2000-1100 B. C.E. --
In this era of far-flung trade and communication, the influence of Mesopotamia and Egypt was felt as far away as the Aegean Sea, a gulf of the eastern Mediterranean. The emergence of the Minoan° civilization on the island of Crete and the Mycenaean° civilization of Greece is another manifestation of the fertilizing influence of older centers on outlying lands and peoples, who then struck out on their own unique paths of cultural evolution.
The landscape of southern Greece and the Aegean islands is mostly rocky and arid, with small plains lying between ranges of hills. The limited arable land is suitable for grains, grapevines, and olive trees. Flocks of sheep and goats graze the slopes. Sharply indented coastlines, natural harbors, and small islands within sight of one another made the sea the fastest and least costly mode of travel and transport in ancient times. With few deposits of metals and little timber, Aegean peoples had to import these commodities, as well as additional food supplies, from abroad. As a result, the rise, success, and eventual fall of the Minoan and Mycenaean societies were closely tied to their commercial and political relations with other peoples in the region.
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“ By 2000 B. C.E. the island of Crete (see Map 4.2) was home to the first European civilization to have complex political and social structures and advanced technologies like those found in western Asia and northeastern Africa. The Minoan civilization had centralized government, monumental building, bronze metallurgy, writing, and recordkeeping. Archaeologists named this civilization after Greek legends about King Minos, who was said to have ruled a vast naval empire, including the southern Greek mainland, and to have kept the monstrous Minotaur° (half-man, half-bull) beneath his palace in a mazelike labyrinth built by the ingenious inventor
Daedalus°. Thus later Greeks recollected a time when Crete was home to many ships and skilled craftsmen.
The ethnicity of the Minoans is uncertain, and their writing has not been deciphered. But their sprawling palace complexes at Cnossus°, Phaistos°, and Mallia° and the distribution of Cretan pottery and other artifacts around the Mediterranean and Middle East testify to widespread trading connections. Egyptian, Syrian, and Mesopotamian influences can be seen in the design of the Minoan palaces, centralized government, and system of writing. The absence of identifiable representations of Cretan rulers, however, contrasts sharply with the grandiose depictions of kings in the Middle East and suggests a different conception of authority. Also noteworthy is the absence of fortifications at the palace sites and the presence of high-quality indoor plumbing.
Statuettes of women with elaborate headdresses and serpents coiling around their limbs may represent fertility goddesses. Colorful frescoes (paintings done on a moist plaster surface) on the walls of Cretan palaces portray groups of women in frilly, layered skirts engaged in conversation or watching rituals or entertainment. We do not know whether pictures of young acrobats vaulting over the horns and back of an onrushing bull show a religious activity or mere sport. Scenes of servants carrying jars and fishermen throwing nets and hooks from their boats suggest a joyful attitude toward work, but this portrayal may say more about the romantic illusions of the elite than about the reality of daily toil. The stylized depictions of scenes from nature on Minoan vases—plants with swaying leaves and playful octopuses whose tentacles wind around the surface of the vase—seem to reflect a delight in the beauty and order of the natural world.
All the Cretan palaces except Cnossus, along with the houses of the elite and peasants in the countryside, were deliberately destroyed around 1450 b. c.e. Because Mycenaean Greeks took over at Cnossus, most historians regard them as the likely culprits.
Most historians believe that speakers of an Indo-European language ancestral to Greek migrated into the Greek peninsula around 2000 B. C.E., although some argue for earlier and later dates. Through intermarriage, blending of languages, and melding of cultural practices, the indigenous population and the newcomers created the first Greek culture. For centuries
Minoan (mih-NO-uhn) Mycenaean (my-suh-NEE-uhn) Minotaur (MIN-uh-tor)
Daedalus (DED-ih-luhs) Cnossus (NOSS-suhs) Phaistos (FIE-stuhs) Mallia (mahl-YAH)
Agamemnon (ag-uh-MEM-non)
Map 4.2 Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations of the Aegean The earliest complex civilizations in Europe arose in the Aegean Sea. The Minoan civilization on the island of Crete evolved in the later third millennium B. C.E. and had a major cultural influence on the Mycenaean Greeks. Palaces decorated with fresco paintings, a centrally controlled economy, and the use of a system of writing for recordkeeping are some of the most conspicuous features of these societies.
