Minoan Sites: Cities, Towns, Palaces and Hilltop Labyrinths | Early European History And Religion

MINOAN SITES

Knossos

The Minoans were arguably Europe's first great civilization. They originated on the island of Crete around 3000 B.C. and flourished there from 2000 B.C. to 1,400 B.C. While most of Europe was still in the Stone Age the Minoans created cities with magnificent palaces and comfortable townhouses with terra cotta plumbing; traded throughout the Mediterranean and the Aegean with a huge fleet of ships; and developed a writing system. The Minoans are named by British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the legendary King Minos, son of Zeus and Europa, who is said to have lived on Crete. According to myth, a King Minos, living in a palace with more than a thousand rooms, once ruled the island of Crete. In 1900 such a palace was discovered, excavated and partially restored Evans. [Source: Joseph Judge, National Geographic, February 1978]

Knossos, on Crete, was the main Minoan city (See Below). Arkhanes (a few miles south of Knossos) lies at the end of a path with a pleasant view of a gorge. An early Minoan group graveyard has been found here. In the 1960s over 200 human skulls were excavated here along with a temple of the dead built in 1800 B.C. In one tomb a woman was buried with a horse and a bull head. The woman was buried in a clay bath, wearing 140 pieces of gold jewelry.

Phaistos (two hours south of Iraklion) was the second most important Minoan city after Knossos (See Below). The layout of the city is similar to that of Knossos. Purists like these ruins better because they have been left more or less untouched, with the various layers showing the different periods of development. Phaistos lies on the southern side of Crete with views of snow-capped Mt, ida and the sea. About half of the palace, said to be the second largest in Minoa, has collapse down the hillside. What is left is entered through a wide stairway. Only walls and foundations are left. Near Phaestos is another Minoan site, Hagia Triada.

Mallia (20 miles east of Knossos) it is said contains the next largest Minoan palace after Knossos. Only walls and foundations are left. The site has a roof over it. There are large silos grain and the palace has pillar crypt and views of the sea. Gournia is a Minoan sight with earthen courtyards, walls, streets and steps that include 70 homes, metalworkers shops, a factory for pressing olive oil and wine and a palace and cover an area over 18,000 square yards. Unearthed here were ancient awls, nails, razors, tweezers, knives and carpentry tools.

Minoan Palaces, Buildings and Architecture

The Minoans built multi-storied palaces with as many as 1,500 rooms. Most of the large Minoan structures had balconies and were set up around courtyards. Most also had windows, sitting rooms with adjustable partitions, indoor pools, and verandas with wonderful views. Some had advanced indoor plumbing and drainage systems. Many Minoan cities and buildings lacked fortification which has led archaeologists to believe they were a relatively peaceful civilization.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Minoan palaces also functioned as centers for rituals. The Palace of Minos was so vast and complex it was no surprise it gave birth the legend of the labyrinth. It covered nearly five acres and was several times bigger than Malia, 20 miles to the east, the next largest Minoan palace. Buildings in Minoan cities such as Knossos possessed latrines, skylights, ventilation, and water conduits for drainage.

The Minoans built their palaces from “poros” (a kind of soft sandstone), sandstone and gypsum. Columns were made of wood. None survive today. The oldest Minoan buildings were built of fired mud bricks, a construction material that was later abandoned.

Knossos

Knossos (6 kilometers south of Iraklion) was the capital of the Minoan empire, Europe's first great civilization. It is also where you'll find a palace reportedly used by King Minos. There is no evidence however of the legendary Minotaur or the Labyrinth, despite the fact the ruins sometimes resemble a maze.

Knossos attracts more tourist than any other archeological site in Greece save the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It attracts about a million visitors a year. At first glance you'll be amazed be these "ruins." They aren't just pieces of marble piled on top of one another; they hold together like real buildings and what is more the columns are bright red an the cross beams are yellow.

