Mystery Cultures of Early Greece.docx

Mystery Cultures of Early Greece Lecture 8 Two cultures dominated the Greek and Aegean world before the classical Greek culture with which we are familiar: the Minoan and Mycenaean. The Minoans were an island-based culture that appeared to have a strong naval and trading empire; the bull imagery fou...

Mystery Cultures of Early Greece Lecture 8 Two cultures dominated the Greek and Aegean world before the classical Greek culture with which we are familiar: the Minoan and Mycenaean. The Minoans were an island-based culture that appeared to have a strong naval and trading empire; the bull imagery found throughout their art may have religious signifi cance. The Mycenaeans were a collection of citystates scattered across the Peloponnese. Their imposing architecture and the battle scenes that dominate their art imply a warlike culture. Both civilizations had fallen by about 1100 B.C., leading to the prolonged Greek Dark Ages. Finding Facts among the Myths •  We know a lot about Greek civilization from roughly 750 B.C. on because that is when the fi rst surviving written documents that we can read fl uently were composed. Up until the 20th century, our knowledge of Greek history before 750 B.C. was almost nonexistent. The only information we had came from myths. •  One of these myths was the story of King Minos of Crete, whose wife Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, which Minos imprisoned in the Labyrinth. In 1899, an English aristocrat named Sir Arthur Evans became obsessed with the idea that there was a historical basis for this myth. •  Evans self-funded a dig at Knossos, Crete, and uncovered the remains of a large palace in which there were numerous depictions of bulls and bulls’ horns, and, astonishingly, what appeared to be a labyrinth in the basement. •  As a result of Evans’s discoveries and those that followed, we have learned there were signifi cant civilizations in Greece before 750 B.C. We call the two most important the Minoans, after the mythical king, and the Mycenaeans, after Mycenae, one of its largest cities. 53 The Minoans—An Island Empire •  As with the Indus Valley Civilization, it is diffi cult to interpret Minoan because all that survives is material evidence. They began building large urban centers around 2000 B.C. on the island of Crete and over the next 600 years spread to other islands in the Aegean. •  It remained almost exclusively an island-based civilization. Knossos is the largest known Minoan center. Another major site was located on the island of Thera (modern Santoríni) and included the city of Akrotíri. •  Minoan palace structures are characterized by dozens of interconnected rooms clustered around a large, central, open courtyard. There do not appear to be walls around Minoan cities, few weapons have been found, and, with one exception, their art does not depict warfare. •  One obvious interpretation of these facts is that the Minoans were a peaceful society; however, another reading of the evidence is that the Minoans possessed a powerful navy that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and thus had no need for walls around their cities. Scholars still debate the precise religious and cultural meaning of the Minoan bull dance, seen in this fresco. © Corel Stock Photo Library. 54 Lecture 8: Mystery Cultures of Early Greece •  The interior palace walls are covered with frescoes showing the inhabitants engaged in leisure activities. There are many nautical scenes; the Minoans appear to have been accomplished sailors who traded their wares at least as far as Egypt. •  There is abundant evidence of wealth. Most Minoan palaces included numerous storerooms containing pithoi, or giant storage jars. Evans’s labyrinth at Knossos, in fact, turned out to be a set of storerooms. Minoan Religion and Society •  The bull seems to have been a very important symbolic animal to the Minoans. They appear frequently in frescoes and in sculptures, and the most ubiquitous symbol at Minoan sites is a stylized depiction of bulls’ horns. •  A well-known fresco depicts young men and women grasping the horns of bulls and vaulting acrobatically over their backs. Whether this is a form of sport or a religious ritual is unknown. •  A famous statuette found at Knossos is of a bare-breasted woman in elaborate clothing holding two snakes in her outstretched arms. This has been interpreted by some as a depiction of a goddess, whereas others think her a priestess. •  The apparently peaceful nature of the Minoans and the frequent depiction of women in art lead some scholars to speculate that women held positions of power in Minoan society, but in the absence of texts confi rming this, such conclusions must remain hypothetical. •  The Minoans did have a system of writing, called Linear A. The language it records is not related to Greek, however, and the texts we have remain undeciphered. 