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| It is a shame to illustrate gold, like this pair of repoussé cups found more than a century ago at in a tholos tomb at Vapheio (near Sparta). The Print (below) is a set of line drawings, excellent for study, but not so lovely as the real objects. |
[G 36] Late Minoan Crete: Knossos,
Hagia Triada. The Palace at Knossos sits on a rise, so it
is two stories at the top and as much as four or five stories deep as you go
down the slopes. Unlike the palace of Zimrilim at Mari, which was informally arranged around numerous courtyards, Knossos and the other Minoan Cretan palaces have
a single rectangular central court about twice as long as it is wide. In the lower storeys on the west, the
narrow spaces between heavy walls are storage magazines; the parallel walls
supported the floor above. Little
is preserved above the level of the central court.
In the
"queen's" apartment there is a transom over the door; like our
plantation houses, in hot Crete the apartments could be opened up (in the
winter, as Louisiana has used space heaters, the Minoans used portable
braziers; no fixed hearths have been found). The fresco here is of dolphins; we
have not seen decoration so purely decorative and secular anywhere else.
I do not know why the Prints provided no plan of the Palace at Phaistos: Google it!
[G 30] Next to
the royal apartments and partly preserved 5 storeys deep, the Knossos palace has
(another of the identifying traits of Minoan architecture) a light well combined with a staircase,
with the famous downward tapered columns (originally of wood, here restored in
concrete); a brilliant, unique architectural idea. This palace was truly livable. [Probably the Egyptian king's palace was very livable, too,
for we know that it also was of relatively light construction--not made for
eternity; we must not assume that the Egyptians had nothing but temples and
tombs!]. The Minoan column is
remarkable not only for its downward taper but for its distinctive cushion
capital, which the Mycenaeans borrowed and which probably is the direct
ancestor of the echinus of the Doric column in Greek architecture. It probably survived through the dark
ages in wooden columns in house and shrine building.
[1519] The palace was richly decorated with frescoes, mostly rather small in scale,
like this one showing the Bull Leaping
sport. Note that we have both
girls and boys doing it (always in touch with Egypt, they use the color code,
red-brown for males, white for females, and the white ones have fuller chests). It is really gymnastics, like the event
using a leather "horse"; the difference is, the bull has horns and an
aggressive attitude; if you miss, you get gored, not just demerits.
[M 141] This
damaged but still lovely little ivory
figure also is a bull leaper. Full of life and free in motion,
different from hieratic and serious arts of Egypt (only luxury art like that
little gazelle has this feeling) and Mesopotamia. This is art for the living, while they are living. That is why we respond so readily to
it. Not that these people weren't
religious; it's rather a question of what you use art and artists for. The three figures in the fresco show
the three phases of making a leap; the bull comes lunging, you grab the horns
and use the impact to somersault yourself, then landing on your feet on his
moving haunches you spring off to the ground, as the bull continues (you hope)
in the opposite direction. This
could be a cruel sport; there are representations of accidents. Notice how the borders of the painting
imitate in paint veneers made of sliced stalactite.
[M 144] The
restored throne room is
instructively compared with the excavation photo, unrestored! This room was entered right off the
central court. What's more, the
throne room is a 14th-century addition, a remodelling, and no other palace on
Crete has one. The famous Linear B
tablets from Knossos also belong to this period. Now, at the end of the 15th century, at the end, that is, of
Late Minoan I and Late Cycladic I, the volcanic island of Thera erupted in a
catastrophe greater than Mt. St. Helen's or Pinatubo or even Krakatoa, leaving
Thera a sickle shaped relic of its former self. The geologists agree that this was the date. Terrible earthquakes, of course, and
frightfully destructive tidal waves, and very thick ash, which seems to
have made most of Crete uninhabitable (certainly unfruitful) for more than a
generation. [This is not the place
to discuss "fascinating" theories about Atlantis, the Parting of the
Red Sea, etc.] Effectively this
natural catastrophe ended the brilliance of both Minoan and the closely related
Cycladic civilization. But the
currents in the upper atmosphere that delivered a blanket of ash to Crete
spared the Mycenaean Greek peninsula.
As we shall see, in the 16th century already the Mycenaeans had borrowed
a lot of high culture from Crete and the Cyclades; now they alone in the Aegean
survived unscathed. When the
palace at Knossos was rebuilt in the 14th century (Late Minoan II), it was
given a throne room (a Mycenaean feature), the pottery was more like Mycenaean
pottery [M 219, right], and the palace administrative records were written on
clay tablets in Linear B, which is the Mycenaean adaptation of Minoan Linear A
script for their own language, Greek, and the late Knossos records are in
Mycenaean Greek (deciphered in 1953).