Unlike most archeological sites Knossos was reconstructed and painted. Some of the ruins have polished columns and are supported by broad beam. Some scholars have frowned upon the practice. Many tourists think it is great. At the entrance there is a bust of Sir Arthur John Evans, the discovered of the site, who spent 25 years excavating and reconstructing it.

Evans and others involved in reconstructing Knossos took quite a few liberties. Buildings that are more than 1000 years older than the Parthenon look newer and in better shape. The colors definitely makes the ruins more dramatic but in the end also make them look artificial, the same way colonizing a classic film does. The garishly painted frescos which look more like the work of art-nouveau school, than the Minoans are down right insulting. Still, I guess, they are kind of fun and I guess people visit ruins for entertainment.

Knossos occupied a valley next to the coast and was home to perhaps 80,000 people. It survived for seventy years after the Thera eruption that is thought to have had a hand in the demise of Minoan culture. Knossos was probably located were it was because it near the coast and near the fertile plains of Messera which are on the other side of some mountains.

Knossos is a labyrinth of storerooms, workshops, and ceremonial halls. Minoan columns were tapered only at the top and looked the handles of gavels.The Minoans built there palaces from “poros” (a kind of soft sandstone, sandstone and gypsum). Geologists worry that if current erosion rates continue Knossos will weather away to nothing in a few hundred years.

King Minos’s Palace

Minoan Palace
King Minos’s Palace is the largest structure at Knossos. A vast complex that encloses a courtyard and occupies a large part of Knossos, it covers over 21,000 square meters (about five acres) and embraces the remains of the throne room, the royal suites, Pillar Hall, the Central Court, Grand Staircase, Hall of Double Axes, a treasury, an arsenal and a theater.

The Palace of Minos is so vast and complex — it is several times bigger than Malia, 20 miles to the east, the next largest Minoan palace — it is no surprise that it has been linked with King Minos and the legend of the Minotaur and the labyrinth even though there is no proof or even hints that are related to one another.

Visitors entering King Minos’s Palace from the west walk along a hallway called the Corridor of the Procession Fresco which is paved with gypsum flagstone and decorated with a frescoe showing visitors bearing gifts. This passages lead to 164-by-82-foot courtyard., where public gatherings and ceremonies took place. Around the courtyard are residents of the Knossos aristocracy, reception rooms, treasuries, storehouses, administrative archives and potter's and smith's workshops.

In the throne room is a stone-lined tank called Ariadne's Bath. Archeologist believe that the tank was basin used in rituals. The stone chair on a platform, described as a throne, is thought to have been designed for a woman. Nearby are storerooms that held grain, olive oil and wine. Paintings along the wall of the palace at one time contained hundreds of figures — musician, butterflies, sphinxes, bull leapers and griffins.

The huge central court is where sacrifices, bull leaping contests, and religious ceremonies were held. Unexplained holes in the court may have been used to erect barricade to protect the audience from the bulls.

In the west wing there are three religious shrines, each made up of small room with columns topped by bull horns. Up a flight a stairs is sanctuary hall with religious paintings where communion feasts were possibly held. Beneath these halls are warehouses with 400 giant jars that could each hold 65 gallons olive oil or wine. In one of the 150 palace room is what is believed to be the oldest serving throne in the world, a gypsum chair with griffin's painted on it.

The western court features raised walkways, a small porch and gypsum wall still black from the fire that destroyed Knossos. Near the palace a stone causeway leads to a wide-stepped portico. Outside the palace are the foundations of homes of ordinary people and cemeteries. On the east side of the palace is an area believed to be a residential neighborhood inhabited by advisors to the rulers. There is restored staircase built around a well that leads to apartments decorated with frescoes of dolphins.

The Grand Staircase and the much of the Domestic Quarter are well preserved because they had been built into the side of a hill. Here Evans found "gypsums, paving slabs, door jambs, limestone bases, the steps of the stairs, and other remains." Other Minoan ruins near Iraklion include Arkanes and Anemomospilia.

