Crete: isle of the dead?

Crete has been the home to an enigmatic civilisation for more than 3000 years. Labelled the “Minoan civilisation”, the label does nothing to enhance understanding of the people that created enigmatic palaces across the island.

Philip Coppens

Crete, south of mainland Greece, is an island famous with many modern sun worshippers. But it is also the mythical birthplace of many of the Greek deities, including the head of their pantheon, Zeus. It should therefore not come as a surprise to learn that Neolithic settlements have been discovered on the island, pushing its occupation back to at least 6000 BC. Though it took until the 20th century before Crete was recognized as a major civilisation, it should have been obvious that this centrally located island in the Mediterranean Sea was an ideal port of call for all traders and travellers. Artefacts from the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Mycenae (Greece) and Egypt have all been found on the island. The conclusion is that the island traded with all of these civilisations, benefiting as a result in its own, distinct civilisation, personified in the “palace culture” of Knossos and other towns.

The man who put Crete on the map was Arthur Evans, an English archaeologist. Evans was mainly interested in the cave sanctuaries located on the slopes of the mountains and the palaces – his statue now stands in front of the excavated and restored palace of Knossos, his most famous discovery. The palace, located in the hills south of the capital Heraklion, was quickly identified as the “Labyrinth” and the “Palace of King Minos”. Hence, the “Minoan civilisation” was coined. Since Evans’ time, it is accepted that the palace culture of Crete was that of a trading empire, typified with lavish and large palaces, often along the coastline, rather than in the heartland or mountainous regions. The timeframe for the civilisation had a start in ca. 2000 BC, flourishing in ca. 1500 BC, and declining in 1200 BC, a period when many if not all cultures around the Mediterranean Sea succumbed to an arduous “Dark Age”. For Crete, it was the end of an era.

According to the German geologist Hans Wunderlich, Crete’s history has been harshly misinterpreted. Whereas there is a now a more common consensus that the initial conclusions reached about the Minoan civilisation are part modern invention, part based on archaeological discoveries, the framework of the “Minoan civilisation” has not been publicly criticised as much as it perhaps should have been. Wunderlich, however, spoke up against that status quo in the 1970s, and rather than just argue against the conclusions, also put forward a theory of his own about what Crete might have been. Three decades later, Wunderlich’s interpretation has remained a hot topic of debate, though as it does not involve aliens or Atlantis, it has not captured the world’s media attention.

The “Minoan legacy” is the presence of enigmatic palaces. These are immense and complex buildings, built over several floors. Their precise function is unknown. Originally labelled a labyrinth, it is clear that they are not. As a consequence, identifying them with the “Minotaur”, the part human, part animal creature held in the Labyrinth of King Minos, cannot be made; labyrinths have always had a distinct design and a complex palace does not a labyrinth make. The problem is also that there is more than one palace – not all of these could have been palaces for a central king, like “Minos”. As a consequence, it has been argued that these were palaces that controlled “regions”. This could very well be, but what is clear to any visitor, is that the palaces all fall in the same design: situated on lowlands, close to the seashore, often aligned to important mountains, or more particularly: mountains with important caves, sometimes mythically connected with the birthplace or the place of burial of deities, Zeus in particular.
It argues that the “palaces” could more likely be “temples” rather than residential buildings. For sure, archaeologists are quick to point out that certain parts of the palaces definitely had a religious function. But some go further. Archaeologist Oswald Spengler stated in the 1930s that these “palaces” were temples for the dead. His opinion was not taken seriously, as it went against the accepted belief. Wunderlich continued where Spengler had stopped. Both noted that the state of the palaces was particularly bizarre. Thousands of people are believed to have roamed the corridors of the Palace of Knossos, but the staircases throughout the complex look as if they have never been used. Most sections of the complex reveal no sign of usage, or age. This in itself is bizarre. Almost as an aside, it is noted that the palace had no surrounding wall, making it extremely fragile. Though the island or its builder might have been unaware of war, a surrounding wall does offer protection, if only from the elements. Crete, though popular with tourists for its warm summers, nevertheless does have cold winters – and snow in the highlands.
Still, we need to wonder whether the dead had any need for a sewage system, of such complexity that it would take until Roman times before a similar construction could be seen. There is even a bathroom with a flushing toilet – though there is some discussion whether this is an original find, or an “addition” of Evans. Evans did many reconstructions throughout the complex, and some of these have been labelled “unfortunate”, as they are felt to be more in line with the early 20th century culture then with that of the ancient Minoans.
Most remarkable, however, is the fact that the ancient Minoans did not leave much behind – little waste, not many utensils, etc. This is in itself a problem, for people leave behind rubbish – and that rubbish can also reveal many facts about the people. Even so, we do not know what language they used, or what type of religion or deities they worshipped. It is nevertheless clear that they placed strong emphasis on the mountainous caves, which for the Greeks would become identified with their deities.

