huge building or even a whole complex of buildings with a total area of 16,000 square meters was actually discovered, which included about three hundred rooms for a wide variety of purposes.

The architecture of Cretan palaces is highly unusual, original and unlike anything else. It has nothing in common with the ponderous monumentality of Egyptian and Assyro-Babylonian buildings. At the same time, it is very far from the harmonious balance of the classical Greek temple with its strictly symmetrical

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precise, mathematically verified proportions. In its appearance, the Palace of Knossos most closely resembled an intricate open-air theater set. This impression was facilitated by fancy porticoes with unusually shaped columns that thickened upward, wide stone steps of open terraces, numerous balconies and loggias that cut through the walls of the palace, and bright spots of frescoes flashing everywhere. The interior layout of the palace is extremely complex, even confusing. Living rooms, utility rooms, corridors connecting them, courtyards and light wells are located, at first glance, without any visible system or clear plan, forming some kind of anthill or coral colony. (It is easy to understand the feelings of some Greek traveler at the sight of this huge

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buildings: he really might have thought that he was in a terrible labyrinth from which he would never get out alive.) Despite all the chaos of the palace building, it is still perceived as a single architectural ensemble. This is largely facilitated by the large rectangular courtyard occupying the central part of the palace, with which all the main premises that were part of this huge complex were in one way or another connected. The courtyard was paved with large gypsum slabs and, apparently, was used not for household needs, but for some religious purposes. Perhaps it was here that the so-called “games with bulls” were held, images of which we see on the frescoes decorating the walls of the palace.

Over its centuries-old history, the Palace of Knossos has been rebuilt several times. Its individual parts and the entire building probably had to be restored after each strong earthquake, which occurs in Crete approximately once every fifty years. At the same time, new premises were added to the old, already existing ones. The rooms and storage rooms seemed to be strung one on top of the other, forming long enfilade rows. Separate buildings and groups of buildings gradually merged into a single residential area, grouped around a central courtyard. Despite the well-known unsystematic nature of the internal development, the palace was abundantly equipped with everything necessary to ensure that the life of its inhabitants was calm and comfortable. The builders of the palace took care of such important elements of comfort as water supply and sewerage. During excavations, stone gutters were found that carried sewage outside the palace. An original water supply system was also discovered, thanks to which the inhabitants of the palace never suffered from a lack of drinking water. The Knossos Palace also had a well-designed ventilation and lighting system. The entire thickness of the building was cut through from top to bottom with special light wells, through which sunlight and air entered the lower floors. In addition, large windows and open verandas served the same purpose. Let us recall for comparison that the ancient Greeks even in the 5th century. BC BC - at the time of the highest flowering of their culture - they lived in dim, stuffy dwellings and did not know such basic amenities as a bath and a toilet with a drain. In the Palace of Knossos it was possible to find both: a large terracotta bathtub, painted with images of dolphins, and not far from it a device closely resembling a modern water closet were discovered in the eastern wing of the palace, in the so-called queen's chambers.

A significant part of the lower, ground floor of the palace was occupied by storerooms for storing food supplies. In the western part of the palace, a long corridor has been preserved, cutting through this entire wing in a straight line from north to south. On both sides of it there were narrow elongated chambers located close to each other, in which there were huge clay pithos vessels with convex reliefs on the walls. Apparently, they stored wine, olive oil

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oil and other products. In the floor of the storerooms there were pits lined with stone and covered with stone slabs into which grain was poured. Rough calculations show that the food reserves stored here would have been enough for the inhabitants of the palace for many years.

During the excavations of the Palace of Knossos, archaeologists recovered from the ground and accumulations of rubbish that littered the surviving premises, a wide variety of works of art and artistic crafts. Among them are magnificent painted vases decorated with images of octopuses and other sea animals, sacred stone vessels (the so-called rhytons) in the form of a bull’s head, wonderful earthenware figurines depicting people and animals with extraordinary verisimilitude and expressiveness for that time, and exquisitely crafted jewelry , including gold rings and carved precious stone seals. Many of these things were created in the palace itself, in special workshops in which jewelers, potters, vase painters and artisans of other professions worked, serving the king and the nobility around him (workshop premises were discovered in many places on the territory of the palace). Almost all the products found in the Knossos Palace testify to the high artistic taste of the Minoan craftsmen who made them, to the exceptional originality and unique charm of the art of ancient Crete. Of particular interest is the wall painting that decorated the interior chambers, corridors and porticoes of the palace. Some of these frescoes depict plants, birds, and sea animals. Others showed the inhabitants of the palace itself: slender, tanned men with long black hair, thin “aspen” waists and broad shoulders, and ladies in huge bell-shaped skirts with many frills and tightly drawn bodices that left their breasts completely open. Men's clothing is much simpler. Most often it consists of one loincloth. But some of them have a magnificent headdress of bird feathers on their heads, and on their necks and arms you can see gold jewelry: bracelets and necklaces. The people depicted on the frescoes participate in some complex and not always understandable ceremonies. Some walk decorously in a solemn procession, carrying sacred vessels with libations for the gods on outstretched arms (frescoes of the so-called processional corridor), others smoothly dance around the sacred tree, others carefully watch some ritual or performance, sitting on the steps of the “theater room.” sites." Two main features distinguish the frescoes of the Knossos Palace from other works of the same genre found in other places, for example in Egypt: firstly, the high coloristic skill of the artists who created them, their keen sense of color and, secondly, a completely exceptional art in conveying the movement of people and animals. An example of the dynamic expression that distinguishes the works of Minoan painters can be found in the magnificent frescoes that depict the so-called bull games, or Minoan tauromachy. We see on them a rapidly rushing bull and an acrobat performing a series of intricate jumps right on its horns and on its back. In front of and behind the bull, the artist depicted the figures of two girls in loincloths, obviously “assistants” of the acrobat. The meaning of this entire impressive scene is not entirely clear. We do not know who took part in this strange and undoubtedly fatal competition between a man and an angry

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animals and what was his ultimate goal. However, it is safe to say that “games with a bull” were not simple fun for an idle crowd in Crete, like modern Spanish bullfighting. Apparently, this was an important religious ritual associated with one of the main Minoan cults - the cult of the bull god.

The scenes of the tauromachy are perhaps the only disturbing note in Minoan art, which in general is distinguished by its amazing serenity and cheerfulness. The cruel, bloody scenes of war and hunting, so popular in contemporary art of the Middle East and mainland Greece, are completely alien to him. Judging by what we see in the frescoes and other works of Cretan artists, the life of the Minoan palace elite was free from unrest and anxiety. It took place in a joyful atmosphere of almost continuous celebrations and colorful performances. War and the dangers associated with it did not occupy any significant place in it. Yes, this is not surprising. Crete was reliably protected from the hostile outside world by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea washing it. In those days there was not a single significant maritime power in the immediate vicinity of the island, and its inhabitants could feel completely safe. This is the only way to explain the paradoxical fact that amazed archaeologists: all Cretan palaces, including Knossos, remained unfortified throughout almost their entire history. In the hothouse atmosphere of the island with its fertile Mediterranean climate, eternally clear skies and eternally blue sea, a unique Minoan culture emerged, reminiscent of a fragile, outlandish plant, and the “national” character of the Minoans was formed with such features that are clearly revealed in Cretan art, such as peacefulness and subtle artistic taste , cheerfulness.

4. Religious views. Royal power. Of course, in works of palace art the life of Minoan society is presented in a somewhat embellished form. In reality, she also had her shadow sides. The nature of the island was not always favorable to its inhabitants. As already noted, earthquakes constantly occurred in Crete, often reaching destructive force. To this should be added the frequent sea storms in these places, accompanied by thunderstorms and torrential rains, dry years that periodically hit Crete, as well as the rest of Greece, with severe famine and epidemics. In order to protect themselves from all these terrible natural disasters, the inhabitants of Crete turned to their many gods and goddesses for help. The central figure of the Minoan pantheon was the great goddess - “the mistress” (as she is called by inscriptions found at Knossos and in some other places). In works of Cretan art (mainly in small plastic (figurines) and on seals), the goddess appears before us in her various incarnations. Sometimes we see her as a formidable mistress of wild animals, the mistress of mountains and forests (cf. the Greek Artemis), sometimes a benign patroness of vegetation, especially cereals and fruit trees (cf. the Greek Demeter), sometimes an ominous queen of the underworld, holding in her hands wriggling snake (this is how her famous faience figurine depicts her - the so-called goddess with snakes from the Knossos Palace, compare with her the Greek Persephone). Behind all these images one can discern the common features of the ancient deity of fertility - the great mother of all people, animals and plants, whose veneration was widespread in the Mediterranean countries since the Neolithic era.

