The palace is the hallmark of Minoan architecture. The term “palace” is misleading, it must be stressed. “Palace” suggests a royal residence. For Minoan Crete, we are unsure who the rulers were. The later Greeks wrote of a King Minos (see below), but from the Bronze Age itself, evidence for the rulers — pictorial, textual, or other — is absent. Nonetheless, the term “palace” is entrenched in the archaeological literature; it is best to divorce the palace from royalty and, instead, to consider it a large architectural complex housing a variety of functions.
Four large palace complexes are known from Bronze Age Crete: Knossos, Mallia, Phaistos, and Kato Zakro. Smaller structures, comparable in design and built of the same ashlar masonry technique, have been discovered at Galatas, Gournia, and Petras. Of these, Knossos is the largest and most important, and has yielded examples of most characteristic features of Minoan civilization. Indeed, so dominant was its position in Cretan culture from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age that archaeologist Jeffrey Soles has persuasively identified it as a cosmological center: a focus of cultural origins, a wellspring of human and divine energy and cultural creativity.
A sustained campaign of excavation began in 1900. Arthur Evans, then fifty years old, had the good fortune to live another forty-one. He was able to present his findings in a magisterial four-volume publication, The Palace of Minos. Not only did he expose the palace and several of the outlying buildings, he also restored portions of the architecture and numerous objects so the public could have a better understanding of the remains. These restorations, virtually impossible to dismantle, are now viewed by scholars as a handicap, for they make it difficult to imagine the evidence in its original state at the time of discovery — important for any re-evaluation of its significance.
Although occupation began at Knossos during the Neolithic period and continued through the Bronze Age and indeed well beyond, the ruins one sees today are largely from the heyday of the palace in the New Palace Period and the ensuing seventy-five years, ca. 1700—1375 BC. The terminology for the different phases of Minoan civilization can be confusing, because two systems are used, each serving a useful purpose. The original framework designed by Evans divided Minoan culture into three periods: Early, Middle, and Late Minoan, with further subdivisions (I, II, and III; A and B). Although it continues to serve well the study of pottery development, this system does not correlate with the major breaks in the architectural sequence. To highlight these events, a second system was devised: the Pre-Palatial (= Early Bronze Age), Protopalatial (= Old, or First, Palace), Neopalatial (= New, or Second, Palace), and Post-Palatial periods. The correspondences between the two systems are given in the introductory chart on page 118.
The palace occupies an area of 1.3ha on a low hilltop in a well-watered valley some 10km from the sea, not far from the modern city of Heraklion (Figure 7.2). The site is unfortified; indeed, the lack of fortification walls is a striking feature of Minoan towns and palaces during the New Palace period. Only Mallia has yielded a hint of a city wall, nothing more. This absence of fortifications suggests an age of political harmony throughout the island, perhaps under the leadership of Knossos.
The palace complex served many functions, such as residence (although we are not sure who resided here), seat of administration, treasury, depot for agricultural and manufactured products,
Figure 7.1 Plan, The Palace of Minos, Knossos
And cult center. In general, what survives is the basement floor, and many of the above activities are attested in the small basement rooms. The appearance and purpose of the now largely vanished upper stories are uncertain. Nevertheless, some evidence survives to suggest the reconstruction of these sections. In the south-east, the “Residential Quarters,” the Grand Staircase connected at least four superposed levels. Periodic indentations in the west facade of the palace, thickened ground floor walls, fallen debris (such as shattered wall paintings), and large columns bases found in situ on upper floors suggest that large public rooms lay upstairs, covering a cluster of basement rooms. So the original appearance of the palace, and the overall balance of larger and smaller rooms, would have been quite different from what one can visualize today.