55 Minoan Collapse •  Unfortunately for the Minoans, the islands they lived on were prone to natural disasters. Major earthquakes shook Crete repeatedly, fl attening large sections of Knossos, but each time, the city seems to have been rebuilt. •  Around 1500 B.C., Thera was destroyed in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. The entire middle of the island literally blew up and fl ew away to Akrotiri, which was on the coast, was buried in mud and thus was preserved, much like a Minoan version of Pompeii. •  By 1200 B.C., Minoan civilization seems to have collapsed. The population plummeted; cities were abandoned and, in some cases, show signs of violent destruction. Whether the cause was external invaders, internal dissension, natural disaster, or some combination remains unknown. The Mycenaeans—Mainland Warriors •  The term “Mycenaean” gives the false impression of one nation. In reality, this civilization comprised dozens of small, independent kingdoms that shared a similar culture and language, of which Mycenae was the largest. •  Mycenaean civilization arose around 1600 B.C. on the Peloponnese, the southern section of the Greek mainland. In many ways, this civilization seems to have been the opposite of Minoan. •  Mycenaean cities were heavily fortifi ed, and their culture seems to have been dominated by military concerns. Their cities were always in defensible locations, usually on a hilltop, and surrounded by massive walls. There were no central courtyards; instead, each palace was centered on an enclosed throne room called a megaron. 56 Lecture 8: Mystery Cultures of Early Greece •  Almost all Mycenaean art shows battle or hunting scenes. In addition, it demonstrates a concern with symmetry and order, perhaps refl ecting a society run along the structured lines of a military organization. Whereas the bull was the emblem of the Minoans, Mycenaean art featured lions, which, as we saw with the Assyrians, are often associated with warriors. •  Much of the best evidence for Mycenaean civilization comes from the excavation of its tombs. The earliest tombs were located inside city walls, suggesting that even the dead were not safe from raiders outside their protection. These tombs contained gold jewelry and death masks and weapons of all kinds. •  The overall portrait of Mycenaean culture is of lots of little citystates ruled over by local warlords and constantly fi ghting with their neighbors. The territory covered by each city-state was quite small, and here geography plays a key role. Unlike Mesopotamia, mainland Greece consists of small valleys surrounded by rocky hills that can be hard to cross; thus it was hard to conquer and hold a large amount of territory. •  Each valley tended to be its own separate political entity. Later on, this geographic pattern had profound implications for Greek political and philosophical development. •  The other important aspect of Greece’s geography is that almost everywhere is close to the sea: 72 percent of Greece lies within 25 miles of the shoreline. This would predispose the Greeks to be sailors. Linear B •  More than 4,000 clay tablets inscribed with the writing of the Mycenaeans have been found. Scholars call this language Linear B. Just as with Minoan Linear A, initially no one could decipher them. 57 •  A breakthrough came in 1952, when a young English architect and self-trained linguist named Michael Ventris announced that he had deciphered Linear B, and to everyone’s amazement, he was correct. At the age of 14, he attended a lecture given by Sir Arthur Evans, and from that point on, deciphering Linear B became his passion. •  Linear B turned out to be a direct precursor to Greek phonetically, although it used a different alphabet. The decipherment of Linear B raised hopes that we would now learn much more about the Mycenaeans, but just as with the Mesopotamians, most of the surviving tablets turned out to be tax records. The Collapse of Mycenaean Greece •  The fate of most Mycenaean cities was violent death. Most Mycenaean sites show evidence of having been destroyed and burnt between 1200 and 1100 B.C. No one is quite sure what happened, although nomadic invaders may have played a role. •  With the collapse of this civilization, Greece entered the Dark Ages (1200–800 B.C.). Cities disappeared. The population plummeted. Communication ceased. Travel and trade collapsed. Even pottery, always a good gauge of the material prosperity of a culture, became ugly in this period. The very ability to write was forgotten. •  Around 1000 B.C., for unknown reasons, things gradually improved. Around the 8th century B.C., there was a rapid increase in population. Cities began to form again. People began to move from place to place, and merchants started to transport and sell goods again. •  Most importantly, writing was rediscovered. Spoken Greek had remained more or less the same, but Linear B had been forgotten, so the Greeks adopted and adapted the script used by the Phoenicians. As the Phoenician alphabet was itself derived from the earlier alphabets of the Near East, there is a continuous chain linking the fi rst alphabets of Mesopotamia to modern English. 58 Lecture 8: Mystery Cultures of Early Greece •  In 776 B.C., the fi rst Olympic Games were held. Perhaps more than anything else, this symbolized that Greece had fi nally and fully emerged from the Dark Ages, and from this point on, we can truly speak of Greek history rather than pre-Greek cultures such as the Minoans and Mycenaeans.