Minoan Society

"Ex oriente nigri: "Captain of the Blacks" and the Fabrication of the Minoan Culture

The fabrication of the Minoan culture is the specifically modern phenomenon, closely linked to the imperial and colonial conquest and appropriation of Ancient Greece. The Greek war of independence created an arena in which Europe could take part in the fight for its cradle. In the postcolonial key, the paper situates the fresco "Captain of the Blacks" into the context of the fabrication of the Minoan culture and the colonial narratives inscribed into it. In the beginning of the 20th century, this colonial past of the notion, known today as the Minoan culture, played a major role in the definition of the European past, present and future. The Minoan culture, as a colonial discursive formation in archaeology, has remained in the framework of the culture-histori-cal paradigm, but beyond it as well. The paper argues that the reconstructionof the fresco "Captain of the Blacks" in the works of Arthur Evans is the consequence of the colonial racism, putting the emphasis on the colour of the skin as a racial/ ethnic category. The interpretation that the dark-skinned figures are of the African origin has rarely been questioned, but rather perpetuated as a given.

Key words: Minoan culture, racism, "Captain of the Blacks", Egypt,colonialism, post-colonial perspective"

Wino jest najstarszym znanym alkoholem. Prawdopodobnie było również pierwszą
dostępną człowiekowi używką.
Na terenie Egei już od wczesnej epoki brązu wino osiągnęło ważna pozycje jako składnik
diety, ofiara, czy półprodukt w wytwórstwie. To dzięki obecności wina i mięsa uczty i festiwale
mogły pełnić ważne funkcje społeczne.
Badania fizykochemiczne potwierdzają stosowanie wina w medycynie już od
najwcześniejszych okresów epoki brązu. Znane są również liczne dodatki polepszające trwałość
trunku oraz zmieniające jego smak.
Winorośl hodowano a wino tłoczono na różne sposoby uzyskując wiele rodzajów napoju,
który gromadzono i redystrybuowano rozmaitymi drogami. Zachowane dokumenty świadczą o
jego istotnej roli w ekonomii świata mykeńskiego.
Wino stanowiąc cenny symbolicznie i strategicznie towar zachowało swoje znaczenie
także po upadku kultur egejskich.

In London Medicine Papyrus, in incantation against samuna ubuqi illness there are two names of Minoan deities. One of them is determined as Maja that evidently is correlated with Maia of ancient Greek mythology. Maia of ancient Greek mythology is the oldest of seven Pleiades. Pleiades were connected with seafaring since the season of navigation in Mediterranean region began with their heliacal rising. Minoan Maia could be protector of sailors; use of name Maja in an incantation against a disease is completely logical since seafaring was very important of Minoan people, and so a deity that was protector of sailors evidently was considered as a mighty one and could also be an effective protector against other troubles. The fact that name Maja is written with determinative “god”, but not “goddess” in the incantation while in Greek mythology Maia is goddess, hints that initially Maja could be androgynous/bigender deity.

The first part of the book presents archaeological evidence from the Prehistoric Aegean and onward, which demonstrates the existence of an enduring, highly valued and advanced prehistoric Aegean apiculture. Some well known ceramic vessels from Knossos "palace" are identified here for the first time with beekeeping paraphernalia thus proving the existence of a systematic Minoan apiculture. In the second part, an alternative view is proposed for some of the most important scenes on Minoan and Mycenaean gold rings, seals, and clay sealings that have led Evans, Nilsson, and many others over the past century to various speculations regarding the nature of the Prehistoric Aegean religion. By applying a naturalistic context of interpretation on the depicted scenes, apiculture paraphernalia and practices are recognized, instead of the religious symbols of the "sacred tree", "flying gods", "baetyls and birds epiphany of deities", "great goddess", "horns of consecration", "altars", "temenos" and "double axes".
The authors conclude that established ideas about the prehistoric Aegean religion should be reconsidered, thus creating significant challenges for future research."

This paper examines the iconography and find context of the so-called swing model from Ayia Triada and tries to ascertain whether it could have been part of a group comprising other figurines that were used in the context of an epiphany scene. This possibility is strengthened by the existence of a second group of figurines from the same site that seem to have been intended for use together in a scene representing an offering to a divinity. The two groups of figurines from Ayia Triada provide new insights into the use of clay figurines in Minoan Crete and also on Minoan divinities.