The palace of Knossos is famous for its depictions of white women and red men. They are processions, the men dressed in skirts. The most remarkable aspect of these scenes is that they are identical with scenes – and equally old – found on Egyptian temples. They speak of an island, identified in Egyptian sources as “Keftiu” – Crete.
For a very long period, it was felt that the Minoan and Egyptian civilisations evolved independent from one another, but these discoveries contradicted this assumption. It showed that in the 18th Dynasty, ca. 1600-1500 BC, when Crete reached its apogee, there was an intense exchange between the two “nations”.
Some archaeologists interpreted the processions as nothing more than “state visits” and exchange of gifts, i.e. forms of diplomacy. But there was some evidence that did not support this conclusion. The scenes were depicted in Egyptian graves and the processions were clearly linked with the dead. Wunderlich revisited Spengler’s opinion and came to the conclusion that the palaces were not built for a living king… but for a dead one. Sections of the palace were clearly designed to allow for the storage of the dead. Wunderlich also felt that this practice was the main reason behind the close alliance between Crete and Egypt. He even went as far as to suggest that the practice of mummification in Egypt was performed by Cretans – perhaps the mummification itself occurred in Crete.

(above) scenes of the "Keftiu" at Egyptian courts. (below) scene from Cretan palaces.

Wunderlich might have overshot this analogy, but it is clear that there are some clear observations to be made: both Crete and Egypt had cultural theatres. The bull was important both in Crete and Egypt. In Egypt, the animal is linked with the deceased king, whereas the bull is depicted across the Minoan monuments – though its specification function is unclear, because of the absence of any knowledge on the Minoan religion. The palaces depict lilies and lotus flowers, plants that have an important, religious function in Egypt. However, it is known that the Minoan palace has a depiction of what is known as “bull leaping”: people performing acrobatics on a leaping bull. Experts have identified that this form of acrobatics is impossible – humans and bulls cannot interact in such a manner. The question is therefore whether these scenes depict “imaginary” scenes, i.e. scenes that might occur in the “Afterlife”.
Wunderlich also noted that the name of king Minos is identical to the first king of the Egyptian First Dynasty, Menes. What, Wunderlich wondered, if the name was not that of a person, but instead was a honorary title, which identified a king? In that aspect, “Minos” was not the name of the king, but was literally the word for “king”. “King Minos” thus would mean “king king”. It is known that the Egyptian king had many titles, “pharaoh” being a relatively recent one.

Evans had tried to make Crete into an independent civilisation, self-sufficient, notorious in its own right. Wunderlich tried to break this wall of independence down, and suggested that Crete in essence was no civilisation, but a “vassal state”. His endeavours were opposite scientific dogma of that – and our – time and thus no-one took much notice of his observations. But… In 1991, in the Egyptian Nile Delta, a team of Austrian archaeologists led by Manfred Bietak discovered a palace complex in Tel ed-Daba (Avaris). An area on the western edge of the site, known as Ezbet Helmi, revealed a large palace-like structure dating to the Hyksos period. The ancient gardens revealed many fragments of Minoan wall-paintings, similar in style to those found in the palace at Knossos in Crete. It has been suggested that these paintings with a distinctive red-painted background may even pre-date those of Crete and Thera and possibly have influenced some of the 18th Dynasty tomb paintings that appear to include Minoan themes such as the 'flying gallop' motif of horses and bulls. In the 18th Dynasty strata of Ezbet Helmi, Dr Bietak discovered many lumps of pumice-stone, which could have come from the volcanic explosion on the island of Thera.
Avaris is notorious as according to the Egyptian priest/historian Manetho (3rd century BC) the Exodus was from a city called Avaris, which had been the capital of the Hyksos. The temple complex was indeed not built by the Egyptians and dated from the period when the Egyptians were ruled by the Hyksos, ca. 1700 BC, shortly before the 18th Dynasty that saw the exchange of Egyptian and Cretan “goods”. The origin of the Hyksos was originally attributed to the Middle East, possibly of Semitic origins.