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Next to the great goddess - the personification of femininity and motherhood, the symbol of the eternal renewal of nature - we see in the Minoan pantheon a deity of a completely different plane, embodying the wild destructive forces of nature - the formidable element of an earthquake, the power of a raging sea. These terrifying phenomena were embodied in the minds of the Minoans in the image of a powerful and ferocious bull god. On some Minoan seals the divine bull is depicted as a fantastic creature - a man with a bull's head, which immediately reminds us of the later Greek myth of the Minotaur. According to the myth, the Minotaur was born from an unnatural relationship between Queen Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a monstrous bull, which was given to Minos by Poseidon, the ruler of the sea (according to one version of the myth, Poseidon himself reincarnated as a bull in order to get along with Pasiphae). In ancient times, it was Poseidon who was considered the culprit of earthquakes: with blows of his trident, he set the sea and land in motion (hence his usual epithet “earthshaker”)

Probably, the same kind of ideas were associated among the ancient inhabitants of Crete with their bull god. In order to pacify the formidable deity and calm the angry elements, abundant sacrifices were made to him, including human ones (an echo of this barbaric ritual was again preserved in the myth of the Minotaur). Probably, the already mentioned games with a bull also served the same purpose - to prevent or stop an earthquake. The symbol of the divine bull - a conventional image of bull horns - is found in almost every Minoan sanctuary. It could also be seen on the roofs of palaces, where it apparently performed the function of apotropaia, that is, a fetish that averts evil from the inhabitants of the palace.

Religion played a huge role in the life of Minoan society, leaving its mark on absolutely all areas of its spiritual and practical activity. This reveals an important difference between Cretan culture and the later Greek civilization, for which such a close interweaving of “divine and human” was no longer characteristic. During the excavations of the Knossos Palace, a huge amount of all kinds of religious utensils were found, including figurines of the “great goddess”,

sacred symbols like bull horns or a double ax - labrys, altars and tables for sacrifices, various vessels for libations, and finally, mysterious objects, the exact name of which cannot be determined

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succeeded, like the so-called playing boards. Many of the premises of the palace were clearly not intended for either household needs or housing, but were used as sanctuaries for religious rites and ceremonies. Among them are crypts - hiding places in which sacrifices were made to the underground gods, pools for ritual ablutions, “sanctuaries”, etc. The very architecture of the palace, the paintings decorating its walls, and other works of art were thoroughly imbued with complex religious symbolism. Essentially, the palace was nothing more than a palace-temple, in which all the inhabitants, including the king himself, his family, the court “ladies” and “gentlemen” surrounding him, performed various priestly duties, participating in rituals, the images of which we we see it on palace frescoes (one should not think that these are just everyday scenes). Thus, it can be assumed that the king - the ruler of Knossos - was at the same time the high priest of the god-king, while the queen - his wife - occupied the corresponding position among the priestesses of the “great goddess - mistress”.

According to many scientists, in Crete there was a special form of royal power, known in science under the name “theocracy” (one of the varieties of monarchy in which secular and spiritual power belong to the same person). The person of the king was considered “sacred and inviolable.” Even viewing it was forbidden to “mere mortals.” This can explain the rather strange, at first glance, circumstance that among the works of Minoan art there is not a single one that could be confidently recognized as an image of a royal person. The entire life of the king and his household was strictly regulated and raised to the level of religious ritual. The kings of Knossos did not just live and rule. They performed sacred acts. The “Holy of Holies” of the Knossos Palace, the place where the priest-king “condescended” to communicate with his subjects, made sacrifices to the gods and at the same time decided state affairs, is his throne room. Before entering it, visitors passed through the vestibule, where there was a large porphyry bowl for ritual ablutions; in order to appear before the “royal eyes”, it was necessary to first wash off

everything is bad. The throne room itself was a small rectangular room. Directly opposite the entrance stood a plaster chair with a high wavy back - the royal throne, and along the walls - tiled benches, on which sat the royal advisers, high priests and dignitaries of Knossos. The walls of the throne room are painted with colorful frescoes depicting griffins - fantastic monsters with a bird's head on a lion's body. The griffins recline in solemn, frozen poses on both sides of the throne, as if protecting the Lord of Crete from all troubles and adversity.

5. Socio-economic relations. The magnificent palaces of the Cretan kings, the untold wealth stored in their basements and storerooms, the atmosphere of comfort and abundance in which the kings and their

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environment - all this was created by the labor of many thousands of nameless peasants and artisans, about whose lives we know little. The court craftsmen who created the wonderful masterpieces of Minoan art, apparently, had little interest in the life of the common people and therefore did not reflect it in their work. As an exception, we can refer to a small soapstone vessel found during excavations of the royal villa in Ayia Triada near Festus. The skillfully executed relief decorating the upper part of the vessel depicts a procession of villagers armed with long fork-shaped sticks (with the help of such tools Cretan peasants probably knocked ripe olives from the trees). Some of the procession participants sing. The procession is led by a priest dressed in a wide scaly cloak. Apparently, the artist who created this small masterpiece of Minoan sculpture wanted to capture a harvest festival or some other similar ceremony.

Some insight into the life of the lower strata of Cretan society is provided by materials from mass graves and rural sanctuaries. Such sanctuaries were usually located somewhere in remote mountain corners: in caves and on mountain tops. During excavations, simple dedicatory gifts are found in them in the form of roughly sculpted clay figurines of people and animals. These things, as well as the primitive grave goods of ordinary burials, indicate the rather low standard of living of the Minoan village, the backwardness of its culture in comparison with the rained culture of the palaces.

The bulk of the working population of Crete lived in small towns and villages scattered across the fields and hills in the vicinity of the palaces. These villages, with their miserable adobe houses, closely pressed together, with their crooked narrow streets, form a striking contrast with the monumental architecture of the palaces and the luxury of their interior decoration. A typical example of an ordinary settlement of the Minoan era is Gournia, located in the northeastern part of Crete. The ancient settlement was located on a low hill near the sea. Its area is small - only 1.5 hectares (this is even less than the entire area occupied by the Knossos Palace). The entire settlement

consisted of several dozen houses, built very compactly and grouped into separate blocks or quarters, within which the houses stood close to each other (this so-called conglomerate development is generally characteristic of settlements of the Aegean world). There were three main streets in Gournia. They walked in a circle along the slopes of the hill. Between them here and there were narrow alleys or, rather, stepped descents paved with stones. The houses themselves are small - no more than 50 sq.m each. Their design is extremely primitive. The lower part of the walls is made of stones held together with clay, the upper part is made of unfired bricks. The frames of the windows and doors were made of wood. In some houses, utility rooms were discovered: storerooms with pithoi for storing supplies -

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owls, presses for squeezing grapes and olive oil. During the excavations, quite a lot of different tools made of copper and bronze were found. In Gurnia there were several small craft workshops, the products of which were most likely intended for local consumption, among them three forges and a pottery workshop. The proximity of the sea suggests that the inhabitants of Gurnia combined agriculture with trade and fishing. The central part of the settlement was occupied by a building, vaguely reminiscent in its layout of Cretan palaces, but much inferior to them in size and in the richness of the interior decoration. It was probably the dwelling of a local ruler who, like the entire population of Gournia, was dependent on the king of Knossos or some other ruler of one of the large palaces. An open area was built next to the ruler's house, which could be used as a place for meetings and all kinds of religious ceremonies or performances. Like all other large and small settlements of the Minoan era, Gournia had no fortifications and was open to attack from both sea and land. This was the appearance of the Minoan village, as far as it can now be imagined from archaeological excavations. What connected the palaces with their rural surroundings? We have every reason to believe that in Cretan society the relations of domination and subordination characteristic of any early class society have already developed. It can be assumed that the agricultural population of the kingdom of Knossos, like any of the states of Crete, was subject to duties, both in kind and labor, in favor of the palace. It was obliged to deliver livestock, grain, oil, wine and other products to the palace. All these receipts were recorded by palace scribes on clay tablets, and then handed over to the palace storerooms, where, thus, huge reserves of food and other material assets accumulated. The palace itself was built and rebuilt by the same peasants, roads and irrigation canals were laid, and bridges were erected.

It is unlikely that they did all this only under duress. The palace was the main sanctuary of the entire state, and elementary piety demanded from the villager that he honor the gods who lived in it with the gifts, giving away the surplus of his economic reserves for the organization of festivals and sacrifices. True, between the people and their gods stood a whole army of intermediaries - a staff of professional priests serving the sanctuary, headed by the “sacred king”. In essence, it was an already established, clearly defined layer of hereditary priestly nobility, opposed to the rest of society as a closed aristocratic class. Uncontrollably disposing of the reserves stored in the palace warehouses, the priests could use the lion's share of these riches

for your own needs. Nevertheless, the people had unlimited trust in these people, since “God’s grace” lay on them.

Of course, along with religious motives, the concentration of the surplus product of agricultural labor in the hands of

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of the palace elite was also dictated by purely economic expediency. For years, food supplies accumulated in the palace could serve as a reserve fund in case of famine. These same reserves provided food for the artisans who worked for the state. The surplus, which had no use locally, went for sale to distant overseas countries: Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, where they could be exchanged for rare types of raw materials that were not available in Crete: gold and copper, ivory and purple, rare woods and stone. Trade sea expeditions in those days were associated with great risk and required enormous preparation costs. Only the state, which had the necessary material and human resources, was able to organize and finance such an enterprise. It goes without saying that the scarce goods obtained in this way ended up in the same palace storerooms and from there were distributed among the master craftsmen who worked both in the palace itself and in its environs. Thus, the palace performed truly universal functions in Minoan society, being at the same time the administrative and religious center of the state, its main granary, workshop and trading post. In the social and economic life of Crete, palaces played approximately the same role that cities play in more developed societies.