This society remained simple and static. Farmers and shepherds lived in Stone Age conditions, wringing a bare living from the land. Then, sometime around 1600 b. c.e., life changed relatively suddenly.
More than a century ago a German businessman, Heinrich Schliemann°, set out to prove that the Iliad and the Odyssey were true. These epics attributed to the poet Homer, who probably lived shortly before 700 b. c.e., spoke of the power of Agamemnon°, the king of Mycenae° in southern Greece. In 1876 Schliemann stunned the scholarly world by discovering at Mycenae a circle of graves at the base of deep, rectangular shafts. These
Schliemann (SHLEE-muhn) Mycenae (my-SEE-nee) shaft graves contained the bodies of men, women, and children and were filled with gold jewelry and ornaments, weapons, and utensils. Clearly, some people in this society had acquired wealth, authority, and the capacity to mobilize human labor. Subsequent excavation uncovered a large palace complex, massive walls, more shaft graves, and other evidence of a rich and technologically advanced civilization that lasted from around 1600 to 1150 B. C.E.
How can the sudden rise of Mycenae and other centers in mainland Greece be explained? Despite legends about the power of King Minos of Crete, there is no archaeological evidence of Cretan political control of the Greek mainland. But Crete exerted a powerful cultural influence. These early Greeks borrowed the Minoan idea of the palace, centralized economy, and administrative
Removed due to copyright permissions restrictions.
Fresco from the Aegean Island of Thera, ca. 1650 b. c.e. This picture, originalLy painted on wet plaster, depicts the arrival of a fleet in a harbor as people watch from the walls of the town. The Minoan civilization of Crete was famous in later legend for its naval power. The fresco reveals the appearance and design of ships in the Bronze Age Aegean.
In the seventeenth century b. c.e., the island of Thera was devastated by a massive volcanic explosion, thought by many to be the origin of the myth of Atlantis sinking beneath the sea. (Archaeological Receipts Fund, Athens)
Bureaucracy, as well as the Minoan writing system. They adopted Minoan styles and techniques of architecture, pottery making, and fresco and vase painting. This explains where the early Greeks got their technology. But how did they suddenly accumulate power and wealth? Most historians look to the profits from trade and piracy and perhaps also to the pay and booty brought back by mercenaries (soldiers who served for pay in foreign lands).
This first advanced civilization in Greece is called “Mycenaean” largely because Mycenae was the first site excavated. Excavations at other centers have revealed that Mycenae exemplifies the common pattern of these citadels: built at a commanding location on a hilltop and surrounded by high, thick fortification walls made of stones so large that later Greeks believed that the giant, one-eyed Cyclopes° of legend had lifted them into place.
Cyclopes (SIGH-kloe-pees)
The fortified enclosure provided a place of refuge for the entire community in time of danger and contained the palace and administrative complex. The large central hall with an open hearth and columned porch was surrounded by courtyards, living quarters for the royal family and their retainers, and offices, storerooms, and workshops. The palace walls were covered with brightly painted frescoes depicting scenes of war, the hunt, and daily life, as well as decorative motifs from nature.
Nearby lay the tombs of the rulers and leading families: shaft graves at first; later, grand beehive-shaped structures made of stone and covered with a mound of earth. Large houses belonging to the aristocracy lay just outside the walls. The peasants lived on the lower slopes and in the plain below, close to the land they worked.
Additional information about Mycenaean life is provided by over four thousand baked clay tablets written in a script now called Linear B. Like its predecessor, the undeciphered Minoan script called Linear A, Linear B uses pictorial signs to represent syllables, but it is recognizably an early form of Greek. The extensive palace bureaucracy kept track of people, animals, and objects in exhaustive detail and exercised a high degree of control over the economy of the kingdom. The tablets list everything from the number of chariot wheels in palace storerooms, the rations paid to textile workers, and the gifts dedicated to various gods, to the ships stationed along the coasts.
