Knowledge of ancient civilizations. Minoan civilization

Prerequisites for the formation of states in Crete

Crete was the oldest center of civilization in Europe. In terms of its geographical position, this mountainous island, elongated in length, closing the entrance to the Aegean Sea from the south, represents, as it were, a natural outpost of the European mainland, extended far south towards the African and Asian coasts. mediterranean sea. Already in ancient times, sea routes crossed here, connecting the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Islands with Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa. The culture of Crete, which arose at one of the busiest crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean, was influenced by such heterogeneous and widely separated cultures as the ancient "river" civilizations of the Near East (and), on the one hand, and the early agricultural cultures, the Danubian lowland and Balkan Greece, on the other hand. another. But a particularly important role in the formation of the Cretan civilization was played by the culture of the Cyclades archipelago neighboring Crete, rightfully considered one of the leading cultures of the Aegean world in the 3rd millennium BC.

The time of the emergence of the Minoan civilization is the turn of the III-II millennium BC. or the end of the Early Bronze Age. Until that moment, the Cretan culture did not stand out in any noticeable way against the general background of the most ancient cultures of the Aegean world. The era, just like the era of the Early Bronze Age that replaced it (VI-III millennium BC), was in the history of Crete a time of gradual, relatively calm accumulation of forces before a decisive leap to a new stage of social development. What prepared this leap? First of all, the development and improvement of the productive forces of the Cretan society. Even at the beginning of the III millennium BC. in Crete, the production of copper was mastered, and then bronze. Bronze tools and weapons are gradually replacing similar stone products. Important changes take place during this period in the agriculture of Crete. It is now based on a new multicultural type of agriculture, focused on the simultaneous cultivation of three main crops (the so-called "Mediterranean triad"), namely -

• cereals (mainly barley),
• grapes,
• olives.

Growth in productivity and population

The result of all these economic shifts was an increase in the productivity of agricultural labor and an increase in the mass of surplus product. On this basis, reserve funds of agricultural products began to be created in individual communities, which not only covered the shortage of food in lean years, but also provided food for people not directly involved in agricultural production, for example, artisans. Thus, for the first time, it became possible to separate craft from agriculture, and the development of professional specialization in various branches of handicraft production. The high level of professional skill achieved by Minoan artisans already in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC is evidenced by the finds of jewelry, vessels carved from stone, and carved seals dating back to that time. At the end of the same period, the potter's wheel became known in Crete, which made it possible to achieve great progress in the production of ceramics.

Palicastro, 16th century BC. Sea style.

At the same time, a certain part of the community reserve funds could be used for intercommunal and intertribal exchange. The development of trade in Crete, as well as in the Aegean in general, was closely connected with the development of navigation. It is no coincidence that almost all the Cretan settlements known to us now were located either directly on the sea coast, or somewhere not far from it. Having mastered the art of navigation, the inhabitants of Crete already in the III millennium BC. entered into close contacts with the population of the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, penetrated the coastal regions of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, reached Syria and Egypt. Like other maritime peoples of antiquity, the Cretans willingly combined trade and fishing with piracy.

The progress of the Cretan economy during the Early Bronze Age contributed to the rapid growth of population in the most fertile areas of the island. This is evidenced by the emergence of many new settlements, which accelerated especially at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Most of them were located in eastern Crete and in the vast central plain of Messara. At the same time, an intensive process of social stratification of the Cretan society is going on. Within individual communities, an influential stratum of the nobility stands out. It consists mainly of tribal leaders and priests. All these people were exempted from direct participation in productive activities and occupied a privileged position in comparison with the mass of ordinary community members. At the other pole of the same social system, slaves appear, mainly from among the captured foreigners.

In the same period, new forms of political relations began to take shape in Crete. Stronger and more populous communities subjugate their less powerful neighbors, make them pay tribute and impose all sorts of other duties. Already existing tribes and tribal unions are internally consolidated, acquiring a clearer political organization. The logical result of all these processes was the formation at the turn of the 3rd-2nd thousand of the first "palace" states, which took place almost simultaneously in various regions of Crete.

The first class societies and states

Palace style pithos. Knossos, 1450 BC

Already at the beginning of the II millennium BC. several independent states have developed on the island. Each of them included several dozens of small communal settlements, grouped around one of the four large palaces now known to archaeologists. This number includes the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia in the central part of Crete and the palace of Kato Zakro on the east coast of the island. Unfortunately, only a few survived from the "old palaces" that existed in these places. The later building almost everywhere erased their traces. Only in Phaistos, the large western courtyard of the old palace and part of the interior adjoining it have been preserved.

Among the palace utensils of this period, the clay painted vases of the Kamares style are of the greatest interest (their first examples were found in the Kamares cave near Phaistos, whence the name comes from). The stylized floral ornament decorating the walls of these vessels creates the impression of a non-stop movement of geometric figures combined with each other: spirals, disks, rosettes, etc. Here, for the first time, that dynamism (a sense of movement) makes itself felt, which will later become a hallmark of all Minoan art. . The color richness of these paintings is also striking.

Vessel "Kamares". Palais Festus, 1850-1700 BC.

Already in the period of the "old palaces", the socio-economic and political development of Cretan society had advanced so far that it gave rise to an urgent need for writing, without which none of the early civilizations known to us can do. The pictographic writing that arose at the beginning of this period (it is known mainly from short - of two or three characters - inscriptions on seals) gradually gave way to a more advanced system of syllabic writing - the so-called linear A. Dedicatory inscriptions made in Linear A have been preserved, as well as, albeit in a small number, business accounting documents.

Rise of the Cretan Civilization. Predominance of Knossos

Around 1700 BC the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Kato Zakro were destroyed, apparently as a result of a strong earthquake, accompanied by a large fire. This catastrophe, however, only briefly suspended the development of Cretan culture. Soon, new buildings of the same type were built on the site of the destroyed palaces, basically, apparently, retaining the layout of their predecessors, although surpassing them in their monumentality and magnificence of architectural decoration. Thus, a new stage began in the history of Minoan Crete, known in science as the "period of new palaces" or the late Minoan period.

Knossos palace

The most remarkable architectural structure of this period is the palace of Minos discovered by A. Evans at Knossos. The extensive material collected by archaeologists during excavations in this palace allows us to get an idea of ​​what the Minoan civilization was like at its peak. The Greeks called the palace of Minos "the labyrinth" (the word itself, apparently, was borrowed by them from the language of the pre-Greek population of Crete). In Greek myths, the labyrinth was described as a huge building with many rooms and corridors. A person who got into the labyrinth could no longer get out without outside help and inevitably died: in the depths of the palace lived the bloodthirsty Minotaur - a monster with a human body and a bull's head. The tribes and peoples subject to Minos were obliged to amuse the terrible beast with human sacrifices every year, until he was killed by the famous Athenian hero Theseus. Evans' excavations showed that the stories of the Greeks about the labyrinth had a certain basis. In Knossos, a building of outstanding size or even a whole complex of buildings with a total area of ​​10,000 m2, which included about three hundred rooms of the most diverse purposes, was indeed discovered.

Modern view of the Palace of Knossos. Construction ca. 1700 BC

The architecture of the Cretan palaces is unusual, original and unlike anything else. It has nothing in common with the ponderous monumentality of Egyptian and Assyro-Babylonian buildings. At the same time, it is far from the harmonic balance of the classical Greek temple with its strictly mathematically adjusted proportions. Internal layout The palace is extremely complex, even intricate. Living rooms, utility rooms, corridors connecting them, courtyards and light wells are located, at first glance, without any visible system and clear plan, forming some kind of anthill or coral colony. For all the chaos of the palace construction, it is still perceived as a single architectural ensemble. In many ways, this is facilitated by the occupying central part The palace is a large rectangular courtyard, with which all the main premises that were part of this huge complex were connected in one way or another. The courtyard was paved with large gypsum slabs and, apparently, was used not for household needs, but for some kind of religious purposes.

During its centuries-old history, the Palace of Knossos has been rebuilt several times. Its individual parts and the entire building as a whole probably had to be restored after each strong earthquake, which occurs in Crete about once every fifty years. At the same time, new premises were attached to the old, already existing ones. Rooms and pantries seemed to be strung one to the other, forming long rows-enfilades. Separate buildings and groups of buildings gradually merged into a single residential area, grouped around the central courtyard. Despite the well-known unsystematic internal development, the palace was abundantly supplied with everything necessary to ensure that the life of its inhabitants was calm and comfortable. The builders of the palace took care of such important comfort elements as plumbing and sewerage. During the excavations, stone gutters were found, through which sewage was removed outside the palace. A water supply system was also discovered, thanks to which the inhabitants of the palace never suffered from a lack of drinking water. The Palace of Knossos also had a well-thought-out ventilation and lighting system. The entire thickness of the building was cut from top to bottom with special light wells, through which sunlight and air entered the lower floors of the palace. Large windows and open verandas served the same purpose.

A significant part of the lower, basement floor of the palace was occupied by pantries for storing food: wine, olive oil and other products.

Gold Cup #2 from Vafio. 15th century BC.

During the excavations of the Palace of Knossos, archaeologists have unearthed a wide variety of works of art and artistic crafts. Among them are magnificent painted vases decorated with images of octopuses and other marine animals, sacred stone vessels (the so-called rhytons) in the form of a bull's head, wonderful faience figurines depicting people and animals with unusual credibility and expressiveness for that time, jewelry of the finest workmanship. , including gold rings and carved seals from precious stones. Many of these things were created in the palace itself, in special workshops in which jewelers, potters, vase painters and artisans of other professions worked, serving the king and the nobility surrounding him with their work (the premises of the workshops were found in many places on the territory of the palace). Of particular interest is the wall painting that adorned the inner chambers, corridors and porticos of the palace. Some of these frescoes depicted scenes from the life of nature: plants, birds, marine animals. Others showed the inhabitants of the palace itself: slender, tanned men with long black hair styled in whimsically curly locks, with a thin “aspen” waist and broad shoulders, and “ladies” in huge bell-shaped skirts with many frills and tight corsages. Two main features distinguish the frescoes of the Palace of Knossos from other works of the same genre found elsewhere, for example in Egypt:

• firstly, the high coloristic skill of the artists who created them, their keen sense of color, and,
• secondly, art in conveying the movement of people and animals.

Bull Games. Fresco from the Palace of Knossos.

An example of the dynamic expression that distinguishes the works of Minoan painters is the magnificent frescoes, which represent the so-called "plays with bulls" or the Minoan tauromachy. We see on them a rapidly rushing bull and an acrobat doing a series of intricate jumps right on his horns and on his back. In front of and behind the bull, the artist depicted the figures of two girls in loincloths, obviously the "assistant" of the acrobat. Apparently, it was an important religious ritual associated with one of the main Minoan cults - the cult of the bull god.

