The same cult survived to later times in Caria in the case of Zeus Labrandeus, whose name is derived from labrys, the native name for the double axe, and it had already been suggested on philological grounds that the Cretan Labyrinth and Minotaur. “labyrinthos” was formed from a kindred form of the same word. The discovery that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe and its associated divinities has now supplied a striking and it may well be thought an overwhelming confirmation of this view. We can hardly any longer hesitate to recognize in this vast building, with its winding corridors and subterranean ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition; and as a matter of fact a maze pattern recalling the conventional representation of the Labyrinth in Greek art actually formed the decoration of one of the corridors of the palace. It is difficult, moreover, not to connect the repeated wall-paintings and reliefs of the palace illustrating the cruel bull sports of the Minoan arena, in which girls as well as youths took part, with the legend of the Minotaur, or bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens was forced to pay annual tribute of her sons and daughters. It appears certain from the associations in which they are found at Cnossus, that these Minoan bull sports formed part of a religious ceremony. Actual figures of a monster with a bull’s head and man’s body occurred on seals of Minoan fabric found on this and other Cretan sites.
It is abundantly evident that whatever mythic element may have been interwoven with the old traditions of the spot, they have a solid substratum of reality. With such remains before us it is no longer sufficient to relegate Minos to Historic substratum of Cretan myths. the regions of sun-myths. His legendary presentation as the “Friend of God,” like Abraham, to whom as to Moses the law was revealed on the holy mountain, calls up indeed just such a priest-king of antiquity as the palace-sanctuary of Cnossus itself presupposes. It seems possible even that the ancient tradition which recorded an earlier or later king of the name of Minos may, as suggested above, cover a dynastic title. The earlier and later palaces at Cnossus and Phaestus, and the interrupted phases of each, seem to point to a succession of dynasties, to which, as to its civilization as a whole, it is certainly convenient to apply the name “Minoan.” It is interesting, as bringing out the personal element in the traditional royal seat, that an inscribed sealing belonging to the earliest period of the later palace of Cnossus bears on it the impression of two official signets with portrait heads of a man and of a boy, recalling the “associations” on the coinage of imperial Rome. It is clear that the later traditions in many respects accurately summed up the performances of the “Minoan” dynast who carried out the great buildings now brought to light. The palace, with its wonderful works of art, executed for Minos by the craftsman Daedalus, has ceased to belong to the realms of fancy. The extraordinary architectural skill, the sanitary and hydraulic science revealed in details of the building, bring us at the same time face to face with the power of mechanical invention with which Daedalus was credited. The elaborate method and bureaucratic control visible in the clay documents of the palace point to a highly developed legal organization. The powerful fleet and maritime empire which Minos was said to have established will no doubt receive fuller illustration when the sea-town of Cnossus comes to be explored. The appearance of ships on some of the most important seal-impressions is not needed, however, to show how widely Minoan influence made itself felt in the neighbouring Mediterranean regions.
The Nilotic influence visible in the vases, seals and other fabrics of the Early Minoan age, seems to imply a maritime activity on the part of the islanders going back to the days of the Early relations with Egypt. first Egyptian dynasties. In a deposit at Kahun, belonging to the XIIth Dynasty, c. 2000 B.C., were already found imported polychrome vases of “Middle Minoan” fabric. In the same way the important part played by Cretan enterprise in the days of the New Egyptian empire is illustrated by repeated finds of Late Minoan pottery on Egyptian sites. A series of monuments, moreover, belonging to the early part of the XVIIIth Dynasty show the representatives The Kefts and Philistines. of the Kefts or peoples of “The Ring” and of the “Lands to the West” in the fashionable costume of the Cnossian court, bearing precious vessels and other objects of typical Minoan forms. Farther to the east the recent excavations on the old Philistine sites like Gezer have brought to light swords and vases of Cretan manufacture in the later palace style. The principal Philistine tribe is indeed known in the biblical records as the Cherethims or Cretans, and the Minoan name and the cult of the Cretan Zeus were preserved at Early relations with Cyprus and N. Aegean. Gaza to the latest classical days. Similar evidence of Minoan contact, and indeed of wholesale colonization from the Aegean side, recurs in Cyprus. The culture of the more northerly Aegean islands, best revealed to us by the excavations of the British School at Phylakopi in Melos, also attest a growing influence from the Cretan side, which, about the time of the later palace at Cnossus, becomes finally predominant.
Turning to the mainland of Greece we see that the astonishing remains of a highly developed prehistoric civilization, which Schliemann first brought to light in 1876 at Mycenae, and which from those discoveries received the general Minoan influence on mainland of Greece. name of “Mycenaean,” in the main represent a transmarine offshoot from the Minoan stock. The earlier remains both at Mycenae and Tiryns, still imperfectly investigated, show that this Cretan influence goes back to the Middle Minoan age, with its characteristic style of polychrome vase decoration. The contents of the royal tombs, on the other hand, reveal a wholesale correspondence with the fabrics of the first, and, to a less degree, the second Late Minoan age, as illustrated by the relics belonging to the Middle Period of the later palace at Cnossus and by those of the royal villa at Hagia Triada. The chronological centre of the great beehive tombs seems to be slightly lower. The ceiling of that of Orchomenos, and the painted vases and gold cups from the Vaphio tomb by Sparta, with their marvellous reliefs showing scenes of bull-hunting, represent the late palace style at Cnossus in its final development.