6. Cretan maritime power and its decline. The highest flowering of the Minoan civilization occurred in the 16th - first half of the 15th centuries. BC e. It was at this time that the Cretan palaces, especially the palace of Knossos, were rebuilt with unprecedented splendor and splendor. During these one and a half centuries, the most wonderful masterpieces of Minoan art and artistic craft were created. Then all of Crete was united under the rule of the kings of Knossos and became a single centralized state. This is evidenced by the network of convenient wide roads laid throughout the island and connecting Knossos - the capital of the state - with its most remote corners. This is also indicated by the already noted fact of the absence of fortifications in Knossos and other palaces of Crete. If each of these palaces were the capital of an independent state, its owners would probably take care of their protection from hostile neighbors. During this period, a unified system of measures existed in Crete, apparently forcibly introduced by the rulers of the island. Cretan stone weights decorated with the image of an octopus have been preserved. The weight of one such weight was 29 kg. Large bronze ingots, which looked like stretched bull skins, weighed the same amount - the so-called Cretan talents. Most likely, they were used as exchange units in all kinds of trade transactions, replacing money that was still missing. It is very possible that the unification of Crete around the Palace of Knossos was carried out by the famous Minos, about whom later Greek myths tell so much*. Greek historians considered Minos the first thalassocrat - the ruler of the sea. They said about him that he created a large navy, eradicated piracy and established his dominance over the entire Aegean Sea, its islands and coasts.

This legend, apparently, is not without a historical basis. Indeed, according to archaeological data, in the 16th century. BC e. there is a wide maritime expansion of Crete in the Aegean basin. Minoan colonies and trading posts appeared on the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, on Rhodes and even on the coast of Asia Minor, in the Miletus region. On their fast ships, sailed and oared, the Minoans penetrated into the most remote corners of the ancient Mediterranean.

* However, it is possible that this name was borne by many kings who ruled Crete for a number of generations and constituted one dynasty.

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Traces of their settlements, or perhaps just ship moorings, were found on the shores of Sicily, in southern Italy and even on the Iberian Peninsula. According to one myth, Minos died during a campaign in Sicily and was buried there in a magnificent tomb. At the same time, the Cretans established lively trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and the states of the Syro-Phoenician coast. This is indicated by the fairly frequent finds of Minoan pottery made in these two areas. At the same time, things of Egyptian and Syrian origin were found on Crete itself. Egyptian frescoes from the time of the famous Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (the first half of the 15th century BC) depict ambassadors of the country of Keftiu (as the Egyptians called Crete) in typical Minoan clothing - aprons and high ankle boots with gifts to the pharaoh in their hands. There is no doubt that at the time to which these frescoes date, Crete was the strongest naval power in the entire eastern Mediterranean and Egypt was

In the middle of the 15th century, the situation changed dramatically. A catastrophe hit Crete, the like of which the island has never experienced in its entire centuries-old history. Almost all palaces and settlements, with the exception of Knossos, were destroyed.

Many of them, for example the palace in Kato Zakro opened in the 60s, were forever abandoned by their inhabitants and forgotten for entire millennia. The Minoan culture could no longer recover from this terrible blow. From the middle of the 15th century. its decline begins. Crete is losing its position as the leading cultural center of the Aegean Basin. The causes of the disaster, which played a fatal role in the fate of the Minoan civilization, have not yet been precisely established. According to the most plausible guess put forward by the Greek archaeologist S. Marinatos, the destruction of palaces and other Cretan settlements was a consequence of a grandiose volcanic eruption on the island. Fera (modern Santorini) in the southern Aegean Sea.

Other scientists are more inclined to believe that the culprits of the disaster were the Achaean Greeks who invaded Crete from mainland Greece (most likely from the Peloponnese). They

They plundered and devastated the island, which had long attracted them with its fabulous riches, and subjugated its population to their power. It is possible to reconcile these two points of view on the problem of the decline of the Minoan civilization, if we assume that the Achaeans invaded Crete after the island was devastated by a volcanic catastrophe, and, without encountering resistance from the demoralized and greatly reduced local population, took possession of its most important life centers. Indeed, in the culture of Knossos - the only one of the Cretan palaces that survived the catastrophe of the mid-15th century - important changes occurred after this, indicating the emergence of a new people in these places. Full-blooded realistic Minoan art is now giving way to dry and lifeless stylization, an example of which can be the Knossos vases, painted in the so-called palace style (second half of the 15th century). Traditional for Minoan vase painting

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motifs (plants, flowers, sea animals) on palace-style vases turn into abstract graphic schemes, which indicates a sharp change in the artistic taste of the palace inhabitants. At the same time, in the vicinity of Knossos, graves appeared containing a wide variety of weapons: swords, daggers, helmets, arrowheads and spears, which was not at all typical for previous Minoan burials. Probably, representatives of the Achaean military nobility who settled in the Knossos Palace were buried in these graves. Finally, one more fact that indisputably indicates the penetration of new ethnic elements into Crete: almost all the tablets from the Knossos archive that have reached us were written not in Minoan, but in Greek (Achaean) language. These documents date mainly from the end of the 15th century. BC e. Obviously, at the end of the 15th or beginning of the 14th century. The Palace of Knossos was destroyed and was never fully restored. Wonderful works of Minoan art were destroyed in the fire. Archaeologists managed to restore only a small part of them. From this moment on, the decline of the Minoan civilization becomes an irreversible process. It is increasingly degenerating, losing those features and characteristics that made up its unique identity, sharply distinguishing it from all other cultures of the Bronze Age. From the leading cultural center that it remained for over five centuries, Crete is turning into a remote, backward province. The main center of cultural progress and civilization in the Aegean region is now moving north, to the territory of mainland Greece, where at that time the so-called Mycenaean culture flourished.

Prerequisites for the formation of states in Crete

The oldest center of civilization in Europe was the island of Crete. In terms of its geographical position, this elongated mountainous island, which closes the entrance to the Aegean Sea from the south, is like a natural outpost of the European continent, extended far to the south towards the African and Asian coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Already in ancient times, sea routes crossed here, connecting the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean islands with Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa. Emerging at one of the busiest crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean, the culture of Crete was influenced by such diverse and separated cultures as the ancient “river” civilizations of the Middle East (and), on the one hand, and the early agricultural cultures of the Danube lowland and Balkan Greece, on the other. another. But a particularly important role in the formation of the Cretan civilization was played by the culture of the Cycladic archipelago neighboring Crete, which is rightfully considered one of the leading cultures of the Aegean world in the 3rd millennium BC.

The time of the emergence of the Minoan civilization is the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. or the end of the Early Bronze Age. Until this moment, the Cretan culture did not stand out any noticeably against the general background of the most ancient cultures of the Aegean world. The era, just like the Early Bronze Age that replaced it (VI-III millennium BC), was in the history of Crete a time of gradual, relatively calm accumulation of forces before the decisive leap to a new stage of social development. What prepared this leap? First of all, the development and improvement of the productive forces of Cretan society. Back at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. In Crete, the production of copper and then bronze was mastered. Bronze tools and weapons are gradually replacing similar products made of stone. Important changes occur during this period in the agriculture of Crete. Its basis is now becoming agriculture of a new polycultural type, focused on the simultaneous cultivation of three main crops (the so-called “Mediterranean triad”), namely -

cereals (mainly barley),
grapes
olives.

Productivity and population growth

The result of all these economic changes was an increase in the productivity of agricultural labor and an increase in the mass of surplus product. On this basis, reserve funds of agricultural products began to be created in individual communities, which not only covered food shortages in lean years, but also provided food for people not directly involved in agricultural production, for example, specialist craftsmen. Thus, for the first time, it became possible to separate crafts from agriculture, and to develop professional specialization in various branches of handicraft production. The high level of professional skill achieved by Minoan artisans already in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC is evidenced by finds of jewelry, stone-carved vessels, and carved seals dating back to that time. At the end of the same period, the potter's wheel became known in Crete, allowing great progress in the production of ceramics.

Palikastro, XVI century. BC. Sea style.

At the same time, a certain part of the community reserve funds could be used for intercommunity and intertribal exchange. The development of trade in Crete, as well as in the Aegean basin in general, was closely connected with the development of navigation. It is no coincidence that almost all the Cretan settlements now known to us were located either directly on the sea coast or somewhere not far from it. Having mastered the art of navigation, the inhabitants of Crete already in the 3rd millennium BC. came into close contact with the population of the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, penetrated the coastal regions of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, and reached Syria and Egypt. Like other maritime peoples of antiquity, the Cretans willingly combined trade and fishing with piracy.

During the same period, new forms of political relations began to take shape in Crete. Stronger and more populous communities subjugate their less powerful neighbors, force them to pay tribute and impose all sorts of other duties. Already existing tribes and tribal unions are internally consolidated, acquiring a clearer political organization. The logical result of all these processes was the formation of the first “palace” states at the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium, which occurred almost simultaneously in different regions of Crete.