The palace at Knossos is linked by its complicated plan with a striking legend of the later Greeks, that of King Minos, the Minotaur, and the labyrinth. According to the legend, Pasiphae, Minos’s wife, was struck with a passion for a bull. She had Daedalus, the master craftsman, construct a model of a cow for her to climb inside. So skillful was the model that the bull was fooled. In due course Pasiphae gave birth to a monstrous creature, half man, half bull, called the Minotaur. The unfortunate Minotaur was banished to a specially built complex, again designed by Daedalus, a maze-like warren of rooms called the Labyrinth. There the monster consumed an annual tribute of fourteen Athenian youths, male and female, until at last he was slain by Theseus, with the assistance of Minos’s daughter, Ariadne.
Although no evidence from the Bronze Age attests to the existence of Minos or his family, the remains of the “Palace of Minos,” as Evans called it, do conjure up the legend of the labyrinth. The plan shows a profusion of small rooms, and at first glance it makes little sense. But Minoan architecture has its own logic. Indeed, the general similarities between the palaces and other sites indicate that labyrinthine layout was not a specifically Knossian feature, but a general trait, and that these ground plans were deliberate. J. W. Graham, a specialist on Minoan architecture, even claimed that a Minoan foot measured 0.3036m, slightly smaller than the English foot, and proposed that the indented west blocks of the palace at Phaistos, at least, were laid out in even numbers of Minoan feet.
If we approach the palace at Knossos from the north-west, coming in along the paved Minoan street known today as the Royal Road, we reach first a low complex of two flights of shallow steps that meet at a right angle, one leading eastwards toward the north entrance to the palace, another leading south toward the flagstone-paved west court and the west entrance. Evans labeled these steps the Theatral Area, imagining ritual dances taking place in the small paved area at the base of the steps. Probably they served simply to direct people toward the two entrances of the palace. The palace entrances are both modest, especially considering the size of the palace. They lead into narrow corridors, not grand halls, providing access to the central court or to stairs to the upper floor. From the north entrance one passes through one side of a pillared hall which supported a dining room above. The discovery of many cooking pots just to the east suggests a kitchen in the area.
The rectangular central court is a standard feature in all Minoan palaces. At Knossos it measures ca. 50m X 25m, somewhat larger than the courts elsewhere. Oriented north-south, the axis of the court points toward the notched peak of Mt. Juktas, the prominent landscape feature to the south. Minoans revered mountain peaks; they established shrines near summits and sometimes, as here, deliberately oriented their major buildings toward them. In addition to providing access to most sections of the palace, the central court may have been the location for bull sports. Several representations of a sport between men (or boys), women (or girls), and bulls survive from Minoan art, among them the Fresco of the Bull Leapers (also known as the Taureador Fresco), a wall painting from the Court of the Stone Spout in the north-east sector of the palace (Figure 7.3). The evidence such images present is somewhat confusing, but it seems the sport
Figure 7.3 Fresco of the Bull Leapers, partly restored, from Knossos. Herakleion Museum
Involved vaulting over a bull, either by grabbing its horns or by doing a handspring on its back. The risk of getting gored was great, as some depictions show. In what context these sports were performed, whether religious or secular, we do not know.
The basement rooms along the west side of the central court were devoted to cult. The Throne Room, so-called by Evans on the basis of the armless stone chair with the back cut out in a flame pattern that was found against its north wall, was in reality a cult room. This small complex consisted of the chair; stone benches along the walls; wall paintings of griffins, imaginary creatures with a lion’s body and an eagle’s head that served as magical protective beings; and, adjacent to the main room, a so-called lustral basin, a gypsum-lined space sunk below the floor of the main room and accessible by two flights of steps. Another common feature in Minoan palaces and villas, lustral basins could be used as bathrooms (Minoans eventually took up bathing in clay tubs) or as places for ritual anointings or ablutions. To the south of the Throne Room, beyond the broad staircase that leads to the upper floor, lie a Triple Shrine facade and storerooms for cult objects, including two stone-lined pits sunk in the floor, the Temple Repositories. In these were discovered statuettes of women in typical Minoan multi-layered flounced skirts and tight short-sleeved jackets that exposed the breasts, with snakes wound around their arms (Figure 7.4). These figurines may represent the goddess who seems to stand at the head of the deities worshipped by the Minoans, or these women might be priestesses. The material is faience, a substance related to glass.
