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All posts tagged Emporia
Chronicle 10. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST'S WATERLOO
Posted in: Once Upon a... Wave.	Tagged: A. R. Schulman, Abban, Aegean civilizations, Aegean Sea, Agatha Christie, Aharon Kempinski, Ahmose, Akrotiri, Al-Mina, Alalakh, Amik, Amorite, Amuq, Analatos Painter, Anat, Anatolia, André Parrot, Antioch, Archanes, Argolid, Arthur Evans, Arvid Schou Kapelrud, Asherah, Assyria, Athena, Athens, Atlantis, Aulos, Austerlitz, Avaris, Baal, Babylon, Barbara Niemeier, Bassit, Black Sea, Bronze Age, Bronze Age collapse, Bulgaria, Bull-leaping, Byblos, Canaan, Caphtor, Carchemish, Carlo Zaccagnini, Cavafy, Cilicia, Colonies, Cradle of civilization, Crete, Critias, Cyprus, Diodorus, Edwin Long, Egypt, El Greco, Elias Petropoulos, Emporia, Entrepôt, Euboea, Euphrates, Fertile Crescent, Fresco, Galilee, Gaza Strip, Greece, Greek pottery, Greeks, Griffin, Hammurabi, Hatshepsut, Hazor, Hellas, Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort, Herodotus, Histories, Hittites, Homer, Homs, Hyksos, Hyksos period, Iberia, Iran, Iron Age, Israel, Ithaca, Jews, Ka (soul), Kabri, Kamares, Knossos, Kothar-wa-Khasis, Lachish, Latakia, Lebanon, Leonard Woolley, Levant, Linear B, Loutrophoros, Lower Egypt, Lyre, Manfred Bietak, Mari, Marketplace, Max Mallowan, Mediterranean, Megiddo, Melpomene, Memphis, Menhet, Menwi, Merti, Mesopotamia, Metropolis, Michales Loukovikas, Miletus, Minoan civilization, Minoan eruption, Morocco, Mycenaean, Nanno Marinatos, Naucratis, Near East, Neith, Neolithic, New Kingdom, Nile, Nile Delta, Obsidian, Odyssey, Orientalizing period, Orontes, Orthostates, Palaikastro, Palestine, Pelusium, Phaistos, Philip Betancourt, Philippopolis, Philistines, Phoenicia, Pistiros, Plato, Plovdiv, Polis, Posideion, Ptah, Qatna, Ram in a Thicket, Rehov, Robin Lane Fox, Rosette, Ruth Amiran, S. Sherratt, Sais, Santorini, Sea peoples, Seleucid, Shaft tomb, Solon, Strabo, Stucco, Sumer, Syria, T. E. Lawrence, Tel(l), Thalassocracy, Thebes, Thera, Thrace, Throne Room, Thutmose, Thutmosid, Timaeus, Tin, Trading post, Ugarit, Ur, Urartu, Via Maris, Waterloo, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, Yamhad, Yarim-Lim, Yves Duhoux, Zakros, Zimri-Lim.	Leave a comment
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 10. ΤΟ ΒΑΤΕΡΛΩ ΕΝΟΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΟΥ
A Minoan woman
● Emporia or Colonies in Egypt and the Levant ● Frescoes Made by Travelling Minoan Workshops ● Leonard Woolley's Waterloo ● Creto-Egyptian Ties ● Differences Between Minoan and Near Eastern Societies and Arts
THERE ARE TIMES in these Voyages and Chronicles, as in similar cases when you have to present a thesis and you need documentation, that you know in general terms beforehand what you are looking for while searching for clues. Some other times, however, the clew you have in hand to find your way in the labyrinth of history leads you to unexpected ends, "into harbours seen for the first time"; and then a desire is born to "stop at Phoenician emporia… / and visit many Egyptian cities / to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars", as Cavafy advises in his Ithaca. These are the happiest moments of a research. It happened exactly that when from the Aegean emporia in the historical space of the Mediterranean I ended up following itinerant Minoan artists to distant lands! I felt I needed to set forth more information about these emporia after I had referred to Naucratis in the previous Chronicle, realizing that I already used this term several times in connection with colonies or trading posts; but the emporia were in fact neither colonies nor trading posts, though related to both. Writing in the Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World on Commercial posts and harbours, Elias Petropoulos tried to clear things out:
The term emporion denoting a colony or a type of settlement first appears in ancient literature rather late, during the 5th century BC. According to some scholars, the emporion should be understood as the locale of the emporos (that is, merchant), i.e. the person who travels to buy and sell commodities. The word emporos etymologically originates from the preposition en and the word poros (which means sea route). This word appears in the Odyssey of Homer twice. In both these cases the epic poet obviously means a private individual who travels for professional reasons. So we could suppose that the word emporion originates from the word emporos. This word does not appear on [Mycenaean] Linear B tablets, and this is rather surprising, but it also leads to the obvious conclusion that this word was coined at a later time. Scholarship on the subject argues that the word or the term emporion (in the sense of a colony or settlement and not that of a simple commercial transaction or exchange of products) appears first in writing in the works of Herodotus in the mid-5th century BC. By the 4th century BC the word is found on an inscription known as 'the inscription of Pistiros' which has been unearthed quite recently in a settlement of the modern-day Bulgarian (ancient Thracian) hinterland, close to Philippopolis…
Emporion < Emporos (merchant) < en + poros = one who is on a sea route
The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), by Edwin Long,
inspired by a passage in the Herodotan Histories
According to information coming from Herodotus' fourth book of the Histories [entitled Melpomene], the Black Sea was home to several emporia, which is the precise word the historian uses to define these settlements… There are also more scattered references to emporia in the other eight books of Herodotus' work. These are emporia located outside the Black Sea, and are situated in the Mediterranean. Of all these, the case of Naucratis causes puzzlement: the historian refers to it using both the terms emporion and polis (that is, city). Many studies have dealt with this issue, but unfortunately we still cannot determine the early nature of this settlement with certainty. The term usually understood as the opposite of emporion is apoikia (that is, colony), which is considered as a complete form of settlement in the model of the ancient Greek cities, i.e. a settlement featuring a distinct form of political and social organization. A colony was a settlement obviously established in the context of a predetermined plan of action and was carried out under the auspices of a god (or gods) with every formality on the part of the metropolis, possessing an agricultural hinterland and its own coinage… However, in some cases, the emporion may be characterized as a proto-polis or a proto-settlement, in the sense that it can act as the early stage in the establishment of a colony or a city.
Frieze depicting a river on Thera/Santorini…
Egypt with Alexandria, Naucratis, Avaris, Sais, Pelusium, Memphis and Thebes mentioned here.
Emporia (sing. emporion, or emporium in Latin), according to Wikipedia, were places which the traders of one people had reserved to their business interests within the territory of another people. Famous emporia in Egypt, except Naucratis, included Avaris and Sais, where the Athenian legislator Solon went in 590 BCE to acquire the knowledge of the Egyptians. Similar emporia were founded in the Levant, such as Al-Mina and Posideion in Syria. Sais (Σάϊς, or Zau in ancient Egyptian) was located in the Western Nile Delta. The city's patron goddess was Neith. The Greeks, such as Herodotus, Plato and Diodorus Siculus, identified her with Athena and hence postulated a primordial link to Athens. Diodorus recounts that Athena built Sais before the deluge that supposedly destroyed Athens and Atlantis. While all Hellenic cities were destroyed during that cataclysm, the Egyptian cities survived. In Plato's Timaeus and Critias (around 395 BCE), a priest in Sais entrusted to Solon the story of Atlantis, its military aggression against Greece and Egypt, and its eventual defeat and destruction by natural catastrophe.(a)
(a) The story of Atlantis is most probably connected with the Sea Peoples' raids and the consequent Bronze Age collapse. This should have been the "cataclysm" that destroyed Hellas, while Egypt barely survived… (See mainly Chronicle 5).
Taureador: Fresco fragment from Avaris, 16th BCE
Avaris (Αὔαρις, today's Tell el-Dab'a), the capital of Egypt under the Canaanite Hyksos, was also located in the Nile delta in the northeastern region. Its position at the hub of Egypt's emporia made it a major administrative and commercial centre. Excavations have shown that there was a busy harbour catering to over 300 ships during a trading season. Artifacts inside the precinct of the palace, possibly a temple, have produced goods from all over the Aegean world. Most impressively, there were even Minoan-like wall paintings similar to those found in Crete at the Palace of Knossos. It is speculated that there was close contact with the rulers of Avaris, whoever they were, and the large building representing the frescoes allowed the Minoans to have a ritual life in Egypt. French archaeologist Yves Duhoux also proposed the existence of a Minoan colony on an island in the Nile delta.
Minoan Ladies in Blue fresco, ca 1525-1450 BCE
Outside of the Aegean, only three sites have an indisputable record of Minoan civilization, one being Avaris in Lower Egypt, the others Kabri and Alalakh in the Levant. Kabri, in Palestine near the Lebanese border, is notable for its Minoan style wall paintings. In the summer of 2009, more Aegean style frescoes were found at the site. Apparently, the Canaanite rulers of the city wished to associate with Mediterranean culture and not adopt Syrian and Mesopotamian styles of art like other cities in Canaan did. Alalakh was a late Bronze Age city-state in the area where Seleucid Antioch was to be founded at the end of the 4th century BCE. It was occupied from before 2000 BCE, when the first palace was built, and likely destroyed in the 12th century by the Sea Peoples, as were many other towns of coastal Anatolia and the Levant. The city was never reoccupied, the nearby port of Al-Mina taking its place during the Iron Age.
Dancing to the sound of the aulos, by Analatos Painter, Orientalizing loutrophoros, ca. 690 BCE
Al-Mina ("The Port" in Arabic) is the name given by archaeologist Leonard Woolley to this ancient trading post in the estuary of the Orontes. According to Woolley, it was an early Hellenic trading colony, founded a little before 800 BCE in direct competition with the Phoenicians to the south. Large amounts of Greek pottery established its early Euboean connections, while the Syrian and Phoenician ware reflected a cultural mix typical of an emporium. The controversy whether Al-Mina is to be regarded as a native Syrian site, with local architecture and pots and a Hellenic presence, or as a Greek trading post, has not been resolved. Al-Mina served as an entrepôt for cultural influences that accompanied trade with Urartu and Assyria through the shortest caravan route. Pottery recovered from later levels after 700 BCE shows that a Hellenic presence endured through the 4th century BCE with pottery imported from Miletus and deftly imitated locally, apparently by Greek potters. Al-Mina is a key to understanding the role of early Hellenes in the East at the outset of the Orientalizing period of Greek cultural history. Robin Lane Fox has made a case for the Hellenic name of the site to have been Potamoi Karon mentioned by Diodorus Siculus; he suggestively linked it to karu ("trading post") in an Assyrian inscription, which would give "Rivers of Emporia".
