At the end of the third millennium, around the 20th century BC, an amazing civilization suddenly flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete, traces of which were only revealed at the dawn of the 20th century AD.
For the first time in Europe, cities appeared in Crete, palaces were built, and writing arose; The Cretan state contained its own regular army (a fresco was found in the palace of Knossos, which depicts a detachment of Negro warriors led by a white commander (Negroes have long inhabited Crete).
Knossos, located on the northern coast of the island, became the most powerful city, where the first stones of the legendary Labyrinth were laid. The entire island was covered with a network of roads that converged to the Labyrinth. The rulers of Crete had a huge powerful fleet that reliably guarded the approaches to the island, only this can explain the absence of fortress walls around the Cretan palaces and cities and guard fortresses on the coast. The Cretan fleet reigned supreme in the Mediterranean Sea, subordinating many lands to the power of the Knossos kings.
Photo: travel.obozrevatel.com
The Greek historian Thucydides wrote about Minos: "The rulers of the lands, conquered by him, at his first demand supplied galleys for the Cretan fleet." The Cretan Empire has risen almost to the level of such a colossus of the ancient world like Egypt. Archaeologists find products of Cretan masters in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, in the Pyrenees, in the north of the Balkan Peninsula, in Egypt. The fresco of the tomb of one of the close associates of Pharaoh Thutmose III depicts the solemn arrival of the ambassadors of Crete, and the ancient name of Crete - Keftiu - is often found in business Egyptian papyri.
It would seem that nothing could shake the power of Crete. But at the end of the second millennium BC, a catastrophe occurs - a mysterious, still not fully explained. The cities of Knossos, Festus, Agna-Triada, Palekastro, Gurnia turn into ruins. At the same time, as if in one day, in an instant. Nothing remained of the accumulated power for thousands of years. The Minos Empire was destroyed.
In 1900, Sir Arthur Evans arrived in Crete to clarify a minor problem with the reading of some hieroglyphs. One of the greatest archaeologists, a world famous scientist, an honorary and full member of all kinds of academies and societies, was then almost forty years old, but he was already a venerable scientist, a graduate of Oxford and an expert in ancient Egyptian writing.
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On his first day on the island, Evans visited the ruins of Knossos. Not far from the ruins dating back to ancient times, he saw earthen mounds, which, as his intuition suggested, hid the remains of some ancient buildings. Evans took up the shovel.
Literally a few hours later, the outlines of an ancient building appeared in the excavation … and from that moment, for more than a quarter of a century, he conducted excavations of Knossos almost without a break, because he believed - and announced this publicly that the building he discovered was the ruins of the legendary Labyrinth! The one in which the monster lived - a half-bull, half-man - the Minotaur, where the hero of Theseus was brought by the daughter of King Minos Ariadne.
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Now in any work devoted to the history of Crete, you can see a detailed plan of the "Palace of Minos", drawn up as a result of the excavations of Evans, his students and colleagues. From the incomprehensible depths of millennia, a great civilization arose - so ancient that for Homer's contemporaries it was already a thousand-year legend. Evans called it Minoan.
The palace in Knossos was recognized by all archaeologists as an outstanding monument of highly developed Minoan culture, the residence of the legendary King Minos. The magnificent frescoes on the walls of this palace, comfortable bathing rooms, a sewerage system and numerous storerooms made it possible to assert that the palace belongs to the "golden Minoan era", that joy and carelessness once reigned supreme here, as in some ancient Paris.
Almost everyone got used to these ideas, when suddenly the German professor of geology at the University of Stuttgart, Hans Georg Wunderlich, made a statement that the Palace of Knossos did not know holidays, that on the contrary it was a place of mourning and sorrow. He claims that the palace was the site of a death cult. Here the remains of the dead were kept and mummies were prepared.
He believes that the so-called queen's bath was actually her sarcophagus, that large painted earthen vessels were not intended for grain and oil, as they had previously believed, but were urns and kept the remains of the dead, that depressions resembling baths, which can be found in the so-called "pantries", were actually cuvettes in which corpses were dissected, preparing them for mummification.
The stumbling block that made Wunderlich so decisively reconsider the idea of the Palace of Knossos was gypsum, many details of the Knossos building made of plaster. Wunderlich, a geologist, discovered that in this palace, the stairs, as well as all the bathroom floors, are made of plaster.
Deeply puzzled by this circumstance, he could not immediately understand why the Minoans, people, according to archaeologists, highly civilized, used gypsum in the construction of the palace - a material that is soft and easily destroyed by water? Why didn't they use marble or limestone instead?
Wunderlich began to explore the palace further and found many strange things. Why, for example, was there not a single kitchen in the Palace of Knossos? Why are the so-called dwellings of King Minos and his queen in a dark basement, instead of being on the top floor, full of light and air? At the palace there are no stables and no buildings where chariots should have stood.
Why, finally, are these huge earthen vessels, supposedly intended for grain and oil, so walled up that practically nothing can be obtained from them?
Wunderlich hypothesized that the stairs were built of soft plaster because the builders did not expect any brisk movement along them. Huge amphorae did not serve as storage facilities, and no one ever lived in the premises in the basement. Kitchens, stables and chariot yards were not needed here, for the palace was not intended for living people.
The palace of Knossos was the palace of death, its premises are crypts where the bodies of the dead Minoans were preserved. The palace was destroyed by grave robbers.
Of course, Wunderlich's conclusions provoked objections from most archaeologists and cultural historians, although some of them had previously believed that some of the premises of the "Palace of Minos" were dungeons, and some served as a place for the sacrifice of the sacred bull, personifying … Zeus himself. Only in the works of the outstanding religious scholar Mircea Eliade can one find indications of the correctness of Wunderlich.
Eliade found many evidences that, in addition to the cult of the bull, the cult of death and beliefs associated with the posthumous life of the soul flourished in Crete. Zeus was born and died in Crete, in connection with which the Cretans annually became participants in the mysterious mystery of the "rebirth" of God.
From all corners of the island, wherever they lived, people went along the roads to the "Palace of Minos" in Knossos to make the necessary sacrifice and take part in secret and bloody rituals.
Irina IERUSALIMOVA