at the main gate of the fortification wall at Kolonna on Aigina, lying in a large
cist grave, a warrior was found wearing a gold diadem and equipped with a
fine set of weapons (a long sword, spear and obsidian arrowheads). Also in
his tomb were placed a boar’s-tusk helmet, a bronze razor and pottery, both
local and imported.^85Like their colony at Ayia Irini, the Kolonna community is very likely testimony
to the Cretan kings’ interest in—and control of—the opposite coastlands. These
were the northern Argolid and the eastern coast of the Corinthian Isthmus, as well
as southeastern Attika with its copper and silver mines at Laurion. The so-called
Large Building Complex at Kolonna—measuring at least 300 square meters, or
many times the size of the average house—dates to the MM II period, as does the
so-called “Shaft Grave” with its impressive array of grave goods. Kolonna had
been fortified already in the EC II period, one of the very few fortified sites in
Greece or the islands at that time, but early in the MM period the fortifications
were extended and redone, and various “Minoan” imports and technologies
indicate the presence of Cretans on the island. The “Aigina treasure,” which
emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and has been in the British Museum
ever since, reflects the wealth of the rulers of the island, unparalleled on the
mainland. MM Ayia Irini and Kolonna must reflect the dominance of Crete over
the islands to its north.^86 It is unimaginable that native Keians and Aiginetans could
have erected the fortifications in defiance of the Cretan king, and that for several
hundred years the Cretan kings allowed the defiance to continue.
With no walled cities for Cretan kings to subdue, there was no place for the
kind of siege warfare that was familiar in the Near East. The so-called “Siege
Rhyton” from Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae, almost certainly a Cretan vessel, does
not portray Cretans conducting a siege and is not so early as the eighteenth century
BC.^87 The wars fought by a Cretan king in the MM I and II periods were probably
limited to punitive campaigns against poorly organized troublemakers, some on
the islands and others on the mainland.
Long thrusting swords—rapiers—were seen in the Cretan palaces during the
Middle Minoan period, but evidently they were meant to display the position and
power of the rulers rather than to be used in battle. Perhaps the least serviceable
of the rapiers recovered by archaeologists was one found almost 100 years ago
by the French excavators of the Mallia palace. Precariously hilted, with no tang,
the blade was attached to an organic hilt by four rivets through a flat “grip plate.”
In her catalogue of early Aegean swords Imma Kilian-Dirlmeier dated this
Griffplattenschwertto the end of the MM II or to the MM III period.^88 Two other
rapiers found in the Mallia palace also date to the end of the MM II or beginning
of the MM III period.^89 These are hilted with a tang rather than a grip plate, and
were classified by Georg Karo as Type A swords. One of the Type A rapiers from
Mallia was hilted with ivory and gold and on neither of the rapiers was the hilting
secure: the bronze blade was attached to an organic hilt by a short tang, with two
rivets through the tang and two more through the rounded shoulders of the blade.
Perhaps slightly later than the Mallia rapiers, although roughly contemporary with
Warfare in Western Eurasia 77