So it's clear who has taken over.
We shall see a Mycenaean throne room at Pylos, but Tiryns and Mycenae
also had them.
[M 133] The
fine pottery of Late Minoan I is as
delightful as the dolphin fresco in the "queen's" apartment at
Knossos. Either plant or marine ornament;
16th or early 15th century pottery.
Notice that the octopus is
placed diagonally and unsymmetrically; if you have experience of octopuses you
know how natural that is--slithery.
The flowers, too, are freely drawn.
[M 146] The
summer villa at Hagia Triada (name
of a modern village; it means Holy Trinity) in southern Crete produced this
fresco fragment of a cat stalking a
pheasant; here, too, the plants are drawn in brushstrokes and with a sense
of growing, though you can't tell what species they are. (These are what some scholars were
reminded of by the plant frescoes from the North Palace at Amarna in the 14th
century, more than a century later).
The artist has perfectly captured the stalking behavior of the cat even
without bothering with accurate anatomy; it's the feeling alone that he
concentrates on.
[M 228] The
same quality at the same date can be seen in the much better preserved frescoes
from wealthy merchants' houses excavated (with great trouble, removing
compacted volcanic ash) in the 1960s on Thera. Here the same kind of rocky landscape, colorfully and
impressionistically rendered, lilies
growing on rocks, and (what people of Thera especially like--not seen in
painting from Crete) lots of swallows
flitting. Botanically again not
very accurate, but I assure you it gives the feeling so vividly that if you
have been there you can smell the sage and other herbs by looking at the
painting.
[M 229] But
there were some real surprises on Thera, without parallel on Crete itself. Late Cycladic is a variant of the same civilization as on Crete. For example, two young boys boxing, wearing belts and codpieces, about 2/3 life
size. Nothing like them from
Crete, though the "steatite" (actually another type of soapstone) vases from Hagia Triada (here, the Harvesters Vase (the shape of an ostrich egg, but the lower half is missing)L
.
THE LATE HELLADIC MYCENAEANS
In the Greek peninsula (in modern political
geography, of course, Crete and the islands are part of Greece, so I say the
peninsula when I must distinguish it from Crete and the Cyclades), the
Mycenaeans had powerful kingdoms and massive palaces in the Late Bronze Age.
[A 8] This is a pair of 16th century cups. It looks like
Minoan art. In fact it shows an
unsuccessful bull leaper being gored.
Cup only 3" high, relief in repoussé,
gold being very malleable (literally, hammerable). Gold. Two cups, one with wild bulls, the
other with domesticated cattle being herded. Not quite identical but found together in a beehive tomb
(similar to the "Treasury of Atreus" that we'll study) at Vapheio near Sparta in southern
Greece. Where made? Crete? But found in Greece.
We don't always know at this
date, the 16th century, Late Helladic I, whether things that look very like
Minoan work were imports, or made by immigrant Minoan craftsmen in Mycenaean
Greece, or made by Mycenaeans trained by Minoans (or possibly by craftsmen from
the Cyclades). In any case, the
style stands for the fact that in this century the Mycenaean Greeks got wealthy and adopted all the outward traits of Minoan civilization, whole hog. In Middle Helladic they had Minyan ware
and hairpin-shaped houses. Now all
of a sudden they're rich, importing gold from Egypt, adopting the art forms
originated in the Minoan palaces.
[MG 217] Mycenae
itself is a citadel. Just inside
the gate is the grave circle with
the shaft graves of the 16th century
(at the top is the inner citadel with the palace, which today is not well
preserved because of a later temple built there, also some landslide damage, so
we'll study their palaces from other sites). The great fortifications are not very different from those
of the Hittites in the same period, in so far as both are built of huge
boulders, with cut-fitted stone only at corners and gates, in the 14th and 13th
centuries B.C. Note that these
later Mycenaean huge fortifications swing out deliberately to enclose, enshrine
(it seems) the 16th century grave circle.
Nothing like this in Crete; no fortifications there. No chariot warrior scenes in Crete,
either. Crete probably relied on
its navy for defense, but did they never fight each other?
[A 2] The wanakes (rulers) of the Mycenaean
citadels did fight each other and they show war chariots on their stone grave stelai (nothing like those in Crete, either). Both Mycenae and Tiryns are fortified
to the teeth--although the heaviest walls are the very late ones of the 12th
century, required by invaders who by about 1100 B.C. destroyed them. Shaft graves were not used for royal
tombs later. There are shafts for
females, shafts for males, each used repeatedly; so it's dynastic. Six shaft graves. Enclosed by neat double circle with
flat slabs on top. (More recently another grave circle was discovered, mostly a little earlier in its shaft-grave contents).