Sumerian silver lyre 2600-2400 BCE
Woolley identified Al-Mina with Herodotus' and Strabo's Posideion, but more recent scholarship places the latter at Ras al-Bassit, located 53 kilometres north of Latakia (the Hellenistic Laodicea) on the Mediterranean Sea. Excavations revealed a small settlement back to the late Bronze Age, when it may have functioned as an outpost of Ugarit to the south. Unlike Ugarit, Bassit survived to the passage of the Sea Peoples and into the Iron Age. It had strong links with Phoenicia and Cyprus, and a Greek presence was attested from the 7th century BCE. Posideion expanded and its acropolis was fortified in the Hellenistic period.
One of the two figurines Ram in a Thicket. The excavation at Ur was a joint venture of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania sharing the booty!
Woolley began work at Al-Mina in 1936, after the excavation at Ur in Mesopotamia, where he discovered Sumerian royal tombs of great wealth. He decided to work by the Mediterranean coast because he was interested in finding ties between the Aegean and the Mesopotamian civilizations, and wished to throw light, as he wrote, "upon the development of Cretan civilization and its connections with the great civilizations of Nearer Asia". Disappointed in not finding a Bronze Age port at Al-Mina, he soon moved his interests to the earlier, more urbane site of Alalakh, where he worked before and after World War II (1937-39 and 1946-49). It seems, however, that his "view" was anything but "impartial", for he, too, was "spectacled" wearing "Asiatic myopic glasses". The clues on the "connections" he was interested in were there, of course; but, having already in mind an elaborate scenario, and possibly a hidden ambition to turn Arthur Evans' work in Crete upside down, he led himself to erroneous conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo! His failure to interpret his findings correctly should be taught in every School of Archaeology and help every equally short-sighted scholar learn his/her lesson.(b)
Lawrence (left) and Woolley at Carchemish
(b) Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) has not been an ordinary archaeologist. Best known for his excavation at Ur, and knighted in 1935 for his contributions to his discipline, he is considered as one of the first "modern" archaeologists. Volunteered by Arthur Evans to run the excavation on a Roman site in Northern England, Woolley began his career there in 1906, later admitting that "I had never studied archaeological methods even from books… and I had not any idea how to make a survey or a ground-plan". He worked with T. E. Lawrence, the later famous "Lawrence of Arabia", on the excavation of the Hittite city of Carchemish in 1912-14. His work at Ur that began in 1922 led to the discovery of the royal tombs and inspired Agatha Christie in writing the novel Murder in Mesopotamia. The writer later married his assistant, Max Mallowan. Woolley was one of the first archaeologists to propose that the "great deluge" of the Bible was a local flood after identifying a flood-stratum at Ur of "…400 miles long and 100 miles wide; but for the occupants of the valley that was the whole world"…
Having already in mind an elaborate scenario, and possibly a hidden ambition to turn Arthur Evans' work in Crete upside down, Woolley led himself to erroneous conclusions. If Ur had been his Austerlitz, Alalakh turned out to be his Waterloo! His failure to interpret his findings correctly should be taught in every School of Archaeology.
The Knossos palace reconstructed
In his Minoan Artisans Travelling Overseas: The Alalakh Frescoes and the Painted Plaster Floor at Tel Kabri (Western Galilee), the German archaeologist Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier explained:
The uniqueness and seeming suddenness of the emergence of the Cretan palace system in the Aegean has often been explained by connections with and influences from the older advanced civilizations of the ancient Near East. In Alalakh… Woolley thought to have found what he had looked for: in Yarim-Lim's palace he recognized "unmistakable connections" with Minoan Crete. Similar building techniques… as well as frescoes "identical in colouring, technique and style" at Alalakh and Knossos led him to the conclusion that "there can be no doubt but that Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland" and that "we are bound to believe that trained experts, members of the Architects' and Painters' Guilds, were invited to travel overseas from Asia (possibly from Alalakh) to build and decorate the palaces of the Cretan rulers".
"There can be no doubt but that Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to Asia… Trained experts, members of the Architects' and Painters' Guilds, were invited to travel overseas from Asia to build and decorate the palaces of the Cretan rulers". (Leonard Woolley)
Charging bull and olive tree, relief in Knossos
Woolley's main argument for this theory, which has been accepted by eminent scholars[!],(c) was that "Yarim-Lim's palace antedates by more than a century the Cretan examples in the same style"… However, after a long debate on "Alalakh and Chronology", Woolley's date ["between circa 1780 and 1730 BC"] proved to be too high. Yarim-Lim of Alalakh was not – as Woolley had thought – Yarim-Lim I of Yamhad, the contemporary of the great Hammurapi of Babylon, but a younger brother of King Abban of Yamhad who gave Alalakh to him as an appanage principality…(d) The dates recently proposed by different scholars lie between ca. 1650 and 1575 BC. In regard to architecture… the evidence is far from substantiating Woolley's theory of Near Eastern architects working in Crete… The orthostates of Alalakh are ca. 300 years later than the orthostates of the first phase of the Old Palace at Phaistos… Fragments of wall paintings from Yarim-Lim's palace show characteristic Minoan motifs which appear contemporary or even earlier in Crete. Moreover, the sense of movement detectable in the wall-painting fragments from Yarim-Lim's palace is characteristically Minoan and in opposition to Near Eastern tradition.
(c) Who said that the… spectacled caiman crocodile is an endangered species? [!]
(d) There were three kings of Yamhad under the name of Yarim-Lim and, of course, far more local rulers having the same name, such as the one in Alalakh. Woolley – more than anyone else – should have known better before he wrote that "Crete owes the best of its architecture, and its frescoes, to the Asiatic mainland"…
Papyrus fresco on Thera
Woolley's strongest argument for a direct connection between the Alalakh paintings and those in Crete was that they both were executed in true fresco painting on wet lime plaster. But it is exactly this fact which definitely disproves Woolley's theory of the Near Eastern ancestry of Cretan fresco painting. Until most recently the Alalakh frescos formed the only known example of true fresco painting on the ancient Near East. In Crete, true fresco painting is known at least from ca. 1900 BC on. Thus true fresco painting apparently has been first invented on Crete, probably because it was suitable to the temperament of the Minoan artists. Thus, technique, style and iconography of the fresco fragments from the Yarim-Lim palace at Alalakh indicate that their resemblances to the Cretan wall-paintings worked in the reverse direction as that originally thought by Woolley.
"The sense of movement detectable in the wall-painting fragments is characteristically Minoan and in opposition to Near Eastern tradition… Technique, style and iconography indicate that their resemblances to the Cretan wall-paintings worked in the reverse direction as that thought by Woolley… Kabri and Alalakh do not have only single Minoan motifs foreign to 'Greater Canaan' but they show a purely Minoan iconography as well as technique. This can only mean they were executed by travelling Minoan artisans." (Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier)
Ritual sprinkler in rock crystal from Kato Zakros, Crete
There is much evidence that Cretan objects of art were highly valued in the ancient Near East. In the Mari tablets Cretan imports are mentioned… The prestige character of the Cretan objects in the Mari texts is indicated by the fact that two of them were presented by King Zimri-Lim of Mari to other Mesopotamian Kings. As finds of Kamares pottery at Ugarit, Qatna, Byblos and Hazor demonstrate, this outstanding pottery was highly esteemed in the Levant. Thus, at least from the 19th century BC on, Crete within its relations to the Levant was not only the receiver but developed into an equal partner producing works of art for which there was a great demand in the Near East.(e) These Cretan works of art arrived by some kind of exchange or trade in the Levant. But, as Woolley has stated, "one cannot export a palace on board of a ship, nor is the 'art and Mystery' of fresco-working a form of merchandise".(f) Do we therefore have to reconstruct just the reverse scenario as that suggested by Woolley, i.e. Cretan artisans travelling to Alalakh for painting the frescoes there?
(e) I ignore the Levantine contribution to the Minoan civilization and, unfortunately, Niemeier gives no information on the subject. What I do know is how much the Cretans were indebted to, and how much they were benefited by learning from, the Egyptians (see Chronicle 2). I can also imagine how much the Egyptians would have benefited if they were not so stuck-up to let themselves learn from the Cretans…
(f) I used a similar argument to show the necessity of Hellenic presence in Iberia: "What the Phoenician ships could not transport and, therefore, made the Greek presence absolutely necessary in Iberia, was Hellenic culture, art, ideas, architectural models, burial habits, and so on" (see Chronicle 7).
Knossos: the Throne Room with the griffins reconstructed
In "Greater Canaan"… there are two other sites which can contribute to the problem: Qatna and Tel Kabri.(g) Fragments of wall-paintings from the palace at Qatna show [techniques] in the characteristic Aegean manner. Tel Kabri lay on one of the most important trade routes of the ancient Near East, the later so-called Via Maris [Way of the Philistines]…(h) In the palace of the local ruler… a threshold was plastered and painted with… similar floor-techniques and designs of the Minoan palaces but not from the Ancient Near East… There is evidence that the walls of this room were also covered with painted plaster of which unfortunately only tiny fragments have been preserved. The plaster floor has been painted in true fresco technique… found also in Cretan and Theran fresco painting but not in tempera and fresco secco. The colours in the floor's painting are… very similar to those of Cretan and of Theran wall-painting… Originally the floor… imitated the slabs of a stone pavement… ln Crete painted plaster floors imitating slab-paved floors are known from [ca 2000 BCE]. Other parts of the Kabri floor were decorated with floral motifs. Among them are chains of stylized linear iris blossoms of a characteristic Minoan type which occurs first in frescoes and vase-painting [in 1700-1500 BCE]. Such kind of decorative mixture is a characteristic feature of Minoan fresco painting… The Kabri floor and also the fresco fragments from Yarim-Lim's palace at Alalakh do not have only single Minoan motifs foreign to "Greater Canaan" which could be explained as intrusive or incorporated elements arriving by motif transfer, but they show a purely Minoan iconography as well as technique. This can only mean that they were executed by travelling Minoan artisans…
Asherah, Canaanite fertility
and motherhood goddess
(g) Greater Canaan: "the area between the Amuq plain [where Antioch was later built] to the north and the deserts to the south and to the east for the middle and late Bronze Age… appears to form a largely uniform civilization with regional variations." (Ruth Amiran).
The excavations at Kabri were directed by Aharon Kempinski and Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier.
