#Knossos

[the-cricket-chirps]

Dolphins Fresco, Palace of Knossos (& detail)

c. 1700-1450 B.C.

[clepysdra]

Knossian Board Game

This is modeled after an ancient bronze age artefact unearthed at Knossos, believed by archeologists to be an early board game.

The game is a chess clone and playing it will increase the logic skill.

Make sure when you are placing the object in build mode, you first attach chairs to the board game itself, and then place a table of your choosing underneath the game (using the commands testingcheats true and then bb.moveobjects on). If you do not follow these steps, the sims will not be able to sit and play!

BOARD GAME DOWNLOAD - Dropbox (no ads)

[city-of-ladies]

"The prominence of female divinity in Minoan culture might well have reflected the prominence of Minoan women in daily life. In Shang dynasty China, the authority of goddesses such as the Eastern and Western Mothers was echoed to some degree by the authority of women in elite society and even the army. Fu Jing and Fu Hao, wives of King Wu Ding, led men into battle before being honoured in death with monumental tombs containing the victims of human sacrifice, battle axes, knives and arrowheads. In Egypt, many of the images of Hatshepsut were destroyed or defaced after her death when her name was removed from the official list of rulers by her male successors, who sought to claim direct descent from her husband. It is possible that images of powerful Minoan women were subject to similar mistreatment.

While there is no evidence that Minoan women ruled in the same manner as Hatshepsut, or joined battle like the women of Shang China, the sheer number of artworks depicting them centrally placed and on a larger scale than men has prompted some historians to speculate that Minoan society was matriarchal or matrilineal. ‘Neopalatial Crete,’ writes one scholar, ‘presents the best candidate for a matriarchy – if one ever existed.’ There is nothing to say that the position of Minoan women was in any way secondary to that of men. 

Minoan women were certainly not confined to the weaving room. Sculptures show them playing lyres, flutes and zithers, sashaying in flounced chevron-patterned skirts and raising their arms in the air in ecstasy. In the ‘Grandstand Fresco’ from Knossos the women are more carefully delineated in paint than the men. Each woman has her own identity, her own style. The women appear to occupy the main rooms of the palace while the men congregate as an anonymous mass beyond. Women depicted seated – a sign of divinity or authority – are often being approached by men or animals. A highly enigmatic fresco at Thera (Santorini), for example, features a woman wearing large hoop earrings, a snake in her hair, and a neck-chain of ducks, sitting on a dais with a griffin beside her while a blue monkey pays her court.

 On a gold ring, a female deity, we may presume, is seated beneath a tree, where she receives flowers from two women. A smaller figure of a man with a double-headed axe over his head hovers between them.  By depicting the man beneath the axe, and on a smaller scale than the women, the engraver of the ring perhaps hoped to convey that he was a divine vision, almost a thought-bubble, originating in one of the female worshipper’s heads. Trees, as Arthur Evans recognised, were sacred in Minoan culture, and were perhaps believed to be capable of inspiring divine visions in those who honoured them. Such artworks contribute to the picture of Minoan women exerting considerable religious authority in the palace complexes and society more widely. 

Minoan women also played a crucial role in ritual. The early Minoans sometimes interred their dead twice by exhuming the bones of their family members and resettling them later in jars. The more usual custom, however, was to bury the dead in chamber tombs or stone beehive-shaped ‘tholos’ tombs, clay sarcophagi or, in the case of infants, under the floorboards of the home. The colourful paintings on a rare limestone sarcophagus from Hagia Triada, circa 1400 bc, show three men carrying young animals and a model boat to the deceased, who stands in front of his tomb, ready to receive his provisions for the afterlife. There are also three women present, the first of whom pours a libation into a cauldron placed between two upright axes mounted by birds; the second carries further vessels; the third – darker skinned like the men and thus possibly of lower social status – has a lyre. On the other side of the sarcophagus the women assist in the sacrifice of a bull on an altar. Other wall paintings show women involved in rituals of their own involving blood.  A fresco from Akrotiri features a group of women, one of whom sits beside a sunken room or ‘lustral basin’ with a bleeding foot. A tree also bleeds. It is possible that lustral basins were used for purification by women during or after menstruation."

The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World, Daisy Dunn

[whencyclopedia]

This map illustrates the geopolitical evolution in the Aegean during the Bronze Age when the dominant civilizations of the region - the Minoans and Mycenaeans- played distinct roles. The Minoans (2000–1450 BCE) on Crete were renowned for their maritime trade, elaborate palaces like Knossos, and sophisticated art, while the Mycenaeans (1600–1100 BCE) were more militaristic, building fortified citadels...

[anarchistfrogposting]

Do you think the Minotaur ever lamented his loneliness in the Labyrinth of Knossos. Do you think he made some small corner of it a home. Do you think he traced the cracks in its walls with knowing fingers. Do you think he found happiness despite it all?

[lightthereis]

Arthur Evans' reconstruction of the Dolphin Frescos, Knossos Minoan archaeological site, Crete

[littlegiganticthings]

Character Art by Eric Dagley

[joseline-woodhouse]

So my wife and I had our honeymoon on Crete recently and in the museum of Heraklion we saw her:

I am obsessed!