Scenes of tauromachy are perhaps the only disturbing note in Minoan art, which is generally distinguished by serenity and cheerfulness. He is completely alien to the cruel bloody scenes of war and hunting, so popular in contemporary art in the countries of the Middle East and mainland Greece. Yes, this is not surprising. From the hostile outside world, Crete was reliably protected by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea washing it. In those days, there was not a single significant maritime power in the immediate vicinity of the island, and its inhabitants could feel safe. This is the only way to explain the paradoxical fact that amazed archaeologists: all the Cretan palaces, including Knossos, remained unfortified throughout almost their entire history.

Religious beliefs of the ancient Cretans

In the works of palace art, the life of the Minoan society is presented in a somewhat embellished form. In fact, it also had its dark sides. The nature of the island was not always favorable to its inhabitants. As already noted, earthquakes constantly occurred in Crete, often reaching destructive force. To this should be added the frequent sea storms in these places, accompanied by thunderstorms and heavy rains, dry years, periodically bringing down on Crete, as well as on the rest of Greece, famine and epidemics. In order to protect themselves from all these terrible natural disasters, the inhabitants of Crete turned to their many gods and goddesses for help.

Goddess with snakes from the Palace of Knossos. OK. 1600-1500 BC.

The central figure of the Minoan pantheon was the great goddess - the "mistress" (this is how her inscriptions found in Knossos and in some other places are called). In the works of Cretan art (mainly in small plastic: figurines and seals), the goddess appears before us in her various incarnations. Sometimes we see her as a formidable mistress of wild animals, the mistress of mountains and forests with all their inhabitants (cf. the Greek Artemis), sometimes a blessed patroness of vegetation, primarily cereals and fruit trees (cf. the Greek Demeter), sometimes a sinister queen underworld, holding writhing snakes in her hands (this is depicted by her famous faience statuette of the “goddess with snakes” from the Palace of Knossos, compare the Greek Persephone with her). Behind all these images, the features of the ancient deity of fertility are guessed - the great mother of all people, animals and plants, the veneration of which was widespread in all countries of the Mediterranean since the Neolithic era.

Next to the great goddess - the personification of femininity and motherhood, a symbol of the eternal renewal of nature, there was in the Minoan pantheon a deity of a completely different plan, embodying the wild destructive forces of nature - the formidable element of an earthquake, the power of a raging sea. These terrifying phenomena were transformed in the minds of the Minoans into the image of a mighty and ferocious bull-god. On some Minoan seals, the divine bull is depicted as a fantastic creature - a man with a bull's head, which immediately reminds us of the later Greek myth of the Minotaur. According to the myth, the Minotaur was born from the unnatural relationship of Queen Pasiphaia, the wife of Minos, with a monstrous bull, which was presented to Minos by Poseidon, the lord of the sea (according to one version of the myth, Poseidon himself reincarnated as a bull). In ancient times, it was Poseidon who was considered the culprit of earthquakes: with the blows of his trident, he set the sea and land in motion (hence his usual epithet "earthshaker"). Probably, the same kind of ideas were associated among the most ancient inhabitants of Crete with their bull-god. In order to pacify the formidable deity and calm the angry elements, plentiful sacrifices were made to him, apparently including human ones (an echo of this barbaric rite was again preserved in the myth of the Minotaur). Probably, the already mentioned games with the bull served the same purpose - to prevent or stop the earthquake. The symbols of the divine bull - the conventional image of bull horns - are found in almost every Minoan sanctuary.

A young man among the lilies, "Priest-King". Fresco-painted relief, height 2.2 m. Knossos, 1600 BC.

Religion played a huge role in the life of the Minoan society, leaving its mark on all spheres of its spiritual and practical activities. This shows an important difference between the Cretan culture and the later one, for which such a close interweaving of "divine and human" was no longer characteristic. During the excavations of the Palace of Knossos, a huge amount of all kinds of cult utensils was found, including

• figurines of the great goddess,
• sacred symbols like the already mentioned bull horns,
• double ax - labrys,
• altars and tables for sacrifices,
• various vessels for libations.

Many of the premises of the palace were clearly not intended for household needs or for housing, but were used as sanctuaries for religious rites and ceremonies. Among them are crypts - caches in which sacrifices were made to underground gods, pools for ritual ablutions, small home chapels, etc. The very architecture of the palace, the paintings that adorned its walls, and other works of art were thoroughly permeated with complex religious symbols. In essence, the palace was nothing more than a huge sanctuary, a palace-temple, in which all the inhabitants, including the king himself, performed various priestly duties, participating in the rites, the images of which we see on the palace frescoes. So, it can be assumed that the king - the ruler of Knossos - was at the same time the high priest of the god-king, while the queen - his wife - occupied a corresponding position among the priestesses of the great goddess - "mistress".

royal power

According to many scientists, there was a special form of royal power in Crete, known in science under the name of "theocracy" (one of the varieties of the monarchy, in which secular and spiritual power belongs to the same person). The person of the king was considered "sacred and inviolable." Even the sight of him was forbidden to "mere mortals." This can explain the rather strange, at first glance, circumstance that among the works of Minoan art there is not a single one that could be confidently recognized as an image of a royal person. The whole life of the king and his household was strictly regulated and raised to the level of a religious ritual. The kings of Knossos did not just live and rule. They were sacred.

The “Holy of Holies” of the Palace of Knossos, the place where the king-priest “condescended” to communicate with his subjects, made sacrifices to the gods and at the same time decided state affairs, is his throne room. Before getting into it, visitors were led through the vestibule, in which there was a large porphyry bowl for ritual ablutions: in order to appear before the "royal eyes", it was necessary to first wash off all evil from oneself. Along the walls of the hall there were benches lined with knocks, on which the royal advisers, high priests and dignitaries of Knossos sat. The walls of the throne room are painted with colorful frescoes depicting griffins - fantastic monsters with a bird's head on a lion's body. Griffins lie in solemn frozen poses on both sides of the throne, as if protecting the lord of Crete from all sorts of troubles and hardships.

Socio-economic relations

The magnificent palaces of the Cretan kings, the riches stored in their cellars and pantries, the atmosphere of comfort and abundance in which the kings themselves and their entourage lived - all this was created by the labor of many thousands of nameless peasants and artisans, about whose life little is known.

Steatite vessel from Agia Triade. OK. 1550-1500 BC.

The court masters who created all the most remarkable masterpieces of Minoan art, apparently, had little interest in the life of the common people and therefore did not reflect it in their work. As an exception, we can refer to a small steatite vessel found during excavations of the royal villa in Agia Triada near Phaistos. The skillfully executed relief decorating the upper part of the vessel depicts a procession of peasants armed with long forked sticks (with the help of such tools the Cretan peasants probably knocked ripe olives from the trees). Some of the participants in the procession sing. The procession is led by a priest, dressed in a wide scaly cloak. Apparently, the artist who created this little masterpiece of Minoan sculpture wanted to capture the harvest festival or some other similar ceremony.

Some idea of ​​the life of the lower strata of Cretan society is provided by materials from mass graves and rural sanctuaries. Such sanctuaries were usually located somewhere in the remote corners of the mountains: in caves and on the tops of mountains. During excavations, uncomplicated initiatory gifts are found in them in the form of figures of people and animals roughly molded from clay. These things, as well as the primitive inventory of ordinary burials, testify to the low standard of living of the Minoan village, to the backwardness of its culture in comparison with the refined culture of the palaces.

The bulk of the working population of Crete lived in small towns and villages scattered over the fields and hills in the vicinity of the palaces. These villages, with their wretched adobe houses, closely pressed against each other, with their crooked narrow streets, make up a striking contrast with the monumental architecture of the palaces, the luxury of their interior decoration.

Rock crystal rhyton. Palace of Kato Zakro. OK. 1700-1450 BC.

A typical example of an ordinary Minoan settlement is Gournia, located in the northeastern part of Crete. Its area is very small - only 1.5 hectares (this is only a little more area occupied by the Palace of Knossos without buildings adjacent to it). The entire settlement consisted of several dozen houses, built very compactly and grouped into separate blocks or quarters, inside which the houses stood close to each other. The houses themselves are small - no more than 50 m2 each. Their design is extremely primitive. The lower part of the walls is made of stones fastened with clay, the upper part is made of unbaked bricks. The frames of windows and doors were made of wood. Utility rooms were found in some houses: pantries with pithoi for storing supplies, presses for squeezing grapes and olive oil. During the excavations, quite a lot of various tools made of copper and bronze were found.

There were several craft workshops in Gournia, the products of which were most likely designed for local consumption, among them a smithy and a pottery workshop. The proximity of the sea suggests that the inhabitants of Gournia combined agriculture with trade and fishing. The central part of the settlement was occupied by a building vaguely reminiscent of the Cretan palaces in its layout, but much inferior to them in size and in the richness of the interior decoration. It was probably the home of the local ruler, who, like the entire population of Gurnia, was dependent on the king of Knossos or some other lord from large palaces. Near the ruler's house was arranged open area, which could be used as a place for meetings and all kinds of religious ceremonies or performances. Like all other large and small settlements of the Minoan era, Gournia did not have any fortifications and was open to attack both from the sea and from land. Such was the appearance of the Minoan village, as far as it can now be imagined from the data of archaeological excavations.

What connected the palaces with their rural areas? We have every reason to believe that relations of domination and subordination, characteristic of any early class society, have already developed in Cretan society. It can be assumed that the agricultural population of the Kingdom of Knossos, like any of the states of Crete, was subject to duties both in kind and labor in favor of the palace. It was obliged to deliver cattle, grain, oil, wine and other products to the palace. All these receipts were recorded by palace scribes on clay tablets, and then they were handed over to the palace storerooms, where huge stocks of food and other material values ​​accumulated in this way. The palace itself was built and rebuilt by the hands of the same peasants and slaves, roads and irrigation canals were laid.

Labrys is a votive golden ax from the cave of Arkalochori. 1650-1600 BC.

It is unlikely that they did all this only under duress. The palace was the main sanctuary of the entire state, and elementary piety demanded from the villager that he honor the gods who lived in it with gifts, giving surpluses of his household supplies to arrange festivities and sacrifices, however, between the people and their gods stood a whole army of intermediaries - a staff of professional priests serving the sanctuary led by a "sacred king". In essence, it was an already established, clearly defined stratum of hereditary priestly nobility, opposed to the rest of society as a closed aristocratic estate. Uncontrollably disposing of the reserves stored in the palace warehouses, the priests could use the lion's share of these wealth for their own needs. Nevertheless, the people unlimitedly trusted these people, since "God's grace" lay on them.

Of course, along with religious motives, the concentration of the surplus product of agricultural labor in the hands of the palace elite was also dictated by purely economic expediency. Over the years, food stocks accumulated in the palace could serve as a reserve fund in case of famine. At the expense of these same reserves, artisans who worked for the state were provided with food. The surplus, which was not used locally, was sold to distant overseas countries: Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, where they could be exchanged for rare types of raw materials that were absent in Crete itself: gold and copper, ivory and purple, rare breeds wood and stone.