The government organized grain production and controlled the wool industry from raw material to finished product. Scribes kept track of the flocks in the field, the sheared wool, the allocation of raw wool to spinners and weavers, and the production, storage, and distribution of cloth articles.
The tablets say almost nothing about individual people—not even the name of a single Mycenaean king—and very little about the political and legal systems, social structures, gender relations, and religious beliefs. They tell nothing about particular historical events and relations with other Mycenaean centers or peoples overseas.
The evidence for the political organization of Greece in this period is contradictory. In Homer’s Iliad, Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae, leads a great expedition of Greeks from different regions against the city of Troy in northwest Anatolia. To this can be added the cultural uniformity of all the Mycenaean centers: a remarkable similarity in the shapes, decorative styles, and production techniques of buildings, tombs, utensils, tools, clothing, and works of art. Some scholars argue that such cultural uniformity could have occurred only in a context of political unity. The plot of the Iliad, however, revolves around the difficulties Agamemnon has in asserting control over other Greek leaders. Moreover, the archaeological remains and the Linear B tablets give strong indications of independent centers of power at Mycenae, Pylos°, and elsewhere. Cultural uniformity might simply have resulted from extensive contacts and commerce between the various Greek kingdoms.
Long-distance contact and trade were made possible by the seafaring skill of Minoans and Mycenaeans. Commercial vessels depended primarily on wind and sail. In general, ancient sailors preferred to sail in daylight hours and keep the land in sight. Their light, wooden vessels had little storage area and decking, so the crew had to go ashore to eat and sleep every night. With their low keels the ships could run up onto the beach.
Cretan and Greek pottery and crafted goods are found not only in the Aegean but also in other parts of the Mediterranean and Middle East. At certain sites the quantity and range of artifacts suggest settlements of Aegean peoples. The oldest artifacts are Minoan; then Minoan and Mycenaean objects are found side by side; and eventually Greek wares replace Cretan goods altogether. Such evidence indicates that Cretan merchants pioneered trade routes and established trading posts and then admitted Mycenaean traders, who eventually supplanted them in the fifteenth century b. c.e.
What commodities formed the basis of this widespread commercial activity? The numerous Aegean pots found throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East must once have contained such products as wine and olive oil. Other possible exports include weapons and other crafted goods, as well as slaves and mercenary soldiers. Minoan and Mycenaean sailors also may have made tidy profits by transporting the trade goods of other peoples.
As for imports, amber (a translucent, yellowish-brown fossilized tree resin used for jewelry) from northern Europe and ivory carved in Syria have been discovered at Aegean sites, and the large population of southwest Greece and other regions probably relied on imports of grain. Above all, the Aegean lands needed metals, both the gold prized by rulers and the copper and tin needed to make bronze. A number of sunken ships carrying copper ingots have been found on the floor of the Mediterranean. Scholars believe that these ships were transporting metals from Cyprus to the Aegean (see Map 4.2). As in early China, the elite classes were practically the only people who owned metal goods, which may have been symbols of their superior status. The bronze tripods piled up in the storerooms of the Greek heroes in Homer’s epic poems bring to mind the bronze vessels buried in Shang tombs.
In this era, trade and piracy were closely linked. Mycenaeans were tough, warlike, and acquisitive. They traded with those who were strong and took from those who were weak. This may have led to conflict with the Hittite kings of Anatolia in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries b. c.e. Documents found in the archives at Hat-tusha, the Hittite capital, refer to the king and land of Ah-hijawa°, most likely a Hittite rendering of Achaeans°, the term used most frequently by Homer for the Greeks. The documents indicate that relations were sometimes friendly, sometimes strained, and that the people of Ah-hijawa were aggressive and tried to take advantage of Hittite preoccupation or weakness. The Iliad, Homer’s tale of the Achaeans’ ten-year siege and eventual destruction of Troy, a city on the fringes of Hittite territory that controlled the sea route between the Mediterranean
Pylos (PIE-lohs)
Ahhijawa (uh-key-YAW-wuh) Achaeans (uh-KEY-uhns)
The Fall of Late Bronze Civilizations
And Black Seas, should be seen against this backdrop of Mycenaean belligerence and opportunism. Archaeology has confirmed a destruction at Troy around 1200 b. c.e.