What do you mean there was a possible Goddess of nature AND cats AND snakes and no one told me about this before??

So basically the Minoan civilization was one of the first civilisations in Europe and we know very little about them and what we know of them comes largely from the fact they were really talented artists, to the point where they have been hired by the Egyptian Pharos. They had a lot of cults on the Greek island Crete and built big labyrinth like "Palaces" there, which we by now know, probably weren't palaces at all. Most often they are assumed to have been temples, but it is subject of ongoing debate. Unrelated to the snake goddess (probably?) they found a cave on Crete filled with double edged axe heads of varying sizes, probably for religious reasons(?) because some of these sizes don't make sense as weapons or tools.

Why did Greek mythology tumblr not tell me about this?

Anyway I bought myself a tiny figure and a T-Shirt (picture below) of the snake goddess and am planning to become a collector of her merchandise now.

Anyway, I have been reading up on the Minoan culture on wiki and I advise other history or mythology nerds to do the same.

[clepysdra]

Aegean Set 2.0

Revisiting Ariadne and Phaedra to give them some clothes! And also a tunic for Theseus. The outfits are based off of ancient Minoan and Mycenaean clothing (with huge inspiration taken from the reconstructions by Dr. Bernice Jones; I don’t think I’d be able to visualize their shapes from the ancient frescos alone), although some swatches are more historically accurate than others.

~You can find the first half of the Aegean set here.~

Ariadne Dress (UPDATED 1/2/24)

Long dress category

15 swatches

Base game compatible

Feminine

Theseus Tunic

Short dress category

17 swatches

Base game compatible

Masculine

DRESS DOWNLOAD - Dropbox (no ads)

TUNIC DOWNLOAD - Dropbox (no ads)

~Also, the Manthos sword on Theseus’ hip is by the amazing @kyriat-sims~

[flintdibble]

The Top 6 Penis Bones in Archaeology

Video on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/h3I9ny2O8XI

It's got dickbones, non-dickbones, cool archaeology, paleontology, and biology, some more wangs, and a few jokes. Check it out and share it with friends!

[paintedtreasury]

''Ladies in Blue'' Palace of Knossos in Crete. Ca. 1525–1450 BC. Archaeological Museum of Herakleion. PS. This is not my photo. I found it and it should be shared in my opinion.

[oldbooksarchive]

Place of minos at knossos (1921)

[agarlick]

Clay Bull’s Head Rhyton, Knossos

Gel pen and marker on watercolor paper, 2024

[uwmspeccoll]

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth stands as one of the ancient stories that has survived the test of time and continuously appears in mainstream entertainment. Most understand that this concept began with the story of Theseus of ancient Athens and how he navigated the labyrinth and slayed the beast within, but many don’t know the inspiration of this idea.

Nearly a millennia before Classical Greece rose to the height of its power (500-350 BCE) the two leading cultures of the Aegean Sea were the Mycenaeans on the mainland and the Minoans on modern day Crete, and it is on this island that we find the labyrinthian structures of Bronze age Greece.

The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos: Plan and Sections by British archaeologist Sinclair Hood and Canadian archaeologist William E, Taylor, Jr., was published as Supplementary Volume No. 13 of The British School at Athens in 1981. It shows the archaeological remains of one of the many Minoan Palaces. Though mostly destroyed and crumbling, we can still see the complex layout of halls and rooms that twist, turn, and abruptly end. Beginning with the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, scores of theories have been raised about the purpose of such confounding architecture, from a form of defense to a means of controlling foreign visits.  

Besides the confusing architecture, though no depictions of minotaurs were found, Minoan Palaces such as the one at Knossos did contained several pieces of art that depicted bulls. Upon further inspection, the symbol of the Bull was quite prominent throughout the ancient culture from sports, such as bull leaping, to religious sacrifice.

When looking to those who lived in the past, one should remember that we are not the only ones who inquired about archaeological remains. These ruins would’ve been seen by the Classical Greeks, but by that time their imaginations about the great Palaces and Bull iconography of the Minoan civilization was transformed into the myth of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth.

View more posts on Ancient Greece.

-- LauraJean, Special Collections Undergraduate Classics Intern

[davidstanleytravel]

This high relief fresco of griffins tethered to columns (1600-1450 BC) in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum was found next to the Grand Staircase of the Great East Hall in the Palace of Knossos.

[thatshowthingstarted]

Dagger with inlaid Griffin,

Knossos, Crete, Greece. 1450-1375 BC. 

Bronze, ivory, gold and silver. 

“It is a short copper sword, 40 cm long. It has an elephant apple and an elephant-lined handle, which has been fixed with gold-plated silks. The sword has an insert decoration of a sitting flu with open gold wings on both sides. 

This is the technique of ink insert decoration, formerly called niello and with it the famous Mycenaian Greek textbooks have been manufactured.The insert trim was done inside a cut, which followed the outline of the copper alloy-based fluoride by applying gold and silver foil to the shaped surface of the sword... "

( an interview with Dr. Athanasia Kanda with the theme: "The City of Knososos, a "timeless" center of worship. "

Ephorate of Antiquities of Heraklion �� Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports / Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development