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MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE

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Author Topic: MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE  (Read 8907 times)
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« Reply #780 on: February 27, 2010, 12:23:51 pm »

the Rhone on pack-horses. Ships crossed the English Channel as early as Neolithic times, when the earliest settlers of the Mediterranean race migrated from Gaul. The Veneti of Brittany in Cæsar's time had a navy, as well as trading-vessels, like the ancient Cretans. In the early Bronze Age amber was imported into England from the mouth of the Elbe, so that a connection was established between our shores and the Danubian trade route. Gold was carried from Ireland and Wales and Scotland to Scandinavia. It
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« Reply #781 on: February 27, 2010, 12:24:01 pm »

may have been due to the racial migrations which followed the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt that "the men of the round barrows" invaded these islands in the early British Bronze Age. Probably they followed in the tracks of the traders up the valleys of the Danube and the Elbe as well as from the Alpine districts towards Brittany. It need arouse no surprise that the effects of the distant Egyptian wars should have been felt in Europe. The building of the Chinese wall, which directed westward the drift of Asiatic nomads, was the indirect cause of the fall of Rome.
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« Reply #782 on: February 27, 2010, 12:24:11 pm »

Crete's Late Minoan II Period of splendour and commercial prosperity was brought to an abrupt close by the sack of Knossos. This disaster must have fallen like "a bolt from the blue". It was evidently as unexpected as it was complete. Workmen were engaged in renovating the stately dwelling, new frescoes were being painted, and builders were erecting a new wing, when the invaders

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« Reply #783 on: February 27, 2010, 12:24:24 pm »

swept inland from the seashore, put to the sword soldier and artisan, and probably women and children, then plundered the palace and set it on fire. Phæstos palace and the villa of Aghia Triadha shared similar rates.

It may be that the invaders attacked Crete when its army and navy were engaged elsewhere. The tradition recorded by Herodotus, which is of special interest in this connection, sets forth that Minos went to Sicily in search of Dædalus, the great architect,
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« Reply #784 on: February 27, 2010, 12:24:40 pm »

and there was murdered. An expedition followed to avenge his death, and besieged Camicus for five years. Their efforts were, however, unsuccessful. On their way home their vessels were wrecked on the south coast of Italy, where they founded the town of Hyria. Thereafter, the Præsians informed Herodotus, "men of various nations flocked to Crete, which was stripped of its inhabitants". 1 Memories of Minoan colonies may have mingled with this tradition. One of the several cities called Minoa was situated in Sicily.
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« Reply #785 on: February 27, 2010, 12:25:09 pm »

It is generally believed that the destroyers of Knossos were not Achæans alone, but the mixed peoples on the Greek coast who had come under the influence of Minoan civilization. Thucydides says that after Minos had formed his navy, and communication by sea became easier, "the coast populations began to apply themselves more closely to the acquisition of wealth, and their life became more settled; some even began to build themselves walls on the strength of their newly acquired riches". These Cretanized mainlanders were subjected to the constant pressure of the northern tribes. "The country called Hellas", wrote Thucydides, "had in ancient times no settled population; on the contrary, migrations were of frequent occurrence, the several tribes readily abandoning their
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« Reply #786 on: February 27, 2010, 12:26:01 pm »



RUINS OF THE "ROYAL VILLA", AGHIA TRIADHA. (See page 286).
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« Reply #787 on: February 27, 2010, 12:26:17 pm »

p. 329

homes under pressure of superior numbers. . . . The goodness of the land favoured the aggrandizement of particular individuals, and thus created faction, which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion." 1 It is possible, as some have urged, that Minos himself was a conqueror of Crete, and was supported by Pelasgians and Achæans who had acquired the elements of Minoan culture on the mainland.