(h) The historical name of the road, sadly for the Israeli Jews, was Way of the Philistines because it crossed through the Philistine plain, where the Gaza Strip is. Via Maris was "fished up" out of Vulgate – "via maris", meaning "by the way of the sea" – without specifying any road (there was no such Roman term denoting a road anywhere). The modern name was adopted so as to expel the Palestinians from their homeland even on archaeological terms…
La Petite Parisienne de Crète…
We have evidence for exchange of information on the equipment of the palaces within the ancient Near East (to which Minoan Crete belonged in a certain sense as a westernmost member). That Cretans actually travelled to the Levantine coast is proved by a tablet from the Mari archives mentioning a Cretan who purchases tin at Ugarit from agents of the Mari palace. A tale in the mythological poetry of Ugarit is of highest interest in our context. In it the goddess Anat is sending the divine messenger over the sea to the god of handicrafts, Kothar wa-Khasis, who is brought from his throne in Kptr (almost unanimously identified as Caphtor = Crete)(i) to build a splendid palace for god Baal and to furnish it with precious works of art. As Arvid Schou Kapelrud has stated, Kothar is "the master-builder and the master-smith as he is found in the Near Eastern courts of this time, a highly skilled specialist". In Canaanite mythology the god of handicrafts was called from Crete to furnish the palaces of the deities with precious works of art; in reality the rulers of Tel Kabri (Rehov) and Alalakh (and other cities, possibly Qatna) asked the rulers of Crete for sending artisans to decorate their palaces with fresco painting. As has been demonstrated by Carlo Zaccagnini, the sending of specialized workers is well-attested in the framework of the diplomatic relations between the rulers in the ancient Near East, their transfers are inserted into the dynamics and formal apparatus of the practice of gift-exchange.
(i) "KPTR" may be identified with "Caphtor"; but the latter's equation with Crete is the least probable scenario. Biblical Caphtor may refer to: a) Pelusium in the Nile Delta; b) Cilicia; c) Cyprus; and d) Crete (see Chronicle 5). Egypt is also indicated here because in all references to Kothar, except the above-mentioned poetic tale, his abode is identified as "HKPT", read perhaps as "Hikaptah", or "House of the ka (soul) of Ptah", that is, Memphis. The Hellenes pronounced this Hikaptah as Aegyptos, hence the name of the country in many languages.
Minoan fresco frieze at Avaris reconstructed
After the discoveries in Alalakh and Kabri, the Minoan frescoes in Avaris excavated by Manfred Bietak "instantly created much sensation, since among the scenes depicted on them are spectacular representations of bull leaping so closely identified with Minoan cult and culture", Wolf-Dietrich and Barbara Niemeier commented in another paper on Minoan Frescoes in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Minoan gold ring depicting bull leaping
"From 1990 on, we suggested that the Kabri and the Alalakh frescoes were painted by travelling Aegean specialists, and [some time later] Bietak and Nanno Marinatos did the same for the Avaris frescoes". There is a minor problem among archaeologists on the date of these frescoes. Wishing perhaps to please everyone, "Bietak and Marinatos came to the conclusion that 'Minoan wall painting existed in Avaris both during the late Hyksos period and the early 18th [Thutmosid] Dynasty'. Bietak himself had regarded as possible that 'trade… links between Avaris and Crete… might have survived a dynastic change and might have carried on into the 18th Dynasty, even after the fall of the Hyksos.' There is indeed enough evidence from history that the kind of diplomatic and economic relations which apparently are behind these fresco paintings can survive the changes of regimes. According to Bietak, 'king Ahmose, the founder of the 18th Dynasty, fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections.' He imagines the possibility of a political deal between Ahmose and the 'Minoan Thalassocracy' in which the Minoan fleet helped Ahmose – who had no fleet – against the danger still threatening from the Hyksos harbour bases in southern Palestine. There is no archaeological or textual evidence for the latter hypothesis, and it recalls rather imaginative and today forgotten scenarios connected with the expulsion of the Hyksos, like those according to which Mycenaean mercenaries helped Ahmose in evicting the Hyksos, or according to which fugitive Hyksos princes conquered the Argolid and subsequently were buried in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. Moreover, Ahmose already had a fleet: he captured Avaris after a series of assaults by both land and water [and then] proceeded to southern Palestine."
Ahmose fighting back the Hyksos
Even a pharaoh with a fleet of his own would surely prefer to have the far more experienced Cretan navy by his side than against him allied with the Hyksos! The Avaris paintings indicate an involvement of Egypt in international relations and cultural exchanges with the eastern Mediterranean either through exchange of gifts or even marriage. They additionally point to Minoan authority as being involved in Egyptian affairs possibly because Crete had a strong naval force to offer the pharaoh, and also to Avaris as a place where these cultural exchanges took place, meaning the city was incredibly important to Egypt.
Girl from Acroteri, Thera: detail from the fresco of the lilies
The marriage of a Minoan princess to an Egyptian pharaoh may be one possible scenario. Bietak has suggested that the Avaris frescoes were painted by Minoan artists belonging to the entourage of a Knossian princess married to the pharaoh, whom he first identified as a Hyksos ruler, then as Ahmose, and much later as Thutmose III. Indeed, who was the Cretan girl's groom? The Thera eruption around 1600 BCE happened in the middle of the Hyksos period (1650–1550). Thus, most probably a royal wedding in the final years of the Hyksos in Egypt must be ruled out. There follows Ahmose with his New Kingdom, when the Egyptians considered the Aegean to be part of their "empire". The term must not be understood literally, for in the land of the Nile they misinterpreted even the gifts given to the pharaohs: "The Egyptians, with their characteristic egocentric sense of superiority, would have presented such gifts as tribute" (A. R. Schulman). At any rate, "Ahmose fits particularly well into the picture of Minoan connections". Thutmose could well be the groom, as well. Besides, we know that he had three foreign wives: Menwi, Merti, and Menhet. However, there was a problem: one more dynastic change that took place during his reign, in the middle of the 15th century BCE, not in Egypt but in Crete, when the Minoans were put under the yoke of their own "Hyksos" (foreign rulers), the Mycenaeans. Therefore, if there was a wedding, it should have happened in the beginning of Thutmose's reign, when the real pharaoh was his stepmother, Hatshepsut.
Theran rosettes
Whatever the motives, these unique wall paintings are of Minoan style, technique, and content. There is a long frieze of bull-leaping and grappling against a maze pattern. Marinatos has made the case that the rosette motif, a prominent feature of the Taureador paintings, reproduces the Knossian rosettes and that it is a distinct Minoan symbol. The frescoes also depict griffins, hunting scenes, felines chasing ungulates, several life-sized figures, and a white female wearing a skirt. Especially important are the emblems of the Minoan palace such as the half rosette frieze and the presence of big griffins which are the same size as the ones in the throne room at Knossos. The technique of the paintings is typically Aegean, while the style is very high quality and compares with some of the best paintings from Crete. According to Bietak, the use of specific Minoan royal motifs in a palace of Avaris indicates "an encounter on the highest level must have taken place between the courts of Knossos and Egypt," while the large representation of the female in the skirt might suggest a political marriage between the pharaoh and a Minoan princess.
"Dynastic intermarriage was a favoured diplomatic tactic in the Bronze Age Near East," the Niemeiers point out. The entourage of a foreign princess, some scholars estimate, "would comprise several hundred people, who until the end of their lives remained in the harem of the pharaoh, and that one can well imagine that at Avaris the rooms of the foreign princess and her entourage were decorated according to her desires. [However], at Alalakh and Tel Kabri, the frescoes probably had been attached to the walls of major ceremonial (and possible ritual) halls of the palace, not of the private rooms of queens or princesses."
Wild duck on Thera
The technique of using lime plaster in two layers with a highly polished surface, fresco in combination with stucco, all are techniques that are not Egyptian but are first seen in Minoan paintings. Also, the colours used by the artists are clearly Minoan. Using blue instead of grey e.g. is Minoan, with that colour convention being seen in Egypt later, and due to Aegean influences. Besides, there are no Egyptian hieroglyphs or emblems among any of the fragments discovered. The composition of the paintings and motifs also fit in perfectly with those of the Aegean world. Thus the overwhelming evidence seems to point in the direction of Minoan artists having been at work in Avaris.
"The differences between the styles of Egyptian and Minoan arts have been analyzed by Henriette Antonia Groenewegen-Frankfort and, most recently, by Bietak," the Niemeiers remark. "According to Groenwegen-Frankfort, Minoan art differs from Egyptian (and ancient Near Eastern) art in its 'absolute mobility in organic forms'. Bietak aptly explains this with the different cultural patterns of both civilizations. The Minoan society was not – as the Egyptian one – dominated by writing, listing, and absolute order, and therefore Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and a rigid canonical order. As to a comparison of Canaanite and Minoan arts, we unfortunately do not have many objects of art from the middle Bronze Age Levant. But those which are extant show a style distinctly different from the Minoan one. For instance, the bird representations on bone inlays from Megiddo and Lachish seem motionless in comparison to the crane on an ivory plaque from Palaikastro. Canaanite female and male metal figurines appear stiff in comparison to the Minoan female and male metal figurines displaying strong inner tension and dynamics."
"Minoan art differs from Egyptian (and ancient Near Eastern) art in its 'absolute mobility in organic forms'." (H.A. Groenewegen-Frankfort)
"The Minoan society was not – as the Egyptian one – dominated by writing, listing, and absolute order, and therefore Minoan art was not subjected to hieroglyphic clichés and a rigid canonical order." (M. Bietak)
The Fertile Crescent (that also includes the Nile valley and delta): the cradle of civilization in the time of the Bronze Age collapse
(arrows pinpoint all the places mentioned in this Chronicle)
As it turned out the wall paintings in Avaris, Alalakh, Kabri, possibly Qatna (17th-16th centuries BCE), were not the older ones.
"Earlier are the painted stone imitations in Zimri-Lim's palace at Mari [18th century BCE]. The excavator of Mari, André Parrot, compared the stone imitations to those at Knossos. He also asked for possible connections between the Mari and the Knossos murals, and, pointing to the evidence for their connections provided by the Minoan precious objects mentioned in the Mari archives, he apparently tended to see some Cretan influence in the murals there."