This paper explores the mutually enforcing dynamic between religion, myth, and the realities of material existence. I discuss the symbols of double axe, double horns, and bucranium as decorative motifs and marks on pre- and protopalatial pottery (EMIIa to MMIIb), and their special association with jugs and spouted vessels. This ceramic imagery is connected to the wider adoption of same themes in the iconography, scripts, and marking systems of the period.
The symbols discussed here were key components of the religious thought and ritual apparatus throughout the Minoan era, prominent in a wide spectrum of material forms and representations. Pots decorated and marked with these motifs also span the time from pre- to post-palatial, albeit in varying spatio-temporal distibutions.  Distinctive  traits of ambiguity distinguish these ceramics  from other material supports of the same iconography . First, the non-narrative style of depicting the motifs isolated, arranged in repetitive or emblematic patterns,  or integrated in decorative compositions.  Second,  the potentially fluid and multiple function of the pots –as tableware, offering containers, storage or burial receptacles, household utensils and cult paraphernalia. In this capacity, ceramics bridge across maintenance activities and ceremony, domesticity and communal affairs, economy and ritual, production and social reproduction.
Through their evocative iconography and ambivalent function, the symbol-bearing pots can be interpreted as tangible references to an archetypical, ritual order which informed, and was in turn informed by,  material and social experience. Such semantic possibilities are examined  in the contexts of craft, signification, administration, and collective ceremony.

Mortuary practices of the Pre- and Proto-palatial period in the broader Siteia area show a remarkable degree of diversity, even between sites that are only a few kilometers apart. Within this context, the emergence of Petras as an important center of habitation, which acquires palatial characteristics from the Protopalatial period onwards, poses several questions concerning the existence of an integrated political and/or cultural entity in the region. This paper focuses on the mortuary practices of the region, aiming at placing the cemetery of Petras within wider historical and geographical contexts, and defining its influence on other communities in the area.

Ανάλυση του αστικού περιβάλλοντος του ανακτορικού οικισμού της Κάτω Ζάκρου στη βάση των αρχιτεκτονικών κυρίως καταλοίπων, κατά τη Νεοανακτορική περίοδο. Παρουσίαση των δεδομένων από τη θέση και ανάλυση της ενδοκοινοτικής οργάνωσης του οικισμού με έμφαση στα "αστικά" χαρακτηριστικά του. Εντοπισμός των βασικών αρχών οικιακής αρχιτεκτονικής που εφαρμόζονται στη θέση και χωρική ανάλυση επιλεγμένων κτηρίων με σκοπό τον προσδιορισμό της κοινωνικής ομάδας που τα κατοικούσαν και τον εντοπισμό τυχόν αλλαγών στη σύνθεση των νοικοκυριών, με βάση τις αρχιτεκτονικές μετασκευές που διαπιστώνονται.

This paper examines the representations of the objects brought by the Aegean emissaries depicted in the foreigners’ procession scene in the tomb of Senenmut (TT 71). Through comparison of the depicted objects with the ones found in the Aegean it is argued that not only is it possible to find close analogies for single objects but also for the whole assemblage. The assemblage depicted in the tomb of Senenmut is found in elite burials of the Late Bronze Age I Aegean, and it can be interpreted as a diplomatic gift. The very fact that the same assemblage is found both in the Aegean princely burials and depicted in Senenmut’s tomb, as a gift to the Egyptian king, is of great importance for the discussion on historicity behind this scene. The paper also discusses the transformation of the Aegean gift assemblage after its arrival in Egypt.

‘Minoans’ have been recognised as pre-Hellenic race or closed ethnic group in Egyptian representations of Aegean figures from Eighteenth Dynasty Theban tombs. Modern construct of ‘Minoans’ thus merged with an ancient Egyptian construct of Aegean foreigners. Previous approaches to Aegean figures in Theban tombs did not pay attention to decorum, context and restricted knowledge. By examining these concepts it is argued in this paper that decorum can transform restricted knowledge into available knowledge for the tomb visitors. The abducted meanings from these images materialized virtual reality different from reality based on the tomb-owner’s restricted knowledge. However, this abducted virtual reality can actually take the form of reality for those who lack specific restricted knowledge. Based on decorum analysis it can be argued that New Kingdom Egyptians perceived Keftiu and its inhabitants as quite close to their cultural concept of ‘north’ and ‘Asia’, observable both in visual and written evidence.