Merchant sea expeditions in those days were associated with great risk and required large expenditures for their preparation. Only the state, which had the necessary material and human resources, was able to organize and finance such an enterprise. It goes without saying that the scarce goods obtained in this way all settled in the same palace storerooms and from there were distributed among the craftsmen who worked both in the palace itself and in its environs. Thus, the palace performed truly universal functions in Minoan society, being at the same time the administrative and religious center of the state, its main granary, workshop and trading post. In the social and economic life of Crete, palaces played roughly the same role that cities play in more developed societies.

Creation of a maritime power. Decline of the Cretan Civilization

Rise of Crete

A girl worshiping a deity. Bronze. 1600-1500 BC.

The highest flowering of the Minoan civilization falls on the XVI - the first half of the XV century. BC. It was at this time that the Cretan palaces, especially the palace of Knossos, were rebuilt with unprecedented brilliance and splendor, masterpieces of Minoan art and artistic crafts were created. At the same time, all of Crete was united under the rule of the kings of Knossos and became a single centralized state. This is evidenced by a network of convenient wide roads laid throughout the island and connecting Knossos - the capital of the state - with its most remote corners. This is also indicated by the absence of fortifications in Knossos and other palaces of Crete. If each of these palaces were the capital independent state, its owners would probably take care of their protection from hostile neighbors.

During this period, there was a unified system of measures in Crete, apparently forcibly introduced by the rulers of the island. Cretan stone weights, decorated with the image of an octopus, have survived. The weight of one such weight was 29 kg. Large bronze ingots that looked like stretched bull skins weighed the same amount - the so-called "Cretan talents". Most likely, they were used as units of exchange in all kinds of trade transactions, replacing money that was still missing. It is very possible that the unification of Crete around the Palace of Knossos was carried out by the famous Minos, about whom the later Greek myths tell so much. Although we may well assume that this name was borne by many kings who ruled Crete for a number of generations and constituted one dynasty. Greek historians considered Minos the first thalassocrator - the ruler of the sea. It was said about him that he created a large navy, eradicated piracy and established his dominance over the entire Aegean Sea, its islands and coasts.

Sacred bull horns. Knossos palace. 1900-1600 BC.

This legend, apparently, is not devoid of historical grain. Indeed, as archeology shows, in the XVI century. BC. there is a wide marine expansion of Crete in the Aegean basin. Minoan colonies and trading posts appear on the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, on Rhodes, and even on the coast of Asia Minor, in the region of Miletus.

On their fast ships, sailing and oared, the Minoans penetrate the most remote corners of the ancient Mediterranean. Traces of their settlements or, perhaps, just ship anchorages have been found on the shores of Sicily, in southern Italy, and even on the Iberian Peninsula. According to one of the myths, Minos died during a campaign in Sicily and was buried there in a magnificent tomb.

At the same time, the Cretans are establishing lively trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and the states. This is indicated by the rather frequent finds of Minoan pottery made in these two areas. At the same time, things of Egyptian and Syrian origin were found in Crete itself. On the Egyptian frescoes of the time of the famous queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (first half of the 15th century), the ambassadors of the country of Keftiu (as the Egyptians called Crete) are represented in typical Minoan clothes - aprons and high ankle boots with gifts to the pharaoh in their hands. There is no doubt that at the time to which these frescoes date, Crete was the strongest maritime power in the whole world. Eastern Mediterranean, and Egypt was interested in friendship with its kings.

Disaster in Crete

In the middle of the XV century BC. the situation has changed dramatically. Crete was hit by a catastrophe, the equal of which the island has not experienced in its entire centuries-old history. Almost all palaces and settlements, with the exception of Knossos, were destroyed. Many of them, for example opened in the 60s. 20th century palace in Kato Zakro, were forever abandoned by their inhabitants and forgotten for millennia. Minoan culture could no longer recover from this terrible blow. From the middle of the XV century. her decline begins. Crete is losing its position as the leading cultural center of the Aegean.

The causes of the catastrophe, which played a fatal role in the fate of the Minoan civilization, have not yet been precisely established. According to the most plausible guess put forward by the Greek archaeologist S. Marinatos, the death of palaces and other Cretan settlements was the result of a grandiose volcanic eruption on about. Fera (modern Santorini) in the southern part of the Aegean Sea. Other scholars are more inclined to believe that the Achaean Greeks, who invaded Crete from mainland Greece (most likely from the Peloponnese), were the perpetrators of the disaster. They plundered and devastated the island, which had long attracted them with its fabulous wealth, and subjugated its population to their power. It is possible to reconcile these two points of view on the problem of the decline of the Minoan civilization, if we assume that the Achaeans invaded Crete after the island was devastated by a volcanic catastrophe, and, without meeting resistance from the demoralized and greatly reduced in number of the local population, took possession of its most important life centers. Indeed, in the culture of Knossos, the only one of the Cretan palaces that survived the catastrophe of the middle of the 15th century, important changes took place, indicating the emergence of a new people in these places. Full-blooded realistic Minoan art is now giving way to a dry and lifeless stylization, which can be exemplified by the Knossos vases, painted in the so-called "palace style" (second half of the 15th century).

Rhyton in the form of a bull's head. Chlorite. Kato Zagros. OK. 1450 BC

The motifs traditional for Minoan vase painting (plants, flowers, marine animals) turn into abstract graphic schemes on vases of the “palace style”, which indicates a sharp change in the artistic taste of the inhabitants of the palace. At the same time, graves appeared in the vicinity of Knossos containing a wide variety of weapons: swords, daggers, helmets, arrowheads and spears, which was not at all typical of the previous Minoan burials. Probably, representatives of the Achaean military nobility, who settled in the Palace of Knossos, were buried in these graves. Finally, one more fact that indisputably indicates the penetration of new ethnic elements into Crete: almost all the tablets of the Knossos archive that have come down to us were written not in Minoan, but in Greek (Achaean) language. These documents date mainly from the end of the 15th century. BC.

At the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 14th century. BC. The palace of Knossos was destroyed and was never fully restored in the future. Wonderful works of Minoan art perished in the fire. Archaeologists managed to restore only a small part of them. From this moment on, the decline of the Minoan civilization becomes an irreversible process. From a leading cultural center, as it has been for over five centuries, Crete is turning into a remote, backward province. The main center of cultural progress and civilization in the Aegean basin is now moving north, to the territory of mainland Greece, where at that time the so-called Mycenaean culture flourished.

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Crete is the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean and the largest Greek island and the second largest (after Cyprus) in the Eastern Mediterranean and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean basin. Located in the southern part of the Aegean Sea. The capital of Crete is Heraklion. The area of ​​the island is 8336 km². The length of the coastline is 1046 km, the length of the island is 257 km, the width is from 13 to 60 km. The population of Crete is 650,000 people (as of 2005). The two largest cities of Crete, Heraklion and Chania, are also the two main gateways for people and trade. In the central part of the island there are three mountain ranges with a height of more than 2000 m, in which there are flat plateaus with fertile soil. Three mountain range Crete gently descends to fertile valleys and turns into beautiful beaches. The intricately indented coastline will always give you the opportunity to relax in a calm, cozy bay with a transparent azure water. The former grandeur of the brilliant Minoan civilization, the progenitor of European culture, is still preserved in the ruins of ancient palaces, in the grandiose labyrinth palace of King Minos. The mountains are cut deep canyons going down to the sea. There are more than 3,000 caves on the island, famous for their stalactites. A feature of Crete is the combination of mountains and magnificent plateaus with windmills, rocky shores and coves, traditional villages, endless pebble and sandy beaches.

Myths and legends Ancient Greece are so closely intertwined with history that it is now difficult to separate truth and fiction. It was on Crete in the cave of Mount Dikti Rhea, secretly from the bloodthirsty Kronos, who, fearing to be deposed by his children, swallowed every time a newborn child, gave birth to Zeus, the father of all the gods. Having kidnapped the beautiful Europa, Zeus spent her honeymoon here, where he grew up. In Crete, King Minos, the son of Zeus and Europe, created his mighty empire. Here, the most skillful architect Daedalus, on the orders of Minos, built the Palace of Knossos with an intricate labyrinth in which the monstrous Minotaur lived, born of Minos's wife Pasiphae from a bull. The son of the Cretan king Minos Androgey won the Panathenaic Games, but was killed out of envy by his rivals. Minos demanded a ransom for the death of his son: the Athenians had to send seven young men and the same number of girls every nine years to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur. Among the doomed, the brave Theseus, the son of the Athenian king Aegeus and Ephra, voluntarily went to Crete and killed the Minotaur. But the labyrinth was so intricate that it was impossible to get out of it. The daughter of Minos Ariadne, who fell in love with Theseus, gave the hero a thread, thanks to which he and his companions found their way back.

Crete is the oldest center of civilization in Europe and at the same time modern tourist centre mediterranean. Between the Aegean and the Mediterranean, between Europe, Asia and Africa lies this largest island of Greece. The island of Crete separates the Aegean Sea from the Libyan Sea and is located closer to the southern part of Europe, it is the closest region of Europe to the equator. It is located at almost the same distance from Europe (110 km), Asia (175 km) and Africa (300 km) and is washed by four seas - the Aegean, Cretan, Ionian and Libyan. Crete has a mild subtropical climate - the most beneficial for health. During the holiday season, which lasts from April to October, rain is very rare.

Crete it is impossible to imagine without the epithet “the most”: this is the largest island of Greece, the southernmost island of Europe, here are the cleanest beaches, most of which have been awarded UN blue flags, the most diverse base of hotels - from modest two-star hotels to chic pompous “six-star” hotels and luxurious villas . Crete is famous for the most delicious Greek cuisine, as well as the most charming and hospitable people. Finally, this is one of my favorites. summer destinations- it is difficult to put an end to this series of superlatives.

Travelers will find peace and quiet in the most expensive and prestigious resort of the island, Elounda, located on the shores of Mirabello Bay. Fans of a lively holiday will prefer the most "active", one of the best youth resorts, the tourist center of Hersonissos. Or opt for the small villages of Agia Pelagia or Bali. Formerly quite recently simple fishing villages, they are chosen by tourists for their numerous rocks and coves. Or maybe go to the beloved by the Greeks themselves, located in a mountainous area in the west, the most beautiful city on the island of Chania. Whatever you choose, it is worth visiting the tropical palm forest that has grown on a sandy shore a few kilometers from the city of Agios Nikolaos.

The long Neolithic period on the island was replaced by the brilliant Minoan era, whose name comes from the name of the mythical king Minos, the ruler of the kingdom and the palace of Knossos.

The Minoan civilization was established and flourished from 2900 BC. to 1100 BC, a period of more than 1500 years.

The Minoan period is divided into four main ones:

Pre-Palace period (3300 - 2000 BC)

Old Palace period (2000 - 1750 BC)

New palace period (1750 - 1490 BC)

Post-palace period (1490 - 1100 BC)

The excavations of the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans have for the first time shed light on a culture whose existence was previously known only from the Homeric epic and the Greek myth of the Minotaur.