Located in Mesopotamia, far from the sea, Mari (modern Tell Hariri) was a Sumerian and Amorite city on the Euphrates. It flourished from 2900 until 1759 BCE, when it was sacked by Hammurabi, despite the gifts the king Zimri-Lim had given him. More important was Mari's strategic position as a relay point between lower Mesopotamia and northern Syria. The city came to control the trade lanes between different regions such as Iran, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. The royal palace contained over 300 rooms and was possibly the largest of its time. More than 25,000 tablets were recovered there "bringing about a complete revision of the historical dating of the ancient Near East and providing more than 500 new place names, enough to redraw the geographical map of the ancient world," as Parrot noted. Qatna (modern Tell el-Mishrife), 18 km northeast of Homs, was also one of the largest Bronze Age towns in Syria. In the 2nd Millennium trade routes developed connecting Mesopotamia with Cyprus, Crete and Egypt. Qatna is mentioned in the tin trade, which went from Mari via Qatna to the Mediterranean; Cypriote copper was transported in the other direction; their alloy, bronze, was most valuable especially during the Bronze Age.
Theran boy-boxers
As for the ethnic composition of the "Minoan" workshops, there are various possibilities: the frescoes were painted a) by travelling Aegean artisans; b) under the supervision of Aegean artists with the assistance of Levantine painters trained by them; c) by Levantine pupils of Aegean masters. The idea of mixed workshops seems more appealing, probable and realistic. Decorating huge palaces was a great undertaking. However, it would seem unthinkable to imagine Cretan ships full of artists travelling around the Mediterranean for this task. The artistic teams should have been rather small necessarily working with local apprentices.
"It is difficult to decide in each case which of these solutions is the correct one," according to the Niemeiers. "We would agree with Philip P. Betancourt that only a very small percentage of the fresco paintings is known and that 'we are touching the tip of the iceberg of a whole series of interrelated workshops, working in Knossos, the Aegean islands, on the coast of Western Asia and in Egypt, perhaps travelling back and forth, perhaps occasionally exchanging personnel or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things'… The Alalakh, Tel Kabri, and Avaris frescoes are to be seen 'in terms of the forging of an élite koiné [common 'idiom'] – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – in the circumstances of the intense maritime interaction between the coastal Areas of the Eastern Mediterranean'," as S. Sherratt proposed. Marinatos has also argued that these paintings are evidence of a koiné, a visual language of common symbols, which testifies to interactions among the rulers of neighbouring powers. "The Minoan artists involved in the painting of all these frescoes", the Niemeiers agree, "apparently formed an important element in the growth of the so-called 'International Style' of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean."
And not only of the eastern part of mare nostrum, I would add: according to some fresco experts, similar Minoan-style wall paintings have also been found in Morocco…
There was "a whole series of interrelated workshops, working in Knossos, the Aegean islands, on the coast of Western Asia and in Egypt, perhaps travelling back and forth, perhaps occasionally exchanging personnel or going back to Knossos to learn the most recent things." (P.P. Betancourt)
The frescoes are to be seen "in terms of the forging of an élite koiné – artistic, iconographical, ideological, technological – in the circumstances of the intense maritime interaction between the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean." (S. Sherratt)
Cretans in Egypt, bringing gifts of metal, jewelry etc, facsimile of a painting in Thebes, 18th dynasty,
early 15th century BCE
Whatever happened to the Avaris wall paintings? One group of them had fallen off the wall of a doorway, and the other group of fragments was found in dumps deposited by the north-east palace. The frescoes seem to have been removed during the later Thutmosid period – when there was no Minoan Crete anymore.
"Minoan fresco painting apparently was a rather short-lived phenomenon in the Levant and Egypt – in Egyptian terms, covering the Hyksos period and the very beginning of the early 18th Dynasty," the Niemeiers sum up. "Later, we find again paintings of nature scenes which appear to breathe a Minoan spirit. They were, however, executed in secco technique and certainly were not painted by Aegean artists. Minoan wall painting was a thing of the past at that time."
Without Minoan Crete there was no room for Minoan art. The Minoan workshops were still busy, of course; but the artistic masters worked for the new political masters, the Mycenaeans; there were no Greek artists at that time to compete with them. However, their new works of art are not typified as "Minoan" anymore; they are called "Mycenaean", sometimes accompanied with a footnote that they were made by Cretan artistic workshops. Would anyone ever think to describe as "Cretan" the masterpieces of another great Cretan master who lived more than three millennia later, namely Doménicos Theotocópoulos, the famous El Greco?
Mycenaean women procession fresco
Here we are again at our starting point, having completed the circle that began with Periplus and Minoan thalassocracy and ended with Emporia and Minoan painting. Now we can start anew, going back even before our starting point – before man learned how to work metals, when voyages were made in search of an equally valuable material: the obsidian. Let us go back to the Neolithic era! Let's try at least…
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>> BACK TO THE… "OBSIDIAN AGE"!
Chronicle 19. IBERIA IMPARTIALLY VIEWED
Posted in: Once Upon a... Wave.	Tagged: Academy, Aegean civilizations, Aegina, Aeolians, Aesop, Agrigento, Alalia, Aléria, Alcácer do Sal, Alentejo, Alexander, Alexandria, Algarve, Aljustrel, Anatolia, Andalusia, Antonio García y Bellido, Aragon, Arganthonios, Armorica, Artemis, Athenaeus, Athens, Atlantic Bronze Age, Attic Greek, Babylonia, Balearics, Battle of Alalia, Boeotia, British Isles, Bronze, Bronze Age, Cadiz, Calydonian, Campaspe, Cantabria, Cartagena, Carthage, Cassiterides, Caucasus, Celtiberians, Celts, Centaur, Chalcis, Charaxus, Chios, Cinderella, City-state, Clazomenae, Colaeus, Commodus, Corsica, Crete, Cyprus, Cyrus, Dan Stanislawski, Deipnosophistae, Dionysus, Dorians, Drachma, Egypt, Emporia, Exekias, Formentera, Franck Goddio, Galicia, Greeks, Griffin, Guadalquivir, Guadiana, Gymnesian Islands, Halicarnassus, Hannibal, Helen, Heracleion, Heracles, Herodotus, Hetaera, Hispania, Homer, Hoplites, Iberia, Iberians, Ibiza, Ichnoussa, Ionia, Ionians, Jean Guillaume Moitte, John William Godward, Julius Pollux, Khonsu, Klazomenai, Knidos, Knossos, Larissa, Leiro, Leonard Woolley, Linear A, Lisbon, Lusitanians, Lycophron, Lydia, Majorca, Marseille, Mastia, Málaga, Mediterranean, Megalith, Menace, Menelaus, Meseta, Mesopotamia, Miletus, Minoan, Minorca, Murcia, Mycenaean, Mytilene, Naucratis, Naucratis Painter, Naveta, Nile, Nile Delta, Nuraghe, Ophiussa, Paris, Persians, Pharaoh, Phaselis, Phocaea, Phoenicia, Pityuses, Pityusic Islands, Polybius, Portugal, Ptolemy, Punics, Pyrenees, Rhetoric, Rhodes, Rhodopis, Rhys Carpenter, Samos, Sappho, Sardinia, Satyr, Scarab, Sea trade, Sicily, Silver, Sling, Sophist, Spain, Stater, Strabo, Strait of Gibraltar, Syracuse, Tagus, Talaiot, Tanit, Tartessos, Taula, Teos, Thesaurus, Thrace, Tin, Trojan War, Tuscany, Tyre, Vettones, William Smith.	1 Comment
/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 19. ΜΙΑ "ΤΡΙΤΗ ΜΑΤΙΑ" ΣΤΗΝ ΙΒΗΡΙΑ
● Hellenic Emporia on the Nile Delta ● The Mineral Magnet of Andalusia ● "Tin: the Product of Greatest Importance" ● Balearics ● Graeco-Tartessian Friendship Due to Punic Aggression ● Massalia's Role in Galicia's Decline ● Carthage and Its Mercenaries
THOUGH ACCEPTING there were Contacts Between the Ancient Civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and Iberia, Dan Stanislawski rejected the idea of any Aegean presence in the peninsula, and remained faithful to the mainstream scholarly favouritism towards Phoenicians.(a) Commenting on the "claims that there was contact" between Iberia and Crete, he conceded that it is "a seductive idea" and "a reasonable hypothesis", but "as yet there is no convincing evidence that the Mediterranean island route to the west was used" by the Minoans.
(a) See the beginning of Chronicle 6 with the first paragraph of Chapter 7 from Dan Stanislawski's Study in Historical-Political Geography: The Individuality of Portugal (1959). His other studies on Portugal are: Portugal's Other Kingdom: The Algarve (1963), and Landscapes of Bacchus: The Vine in Portugal (1970).
Minoan fresco fragment of a Dancing Woman
at Knossos
Such 'tangible', "convincing evidence" in the archaeologists' hands, i.e. a number of Egyptian trade items found in Spain, is of "a somewhat later period", after the fall of the Minoans, ca 1400-1200 BCE. Although the possibility of "Phoenician intermediaries" cannot be ruled out, one needs to have in mind that exactly in this "somewhat later period" (late Bronze Age), especially in the western Mediterranean, sea trade was in the hands of those who brought about the fall of the Minoans, that is, the Mycenaeans – who, strangely enough, are not even mentioned by the American professor! Therefore, his assertion that the Egyptian trade items found in Spain "almost surely may be associated with Phoenician intermediaries" is anything but scientific.
Besides, the Aegean presence in Egypt, the country of origin of these trade items, dates back to at least Mycenaean times and more likely even further back into the Minoan age, when a trade settlement was founded in the Nile Delta under the aegis of the Pharaohs, namely Naucratis (Ναύκρατις). It was the first and, for much of its early history, the only permanent Hellenic colony in Egypt, acting as a symbiotic nexus for the interchange of Egyptian and Greek trade items, art and culture.(b) When a historian "forgets" the Mycenaeans and Naucratis, it means he wears "Phoenician myopic glasses"! Under the circumstances, Stanislawski, an expert on Portugal, cannot be suspected of pro-Hellenic bias in his narrative about the same fateful events in Iberia related in the previous Chronicles 6, 7, and 8. At the same time, we can test the accuracy of our own testimony:
The Calydonian Hunt, by Naucratis Painter; ca 555 BCE
(b) Naucratis, which was located in the Nile Delta, on its westernmost branch, 70 kilometers southeast of its mouth, where Alexandria was later to be built, was not only the first Greek settlement in Egypt but also Egypt's most important harbour in antiquity until the rise of Alexander's city. Its first period is obscure because of the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and the ensuing "Dark ages" (1100-750 BCE). A Hellenic cultural "renaissance" in the 7th century brought about renewed contacts with the East and its two great river civilizations of the Nile and Mesopotamia. According to Herodotus the shrine known as the Hellenion was a co-operative enterprise financed by nine Greek city-states: four Ionian (Chios, Clazomenae, Teos and Phocaea), four Dorian (Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Knidos and Phaselis), and one Aeolian (Mytilene). Miletus, Samos and Aegina had their own separate sanctuaries. Thus the natives of at least twelve Hellenic cities worked in a collaboration that was not only rare but proved to be lasting.