The first class societies and states

Palace style pithos. Knossos, 1450 BC

Already at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Several independent states emerged on the island. Each of them included several dozen small communal settlements, grouped around one of the four large palaces now known to archaeologists. This number includes the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia in central Crete and the palace of Kato Zakro on the east coast of the island. Unfortunately, only a few of the “old palaces” that existed in these places have survived. Later construction erased their traces almost everywhere. Only in Festos has the large western courtyard of the old palace and part of the adjacent interior spaces been preserved.

Among the palace utensils of this period, the most interesting are the painted clay vases of the Kamares style (their first examples were found in the Kamares cave near Festus, where the name comes from). The stylized floral ornament decorating the walls of these vessels creates the impression of non-stop movement of geometric figures combined with each other: spirals, disks, rosettes, etc. Here, for the first time, the dynamism (sense of movement) that would later become a distinctive feature of all Minoan art makes itself felt . The color richness of these paintings is also striking.

Vessel "Kamares". Festus Palace, 1850-1700 BC.

Already during the period of the “old palaces,” the socio-economic and political development of Cretan society had advanced so far that it gave rise to an urgent need for writing, without which none of the early civilizations known to us could survive. Pictographic writing, which arose at the beginning of this period (it is known mainly from short inscriptions on seals of two or three characters), gradually gave way to a more advanced system of syllabic writing - the so-called Linear A. Dedicatory inscriptions made in Linear A have been preserved, as well as, although in small quantities, economic reporting documents.

The rise of Cretan civilization. Predominance of Knossos

Around 1700 BC The palaces of Knossos, Festus, Mallia and Kato Zakro were destroyed, apparently as a result of a strong earthquake, accompanied by a large fire. This disaster, however, only briefly stopped the development of Cretan culture. Soon, on the site of the destroyed palaces, new buildings of the same type were built, basically, apparently, preserving the layout of their predecessors, although surpassing them in their monumentality and splendor of architectural decoration. Thus, a new stage began in the history of Minoan Crete, known in science as the “period of new palaces” or the late Minoan period.

Knossos palace

The most remarkable architectural structure of this period is the Palace of Minos in Knossos, opened by A. Evans. The extensive material collected by archaeologists during excavations in this palace allows us to get an idea of what the Minoan civilization was like at its peak. The Greeks called the palace of Minos a “labyrinth” (this word itself, apparently, was borrowed by them from the language of the pre-Greek population of Crete). In Greek myths, the labyrinth was described as a huge building with many rooms and corridors. A person who found himself in a labyrinth could no longer get out of there without outside help and inevitably died: in the depths of the palace lived a bloodthirsty Minotaur - a monster with a human body and the head of a bull. The tribes and peoples subject to Minos were obliged to annually entertain the terrible beast with human sacrifices until it was killed by the famous Athenian hero Theseus. Evans' excavations showed that the Greek stories about the labyrinth had some basis. In Knossos, a building of outstanding size, or even a whole complex of buildings with a total area of 10,000 m2, which included about three hundred rooms for a wide variety of purposes, was indeed discovered.

Modern view of the Knossos Palace. Construction approx. 1700 BC

The architecture of Cretan palaces is unusual, original and unlike anything else. It has nothing in common with the ponderous monumentality of Egyptian and Assyrian-Babylonian buildings. At the same time, it is far from the harmonious balance of the classical Greek temple with its strictly mathematically verified proportions. The interior layout of the palace is extremely complex, even confusing. Living rooms, utility rooms, corridors connecting them, courtyards and light wells are located, at first glance, without any visible system or clear plan, forming some kind of anthill or coral colony. Despite all the chaos of the palace building, it is still perceived as a single architectural ensemble. This is largely facilitated by the large rectangular courtyard occupying the central part of the palace, with which all the main premises that were part of this huge complex were in one way or another connected. The courtyard was paved with large gypsum slabs and, apparently, was used not for household needs, but for some religious purposes.

Over its centuries-old history, the Palace of Knossos has been rebuilt several times. Its individual parts and the entire building probably had to be restored after each strong earthquake, which occurs in Crete approximately once every fifty years. At the same time, new premises were added to the old, already existing ones. The rooms and storage rooms seemed to be strung together one next to the other, forming long enfilade rows. Separate buildings and groups of buildings gradually merged into a single residential area, grouped around a central courtyard. Despite the well-known unsystematic nature of the internal development, the palace was abundantly equipped with everything necessary to ensure that the life of its inhabitants was calm and comfortable. The builders of the palace took care of such important elements of comfort as water supply and sewerage. During excavations, stone gutters were found that carried sewage outside the palace. A water supply system was also discovered, thanks to which the inhabitants of the palace never suffered from a lack of drinking water. The Knossos Palace also had a well-designed ventilation and lighting system. The entire thickness of the building was cut from top to bottom with special light wells, through which sunlight and air entered the lower floors of the palace. Large windows and open verandas served the same purpose.

A significant part of the lower, ground floor of the palace was occupied by pantries for storing food supplies: wine, olive oil and other products.

Gold Cup No. 2 from Vafio. XV century BC.

During the excavations of the Palace of Knossos, archaeologists recovered a wide variety of works of art and artistic crafts. Among them are magnificent painted vases decorated with images of octopuses and other sea animals, sacred stone vessels (the so-called rhytons) in the form of a bull’s head, wonderful earthenware figurines depicting people and animals with extraordinary verisimilitude and expressiveness for that time, and exquisitely crafted jewelry , including gold rings and carved precious stone seals. Many of these things were created in the palace itself, in special workshops in which jewelers, potters, vase painters and artisans of other professions worked, serving the king and the nobility around him with their labor (workshop premises were discovered in many places on the territory of the palace). Of particular interest is the wall painting that decorated the interior chambers, corridors and porticoes of the palace. Some of these frescoes depicted scenes from natural life: plants, birds, sea animals. Others showed the inhabitants of the palace itself: slender, tanned men with long black hair styled in whimsically curly curls, with thin “aspen” waists and broad shoulders, and “ladies” in huge bell-shaped skirts with many frills and tightly cinched bodices. Two main features distinguish the frescoes of the Palace of Knossos from other works of the same genre found in other places, for example in Egypt:

firstly, the high coloristic skill of the artists who created them, their heightened sense of color and,
secondly, art in conveying the movement of people and animals.

"Games with a bull." Fresco from the Palace of Knossos.

An example of the dynamic expression that distinguishes the works of Minoan painters are the magnificent frescoes, which depict the so-called “games with bulls” or the Minoan tauromachy. We see on them a rapidly rushing bull and an acrobat performing a series of intricate jumps right on its horns and on its back. In front of and behind the bull, the artist depicted the figures of two girls in loincloths, apparently “assistants” of the acrobat. Apparently, this was an important religious ritual associated with one of the main Minoan cults - the cult of the bull god.

The scenes of the tauromachy are perhaps the only disturbing note in Minoan art, which is generally distinguished by serenity and cheerfulness. The cruel, bloody scenes of war and hunting, so popular in contemporary art of the Middle East and mainland Greece, are completely alien to him. Yes, this is not surprising. Crete was reliably protected from the hostile outside world by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea washing it. In those days there was not a single significant maritime power in the immediate vicinity of the island, and its inhabitants could feel safe. This is the only way to explain the paradoxical fact that amazed archaeologists: all Cretan palaces, including Knossos, remained unfortified throughout almost their entire history.

Religious views of the ancient Cretans

In works of palace art, the life of Minoan society is presented in a somewhat embellished form. In fact, she also had her shadow sides. The nature of the island was not always favorable to its inhabitants. As already noted, earthquakes constantly occurred in Crete, often reaching destructive force. To this should be added the frequent sea storms in these places, accompanied by thunderstorms and torrential rains, dry years, which periodically hit Crete as well as the rest of Greece, famine and epidemics. In order to protect themselves from all these terrible natural disasters, the inhabitants of Crete turned to their many gods and goddesses for help.

Goddess with snakes from the Knossos Palace. OK. 1600-1500 BC.

The central figure of the Minoan pantheon was the great goddess - “the mistress” (as she is called by inscriptions found at Knossos and in some other places). In works of Cretan art (mainly in small plastics: figurines and seals), the goddess appears before us in her various incarnations. Sometimes we see her as a formidable mistress of wild animals, the mistress of mountains and forests with all their inhabitants (cf. Greek Artemis), sometimes a benevolent patroness of vegetation, especially cereals and fruit trees (cf. Greek Demeter), sometimes an ominous queen of the underworld, holding writhing snakes in her hands (this is how the famous faience figurine “goddess with snakes” from the Knossos Palace depicts her, compare with the Greek Persephone). Behind all these images one can discern the features of the ancient deity of fertility - the great mother of all people, animals and plants, whose veneration was widespread in all Mediterranean countries since the Neolithic era.