The Minotaur, half man, half bull, devoured young men and women who were brought to him as tribute from mainland Greece.

Evans at the beginning of the last century found the ruins of the Knossos Palace, which existed on the island of Crete from 1700 BC. and after.

The Palace of Knossos had a water and sewer network that proved to be more perfect than any built in Europe during the Roman era. The walls were elaborately decorated with frescoes, showing the Minoans as a happy and peaceful people who lived in harmony with nature, had an obvious penchant for dancing, and enjoyed great social festivals and sporting events.

The structure of the Palace of Knossos seemed chaotic and complex to the first visitors, and this fact may have given rise to the myth of the famous labyrinth.

What was not suitable for growing crops was ideal for vines or olives. From then until today, oil and wine are the main agricultural products grown and exported from Crete.

Sea

The Minoans soon realized that the sea that surrounded them, and which they still feared, had actually become their new best friend. The sea was an effective deterrent to invasions than any of the fortifications.

During the development and prosperity of civilization, the Minoans did not have to build walls around their cities. Thanks to the sea, the Minoans established cultural ties with other countries. Gradually they became virtuosos in shipbuilding, and the Minoan civilization became one of the first civilizations to base its development on the commercial fleet. The Minoans quickly colonized the nearby islands of the Aegean, the Cyclades, and began trading with Egypt and Syria. It is believed that they arrived in Sicily. The profits from trade and the accumulated experience allowed them to build large ports, aqueducts and impressive palaces.

The Minoan sailors were selfless and their ships were more advanced.

The frescoes depicted ships with a high prow, a short stern, a large mast in the center of a square cloth, and a large blade at the stern for the rudder.

And when the wind blew, more than 25 rowers on each side of the ship provided it with the necessary power to move. High bows cut the waves, and heavy and reliable hulls made them stronger and more stable during a storm. Even the arrogant Egyptians admired the Minoans' maritime abilities. In an Egyptian tomb, a fresco depicts a group of Minoans, whom they called "Keftiu", bringing gifts to the pharaoh. It is likely that the pharaoh of Egypt hired the Minoans with their ships to transport the Lebanese cedar to his country.

Character

The Minoans developed an efficient central authority to manage and track trade. The registers were written on clay tablets, originally in a form that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and after 1700 B.C. - using a syllabary known as linear.

Perhaps because of their isolation, the Minoans fought less than other peoples of that time. They never covered the walls with scenes of battles or military exploits, nor did they describe military exploits.

Their favorite themes were man in his daily life or religious and sporting events, as well as images of nature - flowers, fish, birds and dolphins.

Nor did they erect statues or large mounds to satisfy vanity or emphasize someone's power. Instead, their art is dominated by portraits of charming people with long black hair, tall and slender, in beautiful, colorful costumes. The women, in particular, are depicted wearing stunning colorful dresses that leave their breasts open, perhaps as a sign of beauty, health, and fertility. The Greeks assumed that the appearance of dances belongs to the Minoans.

Minoan art is spontaneous and light, full of rhythmic movements. According to what is depicted in the frescoes, the Minoans were probably the happiest people of the Bronze Age.

Society

Women in Crete enjoyed more freedom than women in any other culture of this era, even more than in Egypt. The frescoes in the palaces depict them as free, dressed in elegant dresses, wearing make-up and enjoying social celebrations with men, or even taking part in sporting events and competitions.

The wall painting is characterized by the depiction of a public celebration ceremony, when the crowd gathered in the square of the Palace of Knossos to watch the athletes perform difficult and risky bull jumps.

Perhaps Homer intuitively assumed when he stated in the Iliad that Crete had 90 cities. However, during the zenith of the Minoan civilization (1700 - 1200 BC), the island's population reached 250,000 and 40,000 of them lived in Knossos.

The cream of Cretan society consisted of the noble aristocracy, priests and priestesses.

The middle class consisted of artisans, merchants and employees, while the working class of that time consisted of farmers, shepherds and workers. The last social class is the serfs. The latter, despite their humble status, fared better than slaves in any other Bronze Age civilization.

Crete has never experienced the social unrest and upheaval that affects the era of most societies.

A thousand years later, Aristotle would say that the serfs of Minoan Crete received all the privileges of Minoan citizens, with the exception of two: they could not bear arms and could not take part in sports and gymnastic events.

We do not know if all or most of the Minoans could live in large houses, but we are sure that many of them lived comfortably, decorating their homes with beautiful pots and gardens. There were no hearths for cooking in their homes. For cooking, they used separate ovens made of clay or bronze. They ate better than their contemporaries the Egyptians of Mesopotamia. They made bread from a mixture of wheat and barley flour. Lettuce, lentils, beans, peas, plums, quince and figs were supplied from their gardens and orchards. Their cows and goats provided the necessary quantities of milk from which they made their cheese. Well, the sea supplied them with octopus, squid, mussels and many types of fish. They drank mainly wine, however, due to the gradual increase in the cultivation of cereals, at some point it became insufficient, and beer appeared.

Religion

Minoan culture, religion and politics were intertwined. The throne room of King Minos, beautiful but not particularly luxurious, was a place where, in addition to politics, religious officials often performed important ceremonies. Sport events also had the character of cult ceremonies.

The sacred animal of the Minoans of Crete was Tavros. Works of art depicting the sacred animal are everywhere, throughout the palace... vases in the shape of a bull's head were used in ceremonies. The most popular sport is the bull-jumping ceremony, where the athletes would grab the animal by the horns and do a complex backflip along the entire body of the animal.

Perhaps King Minos wore a bull-headed mask, and this was the fact from which the Greeks subsequently formed the image of the Minotaur.

We have little information about the Minoan religion, in contrast to what we know about the corresponding religions of this period in the Middle East. There were no large temples or large cult statues of the gods. The chief of the Minoans was the Great Mother Goddess, which perhaps explains the important place of women in Cretan society. Many statues of women, fashionably dressed, in fancy dresses that bare their breasts, with impressive hairstyles. Often they hold two snakes in both hands. This may have been an inspiration for later Greek deities such as Athena, Demeter and Aphrodite. Sometimes the Mother Goddess appears with a young man who may be her son.

Ceremonies, sporting events and bulls were of a sacrificial nature to allow the Mother Goddess to protect them from a series of disasters such as shipwrecks, disease, agricultural failures, especially earthquakes. Such devastating earthquakes occurred in the eastern Mediterranean at regular intervals - as a rule, such large earthquakes occurred every fifty years, and each time, they buried entire cities under the ruins.

The Minoans never forgot about it natural phenomenon and explained it by the existence of a huge Tavros, who lived underground and shook the world with his roar.

End of the Minoan era

Despite the sacrifices, the Minoan civilization disappeared after another blow of the elements. A series of earthquakes and aftershocks have caused so much destruction and so many deaths that the smooth development of society on the island is interrupted. Fighting broke out between Knossos and other Minoan major cities. In the end, Knossos emerged victorious, and other palaces on the island were destroyed. On the mainland, the Achaeans, who had learned the secrets of Minoan navigation, found the opportunity and understood much of the organization of the colonies of Minoan Crete, limiting economic and political power.

Around 1160 BC an even greater element came, when everything that was before seemed insignificant. Santorini volcano exploded 70 nautical miles north of Crete. The explosion was so large that two-thirds of the island disappeared, and the blast wave created a huge tsunami that hit the densely populated northern coast of Crete, causing widespread destruction and death. The Minoan fleet was destroyed, and the island naturally remained undefended.

The survivors on the island were scattered in isolated settlements. Around 1100 BC on the island, the Greeks Dorians began to land, whose ships began to prevail in the Mediterranean Sea. The palace of Knossos was occupied by new invaders, who gradually began to push out the old inhabitants and take power on the island into their own hands.

A new era has begun not only for the island, but for the whole of Greece and the Mediterranean...

Crete was the oldest center of civilization in Europe. By its geographical position, this mountainous island, closing the entrance to the Aegean Sea from the south, represents, as it were, a natural outpost of the European mainland, facing the African and Asian coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Since ancient times, sea routes have crossed here, connecting the Balkan Peninsula and the Aegean Islands with Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa. Originating at one of the busiest crossroads of the ancient Mediterranean, Minoan (The name "Minoan" (respectively, the Minoans - the people who inhabited Crete in ancient times) was introduced into science by the discoverer of the ancient Cretan culture A. Evans, who formed it on behalf of the mythical king of Crete Minos.) the culture of Crete was influenced by the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, on the one hand, and the Neolithic cultures of Anatolia, the Danubian lowland and Balkan Greece, on the other. The time of the emergence of the Minoan civilization is the turn of the III-II millennium BC, in other words, the end of the so-called Early Bronze Age. Part of Europe is still covered with dense forests and swamps, but in some places on the map of the continent one can already notice separate centers of agricultural and agricultural-pastoral cultures (the south and southeast of Europe: Spain, Italy, the Danube region, the southern Russian steppes, Greece). At this time, bizarre buildings appear on Crete, which modern archaeologists usually call "palaces".

The very first of all Cretan palaces was opened by A. Evans in Knossos (the central part of Crete, not far from the northern coast of the island). According to legend, here was the main residence of the legendary ruler of Crete - King Minos. The Greeks called the palace of Minos "the labyrinth" (a word they borrowed from some pre-Greek language). In Greek myths, the labyrinth was described as a huge building with many rooms and corridors. A person who got into it could not get out of there without outside help and inevitably died: in the depths of the palace lived the bloodthirsty Minotaur - a monster with a human body and a bull's head. The tribes and peoples subject to Minos were obliged to amuse the terrible beast with human sacrifices every year, until he was killed by the famous Athenian hero Theseus. The excavations did unearth a building or even a whole complex of buildings with a total area of ​​16,000 sq. m, which included about three hundred rooms of the most diverse nature and purpose (It should be borne in mind that only the first floor of the palace and the basement have survived. The original building had two or three floors in height.). Subsequently, similar structures were opened in other places in Crete.

In its appearance, the palace most of all resembles intricate outdoor theatrical scenery: bizarre porticos with columns, as if turned upside down, wide stone steps of open terraces, numerous balconies and loggias, carved stone decorations on the roofs, schematically depicting "sacred" bull horns, bright spots of frescoes. The interior layout is extremely disorderly. Living rooms, utility rooms, connecting corridors and stairways, patios and light wells are located without any visible system and clear plan. But despite the apparent chaos of the palace building, it is still perceived as a single architectural ensemble. In many ways, this is facilitated by the large rectangular courtyard occupying the central part of the palace, with which all the main premises that were part of this huge complex were connected. The courtyard was paved with large gypsum slabs and, apparently, was used not for household needs, but for religious purposes. Perhaps it was here that the famous games with bulls were held, the images of which we see on the frescoes that adorn the walls of the palace. The palace of Knossos had to be rebuilt several times after strong earthquakes that often occurred here (Knossos and other palaces were first built around 2000 BC, but were finally abandoned between the 15th century and 1200 BC). New premises were attached to the old, already existing ones. Rooms and pantries seemed to be strung one to the other, forming long rows-enfilades. Separate buildings and groups of buildings gradually merged into a single residential area, grouped around the central courtyard. The palace was equipped with everything necessary to ensure that the life of its inhabitants was calm and comfortable. The builders of the palace even created water supply and sewerage. The ventilation and lighting system was also well thought out. The entire thickness of the building was cut from top to bottom with special light wells, through which sunlight and air entered the lower floors of the palace. In addition, large windows and open verandas served the same purpose. Recall for comparison that the ancient Greeks back in the 5th century BC. BC. - at the time of the highest flowering of their culture - they lived in semi-dark, stuffy dwellings and did not know such basic amenities as a bath and a toilet with a drain.

