Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

(FIG. 4-23) revealed a magnificent civilization far older than the
famous vestiges of Classical Greece that had remained visible in
Athens and elsewhere. Further discoveries proved that Mycenae had
not been the only center of this fabulous civilization.

MINOAN CRETE Another legendary figure was King Minos of
Knossos on the island of Crete. He had exacted from Athens a trib-
ute of youths and maidens to be fed to the Minotaur, a creature half
bull and half man housed in a vast labyrinth. Might this story, too,
be based on fact? In 1900, an English archaeologist, Arthur Evans,
began work at Knossos, where he uncovered a palace (FIGS. 4-4 and
4-5) that did indeed resemble a maze. Evans named its builders the
Minoans, after their mythological king. Further evidence of the Mi-
noans was soon uncovered at Phaistos, Hagia Triada, and other sites,
including Gournia, which Harriet Boyd Hawes, an American archae-
ologist (and one of the first women of any nationality to direct a ma-
jor excavation), explored between 1901 and 1904.
More recently, important Minoan remains have been excavated
at many other locations on Crete, and contemporary sites have been
discovered on other islands in the Aegean, most notably on San-
torini (ancient Thera). Art historians now have many buildings,
paintings, and, to a lesser extent, sculptures that attest to the wealth
and sophistication of the people who lived in that once-obscure
heroic age celebrated in later Greek mythology.

AEGEAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY Less glamorous than
the palaces and art objects, but arguably more important for the un-
derstanding of Aegean society, are the many documents archaeologists
have found written in scripts dubbed Linear A and Linear B. The pro-
gress made during the past several decades in deciphering these texts
has provided a welcome corrective to the romanticism that character-
ized the work of Schliemann and Evans. Linear B can now be read as an
early form of Greek, and scholars have begun to reconstruct Aegean
civilization by referring to contemporaneous records and not just to
Homer’s heroic account. Archaeologists now also know that humans

inhabited Greece as far back as the late Paleolithic period and that vil-

lage life was firmly established in Greece and on Crete in Neolithic

times. But the heyday of the ancient Aegean was not until the second

millennium BCE, well after the emergence of the river valley civiliza-

tions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and South Asia (see Chapters 2, 3, and 6).

The prehistoric Aegean has three geographic areas, and each has

its own distinctive artistic identity. Cycladic art is the art of the Cycladic

Islands (so named because they circle around Delos), as well as of the

adjacent islands in the Aegean, excluding Crete. Minoan art encom-

passes the art of Crete. Helladic art is the art of the Greek mainland

(Hellas in Greek). Scholars subdivide each area chronologically into

early, middle, and late periods, with the art of the Late Helladic period

designated Mycenaean after Agamemnon’s great citadel of Mycenae.

Cycladic Art

Marble was abundantly available in the superb quarries of the

Aegean Islands, especially on Naxos and Paros. The sculptors of the

Early Cycladic period used that marble to produce statuettes (FIGS.

4-2 and 4-3) that collectors highly admire today (see “Archaeology,

Art History, and the Art Market,” page 83) because of their striking

abstract forms, which call to mind the simple and sleek shapes of

some modern sculptures (FIG. 35-20).

WOMAN FROM SYROS Most of the Cycladic sculptures, like

many of their Stone Age predecessors in the Aegean, the Near East,

and western Europe (FIG. 1-5), represent nude women with their

arms folded across their abdomens. They have been found both in

graves and in settlements and vary in height from a few inches to

almost life-size. The statuette illustrated here (FIG. 4-2) is about a

foot and a half tall—but only about a half inch thick—and comes

from a grave on the island of Syros. The sculptor rendered the human

body in a highly schematic manner. Large simple triangles dominate

the form—the head, the

body itself (which tapers

from exceptionally broad

shoulders to tiny feet), and

the incised triangular pu-

bis. The feet are too fragile

to support the figurine. It

must have been placed on

its back in the grave—lying

down, like the deceased.

Whether the Syros statuette

and the many other similar

Cycladic figurines known

82 Chapter 4 THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN

MAP 4-1 The prehistoric Aegean.

Athens

Thebes

Orchomenos

Mycenae

Corinth

Argos Tiryns

Pylos

Sparta

Knossos

Heraklion Palaikastro

Kato Zakro

Gournia

Khania Mallia

Hagia Triada Phaistos

Kamares

Akrotiri

Troy

Mediterranean

Sea

Mediterranean

Sea

Aegean

Sea

Aegean

Sea

Sea of CreteSea of Crete

Melos

Keros

Paros Naxos

Syros

Delos

Thera

(Santorini)

PE

LO

PO

NN

ES

US

CRETE

CYCLADES

ASIA

MINOR

0 50 100 miles

500 100 kilometers

4-2 Figurine of a woman,

from Syros (Cyclades),

Greece, ca. 2500–2300 bce.

Marble, 1  6  high. National

Archaeological Museum,

Athens.

Most Cycladic statuettes

depict nude women. This

one comes from a grave,

but whether it represents the

deceased is uncertain. The

sculptor rendered the female

body schematically as a

series of large triangles.

1 in.