An outline, era by era

Minoans (Crete)

palace of Knossos, Linear A

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

The Minoans were the Bronze Age people of Crete, the largest island of the Aegean Sea. Their civilization flourished from about 3000 to about 1450 BCE, and its great centres were built around large complexes that archaeologists call palaces, at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros. The name comes from the legendary King Minos and was given by the archaeologist Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos from 1900. We do not know what the Minoans called themselves.

The palaces were centres of storage, craft and administration, and their walls were decorated with colourful frescoes of bulls, processions, dolphins and gardens. The Minoans traded across the eastern Mediterranean and used a script now called Linear A, which is still undeciphered, so their language remains unknown. Around 1450 BCE most palaces were destroyed, and Knossos later came under the control of Greek speakers from the mainland who used Linear B. The Minoans matter as Europe's first advanced civilization, and as an important influence on the later Greek world.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Minotaur in the Labyrinth

    Myth

    The legend

    King Minos of Crete keeps a monster, half man and half bull, in a maze built by the craftsman Daedalus. Every few years Athens must send young men and women to be devoured. The hero Theseus enters the maze, kills the Minotaur and finds his way out with a thread given to him by Minos's daughter Ariadne.

    The rest is history

    The story is known from Greek writers such as Plutarch and Apollodorus, and was told centuries after the Minoan palaces fell. No labyrinth has been found. The word may be linked to labrys, a double axe that appears often in Minoan religious art, and the vast, many-roomed palace at Knossos may have inspired the idea of a maze. Bulls were important in Minoan art, notably in the bull-leaping frescoes. There is no evidence for human sacrifice to a monster, and no sign that Athens paid tribute to Crete.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryPlutarch. Life of Theseus. Greek biography, c. 100 CE.Gives the Athenian tribute, Theseus and the Minotaur.
    2. PrimaryApollodorus. Library (Epitome 1). Greek mythological handbook, 1st or 2nd century CE.
    3. BookCastleden, Rodney. Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete. London: Routledge, 1990.Survey of Minoan culture, including the labyrinth question.

  2. Europa and the bull

    Origin story

    The legend

    Zeus falls in love with Europa, a princess from Phoenicia, and takes the shape of a gentle white bull. She climbs on his back and he swims with her across the sea to Crete. There she bears him sons, among them Minos, who becomes the island's king.

    The rest is history

    The tale is told in full by Ovid and earlier in other Greek sources, and it served as a Greek explanation of how Crete got its royal line and how Europa gave her name to a continent. It has no Minoan source. It may echo real links between Crete and the Levant, since Minoan traders were active in the eastern Mediterranean and Minoan art and goods turn up in Egypt and Syria. Bull imagery is common in Minoan Crete, but we cannot show it was connected to this story. The Greeks told it long after the Minoan world had gone.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryOvid. Metamorphoses 2.833-875. Latin poem, c. 8 CE.
    2. PrimaryMoschus. Europa. Greek poem, 2nd century BCE.
    3. BookDickinson, Oliver. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Overview of Minoan contacts and trade.

  3. Daedalus and the wings of Icarus

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Daedalus, the master inventor, builds the Labyrinth for Minos. When the king imprisons him on Crete, he makes wings of feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus. Icarus flies too near the sun, the wax melts, and he falls into the sea.

    The rest is history

    The story is known from Ovid and earlier Greek writers, who described Daedalus as a legendary craftsman of Crete. It reflects how the Greeks remembered Minoan Crete as a land of skilled craftworkers, a reputation that fits the evidence. Excavations show fine metalwork, carved stone vessels, gold jewellery, and painted pottery of great skill. The flight itself is a fable, and the name Daedalus is not found in Minoan records. The Linear B tablets from Knossos, written later, do include a reference to a Daidaleion, possibly a place or shrine named for him.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryOvid. Metamorphoses 8.152-259. Latin poem, c. 8 CE.
    2. PrimaryDiodorus Siculus. Library of History 4.76-79. Greek history, 1st century BCE.
    3. BookWarren, Peter. Minoan Religion as Ritual Action. Gothenburg: Paul Åströms Förlag, 1988.

  4. Minos, the sea king and judge

    Origin story

    The legend

    Minos rules Crete as the first great master of the sea. He clears the Aegean of pirates, rules the islands, and forces others to pay him tribute. After death he becomes one of the judges of the dead in the underworld.

    The rest is history

    Thucydides, writing in the 5th century BCE, called Minos the first to build a navy and to rule the Aegean seas. Herodotus also mentions his sea power. Minos is a figure of legend and may never have been one man, and Evans took the name for a civilization of which no written account survives. Still, the Minoans were a major seafaring people. Minoan goods and wall paintings have been found at Akrotiri on Thera, and Minoan pottery reached Egypt and the Levant. Palaces had no great defensive walls, which fits a land secure on its coasts, though the idea of a Minoan empire at sea is debated.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryThucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War 1.4. Greek history, late 5th century BCE.
    2. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories 3.122. Greek history, c. 430 BCE.
    3. BookEvans, Arthur. The Palace of Minos at Knossos. 4 vols. London: Macmillan, 1921-1935.

  5. The peaceful Minoans

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common belief holds that the Minoans were a gentle, peace-loving people ruled by priestesses, living in a paradise with no war. Their palaces are said to have had no walls because they never needed them.

    The rest is history

    This picture owes much to Arthur Evans, who imagined a peaceful Minoan realm and used the name of King Minos for it. Later work has complicated it. Minoan art does show weapons, swords and daggers, and some scenes may show warriors and ships. Some sites, such as Archanes-Anemospilia, have been argued to show human sacrifice, though this is disputed. Linear A cannot be read, so we lack written proof of how the society was governed. The idea of a woman-led society is also an interpretation, not a proven fact. What the evidence does show is a wealthy, artistic and well-connected society, whose palaces were rebuilt after earthquakes and later destroyed around 1450 BCE.

    Sources

    1. BookEvans, Arthur. The Palace of Minos at Knossos. 4 vols. London: Macmillan, 1921-1935.
    2. BookHamilakis, Yannis, ed. Labyrinth Revisited: Rethinking 'Minoan' Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2002.Essays questioning Evans's view of the Minoans.
    3. BookCadogan, Gerald. Palaces of Minoan Crete. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976.

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