A significant part of the lower, basement floor of the palace was occupied by pantries in which wine, olive oil and other products were stored. In the floor of the storerooms, pits lined with stone and covered with stone slabs were arranged, into which grain was poured.

During the excavations of the palace of Knossos, archaeologists found a wide variety of works of art and artistic craftsmanship, made with great taste and skill. Many of these things were created in the palace itself, in special workshops, in which jewelers, potters, vase painters and artisans of other professions worked, serving the king and the nobility around him with their work (the premises of the workshops were found in many places on the territory of the palace). special attention deserves the wall painting that adorned the inner chambers, corridors and porticos of the palace. Some of these frescoes depicted scenes from the life of nature: plants, birds, marine animals. Others depict the inhabitants of the palace itself: slender, tanned men with long black hair styled in whimsically curly curls, with a thin, “aspen” waist and broad shoulders, and “ladies” in huge bell-shaped skirts with many frills and tightly drawn corsages, leaving the chest completely open. Men's clothing is much simpler. Most often it consists of one loincloth. But on the head they have a magnificent headdress made of bird feathers, and on the neck and on the hands you can see gold jewelry: necklaces, bracelets. The people depicted in the frescoes participate in some complex and not always clear ceremonies. Some march sedately in a solemn procession, carrying sacred vessels with libations for the gods on their outstretched arms, others smoothly circle in a dance around a sacred tree, others carefully observe some kind of ceremony or performance, sitting on the steps of the "theatre platform".

Minoan artists mastered the art of conveying the movement of people and animals remarkably. An example is the magnificent frescoes, which represent the so-called "playing with the bulls". We see on them a rapidly rushing bull and an acrobat doing a series of intricate somersaults right on his horns and on his back. In front of and behind the bull, the artist depicted the figures of two girls in loincloths, obviously the "assistant" of the acrobat. The meaning of this whole scene is not quite clear. We do not know who participated in this strange and undeniably deadly contest between a man and an angry animal and what was his ultimate goal. However, it can be said with certainty that "bull games" in Crete were not a mere pastime of an idle crowd, like the modern Spanish bullfight. It was a religious ritual associated with one of the main Minoan cults - the cult of the bull god.

The scenes of games with the bull are perhaps the only disturbing note in Minoan art. The cruel, bloody scenes of war and hunting, so popular in the then art of the countries of the Middle East and mainland Greece, are completely alien to him. Judging by what we see in the frescoes and other works of Cretan artists, the life of the Minoan elite was free from unrest and anxiety. It proceeded in a joyful atmosphere of almost continuous festivities and colorful performances. From the hostile outside world, Crete was reliably protected by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea washing it. At that time, there was not a single significant maritime or other hostile power near the island. Only a sense of security can explain the fact that all the Cretan palaces, including that of Knossos, remained unfortified throughout almost their entire history.

Of course, in the works of palace art, the life of the Minoan society is presented in an idealized, embellished form. In fact, it also had its dark sides. The nature of the island was not always favorable to its inhabitants. So, in Crete, earthquakes often occurred, often reaching destructive force. If we add to this the frequent sea storms in these places with thunderstorms and heavy rains, dry famine years, epidemics, then the life of the Minoans will seem to us not so calm and cloudless.

In order to protect themselves from natural disasters, the inhabitants of Crete turned to their many gods for help. The central figure of the Minoan pantheon was the great goddess - the "mistress". In the works of Cretan art (statuettes and seals), the goddess appears to us in her various incarnations. We see her either as a formidable mistress of wild animals, the mistress of mountains and forests with all their inhabitants, or as a benevolent patroness of vegetation, primarily cereals and fruit trees, or as an ominous queen of the underworld, holding writhing snakes in her hands. Behind these images, the features of an ancient deity of fertility are guessed - the great mother of people and animals, the veneration of which was widespread in all countries of the Mediterranean, starting at least from the Neolithic era. Next to the great goddess, the embodiment of femininity and motherhood, a symbol of the eternal renewal of nature, we find in the Minoan pantheon a deity who embodies the destructive forces of nature - the formidable element of an earthquake, the power of a raging sea. These terrifying phenomena were embodied in the minds of the Minoans in the form of a mighty and ferocious bull-god. On some Minoan seals, the divine bull is depicted as a fantastic creature - a man with a bull's head, which immediately reminds us of the later Greek myth of the Minotaur. In order to pacify the formidable deity and thus calm the angry elements, plentiful sacrifices were made to him, apparently including human ones (an echo of this barbaric rite was preserved in the myth of the Minotaur).

Religion played a huge role in the life of the Minoan society, leaving its mark on absolutely all spheres of its spiritual and practical activities. During the excavations of the palace of Knossos, a huge amount of all kinds of cult utensils were found, including figurines of the great goddess, sacred symbols like bull horns or a double ax - labrys, altars and tables for sacrifices, various vessels for libations, etc. Many rooms of the palace were used as sanctuaries - for religious rites and ceremonies. Among them are crypts - caches in which sacrifices were made to the underground gods, pools for ritual ablutions, small home chapels, etc. The very architecture of the palace, the paintings that adorned its walls, and other works of art were permeated through and through with complex religious symbolism. It was a palace-temple where all the inhabitants, including the king himself, his family, the court “ladies” and “cavaliers” surrounding them, performed various priestly duties, participating in the rites, the images of which we see on the palace frescoes.

Thus, there existed in Crete a special form of royal power, known in science under the name of "theocracy" (this is the name of one of the varieties of the monarchy, in which secular and spiritual power belongs to the same person). The person of the king was considered "sacred and inviolable." Even the sight of him, apparently, was forbidden to mere mortals. This is how one can explain the seemingly strange circumstance that among the works of Minoan art there is not a single one that could be confidently recognized as an image of a royal person. The whole life of the king and his household was strictly regulated and raised to the level of a religious ritual. The kings of Kposs did not just live and rule - they performed sacred rites. The "Holy of Holies" of the kpos palace, the place where the priest-king condescended to communicate with his subjects, made sacrifices to the gods and at the same time decided state affairs, is his throne room, located not far from the large central courtyard. Before getting into it, visitors passed through the vestibule, in which there was a large porphyry bowl for ritual ablutions: obviously, in order to appear before the “royal eyes”, it was necessary to first wash away all the evil from oneself. The throne room itself is a small rectangular room. Directly opposite the entrance to it stands a gypsum chair with a high wavy back - the royal throne. Along the walls are benches lined with alabaster, on which the royal advisers, high priests and dignitaries of Knossos sat. The walls of the throne room are painted with colorful frescoes. depicting griffins - fantastic monsters with a bird's head on a lion's body. Griffins recline in solemn frozen poses on both sides of the throne, as if protecting the lord of Crete from troubles.

The magnificent palaces of the Cretan kings, the untold riches stored in their cellars and pantries, the atmosphere of comfort and abundance in which the kings themselves and their entourage lived - all this was created by the labor of many thousands of nameless farmers and artisans. Unfortunately, little is known about the life of the working population of Crete. It lived, apparently, outside the palaces in small villages scattered over the fields and mountains with wretched adobe houses, closely pressed against each other, with crooked, narrow streets. They strikingly oppose the monumental architecture of the palaces, the luxury of their interior decoration. The simple and crude burial inventory, uncomplicated initiatory gifts discovered by archaeologists in remote mountain sanctuaries in the form of figurines of people and animals roughly fashioned from clay testify to the rather low standard of living of the Minoan village, the backwardness of its culture in comparison with the refined culture of palaces.

We have every reason to believe that relations of domination and subordination, characteristic of early class society, have already developed in Cretan society. So, it can be assumed that the agricultural population was subject to duties, both in kind and labor, in favor of the palace. It was obliged to deliver cattle, grain, oil, wine and other products to the palace. All these receipts were recorded by palace scribes on clay tablets, from which, by the time of the death of the palace (the end of the 15th century BC), a whole archive was compiled, numbering about 5000 documents, and then they were handed over to the palace storerooms, where, in this way, huge stocks of food and other material values. The palace itself was built and rebuilt by the hands of the same farmers, roads and irrigation canals were laid, bridges were erected (Along with the free community members, who were obviously in tax dependence on the palace, people who belonged to the category of not free (slaves) also worked for it. or semi-free (servants and clients. Judging by analogies with other early class societies that existed, for example, in the countries of the Middle East or in later Mycenaean Greece, this palace staff could be quite numerous, numbering hundreds or even thousands of workers trained in various professions.) . One should not think that they did all this under duress, just because the king or his nobles so desired. The palace was the main sanctuary of the community, and elementary piety demanded from the villager that he honor the gods who lived in the sanctuary with gifts, giving surpluses of his household reserves for arranging festivities and sacrifices, and also he himself worked "for the glory of God." True, a whole army of intermediaries stood between the people and their gods - a staff of professional priests serving the sanctuary, headed by a "sacred king." In essence, it was an already established, clearly defined stratum of the hereditary priestly nobility, opposed to the rest of society. Uncontrollably disposing of the reserves stored in the palace warehouses, the priests could use the lion's share of these wealth for their own needs.

Of course, along with religious motives, the concentration of the surplus product of the community in the hands of the palace elite was also dictated by purely economic expediency. Over the years, food stocks accumulated in the palace could serve as a reserve fund in case of famine. At the expense of these same stocks, artisans who worked for the community were provided with food. The surplus, which was not used in the community itself, was sold to overseas countries: Egypt, Syria, Cyprus, where they could be exchanged for goods that were not available in Crete itself: gold and copper, ivory and purple fabrics. Merchant sea expeditions in those days were associated with great risk and cost. The state, which had the necessary material and human resources, was able to organize and finance such an enterprise. It goes without saying that the rare goods obtained in this way settled in the same palace storerooms and from there were distributed among the craftsmen of the palace and settlements. So, the palace performed universal functions in Minoan society, being at the same time the administrative and religious center of the community, its main granary, workshop and center of trade.