The sister port of Naucratis was the harbour town of Heracleion or Thonis, Egypt's main seaport to Greece, which was only discovered in 2000 by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio. Its ruins are located 2.5 kilometers off the modern coast. The city was built on some adjoining islands connected with bridges and intersected by canals. It submerged into the sea in the 6th or 7th century CE, probably due to major earthquakes and floods. The "Stele of Naukratis" with a Pharaonic decree on it, describes Heracleion as a "harbour in the Sea of Hellenes", referring to the Mediterranean. Its twin "Stele of Heracleion" was recovered in 2000. The city's Greek name is linked to a large temple of Khonsu, whom the Greeks identified with Heracles. The city is believed to have been visited by the great hero, as well as Paris and Helen on their flight from the jealous Menelaus, before the Trojan war. Heracleion's mythic wealth was lauded by Homer, as well.
Campaspe, Alexander's courtesan, a prominent citizen of Larissa, by John William Godward (1896)
An offspring of Naucratis was Athenaeus, a Hellene rhetorician, grammarian, and gastronomist, flourishing in the late 2nd – early 3rd centuries CE. His books have been lost, except a 15-volume synopsis of his 30-volume Deipnosophistae (Banquet Connoisseurs), which mostly survives. It is an immense store-house of information, on matters linked to dining, music, songs and dances, games, courtesans, and luxury. Guests included wealthy persons, patrons of art, and scholars, jurists, musicians, and others, who described the lifestyle, the arts and scientific knowledge of the Greeks. In the course of discussing classic authors, they made quotations from nearly 800 writers and 2,500 works, many of them unrecorded. Thus we are entrusted much valuable information about the ancient world and many authors that would be otherwise unknown.
An Athenaeus' contemporary, a bit older, was Julius Pollux (Ἰούλιος Πολυδεύκης), also born in Naucratis, flourishing in the late 2nd century CE and living a long life of more than 80 years. He was a grammarian and sophist, scholar and rhetorician, whom Commodus appointed a professor-chair of rhetoric in the Athenian Academy – due to his melodious voice, according to Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus. Nothing of his rhetorical works has survived. His valuable extant work is Onomasticon (Ὀνομαστικόν), a thesaurus or dictionary of Attic synonyms and phrases in ten books, arranged not alphabetically but according to subject-matter. It supplies in passing much rare information on many points of classical antiquity – objects in daily life, the theatre, music, politics – and quotes numerous fragments of lost works. Thus, Pollux became invaluable for William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1842), etc.
Other personages linked with Naucratis were the Naucratis Painter, a vase-painter of the 6th century BCE, and also Rhodopis, a celebrated Thracian hetaera who lived in the same period. Herodotus says she was a fellow-slave of the fable teller Aesop, with whom she had a secret love affair. Charaxus, brother of Sappho, who had gone to Naucratis as a merchant, fell in love with her, and ransomed her from slavery with a large sum of money. Sappho wrote a poem accusing Rhodopis of robbing her brother of his property but, nevertheless, the hetaera became the model for the original version of the Cinderella story recorded later by Strabo.
Celts in Europe
A WESTWARD MOVEMENT
Celtic art in Spain
The earliest passage of Phoenician ships through the Straits of Gibraltar was probably made during the general period of time when the Central European farmers and pastoralists were first entering the Cantabrian region. These events preceded the 1st millennium BC. Later, Greek exploration and trade grew, following the example given by neighboring Phoenicia, perhaps as early as the 9th century and certainly by the end of the 7th century BC. Such contacts can be equated in time with the acceleration of the East-West movement of peoples and cultures which took place in the North with the advent of the Celts, who may have appeared in Iberia as early as 900 BC, and the main force of which was felt by the 6th century. Between the 6th and the 3rd centuries BC, while the lands of the western Mediterranean were developing under the influence of active and aggressive Greeks and Carthaginians, northern Iberia was changing under the influence of Celts of later arrival from beyond the Pyrenees. There was a difference, however, between the early contacts along the Mediterranean coasts and those of the Central Europeans with northern Iberia. It was not opportunity for settlement that drew men along the southern coasts, but trade… It was the attraction of metals that drew the early Greeks beyond the straits of Gibraltar and along the western coasts of Spain.
CONTACTS WITH THE WEST COAST OF IBERIA
It is possible that the early merchant wayfarers sailed up the west coast to trade directly with Galicia. But if they did, the coast of present Portugal represented a gap in their interest, for there is almost no record of them there.(c) It would seem that Portugal was then, as through so many periods of time before and after, apart from the main stream of events. It possessed no great source of silver such as the mines of Andalusia, nor of copper or tin (with slight exceptions in both cases).(d) With her metals, Spain was a magnet for the early traders, whereas Portugal attracted casual traders at most…
Egyptian scarabs
(c) There are slight exceptions; e.g., there is the Egyptian scarab of the 7th century BC that was found in a pre-Celtic level at Alcácer do Sal. (DS)
(d) There is no record e.g. of Carthaginian exploitation of the copper of the Alentejo, which Romans later mined at Aljustrel. As all of southern Portugal is poor in tin, silver, and gold, there was little there to distract them from their preoccupation with such places as Andalusia and Murcia. (DS)
HOMOGENEITY OF THE IBERIAN MEDITERRANEAN REGION
At the time of their first contacts with the west, the earliest Phoenicians and Greeks encountered a culture area with fundamentally similar characteristics throughout. It extended along the Mediterranean coasts, slopes, and adjacent interior valleys, from the Pyrenees to the Guadiana River… With their usual perspicacity, the Greeks recognized this area as being essentially homogeneous and sharply different in culture from the Celtic territories of the interior and of the north and west peripheries…
EARLY POLITICAL GROUPS AND CONFUSION OF NAMES
Winged griffin of Tartessos, 700-575 BCE
Indisputably, one of the important Iberian groups was that of the Tartessians, wealthy farmers and traders in metals. It was their knowledge of the sources of metals that first brought them in touch with the Phoenicians and Greeks. They knew the coasts to the west and northwest of their home, for the tin and gold that they traded came from Galicia. They were also able to furnish silver, copper, and lead, which came to them from the Guadalquivir River basin. It appears that tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. The early centuries of the pre-Christian millennium were times of great opulence along the coast of Galicia. That this wealth was due to tin may be inferred from the fact that the Greeks used the term Cassiterides to identify the area. However, the question as to the ultimate source of tin is moot. In spite of the lack of archaeological evidence it seems likely that, in the earliest years of trading, it came from alluvial deposits along the river banks of Galicia. There is a possibility, however, that Bronze Age connections with French Brittany and with the British Isles had continued and that the Galicians were merely purveyors of tin from those places. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world. There was no tin in all of North Africa, Asia Minor, Caucasia, Cyprus, mainland Greece, and the Greek islands. The mines of Tuscany were small. It is no wonder that both Galicia and the Tartessians were prosperous and that the Phoenicians and Greeks were attracted to the area.
"Tin was the product of greatest importance at the time. This basic necessity of bronze-users was scarce in the other parts of the Phoenician and Greek world." (Dan Stanislawski)
GREEK EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT
Hellenic ship, mocaic, ca 1st century BCE-CE
The earliest Greek ventures may perhaps be dated as of the 9th or the 8th century BC. Possibly Rhodian and Chalcidian sailors were in the western Mediterranean at this time… The line of Ionian names stretching along the islands and coasts of the western Mediterranean and to the Atlantic coast of Portugal – the names with the -oussa termination – can probably be ascribed to this early period. These names are important in dating the arrival of the Greeks in western waters. They mark the island route of the early Greek navigators. Starting from Syrakoussai [Syracuse] in eastern Sicily, they may be followed through Ichnoussa (Sardinia), Meloussa (Menorca), Rornyoussa (Mallorca) and Pityoussa (Ibiza). The latter three, even now, are identified on maps as the Balearics or Pityusas.(e) The -oussa names extend westward to the straits of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast of Portugal to Ophioussa, in the region of Lisbon, and the general area of Portugal plus Galicia may have been vaguely termed Ophioussa.
The "Balearides" (Gymnesian) and the "Pityusae" Isles on an old map
(e) The Balearics comprise two island groups: the Gymnesians (Majorca and Minorca), and the Pityuses (Eivissa or Ibiza and Formentera). The term "Balearic" derives from the Greek Βαλλιαρεῖς or Βαλεαρεῖς (Baleares in Latin, from βάλλω, meaning "to launch"), referring to the islanders who were skilled slingers and served as mercenaries for the Hellenes, Punics, and Romans. However, Strabo regarded the word as of Phoenician origin, as the equivalent for lightly armoured soldiers the Greeks called γυμνῆτας, hence Γυμνησίαι (from γυμνός, meaning naked). This does not mean they fought naked, but that they used much lighter armament than the hoplites. Nevertheless, according to Lycophron's Alexandra, the toponym refers to some shipwrecked Boeotians who were cast nude on the islands (a story evidently invented to account for the name); or to the islanders themselves who were often nude (probably because of the year-round benevolent climate). In the Gymnesian Islands there are megalithic stone monuments (naveta, taula and talaiot) which speak of a very early prehistoric human activity. They are similar, but not necessarily related, to the nuraghe of Sardinia, and the torri of Corsica. One of the earliest cultures on Minorca was influenced by other Mediterranean civilizations, including the Minoan. Those islanders e.g. may have imitated the inverted plastered timber columns found at Knossos (such evidence is probably not "convincing" enough for Stanislawski).There is also a tradition that the Balearics were colonized by Rhodes after the Trojan War. The Pityusic Islands (from the Greek πιτύα, pine tree) are sometimes informally called in English as the Pine Islands, which is identical to the ancient Hellenic name Πιτυοῦσσαι, "pine-covered islands". In antiquity they were listed in Claudius Ptolemy's Geography under the names Ophiusis and Ebyssus, which had a town of the same name. It is the port Ibossim founded by the Phoenicians in 654 BCE, later known to Romans as Ebusus, hence Eivissa (in Catalan) or Ibiza (in Spanish). (ML)
THE PHOCAEAN GREEKS
Herodotus, by Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1806)
Herodotus said that it was Greeks from the city of Phocaea in Asia Minor who were first to navigate in the western Mediterranean waters. It may seem temerous to question the facts of the father of history, but Antonio García does so convincingly.(f) The Phocaeans, says he, arrived late upon the scene, profiting by earlier maritime contacts. Nor does he accept the statement that the important voyage of Colaeus, the Samian, was a voyage of discovery of Tartessos for the Greeks. This widely heralded 7th century journey was, to him, merely one – although perhaps the most profitable and spectacular up to that time – of many such voyages that had been made by Rhodians, Chalcidians, Samians, and others.(g)
(f) Antonio García y Bellido, Hispania Graeca. (DS)
(g) Another point of view is expressed by H. R. W. Smith in his review of García's Hispania Graeca. Smith does not deny the thesis of García but says that he can find no reason to believe that the Phocaeans reached Tartessos prior to the time of Arganthonios, the Tartessian king friendly to the Greeks, or before the voyage of Colaeus. (DS)
Following the Mediterranean island route, the Phocaeans arrived from Asia Minor to Iberia.
