Gareth Essey v2 Creator

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GBOR Szente 2011. srping semester T.E.I. of CreteEssay: Knossos

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Gbor Szente Hungary page 1

Knossos Palace

My name is GABOR Szente, and I come from Szkesfehrvr, Hungary. I have a course which

name History of Crete and I should write an essay about something compare or some specialist thingwhich interesting me. I have chosen the Knossos palace. I have heard lots of information aboutKnossos and I have read about it in my history books but I have never been there, till this year. FinallyI could walk around this place where happened plenty of interesting historical events, issue. When Iheard that I will able to go there and look everything in real I was really happy.

Knossos ~

Knosss is the oldest and most sophisticated cityof the ancient western world. Knossos was thefirst inhabited area of ancient Crete, from as earlyas 7000BC, and subsequently became the largestand most influential of Minoan centres.The Knossiotes reached an incomprehensiblelevel of sophistication, coming to their zenithbetween the years 2400-1400BC. The city theycreated could be deemed modern by todaysstandards. The Minoan Palace at Knossos is over20,000 square meters - and the largest of allMinoan palatial structures. It was built of ashlarblocks, had many floors and was decorated withreally beautiful frescoes.

The first settlement in the Knossos area was established circa 7000 BC, during the Neolithic Period.

The economic, social and political development of the settlement led to the construction of the

majestic Palace of Knossos towards the end of the second millennium BC.

Knossos was the seat of the legendary King Minos and the main centre of power in Crete.

This first Palace was destroyed circa 1700 BC. It was rebuilt and destroyed again by fire, this time

definitively, in 1350 BC. The environs of the Palace were transformed into a sacred grove of the

goddess Rhea, but never inhabited again.

The Palace of Knossos is the monumental symbol of Minoan civilisation, due to its construction, use

of luxury materials, architectural plan, advanced building techniques and impressive size.

Knossos, the famous Minoan Palace lies 5 kilometres southeast of Heraklion, in the valley of the river

Kairatos. The river rises in Archanes, runs through Knossos and reaches the sea at Katsabas, the

Minoan harbour of Knossos.

In Minoan times the river flowed all year round and the surrounding hills were covered in oak and

cypress trees, where today we see vines and olives. The pine trees inside the archaeological site were

planted by Evans.

Constant habitation for 9,000 years has brought about great changes to the natural environment, so

it is hard to imagine what the Minoan landscape was like.


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The city of Knossos remained important through the Classical and Roman periods, but its population

shifted to the new town of Handaq (modernHeraklion) during the 9th century AD. By the 13th

century, it was called Makryteikhos 'Long Wall'; the bishops of Gortyn continued to call themselves

Bishops of Knossos until the 19th century.[1] Today, the name is used only for the archaeological site

situated in the suburbs of Heraklion.

Knossos, the first excavation by Minos Kalokairinos

The first large-scale excavation was undertaken in 1878 by the wealthy art-lover Minos Kalokairinos,

while Crete was still under Turkish occupation. Kalokairinos excavated part of the West Magazines

and brought many large pithoi (storage pots) to light.

Knossos, the excavations by Sir Arthur Evans

In March 1900 to 1931, Sir Arthur Evans excavated not only the Palace

but the whole surrounding area of Knossos. The Palace complex wasexcavated in only five years, an extremely short time by todays

standards.

Evans restored the Palace with concrete, a technique condemned by

modern archaeologists as arbitrary and damaging to the Minoan

structure. Excavations continue and a conservation programme is

underway to halt the deterioration of the Palace.

Reached by an impressive paved royal road, epic in proportion, Knossossits amid a lush and fertile basin, still to this day lined with rows of olive trees and grapevines.

Minoan cities were unique compared to neighbouring Mycenaean, Spartan and Athenian, in thatthey did not fortify their towns. This is a clear indication that they were not a warring people, andsupported themselves with the trade of their unique agricultural goods and distinct and beautifulartistic crafts such as earthenware, jewellery, cosmetics and perfumes.