Phaistos

Phaistos (also spelled Phaestos, Phaestus, Faistos, Festus and Festos) was one of the most important centers of Minoan civilization, and the most wealthy and powerful Minoan city in southern Crete. Inhabited from the Neolithic period through the Mycenaean and Geometric periods, until the 8th century B.C., it reached its peak when the Minoan palaces were built in the 15th century B.C. The magnificent Minoan palace of Phaistos is regarded as the finest and most typically Minoan of all the Minoan palaces. The city covered a considerable area around the palatial center. The palace was destroyed not long after it was built. [Source: Interkriti]

Phaistos

“The exact location of the Palace of Phaistos was first determined in the middle of the 19th century by the British admiral Thomas Spratt, with archaeological work beginning in 1884 under the Italians F. Halbherr and A. Taramelli. Although many inscriptions have been found by archaeologists, they are all in Linear A code which is still undeciphered, and all we know about the site, even its name is based to the ancient writers and findings from Knossos.

According to mythology, Phaistos was the seat of King Radamanthis, brother of King Minos. The city also is said to have been the home of the great wise man and soothsayer Epimenidis, one of the seven wise men of the ancient world. When Phaistos was at its peak, a very important city-state, its territory extended from Cape Lithinon to Cape Psychion (modern-day Cape Melissa at Agios Pavlos, South Rethymnon) and included the Paximadia islands. The city participated to the Trojan war and later became one of the most important cities-states of the Dorian period. It endured through Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times and was destroyed by the Gortynians during the 3rd century B.C. but continued to exist during the Roman period. Phaistos had two ports, Matala and Kommos.

“The most important monuments of the site are: 1) The Old and New Palaces, built of ashlar blocks and spread on different terraces. The central, peristyle court is surrounded by the royal quarters, storerooms, a lustral basin, and workshops. The monumental propylaea, (monumental gateway) and and large staircases provide access to the many terraces. Minoan remains have been found at the sites of Chalara and Aghia Photeini, southeast and northeast NE of the palace, respectively. A road leads to the archaeological sites of Aghia Triada and Matala.

Gournia

Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Of all the sites in the prehistoric Aegean, Gournia gives the best idea of what a Minoan town looked like, which Harriet Boyd understood after just three years of working there in the earlly 20th century. “The chief archaeological value of Gournia,” she wrote in her site publication, “is that it has given us a remarkably clear picture of the everyday circumstances, occupations, and ideals of the Aegean folk at the height of their true prosperity.” Buell agrees: “When most people think of Minoan archaeology they think in terms of the palaces as these monolithic elements devoid of settlements, but at Gournia we have the settlement and the palace, and that’s so important.” [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology magazine, May-June 2015]

“Between 2010 and 2014, Vance Watrous of the University of Buffalo and a yearly team of more than a hundred have added greatly to the picture of Gournia as a thriving urban center going back at least as far as the Protopalatial period (1900–1700 B.C.). On the north edge of the site, the team has found evidence of intensive industrial activity alongside domestic spaces. “There is no site comparable to Gournia anywhere nearby. These guys are not full-time farmers and this isn’t a farming village. This is the only site like this in our region,” says Watrous, who also documented hundreds of other Minoan sites, most of which he believes are farmhouses, during an extensive regional survey he conducted between 1992 and 1994. According to Watrous, a normal Minoan family home would have had four to five pithoi (large storage jars) filled with food to survive a year, but at Gournia few of the houses had pithoi at all, suggesting that inhabitants were bartering for their food in exchange for the goods they manufactured there.

“Perhaps the other most significant area the team has excavated (and in some places re-excavated) was the space that Boyd had identified as the Neopalatial palace. There they have confirmed that the palace’s walls were intended to be quite impressive. On the north facade the walls were built using the masonry technique known as Cyclopean, in which the stones are unfinished, and, consist of white boulders that may have been visible at a distance to visitors to Gournia coming from the sea. On the western side, however, facing the courtyard, the sandstone blocks are of well-finished ashlar masonry, a more refined technique, and one likely intended to impress those coming to congregate in the palace itself, explains Buell. The palace’s east wing features a large open space facing a valley, with views to a Minoan mountaintop sanctuary that, at 4,842 feet, is at the highest point in eastern Crete. “There’s a visual relationship between the palace and the peak sanctuary,” says Watrous, “and that’s really neat.”