The leading characteristics of this mainland civilization are thus indistinguishable from the Minoan. The funeral rites are similar, and the religious representations show an identical form of worship. At the same time the local traditions and conditions differentiate the continental from the insular branch. In Crete, in the later period, when the rulers could trust to the “wooden walls” of the Minoan navy, there is no parallel for the massive fortifications that we see at Tiryns or Mycenae. The colder winter climate of mainland Greece dictated the use of fixed hearths, whereas in the Cretan palaces these seem to have been of a portable kind, and the different usage in this respect again reacted on the respective forms of the principal hall or “Megaron.”
Minoan culture under its mainland aspect left its traces on the Acropolis at Athens,—a corroboration of the tradition which made the Athenians send their tribute children to Minos. Similar traces extend through a large part of Minoan influences in N. Greece. northern Greece from Cephallenia and Leucadia to Thessaly, and are specially well marked at Iolcus (near mod. Volo), the legendary embarking place of the Argonauts. This circumstance deserves attention owing to the special connexion traditionally existing between the Minyans of Iolcus and those of Orchomenus, the point of all others on this side where the early Cretan influence seems most to have taken root. The Minoan remains at Orchomenus which are traceable to the latest period go far to substantiate the philological comparison between the name of Minyas, the traditional ancestor of this ancient race, and that of Minos.
Still farther to the north-west a distinct Minoan influence is perceptible in the old Illyrian lands east of the Adriatic, and its traces reappear in the neighbourhood of Venice. It is well marked throughout southern Italy from Taranto Adriatic and Italian extension. to Naples. It was with Sicily, however, that the later history of Minos and his great craftsman Daedalus was in a special way connected by ancient tradition. Here, as in Crete, Daedalus executed great works like the temple of Eryx, and it was on Sicilian soil that Minos, engaged in a western campaign, was said to have met with a violent death at the hands of the native king Kokalos (Cocalus) and his daughters. His name is preserved in the Sicilian Minoa, and his tomb was pointed out in the neighbourhood of Agrigentum, with a shrine above dedicated to his native Aphrodite, the lady of the dove; and in this connexion it must be observed that the cult of Eryx perpetuates to much later times the characteristic features of the worship of the Cretan Nature goddess, as now revealed to us in the palace of Cnossus and elsewhere. These ancient indications of a Minoan connexion with Sicily have now received interesting confirmation in the numerous discoveries, principally due to the recent excavations of P. Orsi, of arms and painted vases of Late Minoan fabric in Bronze Age tombs of the provinces of Syracuse and Girgenti (Agrigentum) belonging to the late Bronze Age. Some of these objects, such as certain forms of swords and vases, seem to be of local fabric, but derived from originals going back to the beginning of the Late Minoan age.
The abiding tradition of the Cretan aborigines, as preserved by Herodotus (vii. 171), ascribes the eventual settlement of the Greeks in Crete to a widespread desolation that had fallen on the central regions. It is certain that by Minoan crisis: c. 1400 B.C. the beginning of the 14th century B.C., when the signs of already decadent Minoan art are perceptible in the imported pottery found in the palace of Akhenaton at Tell el-Amarna, some heavy blows had fallen on the island power. Shortly before this date the palaces both of Cnossus and Phaestus had undergone a great destruction, and though during the ensuing period both these royal residences were partially reoccupied it was for the most part at any rate by poorer denizens, and their great days as palaces were over for ever. Elsewhere at Cnossus, in the smaller palace to the west, the royal villa and the town houses, we find the evidence of a similar catastrophe followed by an imperfect recovery, and the phenomenon meets us again at Palaikastro and other early settlements in the east of Crete. At the same time, to whatever cause this serious setback of Minoan civilization was owing, it would be very unsafe to infer as yet any large displacement of the original inhabitants by the invading swarms from the mainland or elsewhere. The evidence of a partial restoration of the domestic quarter of the palace of Cnossus tends to show a certain measure of dynastic continuity. There is evidence, moreover, that the script and with it the indigenous language did not die out during this period, and that therefore the days of Hellenic settlement at Cnossus were not yet. The recent exploration of a cemetery belonging to the close of the great palace period, and in a greater degree to the age succeeding the catastrophe, has now conclusively shown that there was no real break in the continuity of Minoan culture. This third Late Minoan period—the beginning of which may be fixed about 1400—is an age of stagnation and decline, but the point of departure continued to be the models supplied by the age that had preceded it. Art was still by no means extinct, and its forms and decorative elements are simply later derivatives of the great palace style. Not only the native form of writing, but the household arrangements, sepulchral usages, and religious rites remain substantially the same. The third Late Minoan age corresponds generally with the Late Mycenaean stage in the Aegean world (see [Aegean Civilization]). It is an age indeed in which the culture as a whole, though following a lower level, attains the greatest amount of uniformity. From Sicily and even the Spanish coast to the Troad, southern Asia Minor, Cyprus and Palestine,—from the Nile valley to the mouth of the Po, very similar forms were now diffused. Here and there, as in Cyprus, we watch the development of some local schools. How far Crete itself continued to preserve the hegemony which may reasonably be ascribed to it at an earlier age must remain doubtful. It is certain that towards the close of this third and concluding Late Minoan period in the island certain mainland types of swords and safety-pins make their appearance, which are symptomatic of the great invasion from that side that was now impending or had already begun.
Principal Minoan Sites.
It will be convenient here to give a general view of the more important Minoan remains recently excavated on various Cretan sites.