Above: The 'red devil' bull mural at the New Palace
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Above: The throne room of King Minos |
Above: The main approach road into Knossos - the earliest known paved roadway
These images (C) Remy Dean - please credit
The site at Knossos, now known to be the centre of Minoan society, was excavated during the first part of the twentieth century. During the excavation, a huge coloured wall relief of a giant red bull was uncovered. This scared the local labourers who refused to continue working. Sir Arthur Evans, the archaeologist in charge, had to call in a priest to convince the workers that what they had unearthed was not an actual devil!
As the dig at Knossos progressed, it became apparent that what had been discovered was the remnants of a civilisation that had long been a legend, even to the ancient Greeks. They found the world’s first paved road, the first running water system, some of the earliest multi-storey buildings with more than a thousand interconnected rooms - thought to be the inspiration for the 'labyrinth' of the mythical Minotaur. The throne and throne-room of the, until then, mythical King Minos was another first, as he established the now familiar format of kingship.
Parietal art featured throughout the city. There is a famous mural of a young man jumping over a charging aurochs, which is a now extinct ancestor of our domestic cattle. An elegant mural of a bird seems to be painted as a decorative piece of ‘art for art’s sake’, bearing strong stylistic parallels with classical oriental art. Though primarily decorative, this would be a very early example of art as we know it: no longer a type of picture writing, but an image created by for its aesthetic merits and maybe signifying poetic cultural meanings. Perhaps a bird had similar connotations to the people of Knossos as it would to people today: the spirit of freedom and the joy of nature expressed in its song. It seems that the Minoans were the precursor to what eventually blossomed into the Classical period of the Ancient Greeks, but Minoan civilizations eventually fell due to natural disaster, unable to survive the dramatic climate change caused by a nearby volcanic eruption.
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