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Minoan art is often described as having a fantastical or ecstatic quality, with figures rendered in a manner suggesting motion. Little is known about the structure of Minoan society. Minoan art contains no unambiguous depiction of a monarch, and textual evidence suggests they may have had some other form of governance.
In comparison with the art of other ancient cultures there is a high proportion of female figures, [17] though the idea that Minoans had only goddesses and no gods is now discounted. Most human figures are in profile or in a version of the Egyptian convention with the head and legs in profile, and the torso seen frontally; but the Minoan ...
This is a list of Minoan, Mycenaean, and related frescos and quasi-frescos (not completed before the plaster dried) found at Bronze Age archaeological sites on islands and in and around the shores of the Aegean Sea and other relevant places in the Eastern Mediterranean region. In cases where one civilization encroaches on another or a mixture ...
Its size far exceeded his original expectations, as did the discovery of two ancient scripts, which he termed Linear A and Linear B, to distinguish their writing from the pictographs also present. From the layering of the palace, Evans developed an archaeological concept of the civilization that used it, which he called Minoan, following the ...
Minoan wares were already familiar from finds on the Greek mainland, and export markets like Egypt, before it was realized that they came from Crete. In most 19th-century literature they are described as "Mycenaean", and the recognition and analysis of styles and periods had gone some way on this assumption.
A similar belief existed in the ancient Mesopotamians and Semites, and appears also in Hindu mythology. [17] The Pelasgian myth of creation refers to snakes as the reborn dead. [18] However, Martin P. Nilsson noticed that in the Minoan religion the snake was the protector of the house, [16] as it later appears also in Greek religion. [19]
The palaces' function is a topic of continuing debate in Minoan archaeology. Despite the modern term "palace", it is generally agreed that they did not primarily serve as royal residences. They are known to have contained shrines, open areas for communal festivals, industrial workshops, as well as storage magazines for large agricultural surpluses.
Thucydides tells us Minos was the most ancient man known to build a navy. [3] He reigned over Crete and the islands of the Aegean Sea three generations before the Trojan War. He lived at Knossos for nine years, where he received instruction from Zeus in the legislation he gave to the island. He was the author of the Cretan constitution and the ...