accepted by those who believe that from their beginning the cities and states of
the Near East engaged each other in battlefield warfare.
Warfare on Crete and the Islands of the Aegean in the
Middle Minoan II Period
From the well-documented world of Mesopotamia we turn to areas for which we
have either no legible documents or no written records at all. What can be said
about warfare on Crete and the Aegean islands in the Middle Minoan II period
(ca. 1850–1700 BC) is dependent almost entirely on the artifacts and architecture
that archaeologists have found. The findings suggest that early in the second
millennium BCwarfare of any kind was either uncommon or unknown in the
Aegean. Impressive palaces stood on Crete, but neither they nor the island’s cities
were walled. The occupants of the palaces evidently had no reason to fear the
siege warfare that occurred so frequently in Mesopotamia or on the periphery of
Egypt, and certainly no occasion to engage in it.
Many copper and bronze daggers have been found on Crete, but they were hardly
intended for battle. In Keith Branigan’s catalogue of 422 metal daggers from the
Early and Middle Bronze Age Aegean (down to ca. 1700 BC), very few come from
the Greek mainland, more come from the Cyclades islands and still more from
Troy. At least 80 percent, however, come from Crete (especially from burials
at Hagia Triada and Platanos), and mostly from the EM period.^72 Although the
statistic is impressive, it is not evidence for warfare on Crete in the third and early
second millennium BC. Like the “battle-axe” in temperate Europe, the dagger seems
to have been a common side-arm for adult men on Crete at that time, just as it was
in the Levant.^73 Unlike the dagger, the spear was a military weapon, but only a
handful of spearheads—none of them socketed—have been found in Middle
Minoan contexts.^74
Crete in the Middle Minoan period has often been described as a peaceful con -
trast to the Near East. The contrast is certainly there, although Minoan Crete
now appears not quite so peaceful as it did 100 years ago. Nanno Marinatos has
argued that Minoan art (and especially what is portrayed on stone or metal rhyta)
seems to have emphasized the preparation of young Cretan males for some kind
of military activity.^75 On the basis of the unwalled palaces found at Zakros, Mallia,
Phaistos and especially Knossos, it is widely—and probably correctly—assumed
that in the Protopalatial period of Crete a Great King ruled the island and
dominated the Aegean. On the traditional low chronology (disregarding the high
carbon date for the Santorini eruption) the MM II period ended ca. 1700BC, when
an earthquake badly damaged the Knossos and other palaces and so brought
the Protopalatial period to an end. The Great King on Crete in the Protopala -
tial period must from time to time either have waged war or have simply intimi -
dated small communities into subjection. The second alternative must have been
more frequent than the first. Cretan rulers projected their power into the islands
of the Aegean and along the coasts of the Greek mainland and southwestern
Warfare in Western Eurasia 75