The Minoans

by George Glasgow

Chapter 5: Prehistoric Engineering and Architecture

The plan of the palace of Knossos is at first sight rather confusing, especially when one reflects that it represents only the ground floor of the original building and that one has to imagine, in some places two, and in others perhaps three storeys of rooms above it. If this is the old labyrinth of legend, no wonder, you think, that Theseus needed his Ariadne to show him a way out of it; and that Dædalus, who built it, could himself find no other means of escape but by flying straight up into the air!

But it is the nature of legend to exaggerate; and one can easily understand how, years after the destruction of the palace, the deserted ruins with their ghostly corridors and chambers would create the impression of an “inextricable maze” which was crystallized by tradition and became the setting for so many of the Cretan stories. As it stood in the days of Minos, the palace would not, of course, be anything so fantastic. The arrangement of the rooms and corridors, though on a great and elaborate scale, was based on a simple plan. The mass of buildings in the west wing of the palace is divided into two halves by a long corridor running north and south, those in the east wing by one running east and west, and the four divisions thus made fall into a regular scheme.

In the west corridor, which is four yards wide and sixty-six yards long, there are still standing some of the huge stone vases, “big enough,” as Sir Arthur Evans has said, “to hide the Forty Thieves.” They were used for the storage of grain, oil, wine, dried fruits, and the like. Opening on this corridor from the west there is a series of magazines and small chambers which were also used for storage purposes; while under the floors, both of the magazines and of the corridor, were strong cists, some of them lined with lead, which would perhaps contain the State treasures. The entrance which leads from the west court or market-place, and which is conveniently near the commissariat quarters, would be used by tradesmen. Speaking of the outer wall of the palace which borders on the west court, the Haweses (Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 66) remark: “This has a projecting base, whereon the peasants and humbler merchants could sit dozing, with one eye upon their merchandise and pack animals. During the long morning hours when traffic was busiest, this seat was always in the shade—a pleasant refuge from the sun’s rays that beat so fiercely on the open court.” The low narrow ledge would not, however, have been particularly comfortable to sit on. In a narrow corridor to the west of the south main entrance was found the fresco painting of the Cupbearer, an astonishing work of art. It portrays a Minoan youth, stiff with dignity, carrying a gold and silver vase before him. It did not originally stand in the corridor in which it was found and to which it has given its name, but on the west wall of the south entrance. It fell into the corridor when the connecting wall broke down. There is a reproduction of the Cupbearer on the cover of Dr. Burrows’s The Discoveries in Crete, which lacks, of course, the brilliant colours of the original.

CUPBEARER
From The Discoveries in Crete. By R. M. Burrows (John Murray)
[To face [page 39]

On the other side of the central corridor of the west wing are the rooms in which State and religious functions were held. In the Throne Room, which is almost intact, the magnificent throne of Minos is still standing, carved out of solid stone, and along the wall on each side of it are the stone benches on which his counsellors sat. This would be the chief room of the Minoan Government, in which foreign ambassadors were received and the affairs of State generally administered; important cases of justice would also be settled there, and Minos would be Supreme Judge. It will be remembered that Minos was not only the legislative head of a great sea empire. Being of divine origin himself, he is represented as a great Law-giver and Priest of Zeus, holding converse with the god every nine years in the Dictæan cave and receiving from him, like the Moses of the Old Testament, a famous code of laws which held good throughout the period of the Minoan Empire.

At his death, in accordance with the belief that men in the Lower World carried on the duties of their lifetime, he became a Judge of the Dead. Recounting his visit to the nether regions, Odysseus says: “Then I saw Minos, the famed son of Zeus, with his golden sceptre, dealing out justice to the dead, as he sat there; and around him, their King, the dead asked concerning their rights, sitting and standing, in the wide-gated house of Hades” (Homer, “Odyssey,” xi. 568-571).

Leaving the west wing of the palace and crossing the central court, you descend into the east wing by the Great Staircase which, even when found, was in a surprising state of preservation, and which by the end of 1910 had had the remains of no fewer than five flights restored to their original position. This staircase was traversed, as its discoverer said, “some three and a half millenniums back by kings and queens of Minos’ stock, on their way from the scenes of their public and sacerdotal functions in the west wing of the palace to the more private quarters of the royal household.” These quarters occupy the south-east corner of the palace, built on the slope of the hill and overlooking the valley. Approaching them from the central corridor which runs due east from the central court, you pass first through the men’s halls—the Hall of the Colonnades and the Hall of the Double Axes—and thence by a dark crooked corridor, called from its shape the Dog’s Leg Corridor, the effect of which was “to enhance the privacy of the rooms beyond,” you come to the Queen’s Megaron, and the ladies’ apartments. A megaron was a sort of hall with columns across it, open at one end to let in the light. In other parts of the building, light was admitted by means of shafts sunk from the roof to the ground floor.

The queen’s megaron is especially luxurious; it is decorated on a principle which, as Sir Arthur Evans says, was used later by the Romans of the Empire. The wall paintings, done in perspective, included a scene of the sea with fishes playing, another of forest life, and a dado of dancing girls.