Η Προανακτορική περίοδος (περ. 3η χιλιετία π.Χ.) συχνά αντιμετωπίζεται ως προβαθμίδα της ίδρυσης των ανακτόρων στην αρχή της, αντίστοιχα αποκαλούμενης, Παλαιοανακτορικής περιόδου (αρχές 2ης χιλιετίας π.Χ.). Ωστόσο, είναι λίγες οι περιπτώσεις που εξετάζεται ο χαρακτήρας της Προανακτορικής αρχιτεκτονικής, ειδικά όσον αφορά τη συμβολή της στη διαδικασία ανακτοροποίησης της μινωικής Κρήτης.
Οι απόπειρες δημιουργίας μίας τυπολογικής αλυσίδας εξέλιξης από τις μεγάλες προανακτορικές κατοικίες και οικισμούς στα ανάκτορα απέτυχαν. Έκτοτε, τα προανακτορικά αρχιτεκτονικά κατάλοιπα αντιμετωπίζονται είτε ως κελύφη κοινωνικοοικονομικών δραστηριοτήτων είτε ως απλές αντανακλάσεις της οργάνωσης και του βαθμού συνθετότητας της προανακτορικής κοινωνίας. Ως ένα βαθμό κάτι τέτοιο είναι κατανοητό. Τα προανακτορικά οικιστικά κατάλοιπα είναι λιγοστά και σε αρκετές περιπτώσεις αποσπασματικά. Επιπλέον, τα περισσότερα προανακτορικά κατάλοιπα είναι ταφικά, ενώ μεγάλη σημασία στις κοινωνικές εξελίξεις είχαν οι ανοικτοί χώροι που φιλοξενούσαν δημόσιες συγκεντρώσεις. Όμως, το ερώτημα της μετάβασης από τις μικρές ή μεγαλύτερες επιμέρους οικίες στα αρχιτεκτονικά σχεδιασμένα ανακτορικά συγκροτήματα παραμένει.
Επομένως, μέχρι στιγμής, δεν έχει αναπτυχθεί επαρκώς ο προβληματισμός του ενεργού ρόλου της προανακτορικής αρχιτεκτονικής στα κοινωνικά δρώμενα, δηλαδή ο ρόλος της ως ενεργού υποβάθρου στις διαδικασίες που οδήγησαν στα ανάκτορα. Προς τον σκοπό αυτό είναι αναγκαία μία συγκειμενική επανεξέταση των προανακτορικών οικιστικών καταλοίπων η οποία θα αναδείξει το κοινωνικό πρόσημο της προανακτορικής αρχιτεκτονικής. Μέσα από την εξέταση των μορφολογικών και δομικών χαρακτηριστικών των καταλοίπων (π.χ. έκταση, σχήμα, διάρθρωση δωματίων), θα υποστηριχθεί ότι τα προανακτορικά κτήρια και οικισμοί αποτελούσαν συναρμογές επιμέρους δωματίων και χώρων που αλληλεπιδρούσαν εντονότερα από ό,τι έως τώρα πιστευόταν με τις διεργασίες της μινωικής κοινωνίας πριν την Παλαιοανακτορική περίοδο και, συνεπώς, διαδραμάτισαν κομβικό ρόλο στην εμφάνιση των ανακτόρων.

Despite the inevitable realization that all men, beyond any discrimination, are equal before death, there is a social persistence in demonstrating social and economic inequality in mortuary contexts as a reflection of the past social status of the dead. As such, it both serves the respectful wish of the deceased for eternal preservation of their status in life and satisfies, at the same time, the need of the living for reassertion of their own social position, legitimatization of their social role, and sanctification of their authority through the memory of the dead and their bonds with the immediate or distant ancestors. The cemetery, therefore, becomes an (often distorted or exaggerated) image of the living society, but also an organic part and extension of the settlement, a place of dual nature, a source of social reassertion and veneration of the dead, in an admirable compromise of life and death.
Mortuary evidence supplements information on social stratification from settlements, or, quite often, in the absence of such information it constitutes the sole source of evidence on social ranking. Various criteria may be employed to reveal social ranking from mortuary data, such as the architectural type, size, complexity, construction, materials, and location of the tomb; qualitative and quantitative differences in the grave good assemblages of specific burials or groups of burials, indicating a status of wealth and perhaps of high social ranking; evidence for symbols of authority and displays of hierarchy among the artifacts deposited with the burials, as inferred from their value, use, and frequency of appearance in the grave good assemblages; specialized objects of everyday life, deposited as kterismata with the dead, as indicators of the profession and social role of their owners; artifacts designed exclusively for funerary or ritual use and the energy expenditure for their manufacture as evidence of social differentiation; differential post mortem treatment of the corpse, including differences in the degree of elaboration of the funerary ritual, in the energy expenditure of the burial, cases of post-burial interference with skeletal remains, and cult of the dead; prominent position of specific burials inside the tomb; and demographic evidence, mainly sex and age distributions among the burials, as well as burial of particular social groups restrictive in terms of sex and social role.
The Minoan cemetery of Phourni at Archanes is an instructive case study, given its extremely long and uninterrupted period of use (EM II - LM IIIC/Subminoan), its unique organization, the variety of architectural types and burial customs, the wealth of the burials, the detailed excavation and excellent state of preservation. Furthermore, the EM - LM settlement of Archanes, the MM IB - LM II palace at Tourkogeitonia, the MM temple at Anemospilia on Mount Jouchtas, and the minor MM - LM settlements and LM I villas around Archanes compose the picture of an extremely important site, a crossroads of the three major Aegean civilizations, and provide supplementary evidence on social stratification and structure. In the transitional phase from Prepalatial to Protopalatial period, when the cemetery of Phourni reached its acme with the largest number of burials and the greatest amount of building activity ever --reflecting perhaps an explosive population increase just before the erection of the first palatial centers-- and when it had aquired a ‘closed’ poleodomic plan, there seems to be a controlled differentiation in all social ranking variables (architecture, accumulation of wealth, funerary ritual). This intermediate stage of the process towards formalization is evident in the scaled pattern of repetition of certain architectural types and modes of burial at Phourni, climaxing from many isolated burials, to several  rectangular chambers and house tombs, to a few tholos tombs, and finally, to a couple of monumental tomb complexes, which may reflect social ranking and, to a lesser extent, a population ethnic diversity. The combination of these variables in the Phourni cemetery produces evidence of an advanced social stratification at Archanes on the eve of the first palatial centers.

