THE MINOANS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18891, 13 December 1924, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MINOANS.

A FORGOTTEN CIVILISATION.

BY MONA GORDON.

No. 11. It must be remembered that Knossos was a community in itself, and besides being the seat of government and the centre of the civic and religious life of the people, it contained rooms for the pursuance of almost every known art and industry of the day. Front the great throne of Minos, backed by its gorgeous peacock-griffin frieze, and surrounded by the stone benches of the chief Government officials, we may pass to a room in which olives were pressed, still containing its stone jars, to another where gold and silver ornaments were worked, another in which the finest ivory work was done, and yet others where the arts of sculpture, seal-cutting and pottery-making were carried on.

But it is chiefly from the frescoes that the most vivid pictures of Minoan life have been gleaned. They represent, among others. numerous hull-baiting scenes, in which girls, as well as men, took part; studies of birds and animals, and pictures of Minoan court life, in which the women are attired in wide, flounced skirts, with puffed sleeves, and large shady hats. "Mais ce sont dos Parisionnes," was the remark of a French scholar on seeing these fashionably-dressed women of a long-forgotten era.

Ancient Minoan Pottery, Among most archaeological finds, pottery nearly always plays a part, and it is on the ancient Cretan pottery that a system of dating has been based, from the fact that it has been found in Egypt among Egyptian antiquities. Men have always made pots of some sort. The early Stone Age man had his black, and hand polished, and later even attempted to decorate them with what are called incised lines—that is, lines scratched on the surface and filled up vvth a white substance, usually in geometric patterns. Remains of pottery in its varied stages of development have been found at Knossos and other sites in Crete; so that it is possible to learn The story of a nation's artistic development and even her civilisation from this source alone, for in her broken bits of pottery is revealed her life.

The next step was the introduction of the potter's kiln, and the invention of paint. Imagine what that must have been to these early Minoans. It is true that their colours were at first rather crude and vivid, but if you had always used brown, black and buff-coloured cups, how wonderful a thing must the first red, orange and white one have been! It was the first breath of the beauty of colour touching the common tilings of life. Also the potter's wheel came from Egypt, and now side by side with the improvements in colour and design grew up the art of throwing cups and vases, which gradually produced dainty things of exquisite finish and egg-shell thinness. In the period from about 2000-1600 8.C., the Minoans were making this ware: and the beautiful Kamares pottery (called after a cave on Mount Ida, where it was first found) in its many-coloured designs and vaj'ied shapes now graced the tables, wo may suppose, of the Minoan palaces. It was at about this time that the great stone jars known as ' pithoi ' were made. These were used for the preservation of corn and oil, and were taller than a man. Bows of them have been found in corridors and store rooms, and the method of decorating them was novel in. its simplicity. Some were adorned with moulded coils imitative of the rope used in dragging thorn about: while others bore tho "trickle ornament" formed by allowing paint to trickle down the sides as tho oil would eventually do when in use. To the" later period of Minoan art belongs pottery in which plants, animals, fish and seaweeds were used for the designs, with great skill and more naturalistic, effect. Shells and sea objects of alt kinds made a great appeal to the seafaring instincts of the Minoan people, nht.se fleet lay anchored in the harbour of Knossos, and whose ships traded with almost every part of the known world.

Minoan Writing. Probably what has most exercised the wit and raised the curiosity of the archaeologist at Knossos are the innumerable clay tablets, covered with Minoan writing. For they had a system of writing long before the Greek aphabet was evolved, before, in fact, the Hellenes or Greeks had come upon the scene at all. Unfortunately, with all the scholarship of modern times, it is impossible to make out a word of it beyond a few numerical signs, and will remain so unless a bilingual inscription can be found. It is probable that those tablets contain nothing but inventories, but whatever they are they hold their secret more securely than did the Sphinx of old. Writing developed originally from a series of pietographic signs or pictures of the idea intended to bo conveyed; and those pictographs are found on seal stones. Thus there is one of a horse on board ship, which is thought to represent the first importation of that animal from Libya, because the horse towers up above the boat, thus giving prominence to it i<s the subject of the piclograph. The next step was the use of conventional signs for sounds, and later a full linear script came into use. It is quite probable that the Minoans wrote on papyrus with pen and ink, because writing in ink has been found on a cup ; but, of course, any literature there was has long since perished. Only the clay tablets remain to baffle the linguist and testify to a wonderful heritage the world has doubly lost.

Disappearance of Minoan Civilisation. If the tradition be true that Crete was overrun and devastated during the absence of King Minos in Sicily, it accounts at any rate for the sudden and violent destruction which swept down on the unfortified Minoan capital. The invaders, the Achaeans of Homer, were as barbarians compared to the cultured civilised people they found at Knossos. Tkcy stole from the palace all the metal they could lay hands on. which must have been of considerable value and beauty; tor the discoverv under a floor of some vases in delicate'"ivy and lily-chain," which the raiders cvideutly missed, shows what Minoan metal work must have been. The sackers then set lire to what they could not carry away, and passed on, leaving Knossos "a heap of rums, among whose desolated halls and charred heaps ot debris a few miserable inhabitants attempted •to revive, things for a time. Hut "over a great part of the-site there was no building of house, or passing of plough share, or planting ol tree lor 3000 vears." , , r , .... " What happened to the Minoan civilisation, with its creative genius. its bcautv-loving spirit, and its wonder.nl productions in every known art? It disappeared so completely in the Dark Ages of oblivion that its very existence was undreamed of till our own day. Remnants of its now scattered people settled in Palestine as the Philistines of the Bible, as has been proved by finds of Minoan vases at Gaza (Minoa). So that when David slew Goliath, heathen and barbarian, according to the Biblical account, it is quite possible that that same Goliath was of Minoan descent, and fh.it the gnat civilisation of his ancestors was at iti height'before the time of Abraham, and had already fallen when the Children of Israel were making bricks for Pharaoh! So do the threads of legend, scripture, history anil archaeology draw ever more closely together, weaving themselves into the many-coloured folds of that great tapestry which the world weaves nation by nation, and passes on, to rediscover ages pfter that the fabric, through vent, is yd her most precions possession.