In one room the team found more than 700 conical cups in two different deposits. The first deposit dates to the Middle Minoan III period (ca. 1700 B.C.) and includes vessels containing burned earth, animal bones, and grape seeds. “These are the remains of the celebration to mark the completion of the palace, like a foundation deposit,” says Buell, adding, “They’re like ancient Dixie cups.” The second deposit dates to the beginning of the Late Minoan IB period, in about 1600 B.C., where, in addition to the other botanical remains, the team found pomegranate seeds in the cups. The additional presence of pumice in some vessels suggests a ritual in response to the catastrophic eruption of the Thera volcano on the island of Santorini some 125 miles away. It’s clear, says Buell, that Gournia’s residents were also congregating in the central courtyard and eating and drinking, but they may have been amusing themselves in other ways too — the team also found a series of “counters,” perhaps used as gaming pieces. Within the palace, Watrous’ team made what may be their most exciting discovery: a small object that looked at first like a piece of burned bark, but that Watrous immediately recognized as a fragmentary Linear A tablet. Both Boyd and Watrous excavated many seals — clay nodules that were impressed by engraved gemstones to authenticate them — and both the tablet and the seals suggest a palatial system of administration. Boyd had also found a clay disk called a roundel bearing a short inscription in the Linear A script. Discovering the tablet “made my whole year,” says Watrous. “It seems to follow a formulaic format that records them sending objects of some sort to various places and shows that they were fully literate. It’s not great looking, I know, but it’s really important.”

Minoan Coastal Site

Archaeology magazine reported: A monumental Minoan building surrounding a 110-foot-long courtyard has been uncovered at Sissi on the northern coast of Crete. Built around 1700 B.C. and featuring finely plastered floors, the structure is similar in size and grandeur to a number of palaces on the island dating to the same period. However, it lacks many typical features of these complexes, including storage rooms, administrative materials, and industrial areas. Archaeologists with the Belgian School at Athens, in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lassithi, did find a range of ritual paraphernalia at the site, offering a clue to what it was used for. “This building was really focused on its central court,” says excavation director Jan Driessen of the Catholic University of Louvain. “It’s quite clear that religious ceremonies took place there.” [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

“Nearby, researchers unearthed the tomb of a woman dating to around 1400 B.C. that is typical of the Mycenaeans, who came from mainland Greece around the time she died. The woman was buried with an ivory-handled bronze mirror and a necklace of gold beads. Bone and bronze pins resting on her skeleton appear to have once held the woman’s clothing in place. Hers is the first Mycenaean-style grave to have been found so far east on the island.

Mountaintop Sites on Crete

Archaeology magazine reported: The Anavlochos massif in east central Crete had important religious significance for communities living around it thousands of years ago. Two areas with large deposits of votive material were recently uncovered near the summit. One of the deposits contained over 350 female figurines that were purposefully deposited in cracks in the bedrock throughout the first millennium B.C. Experts are still unsure why this particular spot was chosen, but they believe the statuettes were offerings left by women during religious festivals. [Source: Archaeology magazine, January-February 2018]

Among the objects are a sealstone, female plaque, bead and horse figurine. Within one of the cavities was a more peculiar collection of well-worn objects, including a terracotta plaque of a woman and a steatite bead that likely both date to the eighth century B.C., as well as a seventh-century B.C. terracotta horse figurine. The cavity also contained a three-sided Minoan sealstone dating to between 1850 and 1700 B.C.—at least 1,000 years earlier than the other items. “The only thing these objects have in common is that they were already antiques when they were deposited in this cavity,” says archaeologist Florence Gaignerot-Driessen of the University of Cincinnati. “The fact that they were curated objects is clearly the reason why they were precious enough to be left as offerings.” [Source: Benjamin Leonard November/December 2022]

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey mention similar collections of valuable curated objects, called keimelia, that were accumulated as gifts, heirlooms, and spoils of war. While studying the appearances of keimelia in these texts, Gaignerot-Driessen realized that they could have functioned as stand-ins for a missing person, either living or dead. She proposes that the four objects in the Anavlochos cavity might similarly have been intended to represent missing people by the individuals who placed them there. “This interpretation would change the way we perceive votive offerings,” Gaignerot-Driessen says. “They might represent the person offering the object, or someone they have in mind, and not the recipient, which would have been a deity.”