The heyday of the Minoan civilization falls on the XVI - the first half of the XV century. BC. It was at this time that the Cretan palaces were rebuilt with unprecedented brilliance and splendor. At this time, all of Crete was apparently united under the rule of the kings of Knossos and became a single centralized state. This is evidenced by a network of convenient wide roads laid throughout the island and connecting Knossos, the capital of the state, with its most remote ends. This is also indicated by the already noted fact of the absence of fortifications in Knossos and other palaces of Crete. If each of these palaces were the capital of an independent state, its owners would probably take care of their protection from hostile neighbors. It is quite possible that the unification of Crete around the palace of Knossos was carried out by the famous Minos, about whom the later Greek myths tell so much (However, it is possible that many kings who ruled Crete for a number of generations and made up one dynasty had this name.). Greek historians considered Minos the first thalassocrat - the ruler of the sea. It was said about him that he created a large navy, eradicated piracy and established his dominance over the entire Aegean Sea, its islands and coasts. This legend, apparently, is not devoid of historical grain. Indeed, as archeology shows, in the XVI century. BC. the wide sea expansion of Crete in the Aegean begins. Minoan colonies and trading posts appear on the islands of the Cyclades archipelago, on the island of Rhodes, and even on the coast of Asia Minor, in the region of Miletus. At the same time, the Cretans established lively trade and diplomatic relations with Egypt and the states of the Syro-Phoenician coast. This is indicated by the rather frequent finds of Minoan pottery in these areas. In Crete itself, things of Egyptian and Syrian origin were found. On Egyptian paintings of the first half of the 15th century. BC. the ambassadors of the country of Keftiu (as the Egyptians called Crete) are represented in typical Minoan clothes - aprons and high ankle boots, with gifts to the pharaoh in their hands. There is no doubt that at the time to which these paintings date, Crete was the strongest maritime power, and Egypt was interested in friendship with its kings.

In the middle of the 15th century, the situation changed dramatically. Crete was hit by a catastrophe, the equal of which the island has not experienced in its entire centuries-old history. Almost all palaces and settlements were destroyed, many were abandoned forever by the inhabitants and forgotten for millennia. Minoan culture could not recover from this blow. From the middle of the XV century. its decline begins. Crete is losing its position as the leading cultural center of the Aegean. The causes of the disaster have not yet been precisely established. Greek archaeologist S. Marinatos believes that the death of palaces and settlements was the result of a grandiose volcanic eruption on the island of Fera (modern Santorini) in the southern Aegean Sea (After the disaster, the island, once, apparently, densely populated, partially went under water ; some identify it with the legendary Atlantis. - Note ed.). Other scientists are inclined to believe that the Achaean Greeks, who invaded Crete from mainland Greece, were responsible for the disaster. They plundered and devastated the island, which had long attracted them with its fabulous wealth, and subjugated its population to their power. Indeed, in the culture of Kposs, the only one of the Cretan palaces that survived the catastrophe of the middle of the 15th century, important changes took place after this event, indicating the emergence of a new people here. Full-blooded realistic Minoan art is now giving way to a dry and lifeless stylization. Motifs traditional for Minoan vase painting - plants, flowers, octopuses on palace-style vases - are transformed into abstract graphic schemes. At the same time, graves appeared in the vicinity of Knossos containing a wide variety of weapons: bronze swords, daggers, helmets, arrowheads and copies, which was not at all typical of earlier Minoan burials. Judging by everything, representatives of the Achaean military nobility, who settled in the Knossos palace, were buried in these graves. Finally, one more fact that indisputably points to the penetration of new ethnic elements into Crete: in the Knossos archive, many documents were found (the so-called Linear B group), compiled in Greek (Achaean) language, and only two dozen pre-Aachen (Linear A) .

These documents date mainly from the end of the 15th century. BC. Obviously, at the end of the XV or the beginning of the XIV century. The palace of Knossos was destroyed and never fully rebuilt. Many wonderful works of Minoan art perished in the fire.

Since then, the decline of the Minoan civilization has become an irreversible process. It is degenerating more and more, losing its unique originality. Crete is turning into a remote, backward province. The main center of cultural progress and civilization in the Aegean basin is now moving north, to the territory of mainland Greece, where at that time the so-called Mycenaean culture flourished.

The creators of the Mycenaean culture were the Achaean Greeks, who invaded the Balkan Peninsula at the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC, apparently from the north, from the region of the Danube lowland. Moving further and further south across the territory of Greece, the Achaeans partly destroyed, and partly assimilated the crown pre-Greek population of these areas, which later Greek historians call the Pelasgians (Pelasgians were possibly a people related to the Minoans. Separate words from the language of the Nelasgians - or Minoans? - now lost (for example, the names of the plant: "cypress", "hyacinth", "narcissus", etc.), were borrowed by the Greeks, and moved from the Greek language to modern ones.). Early on, Mycenaean culture was heavily influenced by the more advanced Minoan civilization. Some deities and religious rites, frescoes in palaces, plumbing and sewerage, styles of men's and women's clothing, certain types of weapons, and finally, a linear syllabary were borrowed from Crete. This does not mean, however, that the Mycenaean culture was just a secondary, peripheral variant of the culture of Minoan Crete, and the Mycenaean settlements in the Peloponnese and elsewhere were simply Minoan colonies in a foreign "barbarian" country, as A. Evans thought. Many characteristic features of the Mycenaean culture allow us to believe that it arose on Greek soil and was successively associated with the most ancient cultures of this region of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Ages.

The earliest monument of Mycenaean culture are the so-called "shaft tombs" in Mycenae in the northeast of the Peloponnese. The first six graves of this type (“circle A”) were discovered in 1876 by the famous German archaeologist G. Schliemann within the walls of the Mycenaean citadel. Many objects made of gold, silver, ivory and other expensive materials were found in them. Homer in the Iliad will call Mycenae "rich in gold", and the Mycenaean king Agamemnon - the most powerful of all the Achaean leaders who took part in the famous Trojan War. True, Schliemann was mistaken in believing that he managed to find the grave of Agamemnon, who was villainously murdered by his wife Clytemnestra after returning from a campaign against Troy: the shaft tombs date back to the 16th century. BC, while the Trojan War took place, according to modern archaeologists, in the XIII century. BC. Huge treasures found in the graves of "circle A" show that the Mycenaean kings were warlike and ferocious people, greedy for other people's wealth. For the sake of robbery, they undertook distant campaigns by land and sea and returned to their homeland burdened with booty (There were undoubtedly trade relations with the Middle East, as evidenced by the discovery of the Babylonian (Kassite) seal - communications, of course, through intermediate links. - Note .ed.). It is unlikely that the gold and silver that accompanied the royal dead to the afterlife fell into their hands through a peaceful exchange. It is much more likely that they were captured in the war. The militant inclinations of the rulers of Mycenae are evidenced, firstly, by the exceptional abundance of weapons in their tombs, and secondly, by the images of bloody battles and hunting, which decorated some of the things found in the graves, as well as stone steles standing on the graves themselves. On one of them we see a warrior on a chariot pursuing a foot warrior with a bow in his hands. Some of the things are very primitive in execution, which betrays the unskillful hand of the local Mycenaean artisan (an example is the funerary golden masks), others are the work of the best Minoan jewelry craftsmen.

In 1952, another royal necropolis was discovered in Mycenae, located outside the walls of the citadel and containing 24 graves of approximately the same type as the six shaft graves excavated earlier. The burials were not so rich, although many valuable things were found in them, for example, vessels made of rock crystal and amber beads. The earliest graves of "circle B" date back to the second half of the 17th century. BC. This allows us to attribute the origin of the Mycenaean culture to an earlier time than previously thought. Obviously already in the 17th century. BC. in Mycenae there was a primitive state in which the ruling elite - the royal family itself - was sharply isolated from the bulk of the population.

The heyday of the Mycenaean civilization can be considered the XV-XIII centuries BC. At this time, its distribution zone covers the entire Peloponnese, Central Greece (Attica, Boeotia, Phokis), a significant part of the North (Thessaly), as well as many of the islands of the Aegean Sea. All over this large area there was a uniform culture, represented by standard types of dwellings, burials, ceramics, etc. According to them, it appears that Mycenaean Greece was a prosperous country with a large population scattered over many small and larger settlements. The main centers of Mycenaean culture were, as in Crete, palaces. The most significant of them were discovered in Mycenae and Tiryns, in Pylos (Peloponnese), in Athens, Thebes and Orchomeia (Central Greece), and finally in the north of Greece, in Iolka (Thessaly). Almost all Mycenaean palaces were fortified, representing real citadels, reminiscent of castles in their appearance. medieval feudal lords. Powerful cyclopean (the Greeks, who saw these walls at a later time, attributed their construction to the one-eyed giant Cyclopes.) The walls of the Mycenaean citadels, built from huge blocks of stone without any binding material, testify to the high engineering skill of the Achaean architects. An excellent example of Mycenaean fortifications is the famous Tiryns citadel on the territory of Argolis, not far from Mycenae. Raw blocks of limestone, reaching in some cases a monstrous weight of 12 tons, form the outer walls of the fortress 4.5 m thick and up to 7.5 m high in the surviving part. In some places, vaulted galleries with casemates were made inside the walls, in which weapons were stored and food supplies (the thickness of the walls here reached 17 m). The approach to the main gate of the citadel was arranged in such a way that the enemy approaching them was forced to turn to the wall, on which the defenders of the fortress were, with their right side, not covered by a shield. But, even when they got inside the citadel, the enemy stumbled upon the inner defensive wall that protected its main part - the acropolis with the royal palace. To get to the palace, it was necessary to overcome a narrow passage between the outer and inner walls, divided into two compartments by two wooden gates. Here the enemy was caught in the crossfire of throwing weapons, which the defenders of the citadel brought down on him from all sides. So that the besieged inhabitants of the citadel would not suffer from a lack of water, an underground passage was arranged in its northern part (the so-called lower city), leading to a carefully hidden source 20 meters from the walls of the fortress.

Among the actual palace buildings of the Mycenaean time, the well-preserved "Palace of Nestor" is of the greatest interest ova Peloponnese. The Pylos Palace, while similar in interior decoration to the palaces of Crete, differs from them in its clear and symmetrical layout. The main premises of the palace are located on the same axis and form a closed rectangular complex. To get inside this complex, it was necessary to successively pass the entrance portico (propylaea), a small courtyard, another portico, a vestibule, from which the visitor got into a vast rectangular hall - a megaron, which is an integral and most important part of any Mycenaean palace. In the center of the megaron was a large round hearth, the smoke from which escaped through a hole in the ceiling. Four wooden columns stood around the hearth, supporting the ceiling. The walls were painted with frescoes. Megaron was the heart of the palace. Here the king of Pylos feasted with his nobles and guests. Official receptions and audiences were held here. Outside, two long corridors adjoined the megaron. The doors of numerous pantries opened in them, where several thousand vessels were found for storing and transporting oil and other products. Apparently, the Pylos Palace was a major exporter of olive oil, which was highly valued in the neighboring countries of Greece. The "Palace of Nestor" had bathrooms, plumbing and sewerage. In a small room near the main entrance, the palace archives were kept, numbering over 1000 clay tablets inscribed with signs of linear syllabic writing, very similar to that used in the already mentioned documents from the Knossos palace. The tablets are well preserved due to the fact that they fell into the fire of the fire from which the palace burned down.