Hitit dini inancına göre Boğa, Fırtına Tanrısı Tešup’un simgesi olmuştur. Hititler, dini ritüellerinde Boğa sembolüne sunu yapmışlardır. Boğa motifli rhytonları dini ritüellerinde kullanmışlardır. Özellikle Fırtına Tanrısı ile ilgili ritüellerde, Fırtına Tanrısına boğa kurban etmişlerdir. Bazı ritüellerde Boğa üzerinden atlama hareketini gerçekleştirmişlerdir. Girit dininde de bir boğa kültü bulunmaktadır. Girit halkı dini ritüellerinde kutsama boynuz çiftine sunu yapmışlardır. Knossos Sarayında görüldüğü gibi bazı ritüellerde boğa üzerinden atlama hareketi gerçekleştirmişlerdir. Bu çalışmada Hitit dini ile Girit dini arasındaki benzer noktalar ve bu noktaların kökenleri incelenmiştir.

Abstract
The bull was symbol of Tešup, Storm-God, according to Hittite religion. Hittites made offering to bull symbol on their religious rituals. They used bull shaped rhytons in their rituals. Especially, they sacrified bull for Storm-God in rituals in related to Storm-God. They performed bull-leaping in their some rituals. Crete religion had a cult of bull. Crete public made offering to horns of consecration. They performed bull-leaping in their some ritulas as seen on Knossos Palace. In this paper, it is examined similarities and it’s origins between Hittite and Crete religion.

The aim of this paper is to rethink the Minoan peak sanctuaries of East Crete from a walking perspective. Walking will be used as a mean of understanding and embodying the landscape of East Cretan peak sanctuaries, as the only way that someone could reach to a peak  anctuary was (and is) on foot. This relationship can be traced both on Minoan iconography, and on a group of findings from the peak
sanctuaries of East Crete, the clay models of human lower limbs.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest of Aegean archaeologists in methods of quantifying the subsistence economy in order to obtain a better idea of which parts of society were either economically dependent or in charge respectively. Quantifica-tion of subsistence levels has its difficulties since it involves a series of factors – such as diet composition or human daily caloric need – that have to be dealt with before the actual calculations. In this article, it is argued, firstly, that the Minoan palaces of both the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods cannot be seen as centres for communal redistribution of staple goods since their storage capacities could not match this task by any means. In fact, they were storing goods only for themselves. Secondly, the interpretation of the Minoan kouloures, or underground pits in the west courts of Knossos and Phaistos, as granaries is reinforced, particularly on the basis of Hittite analogies. Since these long-term stores – when opened – had to be emptied entirely, their function within the Protopalatial economy could be considered either as reserves for the palace inhabitants in times of need, or as central elements of collective ritual activities taking place in the west courts, such as the distribution of grain rations to the community at large.