At the centre of Knossos stand three andfour storey buildings with throne roomsand spiritual chambers, central halls,bedrooms, bathrooms, intricate spiralstairways and light wells. Also discoveredwere modern bathrooms with flushing

toilets and sophisticated plumbing that fedin fresh spring water and plumbing fortaking away waste water. There are talesthat mention that the residents had centralheating ducted through underground pipesystems utilising local thermal springs,although there seems to be some debateabout this.

On the ground level and basements vast storage areas were excavated lined with large earthenwarestorage jars, ranging in size from rhytons to human size. The entire city was gracefully decorated,

with frescoes and wall paintings of Griffins, dolphins, bull-leaping figures, male processions with


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youths carrying ceremonial jars (rhytons) and beautiful woman with sophisticated attire conveningand enjoying a tte--tte.

The Prince of the Lilies: The tihografia wall painting ofthe Minoan prince known as the Prince of the Lilies or the Priest

King dates to roughly 1500BC. This painting which was restoredby Evans team, shows the sleek and proud postured Cretanyouth with his long curly hair, wearing a headress of lilies. He isbelieved to be leading a bull by its tether. It is controversial thatin fact this painting may be a fusion of a number or paintingsfrom as many as four paintings from the many stories that hadtumbled on top of each other.

The ancient site ofThe Palace and City of Knosss is located in

the central north of the island of Crete in Greece, 5 km from thecapital Heraklion, Iraklio.

Below are some beautiful photos of the Knossos Palace archaeological site as it looks today:


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Knossos Day Tours

Day tours to Knosss Palace with Viator withpick up and drop off from all major centres andhotels, with a fully experience guide to see thepalace ruins. Total tour time 5-6 hours.

Day tours to Knossos are easy to find; the

quality differs from one company to the next. Alocal guide with good experience will beprovided by Tourline, a Heraklion-based touragency with over 25 years experience insharing Crete's most interesting places.

"This tour combines archaeology, mythology and nature. We visit the archaeological site of Knosss,

the palace of the mighty King Minos and the Lasithi Plateau with its now famous one thousand

windmills.

Five kilometres south of Heraklion stands the palace of Knossos where the Minoan civilization

flourished more than 3500 years ago. Myths and legends come alive through the narration of our

official guide.

Our program continues driving up to the Dikti Mountain and the fertile plateau of Lasithi. We stop at

Tzermiado village for lunch break. Then crossing the small villages of plateau we have another short

visit at the traditional pottery workshop. Then we will visit the Diktaion Cave, full of fantastic

stalagmites and stalactites and famous as a birthplace of Greek God Zeus.

Taking our way back we have a short stop for photographs at Seli which is the highest point of our

drive where we see the picturesque old Venetian windmills".


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You can make Contact with Alex and his staff at www.tourline.eu if you are interested in someexcursion

There is a map of Knossos. Fortunatelly weve were every points, and we had good weather.

Knossos: West Entrance and WestCourt (panoramic image): 01

Knossos: Corridor of the Procession: 02 Knossos: South Propylaeum: 03 Knossos: Piano Nobile(panoramic image): 04 Knossos: West Magazines of the Palace: 04 Knossos: the room with the Minoan

Frescos(panoramic image): 05

Knossos: the Central Court(panoramicimage): 06

Knossos: the Throne Room: 07 Knossos: the Tripartite Shrine: 08 Knossos: the Grand Staircase: 09 Knossos: the Southeast Section of the

Palace: 10

Knossos: King Minos Apartments: 11 Knossos: Queen's Apartments Knossos: East Wing of the Palace, the

Minoan Workshops: 12

Knossos: The Magazine of the Giant MinoanPithoi and the Drainage System of the

Palace of Knossos: 12

Knossos: North Entrance: 13 Knossos: North Section of the

Palace (panoramic image)

Knossos: The Theatre, the Customs Houseand the Royal Road: 14

Knossos: Caravan Serai and the The RoyalTomb of King Minos

Central court: We descend from the Piano Nobile, down the monumental staircase with its two rows

of columns, and come to the vastCentral Court of the Palace of Knossos. Looking east, the Throne

Room is on our left and the Tripartite shrine on our right.