Whatever the dating may be – and the archaeological inquiry has far to go – the Phocaeans certainly became the most active and effective Greeks in the area. Their colonization had energy and breadth and was the only one in the western Mediterranean with lasting results… There is no specific evidence that this activity was connected with the decay of Tyre, but there is such a coincidence in time. Tyrian decline had begun by the end of the 8th century BC and was notable during the following century. This was the time of the voyage of Colaeus the Samian (650 BC), the founding of the Phocaean colony of Massalia, present Marseille (600 BC, or approximately then), and the founding of Alalia in Corsica (640 BC, or approximately 40 years prior to Massalia). Some time before the end of the century, Mainake, the most westerly of Phocaean colonies, was founded near Málaga.(h)
A Satyr on pottery found at Alalia
(h) Within 20 miles to the east, says García; Smith suggests that it might even be at approximately the outskirts of present Málaga. (DS)
Some dates are different here. The difference in Colaeus' voyage is not important (650, not ca 640 BCE); but the dating of the founding of Alalia is almost one century earlier (650 instead of 566 BCE). Perhaps, as in other similar cases, the older date denotes the creation of a temporary settlement before the founding of a city. (ML)
This century was one of intimacy between Phocaeans and Tartessians. The reign of Arganthonios of Tartessos began in the 7th century BC. The ancient sources spoke of his 80-year reign but probably, in typical Greek fashion, they dramatized a dynasty or a period by creating a mythical longevity for a single ruler. Whether this represented one ruler or several does not alter the fact that there was frequent and close contact between Tartessos and Phocaea. This was the period of the Phocaean maritime dominance during which the Tartessian king lent money to the Phocaeans to build their fortifications against the threat of the Persians.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GREEKS AND PUNIC PEOPLES
IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH IBERIA
The island and bay of Gadir: the Phoenicians' springboard for attacks against Tartessos
The period of the decline of Tyre was not only important for the Ionian Greeks, but also for the Tyrian colony of Carthage. During the time of Phocaean colonization, Carthage too was expanding. As early as 653 BC it had established the colony on Ibiza of the Balearics, which lay athwart the Greek island route to the west. After 573 BC, when Tyre fell to the Babylonians, Carthage showed increasing independence. Competition for western metals was growing between the two great rivals, Carthage and Greece. It is reasonable to assume that the friendship of Arganthonios (or that of his dynasty), through almost a century of time, was more than mere affection and amiability. It probably represented a form of alliance in which the Tartessians aided the Phocaeans in their struggle against the threat to their mother city. In return, Greeks supported the Westerners against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and the Punic colony of Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the mainland and the Tartessians.
"The [Greco-Tartessian] friendship represented a form of alliance… against the growing aggressiveness of Carthage and Gadir, which threatened the area of Tartessos. Almost from the time of their founding of Gadir the Phoenicians showed their expansionist tendencies. It was not long before they were using the island as a base of attack against the Tartessians."
(Dan Stanislawski)
Greek Massaliotes in Iberia
The Greeks were usually neither pacific nor friendly neighbors when the prospect of gain was apparent. In this they differed little from the Phoenicians. However, in their relations with the Tartessians they had no desire, it would seem, for control of land or people, but merely wanted to trade their products, especially olive oil and wine, for Tartessian metals.(i) In fact, the history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable. This was speeded by events in the eastern Mediterranean area…
"The history of Greek contacts with Iberians is one of amity, and the hospitality of the Iberians toward Greeks was proverbial. The purposes of both peoples were served by friendly intercourse and mutual support against the common enemy, especially after the increased importance and the expanded ambition of Carthage. A major clash for complete dominance of the area was inevitable." (Dan Stanislawski)
Dionysus, by Exekias; Kylix, c. 530 BCE
(i) Pierson Dixon, The Iberians of Spain, and Rhys Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain, state that the olive tree and the vine were introduced into Spain by the Greeks. Olive oil was exported from Greek Akragas to Carthage in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. No doubt the Greeks traded in wine with Iberia. Wine made from grapes is very old in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Phoenicians were famous merchants of wine… (DS)
Why then Carthage bought wine from the Hellenes and not from the Phoenicians, their kindred? Probably because Akragas was very close; for the Punic traders profit was more important than kinship. Or because, as usual, the Phoenician wine could not stand a comparison with the Greek wine… (ML)
THE ALALIA COLONY AND ITS EFFECTS
Phocaean electrum coin with playing seals
In this part of his narrative, Dan Stanislawski turns his attention to the historic developments in Asia Minor: in 546 BCE Cyrus captured Lydia, causing "a mass migration of perhaps half of the population of Phocaea to their Corsican colony of Alalia". When the Persians took Phocaea, "all the men in this city of probably 5,000 to 7,000 people had gone. This population figure suggests the large number of available vessels, and points to the commercial importance of the city at that time". There follows the Battle of Alalia "sometime between 540 and 535 BC" with its disastrous results for the Hellenes and also the Tartessians.
Carthage may then have sealed the straits of Gibraltar, as Carpenter suggests. More likely, the straits had been largely sealed for a long time, but after the battle the land route between Mainake and Tartessos was also blocked. Mainake itself was destroyed by the Carthaginians toward the end of the century, to end its traffic and its competition with the Carthaginian settlement in the location of present Málaga…
ECONOMIC CHANGES IN THE WEST
Artemis, Phocaea's patron goddess, on a Massaliote silver (so-called heavy) drachma,
ca 390-220 BCE
As Carthage had inherited the western empire of Tyre, so did Massalia fall heir to that of her mother city, Phocaea. Greek trade became centered here, with the end of Phocaean maritime enterprise in the West of the Mediterranean. Trade through France to Brittany and beyond had been undoubtedly important to the Massaliotes previous to this time, but the record had been obscured by the greater drama of the struggle on the Mediterranean. During the last half of the 6th century BC, during which time Carthaginians grasped complete power in the West, the prosperity of Galicia – presumably based upon tin – declined. This decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to the northwest and ultimately to Britain…
"Galicia's decline may have been due to the change from the sea route, by way of the Straits, to that from Massalia, via the French rivers, to Britain. The direct land route from Massalia skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen." (Dan Stanislawski)
Stanislawski offers four possible explanations for the Galician decline; the second one is probably the most important:
Bronze Age gold helmet found in Leiro, Galicia
More likely, the Galicians had for some time been not producers, but purveyors, of tin from French Armorica or the British Isles. If this were true, the direct land route from Massalia would have skirted the Carthaginian barrier and eliminated Galician middlemen… At approximately the same period of time there was an increased interest in silver… by the avidity with which the Greeks of Asia Minor sought it for coinage… Perhaps the richest of ancient silver mines was that of Mastia (or Massia), a region second only to Tartessos in commercial importance. The ancient prosperity of the region and of its most important city, also named Mastia (or Massia), the later Cartago Nova, and probably the site of the present Cartagena, was based upon silver mining through several centuries. Great amounts were mined under the direction of Hannibal in the 3rd century BC, and it was still a large operation at the time of Polybius in the succeeding century.
CARTHAGINIAN DOMINATION OF THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN
The Celts (the only Indo-Europeans in Iberia) lived mainly in Galicia, the Celtiberians in Portugal and half of Spain, the Iberians in the other half (Andalusia to Catalonia),
the Basques in NE Spain and SW France
[After the battle of Alalia] Greek commercial activity in Iberia was ended and Carthage was less inhibited in the spread of its control. Tartessos, which had feared the Carthaginians and had allied itself with the Greeks, was left without support and was destroyed.(j) In the following century, probably 20,000 Iberian mercenaries were fighting in Sicily for the Carthaginians… Celts were also serving as mercenaries in the Carthaginian forces.
(j) If there was no one city of that name, it is not important to the larger fact that the area as a whole was put under the control of the Carthaginians of Gadir (Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain). (DS)
Dido (Elissa, the founder of Carthage), attributed to Christophe Cochet
There was an increasing reliance upon mercenaries from the peninsula, not only from the fringes but from deep within the interior as well. In the late 3rd century BC, Hannibal's army included Celtiberians from the northern interior, Galicians from the extreme northwest, Lusitanians from Middle Portugal, Vettones from the middle Tagus drainage – and these do not complete the list. Such troops, however, were something other than pure mercenaries; many had been forcibly impressed into service… During earlier centuries no general antagonism in Iberia seems to have been engendered by the Carthaginians. Locally there may have been antagonism, such as probably existed between the Carthaginians and the Tartessians, but for the tribes of the interior the Carthaginians may have had a friendly appeal. They offered an opportunity to fight with pay. It was later, when the Carthaginians had expanded their power and increased their need for troops that their tactics changed with regard to these tribes of the interior, which had long served as a source of manpower. When Hannibal, in desperate need for troops and under economic pressure, forcibly impressed some of them into his armies, the others reacted in bitter opposition. The tribes of the interior were a bellicose lot. An opportunity to fight for pay was not distasteful to them but a demand that they submit to enslavement was another matter. According to Strabo they resisted Hannibal as they later did the Romans for somewhat the same reasons.
Nevertheless, tens of thousands of mercenaries were introduced to new lands and cultures of the middle and eastern Mediterranean. Since this process had been going on from as early as the 6th century BC and many men had returned to the peninsula, the effect upon attitudes of the peoples of the Meseta ['Plateau', in the heart of Iberia] and even some of the remote western coasts may have been considerable.
