Its use spread from Crete to the Greek mainland. In 1953, Michael Ventris (1922–1956), an English architect and gifted linguist, broke the code. Ventris recognized that Linear B was the written script for an archaic form of Mycenaean Greek dialect.
Minoan settlements were scattered throughout the island of Crete. Whether or not there existed some sort of central authority, as some suggest, cannot be determined from the available archeological evidence. There were four major palace complexes, Knossos being the largest, which apparently exerted some sort of regional authority. The absence of any fortifications indicates that the Minoan civilization was a peaceful one. That assumption is reinforced by frescoes on the walls and in the floors of the palaces that depict tranquil scenes of daily life and nature. Women are portrayed in apparel with their breasts bare.
A small statuette approximately 13½ in. (342.9 mm) tall of a bare‐breasted woman holding a snake in each hand is thought to be evidence that Minoan religion revolved around worship of a mother goddess, perhaps the ancestor of the Greek goddess Artemis. A small ivory figurine called “the bull‐leaper,” a bronze sculpture of an individual leaping over the back of a bull, and wall frescoes of the same subject matter, all found at Knossos, are thought to depict the dangerous sport of bull leaping. Was it only a sport or a ritual involved in bull worship? Evidence of bull worship is found throughout the world.
Though the term Knossos is used today to refer to the Bronze Age archeological ruins, it was more than a palace complex. It is recognized as the oldest city in Europe. At its peak around in 1700 BC, as many as 100 000 people resided at Knossos. The palace covered six acres (2 ha) and included 1300 rooms connected by corridors. Some areas of the palace reached a height of five stories. Fresh water flowed to the palace and surrounding city in aqueducts. The water flowed through the palace in terracotta pipes. A separate closed system drained waste water and sewage to an outside sewer. What is thought to have been the queen's quarters included a water‐flushing system toilet and a bathtub.1
The Minoan civilization came to an end in the middle of the fifteenth century BC. The cause of its demise remains disputed. The mystery is heightened by attempts to associate Minoan Civilization with the legend of Atlantis. The intermingling of history with legends and mythology increases interest in ancient history, but also increases the difficulty in separating fact from fiction. Current consensus among scholars is that the eruption of a massive volcano 61 miles (100 km) north of Crete on the island of Santorini (Thera) sometime between 1627 BC and 1600 BC may have prepared the way for a subsequent conquest by the Mycenaean Greeks.
Mycenaean Civilization
Mycenaean is the name given to the Bronze Age civilization centered on the Greek mainland from c. 1600 BC to c. 1100 BC. It is named after the fortified city of Mycenae that dominated the Peloponnesian peninsula (southern Greece). As with Sir Arthur Evans and the Minoan civilization, Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) ignited interest in Mycenaean civilization, when he began excavations on the site of ancient Mycenae in 1874. Schliemann had already conducted excavations on the site of ancient Troy in 1871.
Schliemann was a wealthy German businessman who retired at age 36 and began a second career as an amateur archeologist. Schliemann's interest in Mycenaean Greece began in early childhood. His father told him tales from the Iliad and Odyssey and gave him an illustrated world history when he was seven. Schliemann later recalled his fascination with a picture of Troy in flames, and claimed that he decided when he was eight, that he would one day dig up the ancient city of Troy. He realized his dream in 1871–1873, when he excavated Hisarlik (“Place of Fortresses”) on the Aegean cost of modern Turkey, 4 miles (6.5 km) from the Dardanelles.
In 1876, Schliemann turned his attention to Mycenae. He believed in the historicity of Homer's Iliad. Using the Iliad as a guide, along with Description of Greece, by Pausanias (d. 180 AD), a second‐century AD geographer, Schliemann searched for the grave of King Agamemnon of Mycenae who commanded the Greek forces in the siege of Troy. Schliemann excavated several shaft graves that he believed dated from the time of the Trojan Wars. The graves contained eight men, nine women and two children, together with some of the most impressive archeological treasures ever found.
The bodies were accompanied by precious metals and jewels. The faces of five of the bodies were covered with funeral masks made of gold, one of which Schliemann identified as the mask of Agamemnon. He felt that he had accomplished his lifelong dream of proving that the Trojan Wars were an actual historical event, not just myth. What Schliemann unearthed was not, as he thought, from the period of the Trojan Wars, but from a much earlier period. Nevertheless, his discoveries captured the imagination of Europe like nothing else until the discovery of King Tut's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922.
Unlike the Minoan Civilization centered on Crete, Mycenaean Greece was a warrior culture. There was no unified state, or kingdom. Instead, there were a number of “power centers,” including Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, Thebes, Athens, Sparta, and other fortress cities in southern and central Greece. There were other differences between the two that make it difficult to differentiate the cultural diffusion between them.
Mycenaean Civilization peaked between c. 1300 BC and 1200 BC. Though a warrior society, the Mycenaeans enjoyed many of the comforts found among the Minoans. Excavations at Pylos on the Mediterranean coast of the Peloponnesus revealed a royal palace with many of the distinctive features of the palace at Knossos. The “Palace of Nestor,” named after King Nestor in Homer's Odyssey, included wall paintings, storerooms, light wells, a sewage system, and a royal bathroom with bathtub and plumbing.
Sometime around the middle of the fifteenth century BC, the Mycenaeans conquered Crete and, as a result, came under the influence of Minoan culture. Perhaps most important for modern archeologists was the appearance of a new writing system referred to by scholars as Linear B Script. It uses the Minoan Linear A Script to write Mycenaean Greek, the earliest form of the Greek language. Linear B was used almost exclusively in the palaces for administrative purposes. It ceased to be used after the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations between c. 1200 BC and 1150 BC.
Figure 2.1 Map of ancient Greece.
The Dark Ages (c. 1100–800 BC)
The collapse of the Bronze Age during the thirteenth century BC was sudden and devastating. Archeological evidence exists throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region in Greece, Turkey, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. “Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century,” writes classical studies scholar Robert Drews, “almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again” (Drews 1993, p. 4).
What caused the collapse remains a mystery. Many explanations have been offered, but recent scholarship suggests that a “perfect storm” of disastrous events including “climate change; drought and famine; earthquakes; invaders; and internal rebellions” led to a kind of “systems collapse” and ushered in a period referred to as the “Dark Ages” throughout the Eastern Mediterranean regain (Weiner 2015). The Dark Ages lasted from c. 1100 BC to 900 BC in the Near East and until c. 800 BC in Greece. Some scholars prefer 776 BC, the date given by Hippias of Elis (c. 460–400 BC) for the first Olympics.
The art of writing disappeared, cities were abandoned, and the population declined. It is estimated that the population fell to about one‐tenth of what it had been in c. 1200 BC. The number of occupied sites in Greece went from about 320 in the thirteenth century