The great square, paved Central Court is one of the basic features of Minoan palatial architecture. It

provided the palace with light and air. It is believed that various rituals and feasts were held in the

Central Court, as both the North and the South Entrance lead there.Most of the paving is lost because the Venetians used a lot of building material from Knossos for the

fortifications of Khandax (Heraklion).

In the summer the Central Court is full of tour groups, patiently waiting their turn to admire the

Throne Room.

The Old Palace

The old palace was built during the Middle Minoan IB period. Not much of it remains as the NewPalace was built on the same site. It is not clear whether or not the Old Palace grew from the building

of a collection of buildings. What is clearer is that there were two main phases in its construction.


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During the second phase, the West Court was laid out on a terrace outside the palace andthe kouloures, round pits, were dug into it.

The West Court would have been used as a publicmeeting place and would have formed a link between the

palace and the town as roads from the town lead towardsthe palace. It is thought that the west side of the OldPalace was used for administrative purposes, given thehieroglyphic tablets found there, for storage and for cultrituals. This combination is also present in New Palacetimes. There were other storerooms located in the EastWing of the palace. The east side also yielded over 400loom weights which suggests that weaving took placethere.

It is not clear whether during the Old Palace period

Knossos was the capital of Middle Minoan Crete. There may well have been a number of politicalcentres at that time.

The Old Palace was destroyed at the end of Middle Minoan II, possibly by an earthquake, but almostcertainly by natural means. The Palace was immediately rebuilt in LM IA.

The New Palace

The West Wing

The west side of the palace at ground level was given over to shrines and store rooms. The wealth of

the society is attested to by the large number of storerooms and the boxes that were stored beneaththe floors. On the West Side of the Palace is one of the most famous of rooms unearthed by Evans,the Throne Room.

Castleden points out that the Throne Room would have had an oppressive quality about it. With itslow ceiling and lack of windows it was separated from the Central Court by an anteroom. The throneis placed along a side wall facing across the room. On either side of the throne there are stonebenches and in front of the throne a stone adyton.

Minoan columns of Knossos Palace:

The palace has distinguished red wooden columns unlike the stone Greek ones. While most Greekcolumns are smaller at the top and wider at the bottom, Minoans are the opposite with a smallerbase and a wider top. The columns at the Palace were mounted on stone bases and had round,pillow like tops.

One of the Kouloures


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There were two exits from theThrone Room. One led to a setof nine rooms and the otherto storage rooms. Two ofthese had vaults in the floor

like the room where the SnakeGoddess was found. TheThrone Room and the therooms leading off it seem tobe a complete, distinct unitwithin the Palace. The mainshrine may have been what isnow called the Throne Room,with the throne being used bya priestess rather than a Kingas Evans imagined. On the

upper floor it is thought thatlarge state rooms were built, looking onto the West Court. These rooms may have been used forceremonial purposes. Also on the west side of the Palace, facing the Central Court are the remains ofatripartite shrine. I dont know that we can sit dawn on this throne, but outside there was a copy ofthat, and I tried it, I can say: It is comfortable.

The Snake Goddess Sanctuary lies to the south of the Throne Room and it is here that one of themost famous -- and most photographed -- objects of Minoan Crete was found, the Snake Goddess. Infact several snake goddesses were found buried in cists in the ground, named by Evans the TempleRepositories. One of the statuettes had been deliberately broken before being placed in therepository and it has been suggested that this might have been a way of "killing" the cult figurines.