Among the most interesting architectural monuments of the Mycenaean era are the majestic royal tombs, called "voices" or "domed tombs". Tholos are usually located near palaces and citadels, apparently serving as the final resting place for members of the reigning dynasty, as in earlier times, shaft graves. The largest of the Mycenaean voices - the so-called tomb (according to the incorrect initial interpretation - the treasury) of Atreus - is located in Mycenae. The tomb itself is hidden inside an artificial mound. In order to get into it, you need to go through a long stone-lined corridor-dromos leading into the depths of the mound. The entrance to the tomb is blocked by two huge stone blocks (one of them weighs 120 tons). The inner chamber is a monumental, round room with a high (about 13.5 m) beehive vault. The walls and vault of the tomb are made of superbly hewn stone slabs and were originally decorated with gilded bronze rosettes. Connected to the main chamber is a slightly smaller side chamber, rectangular in plan and not so well finished. In all likelihood, it was here that the royal burial, plundered in antiquity, was placed.

The construction of such grand buildings, as the “tomb of Atreus” or the Tiryns citadel, as it seems to us, would be impossible without the use of forced labor. To cope with such a task, it was necessary, firstly, the presence of a large mass of cheap labor, and secondly, a sufficiently developed state apparatus capable of organizing this force. Obviously, the lords of Mycenae and Tiryns had both. The secret of the internal structure of the Achaean state began to dissipate since, in 1952, the young Englishman M. Veptris managed to read the Pylos tablets, as well as some of the tablets of the Kpos archive. It turned out that all these documents were compiled in the archaic Achaean dialect of the Greek language, which was spoken by the population of Mycenaean Greece in the 2nd millennium BC. compiled by people of non-Greek origin.). The linear syllabic letter B used in these inscriptions most likely originated in Crete (the Knossos archive is about two centuries older than similar archives of mainland Greece: Pylos, Mycenaean, etc.) on the basis of a more ancient system writing - linear writing A (Tablets of linear writing A, found in the same palace of Knossos and in some other pests in Crete, still remain unread. Most scientists tend to think that the Mioi language is not related to Greek.). The Achaeans, who captured Crete around the middle of the 15th century, adopted from their Minoan predecessors the syllabary they used and adapted it to convey their language.

The tablets read by M. Veptris are “accounting” accounting records, which were kept from year to year in the economy of the Pylos and Knossos palaces. These concise records contain the most valuable historical information, making it possible to judge the economy of the palace states of the Mycenaean era, their social and political structure. We learn, for example, that at that time slavery already existed in Greece and the labor of slaves was widely used in various branches of the economy. Among the documents of the Pylos archives, the lists of workers' detachments of the palace economy occupy a considerable place. Each such list indicates how many female slaves are in the detachment, what is their profession (grain millers, spinners, seamstresses and even bathhouse attendants are mentioned), how many children they have: boys and girls (obviously, these were the children of slaves born in captivity ), what rations they receive and in what place they work (this is either Pylos itself, or one of the towns on the territory subject to it). The number of detachments could be significant - up to more than a hundred people. The total number of women and children in all the detachments, known only from one group of inscriptions in the Pylos archive, should have been about 1300 people. Along with detachments, which include only women and children, detachments consisting only of male slaves appear in the inscriptions, although they are relatively rare and numerically, as a rule, small - no more than ten people in each. Obviously, there were more female slaves, which implies that slavery at that time was still at a relatively low stage of development.

Along with ordinary slaves, the Pylos inscriptions also mention the so-called "God's servants or female slaves." Usually they rent (That the allotments of these people were with them precisely on a lease basis cannot be considered proven. - Note ed.) land in small plots from the community (damos) or from private individuals, from which it can be concluded that they have their own land was not, and, consequently, they were not considered full members of the community, although they were not, apparently, slaves in the proper sense of the word. The very term "God's servant" indicates, in all likelihood, that the representatives of this social stratum served in the temples of the main gods of the Pylos kingdom and enjoyed the patronage of the temple administration.

A significant part of the documents of both the Pylos and Knossos archives is devoted to accounting for the work of artisans. Among them we see representatives of various professions: blacksmiths, masons, tailors, carpenters, potters, gunsmiths, goldsmiths and even perfumers. For their work, artisans receive rations from the palace treasury, consisting of barley and other products. Absence from work was noted in special documents. The "truants" were apparently punished, though we don't know how. Some of the artisans were probably considered "people of the palace" and, like numerous officials mentioned in the same inscriptions, were in the public service. Their position was apparently not much better than that of female slaves. Another category of artisans were free community members, for whom work for the palace was only a temporary duty. Labor duties of this kind, both in Pylos and Knossos, were levied, as can be seen from the documents, on the population of small villages located on the periphery around the main palace and economically dependent on it. Craftsmen involved in state service were not deprived of personal freedom. They could own land and even slaves, like all other members of the community. Blacksmiths occupied a special position among the artisans working for the palace. So, in Pylos, they were exempted from the supply of flax, which was considered mandatory for the rest of the population of the Pylos kingdom. All blacksmiths who lived on the territory of the state were under the supervision of the palace administration. They received the metal they needed for work from the treasury of the palace along with the assignment or lesson. The blacksmiths, who had a lesson, were assisted in their work by slaves, who, apparently, were also sent to them from the palace economy.

In the documents of the Knossos and Pylos archives, the palace economy of the Mycenaean era appears to us as a powerful, branched economic system, covering almost the entire society. The private economy, although, apparently, it already existed in the Mycenaean states, was in tax dependence on the "public sector" and played only a subordinate secondary role under it. The state monopolized the most important branches of handicraft production and established the strictest control over the distribution and consumption of raw materials, primarily metal. Not a single kilogram of bronze, not a single spearhead or arrowhead could escape the vigilant gaze of the palace bureaucracy. All metal, which was both at the disposal of the state and in private households, was carefully weighed, taken into account and (recorded by the scribes of the palace archive on clay tablets. All data indicate that in the states of Achaean Greece a type of economy developed similar to that of the Middle East.

Based on the principles of the strictest accounting and control, the palace economy needed a bureaucratic apparatus for its functioning. Documents from the Pylos and Knossos archives show him in action, although many organizational details remain unclear. In addition to the staff of scribes who served directly in the palace office and archive. the tablets mention numerous officials who were in charge of the work and supervised the fulfillment of duties. So, from the documents of the Pylos archive, we learn that the entire territory of the Pylos kingdom was divided into 16 tax districts, headed by governors-koreters. Each of them was responsible for the proper flow of fees to the palace treasury from the district entrusted to him, primarily in the form of metal, gold and bronze, as well as various types of agricultural products. Subordinate to the coreter were low-ranking officials who managed individual settlements that were part of the district. In the tablets, they are called basilei (More precisely, in the Mixnian pronunciation, apparently, gvasilei.). Basilei supervised production, for example, the work of blacksmiths who were in the public service. The coreters and basilei themselves were under the vigilant control of the central government. The palace constantly sent messengers and couriers, inspectors and auditors in all directions.

At the head of the palace state was a man called vanaka, which corresponds to the later Greek vanakt, i.e. 'master', 'ruler', 'king'. Unfortunately, nothing is known from the documents about the political functions and rights of the Wanaka, but among ruling nobility he occupied a special, privileged position. The land allotment (temenos) belonging to the king was three times larger than the land allotments of other senior officials. He had at his disposal numerous servants. The tablets mention "royal potter", "royal fuller", "royal armorer". Among the highest-ranking officials subordinate to the king of Pylos, one of the most prominent places was occupied by lavagvt, i.e. "warlord", "commander". As his title shows, his duties included commanding the armed forces of the kingdom of Pylos. In addition to Wanaka and Lavaget, other officials are mentioned in the inscriptions. The circle of the highest nobility, closely connected with the palace and constituting the immediate environment of the Pylos Wanaka, included, firstly, the priests of the main temples of the state, and secondly, the highest military ranks, primarily the leaders of the war chariot detachments. Farmers and artisans were, apparently, politically disenfranchised and did not take any part in government (There is an opinion that the term damos (“people”) found in the tablets of the Pylos archive denotes a popular assembly representing the entire free population of the Pylos kingdom. The author seems more likely that damos is one of the territorial communities (districts) that make up the state (cf. later Athenian demos)). Lower than they were only slaves employed at work in the palace economy.

The deciphering of Linear B could not solve all the problems of socio-economic and political history Mycenaean era. We do not know, for example, what kind of relations existed between individual small states: did they constitute, as some scholars think, a single Achaean power under the auspices of the king of Mycenae, the most powerful of all the rulers of Greece at that time, or did they lead a completely separate and independent existence. The latter seems more likely. It is hardly coincidental that almost every Mycenaean palace was surrounded by powerful defensive structures, which were supposed to reliably protect its inhabitants from the hostile outside world, and above all from their closest neighbors. The cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns testify to the almost continuous enmity of these two states, which divided the fertile plain of Argos between them. Greek lore tell about the bloody strife of the Achaean rulers. It is narrated, for example, about how the seven kings of Artos intervened in the struggle between the sons of the Theban king Oedipus, went on a campaign against Thebes, the richest of the cities Central Greece(Boeotia), and after a series of unsuccessful attempts, they took and destroyed it. Excavations have shown that the Mycenaean palace in Thebes was indeed burned and destroyed in the 14th century. BC, long before other palaces and citadels perished.

At certain moments, the Achaean states, apparently, could unite for joint military enterprises. An example is the famous Trojan War, which Homer narrates in his poem The Iliad. According to the Iliad, almost all the main regions of Achaean Greece took part in the campaign against Troy - from Thessaly in the north to Crete and Rhodes in the south. The Mycenaean king Agamemnon was elected leader of the entire army. It is possible that Homer exaggerated the true scale of the Achaean coalition and embellished the campaign itself. Nevertheless, the historical reality of this event is now almost no one in doubt. Excavations in Troy (the northwestern part of Asia Minor, not far from the coast of the Dardanelles, the ancient Hellespont) showed that one of the settlements that existed on this site (Troy VIIa) was taken and destroyed after a long siege around the middle of the 13th century. BC. or somewhat later (this date is closest to the traditional dating of the Trojan War, preserved by Herodotus) (G. Schliemann, who discovered Troy in 1870, was mistaken in believing that Homeric Troen was the second from the bottom of the seven most ancient settlements he found on this bridge. In fact Troy II, as it is now established, dates back to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, i.e. it is almost a thousand years older than the Trojan War. Troy was ignored by Schliemann. the walls of genuine Troy were broken into the construction of barracks for workers hired by Schliemann and were not even sketched. Thus, Schliemann managed to complete the work of Agamemnon and completely destroy Troy. The "underdevelopment" of the then archaeological science here cannot serve as an excuse, since ancient archeology has more than a century of experience at that time. - Note ed.)).