The Late Minoan III Period begins with a partial revival of Minoan civilization. A portion of the Knossian palace was reoccupied, and new houses were erected at Gournia and Palaikastro beside the ruins of those which were destroyed in the early Palace Period.
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« Reply #788 on: February 27, 2010, 12:26:34 pm »

Trading relations with Egypt were resumed, and hundreds of Cretan vases of Bügelkannen type were imported into the Nile valley. These and others were imitated in faience and alabaster by Egyptian artisans. But Cretan culture was on the down grade. The island artisans of the Late Minoan III Period were imitators of their predecessors, and sometimes slovenly imitators; they invented nothing new. It was an age of decadence and transition. Ultimately Knossos and the small towns were entirely deserted, and the people retreated to the inner mountain valleys and plateaux. The Cretans ceased to be known in Egypt as the Keftiu during the reign of Amenhotep III, the father of
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« Reply #789 on: February 27, 2010, 12:26:51 pm »

Akhenaton. 2 The founders of Præsos, who claimed to be the "true Cretans", were no doubt descendants of the old Minoan peoples and the Achæo-Pelasgian elements from the Continent.

But although Late Minoan III culture perished by slow degrees in Crete, it flourished in Cyprus. Apparently large numbers of Cretans and Cretan colonists from the mainland settled on that island and achieved a political

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« Reply #790 on: February 27, 2010, 12:27:13 pm »

ascendancy over the natives. Others settled on Rhodes. About the same time the Minoan colonies in Lycia and Caria were strongly reinforced, and for a period, if Greek tradition is to be relied upon, the Carians monopolized the sea trade of the Ægean. It is believed that large numbers of Cretans also fled to Phœnicia and stimulated maritime enterprise in that quarter. "In the Homeric poems", says Professor Myres, "more visits are paid by western seafarers to Phœnicia and Sidon than 'Phœnician' merchants pay to the west. . . . The wide Phœnician trade of historic times had clearly begun to grow as the Minoan sea-power failed." 1
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« Reply #791 on: February 27, 2010, 12:27:33 pm »

About a century after the fall of Knossos, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and other mainland towns had reached the height of their prosperity. It is possible that they owed their supremacy to Hittite influence. At any rate, persistent Greek legends associate their rulers with Anatolia. The walls of Tiryns were reputed to have been built by Cyclopes from Lycia, and Pelops, who gave his name to the Peloponnesus, was reputed to have come from Asia Minor. "The account given by those Peloponnesians", says Thucydides, "who have been the recipients of the most creditable traditions is this. First of all Pelops, arriving among a needy population from Asia with vast wealth, acquired such power that,
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« Reply #792 on: February 27, 2010, 12:28:12 pm »

stranger though he was, the country was called after him; and this power fortune saw fit materially to increase in the hands of his descendants." 2 The complicated family history of Pelopidæ and Atridæ is of special interest in this connection. Atreus, son of Pelops, married his son Plisthenes to Aerope, granddaughter of King Minos of Crete. Her father had given her and her sister to the King of Eubœa, because it had been foretold he would die by the hand of one of his children. The sons of Aerope

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« Reply #793 on: February 27, 2010, 12:28:23 pm »

were Agamemnon and Menelaus. Afterwards Atreus married Aerope, his daughter-in-law, and brought up her sons, who were consequently called the Atridæ. But this fickle lady deserted Atreus and became the wife of his brother Thyestes. Then Atreus took to wife Pelopea, whose descendants were called the Pelopidæ. He was not aware that this lady was his brother's daughter. Many crimes and calamities are associated with the traditions of these princes and princesses. The chief interest they have for us here is the wonderful relation the traditions regarding them bear to the history
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« Reply #794 on: February 27, 2010, 12:28:34 pm »

of the period. A Minoan king of Crete is to be slain by his own kin from the mainland, and invaders from Anatolia intermarry with Cretan stock in the Peloponnesus. This appears to be as good history as the reference in Ezekiel to the ethnics of Jerusalem: "Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite". 1 Mycenæ's mother was a Cretan and his father an Anatolian, perhaps of Indo-European speech like the military aristocracy of the Mitannian State, which appears to have for a period achieved political ascendancy over the Hittites.
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