“Minoans” have been recognised from the very
discovery of the palaces on Crete as an enclosed
ethnic group in the material assemblage known as
the “Minoan” culture. They were defined as a race
or an ethnic group and continued to be viewed so
in the tradition of the cultural-historical archaeology.
The Theban 18th Dynasty tomb representations
of the Aegean figures played a large role in defining
the “Minoans” as an ethnic group argued to be
represented in the Egyptian imagery. This is how a
cultural-historical construct of an ethnic group –
the “Minoans” was labelled with an Egyptian term
kftjw and both terms were taken to refer to an
Aegean Bronze Age ethnic group with no doubt.
This paper aims to disentangle kftjw from the
“Minoans” by analysing the history and the process
of this entanglement in the Aegean Bronze
Age archaeology and Egyptology. Therefore the
representations of the Aegean figures and the
terms related to them will be analysed on the basis
of the offered disentanglement. Egyptian tomb
imagery and the representations of foreigners are
formed with decorum, ideology and culturally
particular world view and topography. This paper
thus offers an entanglement based on the New
Kingdom Egyptian cultural topography beyond
ethnicity.

This paper offers new insights into the socialchanges that took place in the Mirabello Gulf in eastern Crete dur-ing the Middle Minoan (MM) period (ca. 1900-1700 BC). The most significant change appears to have been the transformation of society from localised chiefdoms to decentralised statesfor the first time in Greek prehistory, and the archaeological finds from the Mirabello area demonstrate that change. Specifically, the newly examined ceramic material from the site of Mochlos furthers our understanding of this transformation, and is discussed here alongside two other factors that also contributed to the development of states: the population increase and the introduction of the potters’ wheel. The production, distribution and consumption of ceramic material in the Mirabello Gulf demonstrates cultural, economic, and social bonds between sites within the region. The introduction of new standardised ceramic shapes, either local or imported, depicts the common production and consumption habits of a unified socio-cultural regional landscape.Considering the new evidence from the perspective of transitions, this paper discusses the transformation in production technology, as well as in deco-rative schemata in drinking and storage wares like cups and jars from Mochlos as they relate to other changes taking place in the Mirabello region during this period. It also gives a glimpse of how this transition affected the cultural and economic life of the settlement, such as the intensification of local pottery production, and its relation to the centre’s trends, and offers insight about how a primary material can enrich the present model of a new state level society.

Hyperlink:https://be-ja.org/index.php/Be-JA/article/view/175

Libation is depicted on Sumerian votive plaques, and mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, and thus is one of the oldest ritual practices attested in the eastern Mediterranean. The practice was ubiquitous throughout the region from at least the Early Bronze Age, and there is substantial evidence associating libation with Minoan feasting and food preparation. In this paper, I compare this evidence with evidence for libation in other cultures, in an attempt to interpret some of the possible meanings of libation within the context of the Minoan feast.

Current archaeology prevails largely within the standard view of the perceived material world formulated during centuries of observation and set into physical laws early in the Enlightenment. For example, in 1687 Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which lays the foundations for modern classical mechanics, declares that ‘Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external.’ For Newton, time is a constant, no matter how you view it, and flows within the great machine that is our world. This assumes that the machine chugs along on its own in a predictable manner as we observe it passively. But, just as Arthur Evans starts to write a new, Minoan, chapter into history in 1900, Max Planck discovers quanta and initiates a new branch of physical science that provides a very different explanation of the perceived material world, one which does away with the classical concepts of time, space and passive involvement. Instead, quantum mechanics finds that consciousness plays an active and key role in forming the perceived world, which cannot exist without it. Planck concludes that, ‘Mind is the matrix of all matter.’
The removal of time as a constant leads physicist John Wheeler to declare, ‘The past is theory.’ Yet, most archaeologists happily continue to write history as though time and matter are absolutes, like Newton’s laws. I examine this notion in Minotaur, my critical biography of Evans, where I introduce the concept of relative archaeology, that is, the study of how the artefact is essentially entangled with its finder, the artefact being Knossos and Evans the finder. Here, I take that idea further by reviewing the evidence from nearly a century of controlled experiments to show that past, present and future are one moment, the sum of all events at once, and those of us who dig for clues to Crete’s past are actually forming those clues in a parallel and exactly contemporary present, one of the myriad parallel constructions physicist Hugh Everett postulates in his many-worlds interpretation (MWI). We are contributing to a theory of the Minoans, making memories in the moment. As archaeology is the science of nostalgia, we must ask ourselves what we want, or need from our perceived Minoans.

"The relevance of survey data as evidence for settlement structure in Prepalatial Crete,” in M. Relaki and Y. Papadatos, eds., From the Foundations to the Legacy of Minoan Archaeology. Studies in  Honour of Professor Keith Branigan, Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology (Oxford: Oxbow, 2018) 256-274.

This article examines the syntax (word order) of the so-called 'Libation Formula', a sequence of Linear A 'words' found on many Minoan ritual stone vessels, in an effort to uncover some of the characteristics of the language behind the script. The conclusions suggest that this language is a non-Indo-European, non-Semitic, verb-initial language, perhaps with VSO word order.