43
This bull-leaping fresco in the
palace at Knossos in Crete is the most
completely restored of several taureador
stucco panels. Bull-handling was a
common theme in art at this time.See also: The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 ■ The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 ■ The Persian Wars 44–45 ■
Athenian democracy 46–51 ■ King Sejong introduces a new script 130–31 ■ The fall of Constantinople 138–41ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
and worshipped in caves, on top of
mountains, and at springs, but by
2400 bce they had begun to build
large palace complexes. By 1900 bce,
in what is known as the Palatial
Period of the Minoan civilization,
palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia,
and Chania had been constructed
in broadly similar forms, with the
one at Knossos being the largest.
It was destroyed, possibly by fire or
perhaps a tsunami, around 1700 bce,
but it was rebuilt soon after on the
same site. At its peak, in about
150 0 bce, Knossos palace and the
city that grew up around it covered
185 acres (75 hectares) and had a
population of up to 12,000.
The Minoan palaces all had large
central courts, flanked by many-
chambered buildings, and were
highly decorated with frescoes of
flora and fauna. In the extensive
magazines (storehouses), the rulers—
who may have served dual roles as
priest-kings or priest-queens—
gathered many commodities for
redistribution. Minoan rulers alsocontrolled trade with other Bronze
Age civilizations around the
Mediterranean, such as Byblos in
Phoenicia (now Lebanon), Ugarit
in Syria, pharaonic Egypt, and
Mycenaean Greek settlements in
the Cyclades and further afield.Linear A script
The Minoans developed their own
script, probably initially for record-
keeping and administration
purposes. It began as hieroglyphic
picture-writing, but later evolved
into the Linear A syllabary, in which
symbols denote syllables (rather
than letters, as is the case with the
alphabet). The Minoan language as
recorded in Linear A script remains
undeciphered to this day, but in
a rou nd 14 5 0 bce the Minoans were
invaded by the Mycenaeans from
mainland Greece, who adapted the
Minoan script into Linear B, which
was used to write archaic Greek.
Not long after the Mycenaeans
invaded Crete, Minoan civilization
collapsed completely. However, the
legacy of Minoan writing lives on
through its connection with the
Phoenician alphabet, which in turn
would come to form the basis of the
Latin alphabet that is used in many
parts of the world today. ■The Phaistos disc
Found in 1908 in the ruins of
the Minoan palace at Phaistos,
southern Crete, the Phaistos
disc (shown above), made
from fired clay and about 6in
(15cm) across, is printed with
symbols in an unknown script.
Although dated to 1700 bce, it
was made using the technique
of woodblock printing, which
was not thought to have been
invented for another 2,000
years or so (in China), making
the disc one of the great
archaeological mysteries. The
symbols, many of which are
recognizable as everyday
objects, are arranged in a
spiral and divided into words
by vertical lines. Some scholars
have drawn parallels between
certain symbols in Cretan
hieroglyphics and Linear A,
suggesting that the writing on
the disc may be an elaborated
form of an existing Minoan
script. There are many theories
about the disc’s significance—
some consider the inscription
is a hymn to a goddess, others
that it tells a story, or that the
disc is a calendar or a game.
Some experts even believe the
disc to be a clever fake.US_042-043_Palace_of_Knossos.indd 43 15/02/2016 16:40