Next to the great goddess - the personification of femininity and motherhood, a symbol of the eternal renewal of nature, there was in the Minoan pantheon a deity of a completely different plane, embodying the wild destructive forces of nature - the formidable element of an earthquake, the power of a raging sea. These terrifying phenomena were transformed in the minds of the Minoans into the image of a powerful and ferocious bull god. On some Minoan seals, the divine bull is depicted as a fantastic creature - a man with a bull's head, which immediately reminds us of the later Greek myth of the Minotaur. According to myth, the Minotaur was born from an unnatural relationship between Queen Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, and a monstrous bull, which was given to Minos by Poseidon, the ruler of the sea (according to one version of the myth, Poseidon himself reincarnated as a bull). In ancient times, it was Poseidon who was considered the culprit of earthquakes: with blows of his trident, he set the sea and land in motion (hence his usual epithet “earth shaker”). Probably, the same kind of ideas were associated among the ancient inhabitants of Crete with their bull god. In order to pacify the formidable deity and calm the angry elements, abundant sacrifices were made to him, including, apparently, human ones (an echo of this barbaric ritual was again preserved in the myth of the Minotaur). Probably, the already mentioned games with the bull served the same purpose - to prevent or stop an earthquake. Symbols of the divine bull - the conventional image of bull horns - are found in almost every Minoan sanctuary.

Young man among the lilies, “King-Priest”. Relief painted in fresco technique, height 2.2 m. Knossos, 1600 BC.

Religion played a huge role in the life of Minoan society, leaving its mark on all spheres of its spiritual and practical activity. This reveals an important difference between Cretan culture and later culture, for which such a close interweaving of “divine and human” was no longer characteristic. During excavations of the Knossos Palace, a huge amount of all kinds of religious utensils were found, including

figurines of the great goddess,
sacred symbols like the already mentioned bull horns,
double ax - labrys,
altars and tables for sacrifices,
various vessels for libations.

Many of the premises of the palace were clearly not intended for either household needs or housing, but were used as sanctuaries for religious rites and ceremonies. Among them are crypts - hiding places in which sacrifices were made to the underground gods, pools for ritual ablutions, small home chapels, etc. The very architecture of the palace, the paintings decorating its walls, and other works of art were thoroughly imbued with complex religious symbolism. Essentially, the palace was nothing more than a huge sanctuary, a palace-temple, in which all the inhabitants, including the king himself, performed various priestly duties, participating in rituals, images of which we see on palace frescoes. Thus, it can be assumed that the king - the ruler of Knossos - was at the same time the high priest of the god-king, while the queen - his wife - occupied the corresponding position among the priestesses of the great goddess - the “mistress”.

Royal power

The “Holy of Holies” of the Knossos Palace, the place where the priest-king “condescended” to communicate with his subjects, made sacrifices to the gods and at the same time decided state affairs, is his throne room. Before entering it, visitors were led through the vestibule, in which there was a large porphyry bowl for ritual ablutions: in order to appear before the “royal eyes”, they first had to wash away everything bad from themselves. Along the walls of the hall there were benches lined with knocking, on which the royal advisers, high priests and dignitaries of Knossos sat. The walls of the throne room are painted with colorful frescoes depicting griffins - fantastic monsters with a bird's head on a lion's body. The griffins recline in solemn, frozen poses on both sides of the throne, as if protecting the Lord of Crete from all troubles and adversity.

Socio-economic relations

The magnificent palaces of the Cretan kings, the wealth stored in their cellars and storerooms, the environment of comfort and abundance in which the kings themselves and their entourage lived - all this was created by the labor of many thousands of nameless peasants and artisans, about whose lives only a little is known.

Soapstone vessel from Agia Triade. OK. 1550-1500 BC.

The court craftsmen, who created all the most remarkable masterpieces of Minoan art, apparently had little interest in the life of the common people and therefore did not reflect it in their work. As an exception, we can refer to a small soapstone vessel found during excavations of the royal villa in Agia Triada near Festus. The skillfully executed relief decorating the upper part of the vessel depicts a procession of villagers armed with long fork-shaped sticks (with the help of such tools Cretan peasants probably knocked ripe olives from the trees). Some of the procession participants sing. The procession is led by a priest dressed in a wide scaly cloak. Apparently, the artist who created this small masterpiece of Minoan sculpture wanted to capture a harvest festival or some other similar ceremony.

Some insight into the life of the lower strata of Cretan society is provided by materials from mass graves and rural sanctuaries. Such sanctuaries were usually located somewhere in remote mountain corners: in caves and on mountain tops. During excavations, simple dedicatory gifts are found in them in the form of roughly sculpted clay figurines of people and animals. These things, as well as the primitive grave goods of ordinary burials, indicate the low standard of living of the Minoan village, the backwardness of its culture in comparison with the refined culture of the palaces.

Rhyton made of rock crystal. Palace Kato Zakro. OK. 1700-1450 BC.

A typical example of an ordinary settlement of the Minoan era is Gournia, located in the northeastern part of Crete. Its area is very small - only 1.5 hectares (this is only slightly larger than the area occupied by the Knossos Palace without adjacent buildings). The entire settlement consisted of several dozen houses, built very compactly and grouped into separate blocks or quarters, within which the houses stood close to each other. The houses themselves are small - no more than 50 m2 each. Their design is extremely primitive. The lower part of the walls is made of stones held together with clay, the upper part is made of unfired bricks. The frames of the windows and doors were made of wood. In some houses, utility rooms were discovered: pantries with pithos for storing supplies, presses for squeezing grapes and olive oil. During the excavations, quite a lot of different tools made of copper and bronze were found.

In Gurnia there were several craft workshops, the products of which were most likely intended for local consumption, among them a forge and a pottery workshop. The proximity of the sea suggests that the inhabitants of Gurnia combined agriculture with trade and fishing. The central part of the settlement was occupied by a building, vaguely reminiscent in its layout of Cretan palaces, but much inferior to them in size and in the richness of the interior decoration. It was probably the dwelling of a local ruler who, like the entire population of Gournia, was dependent on the king of Knossos or some other ruler from the large palaces. An open area was built next to the ruler's house, which could be used as a place for meetings and all kinds of religious ceremonies or performances. Like all other large and small settlements of the Minoan era, Gournia had no fortifications and was open to attack from both sea and land. This was the appearance of the Minoan village, as far as it can now be imagined from archaeological excavations.

What connected the palaces with their rural surroundings? We have every reason to believe that in Cretan society the relations of domination and subordination characteristic of any early class society have already developed. It can be assumed that the agricultural population of the kingdom of Knossos, like any of the states of Crete, was subject to duties, both in kind and labor, in favor of the palace. It was obliged to deliver livestock, grain, oil, wine and other products to the palace. All these receipts were recorded by palace scribes on clay tablets, and then handed over to the palace storerooms, where huge reserves of food and other material assets were thus accumulated. The palace itself was built and rebuilt by the same peasants and slaves, roads and irrigation canals were laid.

Labrys is a votive golden ax from the Arkalochori cave. 1650-1600 BC.

It is unlikely that they did all this only under duress. The palace was the main sanctuary of the entire state, and elementary piety demanded from the villager that he honor the gods who lived in it with the gifts, giving away the surplus of his economic reserves for the organization of festivals and sacrifices; however, between the people and their gods stood a whole army of intermediaries - a staff of professional priests serving the sanctuary led by the "sacred king". In essence, it was an already established, clearly defined layer of hereditary priestly nobility, opposed to the rest of society as a closed aristocratic class. Uncontrollably disposing of the reserves stored in the palace warehouses, the priests could use the lion's share of these riches for their own needs. Nevertheless, the people had unlimited trust in these people, since “God’s grace” lay on them.

Of course, along with religious motives, the concentration of the surplus product of agricultural labor in the hands of the palace elite was also dictated by purely economic expediency. For years, food supplies accumulated in the palace could serve as a reserve fund in case of famine. These same reserves provided food for the artisans who worked for the state. The surplus, which had no use locally, went for sale to distant overseas countries: Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, where they could be exchanged for rare types of raw materials that were not available on Crete itself: gold and copper, ivory and purple, rare rocks wood and stone.

Trade sea expeditions in those days were associated with great risk and required large expenses for their preparation. Only the state, which had the necessary material and human resources, was able to organize and finance such an enterprise. It goes without saying that the scarce goods obtained in this way ended up in the same palace storerooms and from there were distributed among the master craftsmen who worked both in the palace itself and in its environs. Thus, the palace performed truly universal functions in Minoan society, being at the same time the administrative and religious center of the state, its main granary, workshop and trading post. In the social and economic life of Crete, palaces played approximately the same role that cities play in more developed societies.

Creation of a maritime power. Decline of Cretan civilization

The Rise of Crete

A girl worshiping a deity. Bronze. 1600-1500 BC.

The highest flowering of the Minoan civilization occurred in the 16th - first half of the 15th centuries. BC. It was at this time that the Cretan palaces, especially the palace of Knossos, were rebuilt with unprecedented splendor and splendor, and masterpieces of Minoan art and artistic craft were created. At the same time, all of Crete was united under the rule of the kings of Knossos and became a single centralized state. This is evidenced by the network of convenient wide roads laid throughout the island and connecting Knossos - the capital of the state - with its most remote corners. This is also indicated by the absence of fortifications in Knossos and other palaces of Crete. If each of these palaces were the capital of an independent state, its owners would probably take care of their protection from hostile neighbors.

