When was knossos destroyed

The palaces were larger than before, utilising better construction, architectural skills and innovation. With the use of different materials such as gypsum, the new palaces were more aesthetically beautiful than the previous ones and featured magnificent murals still visible today.

The city was spread all around the palace on 75 hectares. By BC, however, the palace suffered considerable damage. Scientists have speculated that the main cause of the destruction of Knossos was the terrible volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Thera now Santorini , which took place around BC, but it seems that Knossos survived despite everything. With other Minoan cities destroyed, Knossos was able to exercise dominion over the rest of the island; however, the palace was destroyed around BC.

Some historians have suggested that its demise was caused either by fire, an earthquake or a revolt against the Mycenaean authorities. All that is certain is that the palace gradually fell into ruin and sank into oblivion. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements.

To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". Construction of the palace appears to have begun around B. This "first palace" as it is sometimes called was damaged likely by earthquakes around B. The papers published in their book raise the possibility that rather than a "first" and "second" palace, there were several phases of renovation and change that occurred over a period of centuries. The actual name of the people who lived in the palace is unknown.

The Minoan writing system is undeciphered and the name "Minoans" comes from Arthur Evans, who believed that he had found the palace of "King Minos," a mythical Cretan king who supposedly constructed a great labyrinth on Crete.

Today, archaeologists know that King Minos likely did not build this palace. Researchers do know that the palace suffered from several disasters throughout its history. The palace likely suffered disruption around B. The palace was hit with another catastrophe of some form around B.

The final destruction of the palace probably took place sometime before B. Although the remains of the "first palace" mostly lie under later palace renovations, archaeologists have been able to put together a rough picture of what it looked like in antiquity.

The first palace was built around a central court and contained numerous storage areas, including magazines to the west and northeast. On the northwest side of the central court was a room that researchers refer to as the "early keep" and near that another section referred to as the "initiatory area. The initiatory area contains a "lustral basin," which consists of a square tank, sunk into the ground, with a staircase descending on two sides, writes Arnold Lawrence and Richard Tomlinson in their book " Greek Architecture " Yale University Press, They note that several of these basins were built in the palace.

The walls of the first palace were bulkier than those built later on. He notes that the column bases and pavement were made of stones of different colors. The development of the palace coincided with the appearance of the still undeciphered Minoan writing system. Also in this early period the different regions of Crete maintained their own distinct style of pottery and material culture, an indication that the island was not unified.

This was a practice throughout the region , not a local invention. The bottom line is that by the 14th century B. Mycenaean material culture became ubiquitous in the south Aegean Sea, where once Minoan influence had been strong.

It was quite the reversal of fate. In the centuries before the eruption, Cretan culture had exercised notable influence on the Greek mainland. With the administration, perhaps even religious authority collapsed. If the eruption did not break the backbone of Minoan civilization, it may have fractured its economy, and Mycenae - the powerhouse of mainland Greece — exploited that. This theory is supported by the fact that the eruption destroyed the Theran port that had been aligned with Crete and Knossos, plausibly enabling the Mycenaeans to develop their own trading hubs, such as the other largest site in the Cyclades, namely Phylakopi, on Milos.

There is no doubt that Phylakopi was instrumental in promoting the Mycenaean Greek language and writing, Linear B, as the lingua franca of Aegean economy after the eruption. Human sacrifice and King Minos the Terrible. By the time of the classical authors of Greece and Rome B. Epimenides, a Knossian philosopher and soothsayer of the 7th century B.

Even so, the ancient Greek myths refer to Crete time and again - perhaps because of their common origin. One myth tells of Europa, a beautiful Phoenician princess whom Zeus seduced in the guise of a bull. Minos, according to another legend, ordered the construction of a labyrinth, in which the fabled half-bull half-man Minotaur resided.

Myth has it that after losing a war with Crete, the people of Athens were compelled every nine years to send seven boys and seven girls as sacrifices to the Minotaur. These youths were released into the labyrinth, where they would wander and the Minotaur would eat them. Why was Knossos abandoned? It was immediately rebuilt to an even more elaborate complex and until its abandonment was damaged several times during earthquakes, invasions, and in BC by the colossal volcanic eruption of Thera, and the invasion of Mycenaeans who used it as their capital as they ruled the island of Crete until BC.

Who did the Minoans worship? The religion of the ancient Minoans of Crete largely revolved around the Mother Goddess who was typically associated with snakes. While she seems to be the chief goddess of the Minoans, they probably also worshiped a Bird Goddess, maybe just a different form of the Mother Goddess, as well as a Bull God.

Is there a labyrinth at Knossos? Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the hero Theseus. Where did the Minoans come from? How long did the Minoans last? Minoan civilization.