The harbour of Carthage
Dan Stanislawski's impartial view of Iberia is almost identical with the historical panorama of the last three Chronicles: Ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι, as Euclid would say, or quod erat demonstrandum (Q.E.D), or 'what had to be demonstrated'! There is still one Periplus left, dropping anchor at several emporia in the Mediterranean, to come full circle back to our starting point – a voyage full of surprises with several itinerant artisans, artists, and masters we meet on the way, "members of the Architects' and Painters' Guilds", whose Linear A writing, however, puzzles the famous archaeologist Leonard Woolley…
>> Chronicle 10. AN ARCHAEOLOGIST'S WATERLOO
<< Chronicle 8. "CARTHAGO DELENDA EST"
Centaur: little figurine in bronze from Campo de Caravaca (Murcia), probably made in Greece, 6th century BCE
Chronicle 2. MINOAN CRETAN THALASSOCRACY
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/ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ/ Χρονικό 2. ΚΡΗΤΟΜΙΝΩΙΚΗ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΟΚΡΑΤΟΡΙΑ
● Minoan Society and Art ● Linear A and B, plus the Phaestos Disc ● Tin Bronze ● Bull-Leaping (Taurocathapsia)
Flying swallows with lilies from a Thera/Santorini fresco
The palace of Minos at Knossos
THE MINOAN civilization, as part of the Aegean cultures in the Bronze Age, arose in the island of Crete, flourished from the 27th to the 15th centuries BCE and then vanished. It came to light again at the outset of the 20th century CE thanks to the British archaeologist Arthur Evans. The term Minoan refers to the legendary Minos. We presume, on no evidence, that it was not a name but a royal title. In the Odyssey, composed centuries after the demise of the Minoans, Homer calls the natives of the island Eteocretans ('true Cretans'); probably they were true descendants of the Minoans. In addition, there were several settlements in the Aegean and the Ionian Seas, as well as in Sicily and Canaan, known by the name Minoa. The root min- appears in some Aegean languages, toponyms and in the name of the Minyans, an autochthonous people inhabiting the Aegean. We assume that the Cretans were not Indo-Europeans, but a Mediterranean people related to the Pelasgians – the pre-Hellenic dwellers of the Aegean region – and possibly to the Minyans. Crete remained free from invasions for many centuries, and managed to develop an independent and distinct civilization, one of the most advanced in the Mediterranean area during the Bronze Age, together with that of Egypt. Linear A, the Minoan script, has not yet been deciphered; it possibly represents an Aegean language, not related to any Indo-European tongue.
The Ship Procession or the Flotilla frieze at Acroteri, Thera (detail)
"Crete was well placed in relation to sea trading routes", Eugene Hirschfeld comments, writing on "Grace in the Aegean: the art of the Minoans". "Thucydides wrote that Minos was the first to build a navy:
'The first person known to us by tradition as having established a navy is Minos. He made himself master of what is now called the Hellenic sea, and ruled over the Cyclades, into most of which he sent the first colonies… and thus did his best to put down piracy in those waters, a necessary step to secure the revenues for his own use.'
"With their merchant fleet, the Minoans came to dominate the seas, sailing for hundreds of miles in search of trade, from Spain in the west to Syria in the east…(a) It is possibly a measure of both the Minoans' geographical isolation and the strength of their fleet that their coastal towns seem to have had few fortifications. Thus their period of ascendancy was called by Arthur Evans the Pax Minoica or 'Minoan peace' – a time when cities needed no walls.(b) Like Pax Romana, of course, such a peace if it existed would have been the product of military strength rather than pacifism."
Replica of the Uluburun shipwreck
(a) "We should never under-estimate how 'joined up' the ancient world was", Hirschfeld footnotes. "See for example the late Bronze Age shipwreck, which was carrying a remarkable assortment of international goods from northern Europe, Africa and Mesopotamia". The ship revealed one of the most spectacular late Bronze Age assemblages to have emerged from the Mediterranean, dated to the late 14th century BCE. It was similar to Graeco-Roman vessels of a later time and was found in 1982 by a sponge diver in south-western Asia Minor.
(b) Though Evans' vision of a Pax Minoica has been criticized recently, it seems there was little armed conflict in the island itself until the following Mycenaean period. Archaeologists say the Minoans often show weapons in their art, but only in ritual contexts. Claims that they produced no weapons are erroneous; Minoan swords were the finest in all of the Aegean. Furthermore, no evidence exists for a Minoan army, or domination of peoples outside Crete.
The Dolphins mural at Knossos
One after the other, the unique features of this marvellous civilization seem to arise from only one: the Minoans' thalassocracy, their "geographical isolation and the strength of their fleet", as Hirschfeld says and then explains:
"As a maritime trading civilization, it is unsurprising that the Minoans left us some beautiful fresco images of their ships, wooden sailing vessels superior to any others on the Mediterranean. Perhaps because of this fleet and the protecting seas, military images are unusual in Minoan art. Until the attacks by the Mycenaeans in 1450 BC, there is no real evidence that the Minoans fought wars with any other culture. This is in stark contrast to their contemporaries: the city states of Mesopotamia were constantly at war, celebrating their exploits on such works as the Stele of the Vultures, and Egypt covered tomb walls with images of military pomp. The Minoans preferred leisurely scenes or sports. They loved to decorate walls with murals of dolphins, flowers and fish. Their art has a grace, movement and exuberance distinct from the art of Egypt and Sumer, and… their craftsmanship is second to none."
This civilization is an astonishing paradox: A great power without a military aristocracy; a palace that was not a royal residence and neither the king was glorified; a religion with no grandeur, while women were equal to men and free – or so it seems.
The Palace of Minos (or the Labyrinth of Minotaur to Greek eyes)
This civilization is an astonishing paradox, indeed: A great power without a military aristocracy; a palace that was not a royal residence and neither the king was glorified; a religion with no grandeur, while women were equal to men and free – or so it seems:
"The Minoans were skilled and sensitive architects, and the palaces count amongst their greatest works of art. The most famous is the palace at Knossos, often called the 'Palace of Minos'. A multi-storey complex of corridors, rooms and staircases built around a central courtyard, the palace boasted impressive plumbing as well as lovely frescos, columns and gardens. Visitors found its 'agglutinative' architecture of over 1000 rooms so confusing that it is thought to have inspired the myth of the Minotaur's Labyrinth. Knossos was an entire community, a centre for religion, pottery production and storage of trade goods, and a venue for festivals. For this reason the term 'palace' is not adequate for describing these Minoan complexes."
Sacred symbols: bull and labrys
"Sitting at the apex of a trading empire, the Cretan kings were extremely wealthy. It is therefore interesting that they appear to have ordered no sculpture, memorials, king-lists or other works to boast of their power and status… We find nothing like the mighty monuments to the god-kings of Egypt. We have no record either of a king Minos or of any other named monarch, male or female… Historian R. F. Willetts has suggested that the apparent modesty of the Minoan aristocracy can be explained by a difference in religious emphasis: the Minoans did not seek to associate the king with the immortal gods, like the Egyptians or Mesopotamians, but rather worshiped a particular vision of nature. From this standpoint, images glorifying the king were unnecessary."
"Women seem to have enjoyed higher status in Minoan culture than was usual in the Bronze Age… They served as administrators and priestesses… Women's relative equality may be because of the absence of military threat, giving far less impetus to the development of a male warrior discourse and thus a greater role and respect for women. It is tempting when looking at images of young women somersaulting over bulls with the men to conclude that women enjoyed considerable freedom… As for religion, Minoan art provides us with faience figurines of a 'snake goddess', and frescos… on which women priests outnumber men. No images of male deities have been found from the peak of Minoan civilization. The apparent prominence of women in Minoan religion has led to conjecture that the principal deity or deities of Minoan Crete may have been female, e.g. an earth or mother goddess."
A Minoan beauty on Thera
What conclusions can we draw?
"Minoan art does show a greater emphasis on spontaneity and invention, and is more secular and informal… less constrained by rigid conventions and geometry", Eugene Hirschfeld writes. "The absence of battles, kings, boastful inscriptions and historical events in its art is surprising for the time. We need to recognize such distinctions without falling into the crude formulations sometimes used in the past, such as posing cultured Minoans against barbarous Mycenaeans. Arnold Hauser's first explanation for the particular character of the Minoans' art is the relatively modest role of religion in their society. Minoan shrines seem to have been small, even in the palaces, kept in people's homes or built in out of the way places like hills and caves. There is nothing like the great cult of the dead seen in Egypt, or the grandiose works that went with it. There was therefore less impetus towards sternly imposed conventions. He also admires the urbanity of the cultural life that arose around the palaces: 'The freedom of Cretan art can also be partly explained by the extraordinarily important role which city life and commerce played in the island's economy… city life was probably nowhere so highly developed as in Crete'. The 'palace' was the centre of Minoan life: of trade and agriculture, but also of art. It was perhaps this union of trade and culture in a context of long internal stability that gave Minoan art its urbane liveliness. Crete's geopolitical situation may also have exerted an influence. With the natural protection of the sea and backed by their fleet, the Minoans had little need to fear invasion. In the absence of a warrior class, not only were women's rights better than in most Bronze Age cultures, but art was less constrained by the military and religion."
"The absence of battles, kings, boastful inscriptions and historical events in Minoan art is surprising for the time… It was perhaps this union of trade and culture in a context of long internal stability that gave Minoan art its urbane liveliness." (Eugene Hirschfeld)
Theran antelopes
The influence of the Minoan civilization outside Crete manifests itself in the presence of Minoan handicrafts on the Greek mainland. After around 1700 BCE, the material culture of the Hellenes achieved a new, higher, level due to Minoan influence. Connections between Crete and Egypt were prominent. Minoan wares were found there, while several Egyptian items were imported, especially papyrus, as well as artistic ideas. The Egyptian hieroglyphs served as a model for the Minoan pictographic writing, from which the Linear A writing system developed. The Minoan palaces were later occupied by the Mycenaeans (late 15th–early 14th century BCE) who adapted the Minoan Linear A script to the needs of their own language, a form of Greek, which was written in Linear B.(c) The Mycenaeans generally tended to adapt rather than destroy Cretan culture, religion and art, and they continued to operate the economic system and bureaucracy of the Minoans. After about a century of partial recovery, most Cretan cities and palaces went into decline in the 13th century BCE. When the Bronze Age came crashing down some time later, Crete did not feel the agony of death.
The mysterious Disc of Phaestos (Phaistos Disk)
(c) "It is very likely that writing arose in Minoan culture for the same reason it did in Sumer: to keep accounts", Hirschfeld notes. "An early pictographic script… was replaced in around 1700 BC by one which represented sounds, i.e. a true alphabet, known as Linear A… It has still not been deciphered… If there is imaginative literature among these writings, we cannot read it. We have no Minoan poetry, no songs, no history, no scripture. It is a great culture, but a silent one… One of archaeology's more mysterious objects is the Phaistos [or Phaestos] Disc… A fired clay disc, it is covered on both sides with spirals of stamped symbols… They belong to none of the writing systems mentioned above."