During this period, a unified system of measures existed in Crete, apparently forcibly introduced by the rulers of the island. Cretan stone weights decorated with the image of an octopus have been preserved. The weight of one such weight was 29 kg. Large bronze ingots, which looked like stretched bull skins, weighed the same amount - the so-called “Cretan talents”. Most likely, they were used as exchange units in all kinds of trade transactions, replacing money that was still missing. It is very possible that the unification of Crete around the Palace of Knossos was carried out by the famous Minos, about whom later Greek myths tell so much. Although we can well assume that this name was borne by many kings who ruled Crete for a number of generations and constituted one dynasty. Greek historians considered Minos the first thalassocrator - the ruler of the sea. They said about him that he created a large navy, eradicated piracy and established his dominance over the entire Aegean Sea, its islands and coasts.

Sacred bull horns. Knossos palace. 1900-1600 BC.

This legend, apparently, is not without historical grain. Indeed, as archeology shows, in the 16th century. BC. there is a wide maritime expansion of Crete in the Aegean basin. Minoan colonies and trading posts appeared on the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, on Rhodes and even on the coast of Asia Minor, in the Miletus region.

On their fast ships, sailed and oared, the Minoans penetrated into the most remote corners of the ancient Mediterranean. Traces of their settlements or, perhaps, just ship moorings were found on the shores of Sicily, in southern Italy and even on the Iberian Peninsula. According to one myth, Minos died during a campaign in Sicily and was buried there in a magnificent tomb.

At the same time, the Cretans established lively trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and the states. This is indicated by the fairly frequent finds of Minoan pottery made in these two areas. At the same time, things of Egyptian and Syrian origin were found on Crete itself. Egyptian frescoes from the time of the famous Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (the first half of the 15th century) depict ambassadors of the country of Keftiu (as the Egyptians called Crete) in typically Minoan clothing - aprons and high ankle boots with gifts to the pharaoh in their hands. There is no doubt that at the time to which these frescoes date, Crete was the strongest naval power in the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt was interested in the friendship of its kings.

Disaster in Crete

In the middle of the 15th century BC. the situation changed dramatically. A catastrophe hit Crete, the like of which the island has never experienced in its entire centuries-old history. Almost all palaces and settlements, with the exception of Knossos, were destroyed. Many of them, for example, opened in the 60s. XX century palace in Kato Zakro, were forever abandoned by their inhabitants and forgotten for entire millennia. The Minoan culture could no longer recover from this terrible blow. From the middle of the 15th century. its decline begins. Crete is losing its position as the leading cultural center of the Aegean Basin.

The causes of the disaster, which played a fatal role in the fate of the Minoan civilization, have not yet been precisely established. According to the most plausible guess put forward by the Greek archaeologist S. Marinatos, the destruction of palaces and other Cretan settlements was a consequence of a grandiose volcanic eruption on the island. Fera (modern Santorini) in the southern Aegean Sea. Other scientists are more inclined to believe that the culprits of the disaster were the Achaean Greeks who invaded Crete from mainland Greece (most likely from the Peloponnese). They plundered and devastated the island, which had long attracted them with its fabulous riches, and subjugated its population to their power. It is possible to reconcile these two points of view on the problem of the decline of the Minoan civilization, if we assume that the Achaeans invaded Crete after the island was devastated by a volcanic catastrophe, and, without encountering resistance from the demoralized and greatly reduced local population, took possession of its most important life centers. Indeed, in the culture of Knossos, the only Cretan palace that survived the catastrophe of the mid-15th century, important changes took place, indicating the emergence of a new people in these places. Full-blooded realistic Minoan art is now giving way to dry and lifeless stylization, an example of which can be the Knossos vases, painted in the so-called “palace style” (second half of the 15th century).

Rhyton in the form of a bull's head. Chlorite. Kato Zagros. OK. 1450 BC

Motifs traditional for Minoan vase painting (plants, flowers, sea animals) on “palace style” vases turn into abstract graphic schemes, which indicates a sharp change in the artistic taste of the inhabitants of the palace. At the same time, in the vicinity of Knossos, graves appeared containing a wide variety of weapons: swords, daggers, helmets, arrowheads and spears, which was not at all typical for previous Minoan burials. Probably, representatives of the Achaean military nobility who settled in the Knossos Palace were buried in these graves. Finally, one more fact that indisputably indicates the penetration of new ethnic elements into Crete: almost all the tablets from the Knossos archive that have reached us were written not in Minoan, but in Greek (Achaean) language. These documents date mainly from the end of the 15th century. BC.

At the end of the 15th or beginning of the 14th century. BC. The Palace of Knossos was destroyed and was never fully restored. Wonderful works of Minoan art were destroyed in the fire. Archaeologists managed to restore only a small part of them. From this moment on, the decline of the Minoan civilization becomes an irreversible process. From the leading cultural center that it remained for over five centuries, Crete is turning into a remote, backward province. The main center of cultural progress and civilization in the Aegean region is now moving north, to the territory of mainland Greece, where at that time the so-called Mycenaean culture flourished.

The ancient Greek civilization was preceded by several civilizations, such as the Cycladic one (which arose on the Cyclades islands of the same name mentioned in ancient Greek myths), which in turn contributed to the emergence of a new, vibrant civilization, the so-called Minoan civilization. It got its name from the name of King Minos, who lived in the city of Knossos.

How did you learn about the existence of the Minoan culture?

It was not until 1900 that the archaeological discovery of the Minoan civilization took place, despite the fact that the myths of Ancient Greece and literature were from the very beginning filled with tales of the wealth and power of Crete. In Homer's Iliad, at the dawn of Greek literature, King Minos is mentioned, who ruled several generations before the Trojan War in the city of Knossos. According to Greek myth, Minos was the son of Princess Europa of Phenicia and the god Zeus, who kidnapped her, turning into a white bull, and took her to Crete. Minos was the most powerful ruler in that era. He forced Athens to regularly pay him tribute, sending girls and boys who became food for the bull-headed monster Minotaur. Athens was freed from this duty by the hero Theseus, who killed the Minotaur with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne. The cunning master Daedalus built a labyrinth where Minos hid the Minotaur.

Few serious scholars in the 19th century believed that these legends had any historical basis. Homer was not a historian, but a poet, and it was believed that wars, big cities, heroes were entirely a figment of his imagination. Everything changed after Heinrich Schliemann in 1873 discovered the ruins of Troy in Asia Minor exactly at the place where Homer placed Troy, and in 1876 he also discovered Mycenae. Homer's prestige was restored. Schliemann's discoveries inspired Arthur Evans, a wealthy English antiquarian and journalist. In 1900 Evans began excavations in Crete. The result was the discovery of a colossal palace and an abundance of pottery, paintings, jewelry and texts. However, the brilliant civilization discovered on Crete was clearly not Greek, and Evans called it Minoan, after the legendary king Minos. Then there were more excavations, and archaeologists were able to collect information about how this one of the most ancient civilizations arose.

The emergence of the Minoan civilization.

The south of the Balkan Peninsula and the islands of the Aegean Sea, due to their geographical location, already at the dawn of civilization became the bridge that connected the European continent with the Middle East, which was ahead of it in socio-economic and cultural development. In this region, before other areas of Europe, around the turn of the 7th-6th millennium BC, the dominance of a producing economy based on agriculture and cattle breeding was established in the Neolithic (New Stone Age). With the advent of the Bronze Age (at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC), it is already possible to imagine with sufficient certainty the ethnic situation in mainland Greece and on the island of Crete, the largest in the Archipelago.

The main territory of the future Hellas was inhabited at that time by the Pelasgian tribes, related to the Thracians of the north-eastern Balkans and speakers of one of the Indo-European languages.

The island of Crete is located in the Mediterranean Sea 100 km south of mainland Greece. Crete is a narrow, mountainous island stretching from west to east with a climate favorable for agriculture, fertile soil and convenient shallow harbors along the deeply indented northern coast.

The first inhabitants of the island of Crete who left material evidence were farmers who used stone tools, who appeared here long before 3000 BC. Neolithic settlers made beautifully polished and decorated pottery. They used axes and adzes made of polished stone. These ancient inhabitants of Crete grew wheat and raised cows, sheep and pigs. Before 2500 BC villages appeared, and the people who lived here engaged in trade (both by sea and by land) with their neighbors. Probably around 2500 BC. their neighbors taught them to use bronze.

The Early Bronze Age culture of Crete posed a puzzle to those who studied the Minoan civilization after Evans. Period from approximately 3000 to 2000 BC. Evans called it early Minoan. There are scientists who continue to follow Evans. However, all excavations in Crete have consistently revealed that fully developed Minoan cities (such as the palace cities of Knossos, Mallia, Phaistos and Kato Zakro) are located directly above the remains of the Neolithic culture.

In Crete, the first palaces, together with a new culture, suddenly appeared around 1950 BC, in the absence of any trace of the gradual development of urban culture. Therefore, archaeologists have reason to believe that we can talk about the “Minoans” only after 1950 BC, and regarding the so-called. the early Minoan culture can be doubted whether it was Minoan at all.

But how did this urban revolution happen around 1950 BC? Probably, the Minoan civilization arose thanks to outsiders - powerful seafaring peoples who conquered Crete and established a thalassocracy here, that is, a power based on dominance of the seas.

Who these newcomers were remained a mystery until the Minoan script, known as Linear A, was deciphered. The Minoan language, as revealed by Linear A, turned out to be a West Semitic language of the type spoken in Phenicia and surrounding areas. areas.

What do we know about Minoan culture?