Minoan artefact found in Avaris

More recently, the question of who the Hyksos were has been reopened. Linear A and B are two scripts of Crete. The newer Linear B was deciphered in 1953 by Michael Ventras and turned out to be Greek. In 1971, Dutch archaeologist and historian Jan Best claimed he had deciphered Linear A and had found a connection between Minoan Crete and the Hyksos. Linear A, he argued, was Semitic, related to the languages of Ugarit and Alalach in Syria. A connection between Crete and the Hyksos was not new. The well-known Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin had reached the same conclusion, at a time when the Avaris frescos had not yet been discovered.
In Knossos, an alabaster lid with the name of the Hyksos king Khyan has been found. In the Egyptian palace, frescos were found that were made of plaster. They depicted scenes that were identical to the scenes depicted in the Cretan palaces: flowers, bulls, even fragments of the famous “bull leap”, a depiction that had been unique to Crete.
Designs in the form of labyrinths were also discovered, this time in its original format. This format was specifically linked with the belief in the Afterlife and the “entrapped souls”: a labyrinth was said to “imprison” the soul.
The question of the labyrinth has also been studied by David Rohl, who thinks that there is a connection between Avaris and the Labyrinth of Hawara or Aueris (i.e. 'Avaris', meaning 'house of the department') in the Faiyum, described by the Greek traveller Herodotus. This enormous building next to the pyramid of Amenemhet III was called 'the Labyrinth' because of its endless maze of courtyards, corridors and rooms. Interestingly, it was built just before the Hyksos period.
The link between Egypt and Crete has also lead some to conclude that the enigmatic Phaistos Disc, found in the palace of Phaistos on Crete, might have been linked with the Egyptian game of Senet and Snake Game. H. Peter Aleff argues that the depictions are not a script, but are related to the signs of the board game. Senet was a popular pastime in ancient Egypt from late pre-dynastic times on and is well documented because it became an important part of the funerary magic and then evolved into today's Backgammon. Its pieces simulated the passage of the player through life and, even more importantly, through death and its perils. On its last field, they were reborn into the eternal afterlife, just as the Backgammon pieces are still "born" at the end of their pursuit.
The Snake Game appears even earlier in the record, with the oldest surviving copies of any known board game. It helped at least one king in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts to ascend to heaven and so seems to have represented the same journey, except that its path was not folded, as in Senet, but coiled into the spiral of a snake's rolled-up body. On one of its sculpted stone boards, the tail of the snake ended in the head of a goose.

The 1991 discovery has revealed that there is indeed a close relationship between the Egyptians and Crete… and the enigmatic Hyksos. Were they inhabitants from Crete that departed to Egypt? The Hyksos period coincides exactly with the time between the Old and New Palace Period on Crete. When the Hyksos invaded Egypt, the old palaces were destroyed, probably by an earthquake. Did the Hyksos (partly) come from Crete? Or did the Hyksos, once out of grave and power in Egypt, travel to Crete, to continue their culture there? The right answer has a lot to do with correct dating, and many have argued that the alignment of the various cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean has not been a complete success. Only the future will shed more light on the enigmatic interrelationship between these cultures, which continue to form the centre of a debate… that should occur, but for some reason is not being held.

This article originally appeared in Frontier Magazine 6.1 (January-February 2000) and was adapted.