In 1898, archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans visited a small plateau near the town of Ierapetra in southeastern Crete, where he documented in his now-lost diary the remains of a Minoan fort. For almost a century there was no further exploration of the site, called Anatoli, until last summer, when a team from the University of Athens began digging there. Over more than a month, the team unearthed new evidence suggesting that the structure was not, in fact, a defensive fort, but rather a well-preserved two-story villa dating to the New Palace period (1600–1450 B.C.). [Source: Yannis Stavrakakis, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2013]

In addition to walls more than seven feet high, archaeologists also uncovered an impressive stone facade, a room filled with large storage pithoi (ceramic containers), a rock-crystal bead, a bronze ax, and a pillar crypt — a distinctively Minoan ritual structure. Rural villas of this type have been uncovered in Crete before, but they were all situated in the lowlands and plains. Thus the Anatoli villa, at almost 9,000 feet, is only the second to be found at such a high altitude. Excavation director Yiannis Papadatos suggests that it likely functioned as a regional administrative and economic center. Until now, Minoan scholars have focused largely on the island’s lowlands and coastline. In the coming seasons, the team hopes to further explore the role of Minoan mountaintop settlements.

4,000-Year-Old “Labyrinth” Discovered in Cretan Hilltop

In June 2024, archaeologist announced the discovery of puzzling, big, round, 4,000-year-old stone building on a Cretan hilltop where a radar system for an airport was slated to be installed near the town of Kastelli. Greece's Culture Ministry said that the structure is a “unique and extremely interesting find” from the Minoan period. Resembling a huge car wheel from above, labyrinthine structure covers 1,800 square meters (19,000 square feet).

The unique structure measures 48 meters (157 feet) in diameter and was discovered about 51 kilometers (32 miles) southeast of Heraklion, the capital of Crete. Consisting of eight superimposed stone rings with small walls intersecting them to form rooms, the ancient building appears to have had two main zones: a circular building with a diameter of 15 meters (49 feet) at the very center and an area created by the walls radiating out from it. Based on the style of pottery fragments discovered during the excavation, archaeologists have tentatively dated the building to 2000 to 1700 B.C., in the middle of the Minoan civilization. [Source: Kristina Killgrove, Live Science, June 13, 2024]

Associated Press reported” Archaeologists don't yet know what the hilltop structure was for. It's still under excavation and has no known Minoan parallels. So for the time being, experts speculate it could have been used for a ritual or religious function. Ringed by eight stepped stone walls up to 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) high, the inner structure was split into smaller, interconnecting spaces and may have had a shallow conical roof. [Source Nicholas Paphitis, Associated Press, June 12, 2024]

The ministry's statement said it didn't appear to have been a dwelling, and the finds from inside it included a large quantity of animal bones. “It may have been periodically used for possibly ritual ceremonies involving consumption of food, wine, and perhaps offerings,” the statement said. “Its size, architectural layout and careful construction required considerable labor, specialized know-how and a robust central administration,” it said, adding it was certainly some kind of communal building that stood out in the entire area.

The ministry said the building was mainly used between 2000-1700 B.C, and was founded around the time Crete's first palaces were being built — including at Knossos and Phaistos. It said some of its features were comparable with early Minoan beehive tombs that were surmounted by stepped conical roofs and burial mounds in other parts of Greece. Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, an archaeologist, pledged that the find would be preserved while a different location would be sought for the radar station.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, "The Discoverers" and "The Creators" by Daniel Boorstin. "Greek and Roman Life" by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2024