About 4,000 years ago, on the island of Crete, the first great civilization on European soil, the predecessor of the culture of ancient Greece, the Minoan civilization, arose and reached its brilliant flourishing.

According to Homer, in addition to the Minoans themselves, Pelasgians also lived on Crete (according to Herodotus and others, who arrived from Asia Minor or Greece), as well as the Kydonians (a small people, possibly related to the Minoans - from them the name of the city of Kydonia comes).

The Minoans were a seafaring people. In the era when the Minoan civilization reached its maximum power, they made sea voyages to the island of Sicily and southern Italy, where they founded strongholds and trading posts, established close ties with Ugarit (in Syria) and Egypt, and colonized the island of Cyprus. The Cretan fleet dominated the Eastern Mediterranean, clearing it of pirates and establishing freedom of navigation there. The successes of the Minoans in the field of military affairs were not limited to the fleet. For a long time, the Cretans were famous as skilled archers and slingers. Their compound bow was so well known that texts from Ugarit say that it was made by the god Kothar-va-Hasis in Crete.

The Minoans conducted active trade, their large merchant fleet went to sea with valuable cargo - ceramics, metal products, wine, olive oil, in order to exchange them overseas for copper, tin, ivory and gold.

Minoan artisans knew how to produce ceramics with amazingly beautiful paintings. This people had a highly developed and complex system of religious worship; an extremely diverse variety of carved gems for religious purposes have survived to this day. The Cretans built magnificent palaces and painted the walls with exquisite frescoes.

The first states on Crete appeared at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

At the same time, the island developed its own written language, unlike any other. The first to be invented was “Cretan hieroglyphs” (so named by scientists for their resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphs). Then its simplified version appeared - “Linear A”. The Minoan language, as revealed by Linear A, appears to be a West Semitic language of the type spoken in Phenicia and surrounding areas. A special and unique pictographic writing, most likely of a later type, was found on the so-called Phaistos Disc, a round clay tablet (diameter 16 cm), on both sides of which pictographs were embossed using seals. This disc comes from the ancient city of Phaistos in Crete.

Among the city-states of Crete, Knossos emerged very early, becoming by the beginning of the 17th century. BC. the capital of the entire island. Subsequently, the power of the Knossos kings extended to many islands and coastal areas on both sides of the Aegean Sea.

The period of prosperity of the Minoan civilization lasted until the middle of the 15th century. BC. During this time, the island was covered with a network of paved roads with guard posts and inns. New cities appeared, old ones were rebuilt and improved. The complex complex of residential and utility premises of the royal palace in Knossos (the “Labyrinth” of Greek myths) had grandiose dimensions. Current economic records were kept on clay tablets using Linear A.

Life of the Minoans

Judging by their visual arts, the Minoans were an elegant and cheerful people. Both men and women wore their hair long, but women styled it in especially varied ways, styling it in curls and ringlets. The men's clothing consisted practically only of a wide leather waist belt and a leather codpiece. Women wore long, colorful skirts with frills, and a bodice that left the chest and arms bare.

In terms of their position in society, women were equal to men in everything; they participated in all types of activities, including the most dangerous types of athletic activities.

Dancing and athletics, such as fist fighting, were popular among the Minoans.

Farmers grew barley and wheat, as well as olives, almonds and grapes. They produced wool and flax for textile production.

The urban community consisted of the upper class (which included the royal family, nobility and priests), the middle class and slaves. In the cities there were sophisticated craftsmen, painters, precious stone and ivory carvers, goldsmiths, and manufacturers of stone vases and goblets.

The Minoans worshiped many gods, some of which can be traced back to ancient times. Some beliefs common in Minoan Crete survived until antiquity.

A common feature characteristic of the Minoan religion was the worship of nature - sacred springs, trees and stone pillars. The Minoans did not erect majestic temples to their gods, unlike many ancient inhabitants of the Middle East. They performed joint religious activities in cave sanctuaries, on palace platforms, in house temples, in chapels built over the sources of streams, but primarily in sanctuaries on the peaks.

Minoan art is the most joyful and radiant of all ancient arts. The Minoan frescoes invariably amaze with their freshness and naturalness. An important artistic convention introduced by the Minoans was the depiction of animals galloping. Bright, saturated colors were used in Minoan art not only in frescoes, but also in architecture and on pottery made on the potter's wheel. The Minoans produced an extremely diverse range of pottery, stone vessels, seals, metal tools, and jewelry.

The Minoans, in fact, did not engage in urban planning. The head of the community chose the best place for his palace, and his retinue and relatives built houses around the palace. Cities for this reason had a radial layout, with streets originating from the palace in the center and connected by more or less concentric alleys.

Typically, palace cities were located inland, and paved roads connected them to port cities. Mallia is an exception to this rule: the coastal plain here is so narrow that Mallia was also a port.

The largest Minoan palaces are colossal labyrinthine systems of rooms; perhaps they served as a model for the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Among the Minoan palaces, the most famous is Knossos (Palace of King Minos).

The Minoan power was at the zenith of its power when, in the middle of the 15th century BC. its power was undermined: an eruption on the island of Thera (present-day Santorini) covered eastern and central Crete with a thick layer of volcanic deposits, making the soil infertile. The eruption also caused a devastating tidal wave, which destroyed and destroyed much not only in nearby Crete, but throughout the eastern Mediterranean.

This disaster was followed by the invasion of Crete around 1450 BC. numerous Achaean Greeks from the nearby mainland. From the advanced center of the Mediterranean, Crete turned into a backward province of Achaean Greece.

The long Neolithic period on the island was replaced by the brilliant Minoan era, whose name comes from the name of the mythical king Minos, ruler of the kingdom and the palace of Knossos.

The Minoan civilization was established and flourished from 2900 BC. to 1100 BC, a period of more than 1500 years.

The Minoan period is divided into four main periods:

Pre-palatial period (3300 - 2000 BC)

Old Palace period (2000 - 1750 BC)

New Palace period (1750 - 1490 BC)

Post-palatial period (1490 - 1100 BC)

The excavations of the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans shed light for the first time on a culture whose existence was previously known only from the Homeric epic and the Greek myth of the Minotaur.

The Minotaur, half man and half bull, devoured young men and women who were brought to him as tribute from mainland Greece.

Evans, at the beginning of the last century, found the ruins of the Palace of Knossos, which existed on the island of Crete since 1700 BC. and after.

The Palace of Knossos had a water and sewer network that was more advanced than any other built in Europe during the Roman era. The walls were elaborately decorated with frescoes depicting the Minoans as a happy and peaceful people who lived in harmony with nature, had an obvious penchant for dancing, and enjoyed large public festivals and sporting events.

The structure of the Palace of Knossos seemed chaotic and complex to the first visitors and perhaps this fact gave rise to the myth of the famous labyrinth.

What was not suitable for growing grain crops was ideal for vines or olives. From then until today, oil and wine are the main agricultural products grown and exported from Crete

Sea

The Minoans soon realized that the sea that surrounded them and which they still feared was in fact their new best friend. The sea was an effective deterrent to invasions than any of the fortifications.

During the development and prosperity of civilization, the Minoans did not have to build walls around their cities. Thanks to the sea, the Minoans established cultural ties with other countries. Gradually they became virtuosos in shipbuilding, and the Minoan civilization became one of the first civilizations to base its development on the commercial fleet. The Minoans quickly colonized the nearby Aegean islands, the Cyclades, and began trading with Egypt and Syria. It is believed that they arrived in Sicily. Profits from trade and accumulated experience allowed them to build large ports, aqueducts and impressive palaces.

The Minoan sailors were selfless and their ships were more advanced.

The frescoes depicted ships with a high bow, a short stern, a large mast in the center of the square cloth, and a large blade at the stern for the rudder.

And when the wind blew, more than 25 oarsmen on each side of the ship provided it with the necessary strength to move. High bows cut through the waves, and heavy and reliable hulls made them stronger and more stable during storms. Even the arrogant Egyptians admired the maritime abilities of the Minoans. In an Egyptian tomb, a fresco depicts a group of Minoans, whom they called "keftiu", bringing gifts to the pharaoh. It is likely that the pharaoh of Egypt hired the Minoans and their ships to transport Lebanese cedar to his country.

Character

The Minoans developed an effective central authority to manage and monitor trade transactions. The registers were written on clay tablets, initially with a writing form that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs and after 1700 BC. - using a syllabic script known as linear.

Perhaps because of their isolation, the Minoans fought less than other peoples of the time. They never covered the walls with scenes of battles or military exploits or described military exploits.

Their favorite topics were man in his daily life or religious and sporting events, as well as images of nature - flowers, fish, birds and dolphins.

Nor did they build statues or large mounds to satisfy vanity or to emphasize someone's power. Instead, their art is dominated by portraits of charming people with long black hair, tall and slender, wearing beautiful, colorful costumes. Women in particular are depicted in colorful, stunning dresses that leave their breasts exposed, perhaps as a sign of beauty, health and fertility. The Greeks assumed that the Minoans were the origin of dance.

Minoan art is spontaneous and light, full of rhythmic movements. If you believe what is depicted on the frescoes, the Minoans were probably the happiest people of the Bronze Age.