[A 4] [M 136]
These Schliemann, right after excavating Troy, excavated first, and the first
digs produced this gold repoussé mask, on which he gazed and
believed that he was looking at the mask of Agamemnon himself, handling
Agamemnon's own dagger; Schliemann took Homer's Iliad very literally.
The stone stelai [A 2] are very crude sculpture, cookie cutout sculpture
(no Minoan models for these!). The
gold masks also are in a style unlike anything from Crete, abstract and linear
(also, of course, they show big boned men with beards and mustaches, as
different as can be from the Minoans).
Not long haired and gracile, like the Minoans. Of course, this can't be Agamemnon; assuming that there
really was a king of that name, he fought in the Trojan War, which, assuming it
has an historical basis, was fought in the late 13th or early 12th century; so
this is much too early (by at least three centuries) for Agamemnon.
[A 9] This lion head is in the same kind of style
as the masks, abstract and linear, very un-Minoan. This is Mycenaean art pretty much on its own.
[M 136] The dagger blades, on the other hand, with
lion hunts with long-haired people with slender waists, looking quite Minoan,
or Nile Scenes, like one from one of the houses at Thera, and both obviously
referring to Egypt, are really problematic. Specialists in Aegean weapons have argued a lot about them,
about who made them and where.
[MG 217] [G 31]
In the 13th century, Late Helladic III B, they built the huge outer wall and,
in it, the Lion Gate. Nothing like this in Minoan architecture.
Anyway, by now Mycenaeans were in charge of the patched-up palace at
Knossos. This is our second Lion
Gate; this one has the lions heraldically posed, flanking a column (probably
symbolizing the palace itself), carved in relief on a separate slab of stone
set in the relieving triangle over the lintel. "Relieving" because the slab is relatively thin,
so reduces the weight over the lintel.
At the gate the stones are nearly ashlar and very well fitted; away from
the gateway, the walls are Cyclopean construction, boulders with smaller stones
in the chinks. The column between
the lions is a Minoan kind of column. NB: the stone that completes the triangle was raised about a half century ago, and more recent photos show it in place.
[G 32] [MG
155] Kings no longer are buried in
shaft graves. This is the most
famous beehive-shaped tholos tomb with a runway (dromos) going into the hill; you had to
excavate the hill to build the corbel-vaulted tholos tomb, then replace the
earth, of which the weight serves to buttress the vault and prevent its
buckling. The gate at the end of
the dromos to the tomb is again of the type with a relieving triangle, and for
the lintel they use the largest stone they can obtain (as at Stonehenge in
England, earth ramps, pulleys, oxen and manpower sufficed to raise a stone in
the space of a day, though it weigh 20 tons). Obviously some
relationship to megaliths of Malta, Sardinia, Spain, Brittany, England and
Ireland, as well as to Troy VI and Boghazköy. All are mega- (big), -lithic (stone). Egypt used large stones, but not larger
than the task required. This is
the so-called Treasury of Atreus,
but it is a tomb, not a treasury; if there really was a King Atreus, the date,
13th century, might be right, but we don't know. Built in rings of stone, successively smaller until
closed by a capstone at the top; this is corbelling. It is 60' high, 60' in diameter, and
awe-inspiring to sit in, cool and dark, and here you are in the ancient tomb of
the ancient kings who fought in the Trojan War and of whose memory the later
Greeks made legends. Imagine how
Schliemann felt when he first saw it, he who knew Homer almost by heart, in Greek,
end to end (he married a Greek girl who did
know it by heart--she was pretty, too).
Mycenaean fortifications, like contemporary Hittite ones, are literally megalithic.
Mycenaean fortifications, like contemporary Hittite ones, are literally megalithic.
[A 1] Better
preserved for the palace is the "Palace
of Nestor" at Pylos. This
is a megaron. Hall with central hearth, surrounded by
four columns, anteroom, porch with two columns in antis; paved court
(unroofed) in front of the porch, entered through an H-shaped gate. That makes a megaron complex, too much
like Troy II of the Early Bronze Age for the resemblance to be accidental,
since, considered as palaces, these are very unusual building types, though we
have no idea what kind of historical link might have existed between the two
(it might help to know what Troy VI was like, but it is irretrievably lost, and
art historians and archaeologists never
say "must have been"--that's called wishful thinking). A great hall with a hearth is called megaron in the Iliad and Odyssey. The floor was plastered and painted;
the imprint of fluted columns is preserved in the plaster.
 |
| A later air view of Tiryns shows that with further excavation we know that the rear part of rock held (within cyclopean walls meant for siege) buildings for supplies and, I suppose, to house the staff. |
[G 35] Now
let's look at Tiryns. Three megarons, side by side.