To the west of the cult rooms one finds a series of storerooms, narrow rooms that give onto a north-south corridor. The rooms contained pithoi (large clay jars) and boxes, lined variously with gypsum, plaster, or lead, sunk into the floor. The pithoi were used for the storage of olive oil, grain, and lentils, important crops in the subsistence-based (or agricultural) economy of the Mino-ans; the lined boxes could hold valuables as well as food products. Important information about the economy of Knossos during the later Post-Palatial period comes from the clay tablets inscribed in the Linear B script. But these tablets are associated with the Mycenaean occupation of the palace; how accurately they reflect earlier Minoan-controlled economic activity is unclear.
Figure 7.4 Snake goddess, or priestess; faience figurine, head and left forearm restored, from Knossos. Heraklelon Museum
The north-east sector of the palace, badly ruined, was the center for craft workshops, such as the production of stone vases. The south-east sector contained the Residential Quarters. to Evans’s reconstructions, these rooms can be well appreciated by visitors. The hill slopes down toward the east, as in fact it does toward the south and west, but on this side the builders of the palace took advantage of the slope and cut down two floors worth from the level of the central court. A Grand Staircase leads down, lined with red columns, oval in cross-section, that taper downwards, and round black column capitals (the red and black colors have been restored, based on the evidence of wall paintings). The main rooms on the lowest floor were named by Evans the Queen’s Megaron and the Hall of the Double Axes. Both illustrate key features of Minoan domestic architecture.
The Queen’s Hall, as it is better called to avoid confusion with the megarons of Mycenaean palaces (see below), consists of a main room with a lustral basin, or bathroom, off it, on the west side. On the east side, one looks first through a row of piers, then beyond, through a row of two columns to a light well, a tiny open-air courtyard enclosed by high walls. The first row of piers contains niches in their sides, into which the wooden door flaps could be folded during the warm months when the circulation of air was desired, or opened across the spaces between the piers, to close the main room off from the outside air. This sort of divider that can be converted into a wall from a series of piers, either as a whole or in part, is called a pier-and-door partition. The light well provided air and light down to this low level. The Queen’s Hall was decorated with wall paintings, mostly geometric patterns. A fresco of dolphins has been installed on the north wall, but this is not its original location. The fragments of the painting, found in the adjacent light well, had fallen from an upper room where they belonged to a decorated floor. The fresco illustrates the Minoan love of °ct°pus’
Marine Style, LM IB; from Palaikastro.
Sea creatures as subjects for art (for another example Herakle|on Museum
Of this theme, see Figure 7.5). Presumably the Queen’s Hall served as a bedroom, but for whom, despite the regal name given in modern times, is completely unknown. A corridor leads westward to small rooms, stairways to upper floors, and a toilet, this last linked to the extensive system of stone-lined drains that ensured sanitation in this part of the palace.
The bigger Hall of the Double Axes has a somewhat different layout. It too has a main room, paved with gypsum flagstones, that looks out through pier-and-door partitions across a second room toward a light well. But here the main room is enclosed on three sides by pier-and-door partitions, and the second room is just as large as the first. In addition, in the direction opposite the light well, the main room gives onto a colonnade and a terrace, with a private and soothing view, we might imagine, to a garden or grove of trees, the stream below, and the ridge beyond. The Hall takes its name from the symbol carved on its walls. The double axe seems to have had mystical importance for the Minoans. Why there should be so many carved in this room, whether private apartment or public audience hall, is a mystery.
The other palaces known so far show similar features in function and plan. So, too, on a smaller scale, do the “villas” or mansions, found both in the Knossos area and in the countryside. But variations occur as well, especially in siting, dimensions, and decoration. For a comparison with Knossos, the palace at Mallia offers a good contrast (Figure 7.6).
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