Two of the Snake Goddesses have been restored and are among the must-see treasures in theMuseum at Heraklion. Further south in the West Wing we come to the Cup Bearer Sanctuary, sonamed after a life-sized fresco, the remains of which had fallen to the floor. This fresco shows areligious scene of temple attendants holding conical rhytons.

The West Store Rooms are situated to the west of the Lower West Wing Corridor and they consist ofa number of long narrow rooms, many with enormous storage jars still in situ. On the storey abovethe store rooms there were big square chambers One chamber, theGreat Sanctuary, was 16 metresacross and had a very large window which may have been used for ritual appearances before thepeople at ceremonies in the West Court. The room was decorated with a bull leaping fresco.

The North Entrance

The north entrance to the Palace opened into the North Pillar Hall. From there one could go, via theNorth Entrance Passage, to the north end of the Central Court. This passage way was originally opento the elements but some time after 1700 BCE it was covered over. It is thought that there may havebeen a dining area above the North Pillar Hall. Inside the Pillar Hall itself a large number of tabletswere found, which suggests that this was an administrative area. Being close to an entrance to the

Palace, the area may have been used to record produce as it was brought into the Palace.The NorthPillar Hall may also have been a place where people newly arrived at the palace would gather.

The Throne Room


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Immediately south of the North Pillar Hall isthe Bull Chamber, which was on the samelevel as the Central Court. It was here thatthe Bull Relief Fresco was found. Opposite thischamber there would originally have been

another, also decorated with a fresco.

The north east corner of the Palace was foundto be badly damaged when it was excavatedand this makes it difficult to understand whatthe area was originally used for. The northeast corner contained a large number of storerooms. Among the finds was a large number ofclay cups. Perhaps this is where meals were

prepared before being taken to the refectory. After the destruction of 1700 BCE many of thestorerooms in this area (and in the East Wing) were filled in.

The East Wing

The east side of the palace would have consisted of four levels of which three remain. There wouldhave been one level above the central court, one level adjacent to the central court and the twolevels below the central court, cut into the side of the hill. The last three still exist. The lower floors,designated the residential quarters by Evans, are reached by the Grand Staircase.

The north end of the East Wing originally comprised store rooms and rooms where craftsmenworked and is known as the Temple Workshops. Some of the rooms had benches in them. The wallsin this section are so strong that they probably had tosupport a storey or storeys above.

The Sanctuary of the Great Goddess no longer exists, onlythe remains of the cellars below can be seen today.But as was so often the case, when the buildingcollapsed a large number of objects from upper floorsfell through to the ground floor and many of thesewere recovered during the excavations. Among the

finds was sanctuary equipment including a small three-pillar shrine and altars, one of which had horns ofconsecration on top. A statue of a goddess, possiblythree metres high, almost certainly existed as bronzelocks of hair were found in the cellars. The Sanctuarywas reached up a flight of twelve stairs from theCentral Court. Beyond this area the drainage system is still preserved to the east of the Room of theStone Drain Head.

The Bull Chamber

The drainage system


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The highlight of the East Wing is the GrandStaircase and the rooms below it. The excavation ofthe Grand Staircase proved to be a major headacheto Evans and his team, not least because it wasactually quite a dangerous undertaking. Amazingly

much of the staircase had been preserved in placeeven though a lot of the support had been builtusing wood which had carbonised in the ensuingperiod.

Thereare 54 stairs in the staircase which descends four flightsto the Hall of the Double Axes. On their way down, thestairs open onto two colonnaded landings. Halfway downthe stairs there is an area which Evans called the UpperHall of the Double Axes. At the bottom of the stairs lies

the Hall of the Double Axes itself. Controversy surroundsEvans' designation of this area as the royal apartments.Many argue that it is unlikely that the royal apartmentswould have been located in this part of the palace. Notonly are they at the bottom of four flights of stairs, butthe original building would also have had several storeys above ground level. The light wells wouldnot have allowed much light to penetrate into the rooms down here and they do indeed look verygloomy today, even without the missing additional storeys. Moreover, not far from here there wereworkrooms used by craftsmen and it is argued that royal apartments would not have been located soclose to such an area. Castleden, for example, suggests that the area would have been more suited tothe carrying out of religious ritual.

