An Aegean Bronze Age town at Kephala, NC Crete, noted for the sophistication of its art and architecture. Flourishing c.19001400 BC, the settlement covered c.50 ha/125 acres, its mansions and houses linked by paved roads and dominated by the 19 000 sq m/4·7 acre Minoan palace discovered in 1899, and later partly reconstructed by Sir Arthur Evans. The traditional association with Minos, the labyrinth of Theseus, and the Minotaur has no historical basis.
Knossos (35°18′N 25°10′E; alternative spellings Knossus, Cnossus, Gnossus, Greek Κνωσός (see also List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete, probably the ceremonial and political center of the Minoan culture.
Name
Knossos appears in the Linear B tablets as ko-no-so with such Greek variants as ko-no-so-de, *Knosonde, "to Knossos", and the adjectives ko-no-si-yo and ko-no-si-ya.
The name ku-nu-sha appears on a statue base of Amenhotep III at Kom el Hetan in Egypt.
Discovery and excavation
The palace at Knossos, also known by the Romantic name assigned by Evans, Palace of Minos, was discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos, a Cretan merchant and antiquarian. Kolokairinos himself conducted the first excavations, which brought to light part of the magazines in the west wing of the palace and a section of the west facade. Assisted by Dr. Duncan Mackenzie, who had already distinguished himself by his excavations on the island of Melos, and Mr. Fyfe, the British School of Athens architect, Evans employed a large staff of excavators and by June of 1900 had uncovered a large portion of the palace.
The site has had a very long history of human habitation, beginning with the founding of the first Neolithic settlement in ca. Over time and during several different phases that had their own social dynamic, Knossos grew until, by the 19th to 16th centuries BCE (during the 'Old Palace' and the succeeding 'Neo-palatial' periods), the settlement possessed not only a monumental administrative and religious center (i.e., the Palace), but also a surrounding population of 5000-8000 people.
Legend
The palace is about 130 meters on a side and since the Roman period has been suggested as the source of the myth of the Labyrinth, an elaborate mazelike structure constructed for King Minos of Crete and designed by the legendary artificer Daedalus to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was half man and half bull and was eventually killed by the Athenian hero Theseus.
Labyrinth comes from the word labrys, referring to a double, or two-bladed, axe. Axe motifs were scratched on many of the stones of the palace. It appears in pottery decor and is a theme of the Shrine of the Double Axes at the palace, as well as of many shrines throughout Crete and the Aegean.
The location of the labyrinth of legend has long been a question of Minoan studies. It might have been the name of the palace or of some portion of the palace. Throughout most of the 20th century the intimations of human sacrifice in the myth puzzled Bronze Age scholarship because human sacrifice on Crete was yet unknown and became vigorously denied. Very likely, the palace was a great sacrificial center (but cleaned up well) and could have been named the Labyrinth.
Many other possibilities have been suggested.
Art and architecture
Description of Palace
The great palace was built gradually between 1700 and 1400 BC, with periodic rebuildings after destruction. The palace has an interesting layout - the original plan can no longer be seen because of the subsequent modifications. The six acres of the palace included a theatre, a main entrance on each of its four cardinal faces, and extensive storerooms (also called magazines). Many of the items were created at the palace itself, which had grain mills, oil presses, and wine presses. The palace also had many modern structures;
Fluid management
The palace had at least three separate fluid management systems, one for supply, one for drainage of runoff, and one for drainage of waste water.
Fresh Water was brought to Kephala hill through aqueducts from springs captured at Archanes about 10 km away. The aqueduct branched to the palace and to the town. Water was distributed at the palace by gravity feed through terra cotta pipes to fountains and spigots.
Sanitation drainage was through a closed system leading to a sewer apart from the hill.
As the hill was periodically drenched by torrential rains, a runoff system was a necessity.
Some links to photographs of parts of the management system follow.
Ventilation
Due to its placement on the hill, the palace received sea breezes during the summer.
Lighting and heating
The palace was designed to take best advantage of natural lighting during the long days of the summer season. The suites of rooms were arranged around courtyards to provide more window openings, the doors were polythyra ("multiple-door") to provide more door opening area, stairs wound around the periphery of light wells, and corridors were open porticos wherever possible. One cannot imagine that the palace shut down at night for lack of light, however.
Winter must have presented the Palace of Minos with as much of a heating problem as its architecture solved the lighting problem. The wind would have swept through the open palace, increasing the chill factor, unless the openings were blocked.
No central heating is in evidence.
Fires within the palace were for the most part economically of charcoal, probably lit with olive oil, in hearths or braziers. The tall drafty rooms, probably with smoke openings at the top (the roofs did not survive), were designed to keep the smoke away from the humans and evacuate it as quickly as possible. The palace undoubtedly reeked of smoke within and gave a pillar of it without.
The emphasis of palace civilizations in colder climes on home production of textiles is understandable.
Minoan Columns
The palace also includes the Minoan Column, a structure notably different from other Greek columns. The Minoan Column was constructed of wood, and then painted red (unlike the stone Greek column.) They were also 'inverted' - most Greek columns are smaller at the top and wider at the bottom to create the illusion of greater height, but the Minoan columns are smaller at the bottom and wider at the top. The columns at the Palace of Minos were mounted on stone bases and had round, pillow-like capitals (tops)
Frescoes
Frescoes decorated the walls.
Throne Room
The centerpiece of the "Mycenaean" palace was the so-called Throne Room or Little Throne Room, dated to LM II.
The room was accessed from an anteroom through two double doors. Both rooms are located in the ceremonial complex on the west of the central court.
The throne is flanked by the Griffin Fresco, with two griffins couchant facing the throne on either side. Griffins also appear on seal rings, which, no matter what purposes the throne and throne room had, were used to stamp the identity of the bearer or his authority in pliable material, such as clay or wax.
The actual use of the Room and the throne is unclear. In theory, the Mycenaean Greeks would have held court in this room, as they came to power in Knossos at about 1450. The "lustral basin" and the location of the room in a sanctuary complex cannot be ignored; A room reserved for the supposed epiphany of a goddess, who would have sat in the throne, either in effigy, or the person of a priestess, or in imagination only.
The lustral basin was originally thought to have had a ritual washing use, but the lack of drainage has more recently brought some scholars to doubt this theory.
Society
A long-standing debate between archaeologists concerns the main function of the palace, whether it acted primarily as an administrative center, a religious center or both in a theocratic manner. Other important debates consider the role of Knossos in the administration of Bronze Age Crete, and whether Knossos acted as the primary center, or was on equal footing with the several other contemporary palaces that have been discovered on Crete. Many of these palaces were destroyed and abandoned in the early part of the 15th century BCE, possibly by the Mycenaeans, although Knossos remained in use until destroyed by fire about one-hundred years later.
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