Society

Women in Crete enjoyed more freedom than women in any other culture of this era, even more than in Egypt. Frescoes in the palaces depict them as free-spirited, dressed in elegant dresses, wearing makeup and enjoying public celebrations with men, or even taking part in sporting events and competitions.

The wall painting is characterized by the depiction of a public celebration ceremony, when crowds gathered in the square of the Palace of Knossos to watch athletes perform difficult and risky bull jumps.

Perhaps Homer intuited when he stated in the Iliad that Crete had 90 cities. However, during the zenith of the Minoan civilization (1700 - 1200 BC), the population on the island reached 250,000 people and 40,000 of them lived in Knossos.

The cream of Cretan society consisted of the noble aristocracy, priests and priestesses.

The middle class consisted of artisans, merchants and office workers, and the working class of that time consisted of farmers, shepherds and laborers. The last social class is the serfs. The latter, despite their humble position, lived better than slaves in any other Bronze Age civilization.

Crete has never experienced the social unrest and upheaval that affects most societies.

A thousand years later, Aristotle would say that the serfs of Minoan Crete received all the privileges of Minoan citizens, with the exception of two: they could not bear arms and could not take part in sports and gymnastic events.

We do not know whether all or most of the Minoans were able to live in large houses, but we are sure that many of them lived comfortably, decorating their homes with beautiful pots and gardens. There were no fireplaces for cooking in their houses. For cooking, they used separate ovens made of clay or bronze. They ate better than their contemporaries, the Egyptians of Mesopotamia. They made bread from a mixture of wheat and barley flour. Their gardens supplied lettuce, lentils, beans, peas, plums, quinces and figs. Their cows and goats provided the necessary quantities of milk from which they made their cheese. Well, the sea supplied them with octopus, squid, mussels and many types of fish. They drank mainly wine, however, due to the gradual increase in the cultivation of grain, at some point it became scarce and beer appeared.

Religion

Minoan culture, religion and politics were interconnected. The throne room of King Minos, beautiful but not particularly luxurious, was a place where, in addition to politics, religious ministers often performed important ceremonies. Sporting events also had the character of religious rituals.

The sacred animal of the Minoans of Crete was Tavros. Works of art depicting the sacred animal were everywhere throughout the palace... vases in the shape of a bull's head were used in ceremonies. The most popular sport is the bull jumping ceremony, where athletes grab the animal by the horns and perform a complex somersault along the entire body of the animal.

It is possible that King Minos wore a mask with the head of a bull, and this was a fact from which the Greeks later formed the image of the Minotaur.

We have little information about the Minoan religion in contrast to what we know about the corresponding religions of this period in the Middle East. There were no large temples or large cult statues of gods here. The main Minoans were the Great Mother Goddess, which perhaps explains the important place of women in Cretan society. Many of the statues are of women, fashionably dressed, in fancy dresses that expose their breasts, with impressive hairstyles. They often hold two snakes in both hands. This may have been an inspiration for subsequent Greek deities such as Athena, Demeter and Aphrodite. Sometimes the Mother Goddess appears with a young man who may be her son.

Ceremonies, sporting events and bulls were sacrificial in nature to allow the Mother Goddess to protect them from a series of disasters such as sunken ships, disease, agricultural failures, especially earthquakes. Such destructive earthquakes occurred in the eastern Mediterranean at regular intervals - usually such large earthquakes occurred every fifty years, and each time they buried entire cities under ruins.

The Minoans never forgot about this natural phenomenon and explained it by the existence of the huge Tavros, who lived underground and shook the world with his roar.

End of the Minoan era

Despite the sacrifices, the Minoan civilization disappeared after another natural disaster. A series of earthquakes and tremors have caused so much destruction and so many deaths that the smooth development of society on the island is interrupted. Fighting broke out between Knossos and other major Minoan cities. In the end, Knossos emerged victorious, and the other palaces on the island were destroyed. On the mainland, the Achaeans, who learned the secrets of Minoan navigation, found opportunity and understood much of the organization of the colonies of Minoan Crete, limiting economic and political power.

Around 1160 BC an even greater element came, when everything that had happened before seemed insignificant. The Santorini volcano exploded 70 nautical miles north of Crete. The explosion was so large that two-thirds of the island disappeared, and the blast wave created a huge tsunami that hit the densely populated northern coast of Crete, causing widespread destruction and death. The Minoan fleet was destroyed, and the island naturally remained unprotected.

The survivors on the island were scattered in isolated settlements. Around 1100 BC The Dorian Greeks began landing on the island, whose ships began to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. The palace of Knossos was occupied by new invaders, who gradually began to displace the old inhabitants and take power on the island into their own hands.

A new era has begun not only for the island, but for all of Greece and the Mediterranean...

Excavations in Crete made it possible to judge the culture and life of the island. The art of the Minoans is permeated with the breath of life. It is very emotional and designed to make an immediate impression. Small plastic objects - cups, rhytons (sacred vessels in the shape of an animal's head), gold signets, jugs and figurines - show that the Minoans had an excellent sense of form. On gold seals dating back to the 15th century. BC e., you can see ritual scenes. They were excellent at conveying movement; they almost never depict people in frozen poses. If a person stops for a moment, then his whole body is springy and tense, so that there is no doubt: in a minute he will set off again.

A bronze figurine of a praying young man from Tilis (circa 1500 BC) is known, his torso is strongly bent back, his hand is raised to his head. Exactly the same images are found on seals. There you can see that the young man worships the goddess standing with a scepter in his outstretched hand on the top of the mountain. The king repeats the power pose of the goddess. On the seal from Castelli, found in 1983, Minos stands on the top of the palace with a scepter in his outstretched hand. It is as if he crowns the world mountain. The king is presented as young, full of strength, his long locks fluttering in the wind.

In Minoan art, the image of a male king is always subordinated to the image of a female goddess. It symbolizes the power of the Earth and dominates most compositions. If the king is always a young man, fit and even fragile, then the goddess appears in the guise of a mature woman with curvaceous figures. Her wasp waist only emphasizes her heavy breasts and wide hips.

Archaeologists were unable to find temples in the usual sense of the word on Crete. The Minoans worshiped their gods in mountain sanctuaries and special rooms in the palace. These were small rooms, separate and closed. They accommodated eight to ten people. Consequently, worship was limited to the number of immediate relatives. Evans managed to excavate several such sanctuaries at Knossos, destroyed by an earthquake. Having cleared away the construction debris, the archaeologist found two large bull skulls at the base of one of them. “Before the building ceased to serve as a place for human habitation,” the scientist wrote, “ceremonial cleansing sacrifices to the underground gods were performed in it.”

These gods can be represented by the figurines discovered in the hiding place of the Knossos Palace. There were two faience (clay covered with glaze) figurines of goddesses holding snakes in their hands (CIRCA 1600 BC). One of them is 32 cm high, the other is 29 cm. Researchers believe that these are mother and daughter - the Cretan Demeter and Persephone. They are dressed in traditional clothing for Cretan women: pleated skirts, aprons, twisted belts, bodices that expose the breasts. It is curious that the preserved remains of clothing and belts were found in the same cache. They probably belonged to a court priestess, and the figurines took part in palace rituals.

The palace at Knossos was richly decorated with paintings. Scientists are surprised by the fact that these frescoes appeared “suddenly,” around 1600 BC. e., and reached their peak in the period before 1200 BC. e. Archaeologists have not discovered any preparatory stages in the development of painting on Crete. It is possible that early examples of paintings were lost in earthquakes. After all, those frescoes that have survived to this day are sometimes known only in fragments.

One of the most famous is “Woman of Paris”, made around 1500-1450. BC e. It is located in the northern part of the palace and depicts a young girl wearing very bright makeup. Once upon a time, “The Parisian Woman” was part of a larger picture of the feast, which cannot be restored. The girl is by no means a beauty, she has irregular facial features, but the ancient artist brilliantly conveyed the pulse of life and the charm of youth inherent in his model.

On the walls of the Processional Corridor, archaeologists cleared away an image of a procession of young men and women bearing gifts to the goddess on her main holiday - it fell in the middle of summer. These are flowers, expensive vessels and new clothes. a similar ritual will be called the donation of peplos and symbolize the rebirth of the goddess. The Saffron Gatherer fresco also has a religious meaning. A blue monkey (at first it was mistaken for the figure of a young man, but later the tail was restored in the picture) jumps along the beds between modest white star inflorescences. Blue - the color of death - indicates that this is happening in another world.

Excavations carried out in the Messara and Molchos valleys revealed domed tombs with small painted terracotta sarcophagi, called larnacas. They served as family tombs, and dozens of people were buried in each. The rulers were buried south of the Knossos Palace. Their tomb had a pillared mortuary hall, a burial chamber with a central pillar, and a sanctuary on top of it. From the paintings of Larnaca it was possible to understand that Crete imagined death. They perceived departure from life as a long journey of the soul into the depths of the earth. At the same time, the body also changed, the bones of which must be cleansed of corruptible flesh. Therefore, holes were made in the bottoms of the Larnacas, through which matter leaked. Then rebirth came - new flesh grew on the bones. The key to rebirth is the sacrifice of the bull god. The Larnaca from Agia Triada (1400 BC) shows scenes of a funeral and the slaughter of a bull.

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