The disc (15 cm wide) is unique because all these symbols seem to have been impressed into the clay using 45 stamps, reproducing a body of text with reusable characters. German typographer and linguist Herbert Brekle argues that the disc is an early document of movable type printing, because it meets the essential criteria of typography, while Jared Diamond described it as "by far the earliest printed document in the world". Discovered by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the palace of Phaistos in 1908, it captured the imagination of amateurs and professionals, and many attempts have been made to decipher it – but in vain…
A Theran fisherman
The Minoans were traders, and their cultural contacts reached far beyond Crete – to copper-bearing Cyprus and Asia Minor (Anatolia), Egypt and Canaan (the Levant), the Balkans and the Black Sea area, especially Colchis (Georgia/Abkhazia), Mesopotamia and even faraway Afghanistan. Paintings in Thebes, Egypt, from the 15th century BCE depict a number of Minoans bearing gifts. Inscriptions record these people as coming from the "islands in the midst of the sea", and may refer to gift-bringing merchants or officials from Crete. Minoan techniques and styles in ceramics also provided models for Helladic Greece. Along with Thera, Cretan 'colonies' can be found on Cythera, an island close to the mainland that came under Minoan influence in the 3rd millennium and remained Minoan in culture for a thousand years, until the Mycenaean occupation in the 13th century, as well as in Melos, Kea, Aegina, Rhodes and Miletus. The Cyclades and the Dodecanese were in the Cretan cultural orbit.
Certain locations within Crete emphasize it as an 'outward looking' society. The palace of Kato Zakros, e.g., is located within a bay, 100 metres from the modern shore-line. Its large number of workshops and the richness of its site materials indicate a centre for import and export. Such activities are elaborated in artistic representations of the sea with ships and sailors, e.g. the Flotilla fresco on Thera. Homer recorded a tradition that Crete had 90 cities. Multi-room constructions were found even in the 'poor' areas, revealing a social equality and even distribution of wealth derived through trade. There was a high degree of organization, with no trace of the military aristocracies that characterized the following civilizations. While the Mycenaeans relied mainly on conquest to expand, the Minoans were a mercantile people engaged primarily in overseas trade. No doubt they should have been involved in the Bronze Age's most crucial trade of tin: tin, alloyed with copper, obviously from Cyprus, was used to make bronze.(d) The Minoan decline seems to be correlated with the decline in the use of bronze tools in favour of iron ones.
The entire Ship Procession or Flotilla frieze at Acroteri, Thera
Multi-room constructions were discovered even in the 'poor' areas, revealing a social equality and even distribution of wealth derived through trade. There was a high degree of organization, with no trace of the military aristocracies that characterized the following civilizations…
A Thracian bronze deer, 9th-6th century BCE
(d) Bronze was initially made from naturally or artificially mixed ores of copper and arsenic. That is why it was called arsenic bronze. Tin was used only later, becoming the sole type of major non-copper ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium. Tin bronze was superior in that the alloying process could be easily controlled and the alloy was stronger and easier to cast. Moreover, unlike arsenic, tin is not toxic. The earliest tin-alloy bronzes date to the late 4th millennium in Iran, Mesopotamia and China. Copper and tin ores are rarely found together (exceptions include one ancient site in Iran); thus, serious bronze work has always involved trade. The major source for tin in Europe was England's deposits of ore in Cornwall, traded as far as the eastern Mediterranean. Though bronze is generally harder than wrought iron, the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age because iron was easier to find and to process into a poor grade of metal. Bronze was still used in the Iron Age. Roman officers, e.g., had bronze swords while foot soldiers had iron. Archaeologists suspect that a serious disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The mass population migrations ca 1200-1100 BCE reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean (and from Britain), limiting supplies and raising prices. As cultures advanced from wrought to machine forged iron, they learned how to make steel, which is stronger than bronze and holds a sharper edge longer. There are many bronze alloys but modern bronze is typically 88% copper and 12% tin. Historical 'bronzes' are highly variable in composition, as most metalworkers probably used whatever scrap was on hand.
Pre-Columbian "birdman", tumbaga
Orichalcumis mentioned in several ancient writings, most notably in the story of Atlantis as recounted in Plato's Critias dialogue. It is first mentioned by Hesiod in the 7th century BCE and in a Homeric hymn dedicated to Aphrodite. Plato says that the metal was considered second only to gold in value. By his time, however, it was known only by name. Pliny the Elder points out that it has lost currency due to the mines being exhausted. The name derives from the Hellenic ορείχαλκος (from όρος, 'mountain' and χαλκός, 'copper'). Plato's orichalcum has been held to be either a gold-copper alloy, or a metal no longer known or mythic like Atlantis. The Romans transliterated 'orichalcum' as 'aurichalcum', which was thought to literally mean 'gold copper'. The Andean alloy tumbaga fits the same description, being a gold-copper alloy. In Virgil's Aeneid, a gold-silver alloy is mentioned. In later years, orichalcum was used to describe the sulfide mineral chalcopyrite or brass, that is, a copper-iron or copper-zinc alloy. The colour of brass is generally golden-yellow, while that of bronze is brown-red.
Brass French horn
Once I had the naïve impression – based on a mechanistic perception of the succession of historical ages (where what comes next is "deterministically superior" to what has preceded it) – that the Iron Age was superior in every aspect to the Bronze Age. Generally this is true. But there are some anomalies, some logical paradoxes, especially at the beginning of the new age, since you have to accept that the "iron" Dorians were more civilized than the "bronze" Achaeans. A similar sham, by the way, is the idea of the "superiority" of monotheism versus polytheism, while in reality it is a huge setback – and the Christian obscurantism of the Dark Ages proves it: When everyone claims the exclusivity or monopoly of truth, when polytheistic tolerance is lost, then the result is… Jerusalem as the capital not of Israel but of hatred between monotheists! Anyway, there are more "historical ironies" in the succession of ages. Since the Iron Age is superior to the Bronze Age, then it is logical to think that iron itself is superior to bronze – which, as we have seen, is not true. The iron weapons, made out of necessity, were the "weapons of the poor". Thus the aristocratic monopoly on the conduct of war ceased. One could argue that "war was democratized". But is the right to kill a "democratic" right?(!)
Cretan gold ring: four women with long robes and bare breasts in a 'cult scene', ca 1500 BCE
The Mediterranean copper island was Cyprus; the word copper comes from the name of the island: from the Latin phrase Cyprium (aes), 'Cyprian (metal)'. A possible etymological origin of the name Cyprus is the Sumerian words for copper or bronze (zubar/kubar), due to the massive deposits of copper ore found in the island. But where did the Minoans find tin, the necessary component to produce bronze? Tin is very rare in the eastern Mediterranean. The only known source of cassiterite in the area was Kestel-Göltepe in the Taurus Mountains of south-central Anatolia. It supplied tin from the late 4th millennium to the mid-19th century BCE, when the ores became uneconomical or ran out. There were three other sources of tin available to the Minoan traders: the distant northeastern Afghanistan, central Europe (Bohemia), and the West, with vast amounts of tin in places such as Iberia, Brittany in northwestern France, and especially Cornwall in southwestern Britain. For the seafaring Cretans, the Occident was the destination they possibly preferred best. And when the mines in Taurus had shut down, Western tin became more important and the Minoans would have totally monopolized the supply of tin into the Eastern Mediterranean with their navy and shipping. Objects made by Minoans suggest there was an extensive network with mainland Greece, Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and westwards as far as Iberia, and even further, that is, Bohemia, Brittany and, of course, Cornwall. Trade in nearby lands was direct, while in distant places could also be indirect, through middlemen. Undoubtedly, the Cretan ships should have transported British tin. If they also dropped anchor in British harbours is another story.
Where did the Minoans find tin, the necessary component to produce bronze? Undoubtedly, the Cretan ships should have transported British tin. If they also dropped anchor in British harbours is another story.
The blue monkeys fresco on Thera
The Cretans derived their surplus from trade, unlike Babylon and Egypt that mainly relied on agriculture. They were the unrivalled long-distance traders, masters of the sea routes, having developed the most advanced navy that had ever been seen. They traded not only their own manufactured goods 'Made in Crete', such as ceramics and metalwork, but also acted as intermediaries, trading raw materials and finished products throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Their most valuable re-exports were pottery, copper, tin, gold, and silver. They were active not only in the East, but also in the West, founding emporia all around. Their most privileged trade contacts in the Orient were certainly those with the Egyptians, while their most significant Occidental partners should have been the Iberians, as the peninsula was rich in metals, especially silver, but also tin. Trade in tin was very lucrative in the Bronze Age, because, as we have seen, it is an essential component of true bronze, and comparatively rare: only gold and silver are rarer. Apart from the cassiterite deposits in Iberia, the locals obviously knew where the Cassiterides were.(e)
(e)The Cassiterides, that is, the Tin Islands (from the Greek word for tin: cassíteros), were thought to be situated somewhere near the west coasts of Europe. Ancient writers (Strabo, Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus, etc) described them as islets off northwest Iberia. Dionysios Periegetes (i.e. the Voyager) mentioned them in connection with the mythical Hesperides. Stesichorus and Strabo wrote that the Hesperides were in legendary Tartessos (where we shall voyage in due time). Nevertheless, the traditional assumption, if we ignore all information from the ancient writers, is that the Cassiterides refer to the British Isles as a whole, based on the significant tin deposits in Cornwall in the past (these deposits have now become very limited due to overexploitation for millennia…).
The metals were just the beginning of a far broader economical and cultural exchange. A lot of Iberians e.g. are nowadays intrigued by the fact that so long ago the Minoans were practicing their own version of 'bullfights'. In his bilingual book (in Portuguese and English) "Fado – Lyrical Origins and Poetic Motivation", Mascarenhas Barreto refers to the Neolithic hunting rituals as a possible origin of bull-leaping ("pegas") and wonders "whether the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula learnt this from the Cretans of the 3rd millennium BC or if they themselves may have been the teachers, since the bulls were taken from their natural habitat in the peninsula to the island of Crete" (see also Voyage 3: Iberia's Odyssey). But, when one speaks of such extensive exchanges taking place in the 3rd millennium BCE, with customs adopted and bulls transported so far away, is it really so important to know who imitated whom?
Mascarenhas Barreto wonders "whether the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula learnt [bull-leaping] from the Cretans of the 3rd millennium BC or if they themselves may have been the teachers, since the bulls were taken from their natural habitat in the peninsula to the island of Crete."
Ταυροκαθάψια (bull-leaping) depicted on a Knossos fresco
>> Chronicle 3. MYCENAE: FROM KNOSSOS TO TROY
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Description Removes (destroys) a script's raw buffer. All raw buffers are automatically released at the end of a simulation, but depending on the extent of use of the raw buffers, it might be a good idea to release them when not needed anymore. See also simGetScriptRawBuffer and simSetScriptRawBuffer.