Knossos

Előszó

Knossos is located just 5 km. south-east of Herakleion - about ten minutes by car - on the hill of Kephala beside the Kairatos river (presentday Katsambas), amidst olive trees, vines and cypresses. It is the best known, most typical and most accessible part of Crete. Even if one has only a day to spare one can visit the palace of Knossos and the Herakleion Museum and so leave Crete with a general idea of its ancient civilisation. Knossos was the most important town in Crete in prehistoric times. Homer speaks of the existence of one hundred cities in Crete at the time of the Trojan War and mentions Knossos first, then Gortyn, Miletos, Phaistos and others. He describes Knossos as "vast'' and "a great city'' and informs us that Minos was its king. The major excavations conducted in Crete since the end of the 19th century have brought to light the remains of a great civilisation, the first advanced civilisation in Europe. It spanned the interval between approximately 2800 and 1100 b.c. and Arthur Evans, the English excavator of Knossos, named it the Minoan Civilisation after the legendary Minos. The centre of the Minoan civilisation was Knossos, where excavations have revealed the actual palace of King Minos with its well-stocked magazines, royal apartments, shrines, the large central court and the throne room, in which the throne of Minos was discovered, the oldest throne in Europe. The purpose of this guide is to help the visitor to find his way through the extremely complicated palace of Knossos, to give him an overall picture of the palace as it was in its heyday and to explain the specific function of each room, wherever this is possible. However, in order to understand the palace one should place it in its correct historical context, M 1. Minoan pithoi (storage jars) in the South Propylaeum. < 2. Part of the palace of Knossos showing the South Propylaeum. In the background is the sacred Mt. Juktas. Vissza