It was in this part of the building, too, that the drainage and water supply put the engineers on their mettle. This was the lowest part of the sloping hillside on which the palace stood, and the water supply, which came from the neighbourhood of the North Gate, had to be so organized as to prevent flooding—a stiff enough problem for engineers of 4,000 years ago. They solved it by a system of parabolic curves which subjected the flow to friction. Sinks, lavatories, underground pipes suggest modern drainage. They, nevertheless, were in use at Knossos.
The rooms of the building in this south-east part were arranged in terraces at different levels on the hillside. The fact of the grand staircase having five flights does not mean that there were five storeys one on top of the other. As a result of the final restoration of this staircase by Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Mackenzie in 1910, it appears that “the upper landing of the fifth flight does not lead on to the ground floor of the central court, but answers in height to what must have been the first floor of the rooms on the other or western side. It must itself, therefore, have led on to some raised building, probably a terrace, that ran along the eastern side of the court” (Britannia Yearbook, 1913, “Crete,” p. 269. Dr. R. M. Burrows).
There remains the north-east section. This was occupied by the artists and workmen of the palace. In one room olives were pressed, the oil being carried away by a conduit which turns twice at right angles till it reaches a spout set in the wall lower down the hill, more than fifty feet away. There the oil-jars were filled, and oil-jars are still standing in an adjoining room. Another room has been identified by the imagination of Sir Arthur Evans as the schoolroom. In other rooms pots were “thrown” and painted; stone vases carved; gold, silver, and bronze work moulded; sculptures were chiselled; seal stones and gems cut; and the favourite miniatures in ivory were carved which, in a compass of ten or eleven inches, reproduced a human form to the minutest detail of veins and finger-nails.
It will be seen, then, that the palace of Knossos was something more than the seat of King Minos. It contained a community completely organized within its walls, and independent of any outside connexion, after the manner of a mediæval castle.
Chapter 6: Internal Politics: the Relations of Knossos and Phæstos
On the other side of the island, at Phæstos, there was another great palace, which has been excavated by the Italian Archæological Mission. In many ways this palace was as magnificent as that of Knossos. Like Knossos, it was built on a hill on a foundation formed by levelling the buildings that had existed on the site from the Neolithic Age; and, like Knossos, though on a smaller scale, it consisted roughly of a system of buildings grouped round a central court. Some of the remains are in a better state of preservation than those of Knossos and are, therefore, useful in supplementing our knowledge of the Golden Age of ancient Crete, which we chiefly derive from Knossos. It must be remembered, however, that owing to the architectural device of levelling the old buildings as foundations for the great palaces, both Knossos and Phæstos are of less value than the other sites in Crete, as illustrating the Early Minoan Age—the period, that is, which preceded these great palaces.
There were, then, two great palaces flourishing in Crete during the same period. One naturally wonders what were the relations between them.
The established facts are few. It has been already shown, on the evidence of their respective pottery, that the original settlers at Phæstos came later than those of Knossos and took over the latter’s ceramic innovations. The great palaces of the two cities were built about the same time, possibly (in view of the likeness in style) by the same architects. Both palaces were destroyed more than once, and at approximately known dates. These are the bare facts revealed by archæology, and the ice is thin for speculation on the internal politics of the island.
Some think, with the Haweses (loc. cit., p. 70), that the first palace of Knossos was “attacked and burned at the close of the Second Middle Minoan period, possibly by the rival ruler of Phæstos.” Yet the only certainty is that Knossos was burned down at that time and Phæstos was not.
Mr. H. R. Hall has a different impression. He says (The Ancient History of the Near East, p. 45): “At the same time that the king of Knossos built his new palace in his capital ... he also built himself a southern palace in the Messarà.... As from the near neighbourhood of Knossos a fine view of the sea, the haven, and the ships of the thalassocrats could be obtained, with Dia beyond and perhaps Melos far away on the horizon, so from Phaistos itself an equally fine, but different, prospect greeted the royal eyes; from this hilltop he could contemplate on one side the snowy tops of Ida and on the other the rich lands of the Messarà.” He thinks that before the palace of Phæstos was built, the island, or at least the central portion of it, had been unified under the rule of Knossos. Legend makes Phæstos a colony of Knossos.