The main one has the hearth and columns and a bath alongside. Each has a court related to it. Note that each megaron is separated
from the others and they are parallel and they are axially related to their
court and gate. This is radically
different architecture from that of the Minoans, a wholly different kind of
architectural thinking. They are
different people with different traditions. They borrow interior design and ladies' fashions from the
Minoans and luxury goods' designs, but their architectural forms and great
citadels are their own.
[1522] The frescoes, like this one of a lady, show Minoan clothing but linear
and abstracted style and flat colors instead of play of brushwork; actually,
their wall paintings are more like those of Thera (compare the boxers) than
those of Crete.
[MA 57] The ivory group of two goddesses and a baby boy
from Mycenae wear Minoan clothing, but the technique and eyes and eyebrows
and round faces show that they learned ivory carving, in this case, where the
ivory came from, from Syria. There
were Syrian elephants in antiquity (in case anyone doubts that ivory trade does
lead to elephant extinction: it happened here). We cannot help but wonder whether the goddesses are Demeter
and Persephone with the boy god Triptolemos, who were worshipped as a triad in
later Greek religion.
 |
| At Olympia, no less, a full set of punctured slivers of boar's tusk leaves no doubt that we can take Homer seriously; some at least of the Mycenaean Greeks really did wear boar's-tusk helmets.
From Ekomi in Cyprus we have a special group of Late Helladic IIIb pottery specializing in decoratively abstracted animals, like this bull in the British Museum. But in all the centers where Myceanaean pottery was made, the style is more abstract and linear than Minoan had been.
[MA 58] The
pottery may have warrior subject matter, like the famous Warriors Vase from Mycenae, or chariots, quite abstract, or motifs
once borrowed from Minoan pottery but with the passage of time made structured,
symmetrical, and abstract in the hands of Mycenaean potters. The handles designed like abstracted
bulls' heads will survive to reappear on Geometric Greek vases of the 9th and 8th
centuries.
|
ELSEWHERE IN
THE BRONZE AGE
[M 186] Denmark in the Bronze
Age. Cult chariot, the Trundholm Chariot, with a sun
disk; if you lived in the North, you'd worship the sun, too. Their punishment in afterlife is a
frozen realm.
[M 225] Malta has beautifully hammer-dressed megalithic temples, built over a
considerable period of time, some very early, but not later than the
Mycenaeans. Malta is just south of
Sicily.
[M 185] [M 157]
Passage graves at Carnac in Brittany,
in France, and in England, of course, Stonehenge
and other monuments related to it.
Stonehenge was built over many generations, but it reached its final
form in this period. Truly megalithic. It is oriented to the sunrise at the summer solstice, but
99.44% of the popular literature published on it is strictly science fiction. Its builders had a very advanced
Neolithic kind of economy and society, but they were sporadically in touch with
the Bronze Age centers of the Mediterranean. Tin, remember, came from Cornwall, and you need tin to make
bronze. I think it's instructive to see Stonehenge before so much conservation had been done—not that the work is not careful and well considered.
[O 601] [O 1]
[O 2] The Indus Valley civilization
in Pakistan was urban and literate (though we cannot read the syllabic
writing). The city of Mohenjo-daro is beautifully planned and
built of fine fired brick. The sculpture and sealstones seem be related to features of later Indian art. It was brought to an end by the arrival
of Indo-Europeans (Aryans in the proper sense of the word) some time in the
second millennium. As I recall, the Prints for India were among the first issued. And I am certain that my fascination with the syllabic script on the steatite (or soapstone) seals was one of the most important events from the first course I took at UC Berkeley.
[O 91] [O 95]
The great Bronze Age of China ended
about the same time as the Late Bronze Age did in Egypt, Asia Minor,
Mesopotamia, and the Aegean--in the eleventh century B.C., if you consider the Shang Dynasty as equivalent to the
Western dynasties. The technically
and artistically wonderful art works of the Shang Dynasty are their ritual bronzes, like these, one with human faces (resembling modern
northern Chinese; China has greater continuity than any other civilization),
the other showing a tiger or a bear consuming a man, doubtless illustrating a
myth. China was literate in the
Late Bronze Age; they had invented the ideographic characters that are
ancestral to all Chinese writing ever since.
India and China
were taught in a survey course of their own; here we include only a sample.
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