Hittite difficulties with Ahhi-jawa and the Greek attack on Troy foreshadowed the troubles that culminated in the destruction of many of the old centers of the Middle East and Mediterranean around 1200 b. c.e. In this period, for reasons that historians do not completely understand, large numbers of people were on the move. As migrants swarmed into one region, they displaced other peoples, who then joined the tide of refugees.
Around 1200 b. c.e. unidentified invaders destroyed Hattusha, and the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia came crashing down. The tide of destruction moved south into Syria, and the great coastal city of Ugarit was swept away. Egypt managed to beat back two attacks. Around 1220 B. C.E., Merneptah°, the son and successor of Ramesses II, repulsed an assault on the Nile Delta. His official account identified the attackers as “Libyans and Northerners coming from all lands.” About thirty years later Ramesses III resisted a major invasion of Palestine by the “Sea Peoples.” Although he claimed to have won a great victory, the Philistines° were able to occupy the coast of Palestine (this is the origin of the name subsequently used for this region). Egypt soon surrendered all its territory in Syria-Palestine and lost contact with the rest of western Asia. The Egyptians also lost their foothold in Nubia, opening the way for the emergence of the native kingdom centered on Napata (see Chapter 3).
Among the invaders listed in the Egyptian inscriptions are the Ekwesh°, who could be Achaeans—that is, Greeks. In this time of troubles it is easy to imagine opportunistic Mycenaeans taking a prominent role. Whether or not the Mycenaeans participated in the destructions elsewhere, their own centers collapsed in the first half of the twelfth century b. c.e. The rulers had seen trouble coming; at some sites they began to build more extensive fortifications and took steps to guarantee the water supply of the citadels. But their efforts were in vain, and nearly all the palaces were destroyed. The Linear B tablets survive only because they were baked hard in the fires that consumed the palaces.
Scholars do not have a clear picture of how these events came about. The archaeological record contains no trace of foreign invaders. An attractive explanation combines external and internal factors, since it is likely
Merneptah (mehr-NEH-ptuh) Philistine (FIH-luh-steen) Ekwesh (ECK-wesh)
To be more than coincidence that the collapse of Mycenaean civilization occurred at roughly the same time as the fall of other great civilizations in the region. Since the Mycenaean ruling class depended on the import of vital commodities and the profits from trade, the destruction of major trading partners and disruption of trade routes would have weakened their position. Competition for limited resources may have led to internal unrest and, ultimately, political collapse.
The end of Mycenaean civilization illustrates the interdependence of the major centers of the Late Bronze Age. It also serves as a case study of the consequences of political and economic collapse. The destruction of the palaces ended the domination of the ruling class. The massive administrative apparatus revealed in the Linear B tablets disappeared, and the technique of writing was forgotten, since it had been known only to a few palace officials and was no longer useful. Archaeological studies indicate the depopulation of some regions of Greece and an inflow of people to other regions that had escaped destruction. The Greek language persisted, and a thousand years later people were still worshiping gods mentioned in the Linear B tablets. People also continued to make the vessels and implements that they were familiar with, although there was a marked decline in artistic and technical skill in the new, much poorer society. The cultural uniformity of the Mycenaean Age gave way to regional variations in shapes, styles, and techniques, reflecting increased isolation of different parts of Greece.
Thus perished the cosmopolitan world of the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Societies that had long prospered through complex links of trade, diplomacy, and shared technologies now collapsed in the face of external violence and internal weakness, and the peoples of the region entered a centuries-long “Dark Age” of poverty, isolation, and loss of knowledge.
World History
