The myths familiar to everyone about Icarus and Daedalus, Theseus and the Minotaur, Zeus and Europe are connected by one mysterious place - the island of Crete. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Minoan civilization was considered an invention of Homer. But after a series of archaeological excavations, the existence of the famous Palace of Knossos was beyond doubt. However, there are still more questions than answers in the history of the Cretan-Minoan civilization.
From myth to reality - who discovered the Minoan civilization?
The fascination with Hellenic antiquities at the end of the 19th century was generally characteristic of the London aristocracy. While skeptics treated Homer's works as fiction, romantics like Heinrich Schliemann believed to the last in the reality of the existence of Troy, Mycenae and other large cities of one of the most ancient civilizations. Briton Arthur Evans belonged to their category. Sir Evans fell ill with antiquity in his youth, having inherited this interest from his father. Schliemann's discovery of Troy in 1873 inspired an Oxford graduate to excavate Knossos. The entire territory where the palace was supposedly located, he bought into his personal possession. Somewhere here, as it seemed to Evans, the ruins of the palace with the famous labyrinth of the Minotaur should have been kept. And the archaeologist, obsessed with his dream, was right.
In 1900, his expedition unearthed a huge palace that was home to several cultural layers. Since Evans was only interested in a specific "Minoan" period, many of the newest strata (almost all after the 15th century BC) were removed or destroyed by him. In the sought-after cultural layer, the scientist encountered a huge abundance of artifacts. Murals confirming the myths of the Minotaur, unique Cretan ceramics, numerous jewels, texts. All this indicated that the Cretan-Minoan civilization had a high level of development. And, judging by the written language, the culture found was definitely not Greek. Overjoyed, Evans named it Minoan in honor of the mythical king Minos and began to decipher numerous tablets. However, he, like many of his followers, did not succeed in doing this to the end.
In linguistics, the belonging of the Cretan script to any particular language group has not yet been established. Incomplete deciphering of the Minoan language showed that it does not belong to the Indo-European family and is not related to Etruscan, but is partially Western Semitic and is similar to the languages spoken in Phenicia. One of the discs found with circular hieroglyphic writing (fest), like many linear writing, remained undeciphered. However, the mysterious Cretan hieroglyphs were not the only mystery that historians had to solve.
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Where did the Minoans disappear to?
Even during the excavations of Evans on the territory of the palace, no human remains were found in the designated cultural layer. Not found traces of their burials and subsequent expeditions. According to one version, the inhabitants of Knossos and other palaces left the island between the 17th and 16th centuries BC. after a volcanic eruption on Santorini Island, which was followed by a severe tsunami and earthquake. Perhaps it was this disaster that formed the basis of the legends about the lost Atlantis. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of typical "Cretan" artifacts on the Mediterranean coast (among the Etruscans and in Palestine).
However, to the surprise of archaeologists, it turned out that the Minoan civilization in Crete existed for more than a century after the eruption. After the disaster, the Achaeans came to the island, who gave rise to the Mycenaean culture. The new civilization absorbed both Greek and Minoan traditions, but in the middle of the 15th century, the Palace of Knossos was destroyed by a series of fires (the reason why this happened is unknown). Nevertheless, the Mycenaean civilization lasted until the XII - XI centuries BC. e., until it was destroyed by the Dorians.
But for more than half a thousand years, the most ancient writing (Eteocritic) and Minoan cults continued to exist in Crete. Perhaps thanks to the descendants of the Minoans hiding in the mountains, who continued to preserve the most ancient traditions.
Who was Minos really?
One of the main mysteries in this story is the origin of the Minoans themselves. Despite Evans' conviction, many archaeologists eventually came to the conclusion that the roots of the Cretan-Minoan civilization had nothing to do with Crete. In their opinion, the local peoples (who were also not autochthonous, but who arrived here from mainland Greece) did not have an urban culture. Only at the beginning of the II millennium BC. suddenly palaces, writing, carved seals and … images of a bull appear in Crete. The latter, like palaces, were characteristic of the Anatolian culture of the Khalafs. Therefore, a number of scholars correlate the emergence of the early Minoan civilization with the Khalaf migration.
But the bull as a symbol of fertility is also found in Semitic (including Phoenician) cults. According to one hypothesis, the legend of the Minotaur is a transposition of the Phoenician myth of Moloch, for the sake of which human sacrifices were also brought. In Greek myths, the famous king of the Minoan civilization, Minos, has Greek roots and comes from the Pelasgians. A number of scholars combine these versions and are inclined to believe that the legends about the service of the "Semitic" minotaur to the Greek Minos and his subsequent murder by Theseus reflects the story of the gradual Indo-European conquest of the autochthonous Semitic peoples of the sea.
Even such an exact science as genetics did not bring clarity to the history of the Cretan-Mycenaean mysteries. After large-scale DNA studies, it turned out that on the maternal side, the indigenous inhabitants of the island are of European, and on the male side, of Asia Minor. It is noteworthy that today the maximum concentration of carriers of the "male" Cretan genome (Y-DNA of haplogroup J2) can be found in Ingushetia and Azerbaijan. However, the majority of the Minoans themselves (43%) belong to the carriers of the traditional “common European” gene of haplogroup H, which was widespread in Western and Eastern Europe and northwest Siberia in ancient times.
Author: Ksenia Zharchinskaya
