The Minoans

THE MINOANS
By George Glasgow

Contents

Preface
Crete the Forerunner of Greece
The Sea-Faring People of Crete
Minos and the Minotaur
Knossos
Prehistoric Engineering and Architecture
Internal Politics: the Relations of Knossos and Phæstos
Minoan Architecture and Fresco Painting
The Pottery
The Origin of Writing
Cretan Religion
Men and Women, Clothes and Customs
From Prehistoric Crete to Classical Greece
Index

Preface

SIR ARTHUR EVANS' renewed campaign of excavation in Crete has again attracted considerable public attention to the remarkable disclosures of the last twenty years. Sir Arthur Evans himself is at present engaged in compiling in three big volumes the consecutive story of Minoan civilization as revealed by his own excavations. The present writer is convinced that the story of Cretan discovery is such as to appeal to the imagination of a wide public who have no specialist interest in archaeology. The story has all the interest of adventure and exploration. This book is an attempt to meet what such a public wants. I have tried to give a general picture of the world which existed in the Mediterranean four thousand years ago, and of the amazing process by which it has been revealed, so that it can be understood by those totally unacquainted with classical study, and I have tried to give it in one hour's reading. For those who want to go further I give references to other books. It must be understood that this book does not aim at an exact account of the archaeological position as it exists today. With new excavations being carried out this very year, and with new material in the hands of the excavators, as yet unpublished and undigested, any attempt to be strictly up to date would merely mean the progressive and indefinite postponement of the book. The broad lines of the discovery of Minoan civilization are clear, and in the writer's opinion, even because a new campaign of excavation is now started, ought to be presented now in a form to be easily understood. The results of the discoveries of this spring, for instance, add important details to our knowledge - some of which I have incorporated - but do not affect fundamentals.

Some of the substance of the following chapters was published in 1920 and 1921 in Discovery, to the Editor of which I am grateful for permission to re-publish them. In a somewhat different form the substance was also published by me in 1914-1915 in the National Home Reading Magazine.

It is to my friend Dr. Ronald Montagu Burrows that I, in common with thousands, owe my interest in Crete. He died on May 14, 1920, before his time. . .

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices.

This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making.

We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.

Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.