The Hall of the Double Axes was a double chamber with an inner and an outer space. The inner spacecould be closed off by eleven sets of double doors. A similar arrangement can be seen in the "royalrooms" at the Palace of Phaistos. Presumably some aspects of religious ritual were public and otherswere not, and so it was necessary to be able to close off the inner area from the view of others.

Near the Hall of the Double Axes is the DolphinSanctuary, which Evans assigned as the Queen'sApartment. The area takes its name from a DolphinFresco which was found here in pieces, although itprobably fell from the floor above during the destruction

of the palace. A replica of the fresco now adorns thenorth wall. A lustral basin adjoined the Dolphin Sanctuaryand this area now contains a "bathtub" which was foundsome distance away and not in the lustral basin at all.Evans had some problems with bathrooms at Knossos. Inthe Throne Room, Evans could not accept that the sunken

area was a bathroom as it was located only four metres from the throne so he decided it was a placeof ritual purification. But here, in his royal apartments he was quite happy to interpret the lustralbasin as an ordinary bathroom. Since there are a number of lustral basins dotted about Knossos, itseems rather likely that they were all used for the same purpose, which would exclude the use of thisparticular lustral basin as the queen's bathroom.

The Hall of the Double Axes

The Dolphin Sanctuary


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The Royal Road and Theatral Area

The royal road is one of the oldest and best preservedancient roads in Europe. As it approaches the Palace, the

roads divides into two. One road goes to the theatralarea, while the other road leads to the West Court.Originally it would have passed through the Minoan townon the way to the palace. A little imagination is nowneeded to picture it as it would have originally beenbecause today it passes along a deep, tree-lined trench.

The theatral area is a paved area thirteen metres byten. Around it is an L-shaped area of steps whichwould offer standing room for about 500 people.Given the size of the town and the palace itself, this

area does not accommodate a particularly largenumber of people.

There are a number of areas of the Palace that havenot been dealt with in this brief description. Inparticular, the lower southern part of the East Wingand the independent structures to the south of thepalace have not been described. For a fuller

description of the Palace one of the many guide books to the Palace of Knossos should be consulted.

These are

photos what Itook there:

The HUN FRANCE friendship in Knossos

The royal road

The theatral area


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The most famous part of the Palace (in my opinion)

All Erasmus classmates of this semester ( 2010 / 2011 / 2 ) We come from Slovakia, France, Poland,

Belgium, USA, Wales, Argentina, Spanish so inside and outside of Europe.


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I really enjoyed the whole excursion, finally I could go there what I have saw in the books for some

years. I like the Erasmus program, I will advertise it and I hope plenty of students will choose this way

of learning and choose this Island. Maybe when I am in my master course in Hungary and I will able

to go some summer university or Erasmus semester I will come back.

The other interesting topic is the phaistos disc. In my opinion Ive never met a people who was in the

National Geographic. It is really new for me, and I look forward the news of the disc. Maybe in

November we will get a new theory, or a correct theory of this.

The museums was exciting all of them, and I like that You do your lessons this way, because the

students I dont think go to museums, but with you, definitely worth it. Furthermore you can tell us

the stories and with these much more interesting.

The sources

- http://www.ancient-greece.org/archaeology/knossos.html- http://www.knossos.hu/- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos- http://www.explorecrete.com/Knossos/knossos.html- http://www.sacred-destinations.com/greece/knossos- http://www.dilos.com/location/13370- http://www.travel-to-crete.com/place.php?place_id=21- http://www.greeka.com/crete/heraklion/heraklion-history/palace-knossos-heraklion.htm- and my head and creativity

Have a nice day, and good luck for the research of the disc

2011 06. 17, Crete

GBOR Szente

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Gareth Essey v2 Creator