The Achaean war against Troy was only one, although, apparently, the most significant of the manifestations of the military and colonization expansion of the Achaeans in Asia Minor and the Eastern Mediterranean. During the XIV-XIII centuries. BC. numerous Achaean settlements (they are indicated by large accumulations of typically Mycenaean ceramics) appeared on the western and southern coasts of Asia Minor, the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus adjacent to them, and even on the Syro-Phoenician coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Everywhere in these places, the Mycenaean Greeks seize the trade initiative from the hands of their predecessors, the Minoans. Crete itself, as we have already said, was even earlier (in the 15th century) colonized by the Achaeans and became the main springboard in their advance to the east and south. Successfully combining trade with piracy, the Achaeans soon became a very prominent political force in this region of the ancient world. In one of the documents from the capital of the Hittite kingdom, the state of Ahkhiyava (probably one of the Achaean states in the western part of Asia Minor or on the adjacent islands) is placed on a par with the strongest powers of that era: Egypt, Babylon, Assyria. The rulers of Ahkhiyava maintained close diplomatic contacts with the Hittite kings. Even at the turn of the XIII-XII centuries. BC. detachments of Achaean miners, who came from Crete or from the Peloponnese, took part in the raids of the coalition of "peoples of the sea" on Egypt. In the Egyptian inscriptions telling about these events, along with other tribes, the peoples of Akivasha and Danauna are mentioned, which may correspond to the Greek Akhaiva and Danava - the usual names of the Achaeans in Homer.

At a time when Egypt repelled the onslaught of the “peoples of the sea” from its borders, clouds were already gathering over Achaean Greece itself. The last decades of the thirteenth century BC. were a very turbulent and turbulent time. The inhabitants of palaces and citadels lived in an atmosphere of fear. In Mycenae, Tiryns, Athens and other places old fortifications are hastily restored and new fortifications are erected. A massive cyclopean wall is being erected on the Isthma (a narrow isthmus connecting Central Greece with the Peloponnese), clearly designed to protect the Mycenaean states in the south of the Balkan Peninsula from some kind of danger looming from the north. Among the frescoes of the Pylos palace, one attracts attention, created shortly before his death. The artist depicted on it a bloody battle, in which, on the one hand, Achaean warriors in armor and characteristic horned helmets take part, on the other, some barbarians dressed in animal skins, with long flowing hair. Apparently, these were the people whom the inhabitants of the Mycenaean strongholds so feared and hated, against whom they built more and more fortifications. Archeology shows that in the immediate vicinity of the main centers of the Mycenaean civilization, in the north and north-west of the Balkan Peninsula (in the areas known in ancient times as Macedonia and Epirus), there was a completely different life, very far from the luxury and splendor of the Achaean palaces. Here lived tribes that stood at a low level of development and, obviously, had not yet left the stage of the tribal system. We can judge their culture from the crude hand-made pottery and the primitive clay idols that make up the accompanying inventory of the vast majority of burials in these areas. It should, however, be noted that, for all their backwardness, the tribes of Macedonia and Epirus were already familiar with the use of metal and their weapons in a purely technical sense, apparently, were not inferior to the Mycenaean.

At the end of the XIII century. the tribal world of the entire northern Balkan region, due to some reasons unknown to us, began to move. A huge mass of barbarian tribes, which included both peoples who spoke various dialects of the Greek language (this includes Dorian and Western Greek dialects close to it), and, apparently, peoples of non-Greek, Thracian-Illyrian origin (Thracian and Illyrian languages, so same as the Greek, belonged to the number Indo-European languages(but to another branch)), withdrew from their homes and rushed south, to the rich and prosperous regions of Central Greece and the Peloponnese, as well as to Asia Minor. The route along which the invasion took place is marked by traces of ruins and conflagrations. On their way, the aliens captured and destroyed many Mycenaean settlements. The Pylos palace perished in a fire. The very place on which he stood was consigned to oblivion. The citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns were seriously damaged, although, apparently, they were not captured. The economy of the Mycenaean states suffered irreparable damage. This is evidenced by the rapid decline of crafts and trade in the areas most affected by the invasion, as well as a sharp decline in population. Thus, at the turn of the XIII-XII centuries. Mycenaean civilization suffered a terrible blow, after which it could no longer recover.

The rapid collapse of the largest Mycenaean states that followed this catastrophe is explained not so much by the strength of the onslaught of the northern barbarians, but by the fragility of their own internal structure, which was based, as already shown, on the systematic exploitation and oppression of the working population by a small palace elite. It was enough to destroy the ruling elite of the palace state with one blow, so that this whole complex structure fell apart like a house of cards.

The subsequent course of events is largely unclear: the archaeological material at our disposal is too scarce. The main part of the barbarian tribes that took part in the invasion, apparently, could not stay in the territory they had captured (the devastated country could not feed such a mass of people) and retreated back north to their original positions. Only small tribal groups of Dorians (Some modern scholars believe that the Dorians did not participate at all in the first invasion, which ended with the fall of Pylos. They came later (already in the 12th or even 11th century BC), when the resistance of the Mycenaean Greeks was finally broken.) and related Western Greek peoples settled in coastal areas Peloponnese (Argolis, areas near Isthm, Achaia, Elis, Laconia and Messenia). Separate islands of the Mycenaean culture continued to exist interspersed with newly founded settlements of newcomers until the end of the 12th century. BC. Apparently, at this time, the last of the survivors of the catastrophe of the late XIII century. BC. Achaean citadels fell into final decline and were forever abandoned by their inhabitants. In the same period, there is a massive emigration from the territory of the Balkan Greece to the east - to Asia Minor and to the nearby islands. On the one hand, the surviving remnants of the Achaean population of Peloponnese, Middle and Northern Greece, who are now called Ionians and Aeolians, on the other hand, Dorian new settlers. The result of this movement was the formation of many new settlements on the western coast of Asia Minor and on the islands of Lesbos, Chios Samo, Rhodes, and others, among which the largest were the Aeolian Smyrna, the Ionian cities of Colophon, Ephesus, Miletus, and the Dorian Halicarnassus.

Literature:
Andreev Yu.V. Crete-Mycenaean World./History of the Ancient World. Early Antiquity. - M.: Knowledge, 1983 - p.312-331

Legend has it that King Agenor, ruler of the city of Tyre, in Phoenicia, had a beautiful daughter named Europa. The king of the gods Zeus noticed her from Olympus and fell in love with her. He turned into a huge white bull and kidnapped the princess when she was heading with her friends to the sea coast. The bull rushed into the water and quickly disappeared from the eyes of the frightened girls. A few days later, Zeus with Europa on his back reached a desert island. Coming ashore, he took the form of a god and settled with a beautiful lover away from human eyes. Europa gave birth to Zeus three sons: Minos, Sarpedon and Radamant. The eldest of them became the first king civilization of Crete. Subsequently, his name turned into the title minos, meaning among the Cretans the same as among the Egyptians the pharaoh, and among the Greeks basileus.

Much later, starting excavations in Crete, archaeologists confirmed the veracity of some aspects of the myth about Europe. The island was indeed inhabited by people from Western Asia. The Phoenician tribes came here about six thousand years BC. They brought cattle to Crete, but their main occupation was agriculture. It was here that scientists discovered the oldest traces of agriculture in Europe. The first excavations were started in 1900 by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans, he owns the most important discoveries on the island of Crete, and he also gave the name - a mine named after the first King Minos.

For four millennia inhabitants of the Crete-Mycenaean civilization created a prosperous empire on the island, the oldest in Europe. Its centers were several large palace complexes that have actually grown into cities. Palaces have been discovered at Knossos, Gournia, Kato Zakro, Agia Triada, Phaistos, Amnissus and Mallia. Only Knossius from the very beginning was built precisely as the residence of the ruler and was isolated from the rest of the city. Other palaces, discovered later in Crete, merged with the walls of the city blocks surrounding them. Such, for example, is the palace in Mallia.

Usually the Cretans erected palaces on the coast, so that it was convenient to get to the sea. The Minoans considered themselves a sea people. On the frescoes in their palaces, images of ships, fish, playing dolphins and octopuses are often found. Greek historian of the 5th century. BC e.

Thucydides reported that king Minos created a powerful fleet that allowed him to rule the sea. Archaeologists have noticed that none of the palace complexes have fortifications. This means that the inhabitants of the island felt safe, were not afraid of their neighbors and considered the fleet the most reliable defense for Crete. Fishing was an important article in the economy of the island. On one of the frescoes, you can see a fisherman boy with bundles of caught fish.

The first palaces appeared in the II millennium BC. e., but only fragments of the foundations remained from them. Earthquakes in Crete were not uncommon, scientists were able to find that the early buildings stood for only 300 years and collapsed. It is customary to distinguish two main building periods - the period of the Old Palaces (II millennium - XVII century BC) and the period of New Palaces (XVII-XV centuries BC). Almost immediately, on the ruins of the destroyed buildings, new ones began to be erected - even more luxurious. However, the "first" palaces did not arise from scratch. Under Knossos, for example, a ten-meter layer was discovered, in which objects were found that tell about the history of Crete over several millennia.

The palace in the city of Knossos is considered the largest. It is here, according to scientists, that the legendary king Minos could live. This huge labyrinth of rooms and courtyards took four and a half centuries to build, from about 1900 to 1450 BC. e. It occupied an area of ​​about 16 thousand square meters. m and included almost 300 different rooms. Up to 30 thousand people lived in the building itself and on the lands adjacent to it. It is not surprising that he made an indelible impression on foreigners.

The legend of the Minotaur is associated with this palace. It says that the wife of King Minos Pasiphae fell in love with a bull and from him gave birth to a monster - a half-human, half-bull Minotaur. He was so terrible that the king built a special labyrinth where he hid the terrible son of Pasiphae. The Minotaur ate people, and the Cretans sacrificed captives to him. At this time Athens Crete. One day, the Athenian prince Theseus arrived on the island with a party of captives. He managed to kill the Minotaur and get out of the labyrinth with the help of a guiding thread, which was given to the hero by the daughter of Minos, Ariadne, who fell in love with him.

Scientists believe that the myth of the Minotaur was inspired by real events. The huge palace, where you can easily get lost, became the prototype of a gloomy labyrinth. And the Cretan cult of the bull formed the basis of the story of a monster to which human sacrifices were made. It is suggested that during especially important rituals the king put on the mask of a sacred bull and, as it were, became the Minotaur “for an hour”. One of the seals shows the image of a dancing Minotaur, from behind whose horns human hair flutters. Before us is a ritual dance with a mask. The fact that the king in Crete symbolized the bull, which was sacrificed to the Earth for the eternal rebirth of life, speaks of the complexity and even drama of the position of the ruler of the island. The ancient Greek authors found the expression "nine-year-old Minos", this does not mean that the king was a child. Scientists decipher it like this: Minos had the right to occupy the throne for only eight years. Every ninth year, he went to the sacred cave of Diktea, where, according to myth, Zeus was born, and talked there with the father of the gods, renewing his strength and receiving laws from him.