Knossos

You probably know the Ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, who lives in a labyrinth under Knossos on the island of Crete - was there ever really a labyrinth, or a King Minos? Dan is joined by the University of Oxford's Steve Kershaw to unravel the mysteries of Knossos, trace the rise of the Minoan civilisation during the Bronze Age, its collapse and the controversial excavation and reconstruction by the eccentric archaeologist Arthur Evans in the early 20th century. This is part of our 'Dan Snow's Guide to Europe' summer travel series. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 2:41Dan Snow?

  There is nowhere quite like the island of Crete at the height of summer. As you drive along the long, thin island from its ancient capital, Heraklion, you get rugged mountains rising to the south and the shimmering blue Aegean Sea to the north. Its coastline is a shifting ribbon of jagged cliffs and secret coves. When you roll down the window, you get that warm, dry air, the smell of thyme and sea salt. You see village gardens spilling over with summer colors. Pink oleander, bougainvillea everywhere, fruit trees laden with figs. Olive groves spread for miles along the roads.

• 3:26Dan Snow?

  Vineyards, fishing boats bob lazily in its inlets and harbors. If paradise exists, folks, well, for me, it probably looks quite like the Georgian dockyard in Portsmouth in England. But for most people, I can imagine paradise must look and feel something like this, like Crete. And on that remarkable island, history isn't tucked away in museums. It is everywhere you look. There are Byzantine chapels nestled down cobbled streets. There are Venetian fortresses with their gaze always on the horizon. There are ancient customs and ways of life just being kept alive in villages and haaths and homes. And on the island of Crete lies one of the greatest archaeological sites on

• 4:10Dan Snow?

  earth, which is also one of the most mysterious. It is a place where the line between history and myth is blurred. It's difficult to know where one begins and the other ends. I'm talking about Knossos. Once, we think the ceremonial and political centre of what we call the Minoan civilisation flourished over 3,000 years ago, long before what we recognise as classical Greece, the Greece of Athens and Sparta. This was supposedly the home of the Minotaur, half man, half bull, a monster said to stalk the corridors of the labyrinth deep below the site, imprisoned by King Minos.

• 4:50Dan Snow?

  If you're looking to get to the bottom of that myth, well, I've got bad news for you, because a visit to Knossos can leave you with more questions than answers. Most of what you see there isn't actually the original palace, but a controversial reconstruction by the 20th century archaeologist Arthur Evans. So if you have been and you've got those questions, or wondered what the real history behind this site might be, then look no further than this episode, or listen no further than this episode, because I'm joined by the University of Oxford's Dr Steve Kershaw. He is our guide to sort the myth out from the facts as we trace the rise and fall of the Minoan civilisation, the history of Knossos and its discovery in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is my guide to Knossos. Enjoy.

• 5:45Dan Snow?

  The Athenians wore black. Every ninth year it happened, the gates opened and out marched seven young men and seven young women bound for Crete. The problem was, long before, Prince Androgeus had died in Athens. He was the son of King Minos of Crete, the most powerful man in the Greek world, and as retribution for his death, his father demanded these Athenian young as human sacrifices. They would be fed into a maze, buried deep in the bowels of his palace at Knossos, and they would never return. That is because at the heart of that labyrinth lived the Minotaur, a terrible monster with a man's

• 6:30Dan Snow?

  body and a bull's head.

• 6:37Dan Snow?

  The labyrinth, I should note, was built by Deedalus, and it was said to be so cunning that anyone who entered it would immediately lose their way and never see sunlight again.

• 6:51Dan Snow?

  But on one of these occasions, when the Athenian handover was taking place, a young man called Theseus decided that enough was enough. He stepped out from the crowd of onlookers and offered himself. “Send me,” he told his father, “either I end this, or I end with it.”

• 7:13Dan Snow?

  A black-sailed ship took him across the ocean until the outline of Knossos could be seen on the horizon. A palace of bright red pillars and bright frescoes, many of which feature bulls. It was there, when he landed, that Ariadne saw him. He had something about him. He looked like he was trying to solve a problem, measuring doors and shadows. He was not marching meekly after his death. Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos, and she knew what her father was like. He was strict and unbending, brutal. But that night, she pressed a sword in Theseus’s hand, and she gave him a ball of thread. She told him to tie the string at the start of the maze,

• 7:57Dan Snow?

  unfurl it, then defeat the beast with the sword, and use the thread to trace the route back to the start. At dawn, Theseus and the others entered the labyrinth. He obviously didn’t receive a pat-down from the guards because he managed to take his sword with him. Stone closed behind him like a mouth. He stood and listened, then he undid the ball of thread and tied the loose end to a stalagmite. The string made a trail, and he turned this way and that, utterly losing himself, but confident that he could find his way home. As he neared the centre of the labyrinth, he smelt the monotaur before he heard it. It was a copper scent of old blood.

• 8:45Dan Snow?

  Then it came at him. The minotaur charged, horns against his blade. The minotaur sprang over darkness again and again. Theseus’s sword attempted to find the soft place between the monster’s jaw. Eventually, he struck and felt the blade slide home. The minotaur stumbled and slumped back, defeated, dying. When Theseus’s hands stopped trembling, he felt around on the floor of the cavern the ball of string. He found it and followed it back to the fresh air, where the doorway opened and the world

• 9:28Dan Snow?

  poured in. Theseus took Ariadne and the other terrified Athenians, ran to the harbour and boarded their black-sailed ship. Lines were cast off, oars churned the water and Crete shrank behind them. For the first time, a tribute ship was returning to Athens with a full cargo. They landed, they stopped on Naxos to take on water and draw their breath. There, the story takes several different turns depending on which version you read. Some say it was there that Theseus abandoned Ariadne, either intentionally or due to circumstance out of his control.

• 10:11Dan Snow?

  Others say she was taken as a wife by the god Dionysus. Whatever the case, Theseus returned to Athens without her. But before he left on his sacrificial voyage, he’d promised the man who seems to have been his father, the king Aegeus, that if he was to survive and return home, he would change the ship’s sails from black to white, so his father, waiting on the shore, would know his son had made it without having to wait for the ship to dock. But in the chaos of victory, Theseus forgot. The black-sailed ship approached. The father stood on the cliff-top waiting. At the sight of those black sails, he believed what any father would.

• 10:52Dan Snow?

  Stricken by grief, he raised his arms, stepped forward and fell into the sea. Forever after, people who sailed those waters called it by his name, so his sorrow would never be forgotten: the Aegean.

• 11:10Dan Snow?

  Steve, great to see you. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  I'm delighted to be on the podcast, Dan. It's good to see you again, too.

• 11:17Dan Snow?

  It's good to see you again. It's not like last time we were chatting with each other under the shade of the olive trees of Greece. You were quoting from memory great chunks of the Odyssey and we were sipping a bit of wine. That was living, I'll tell you what.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  It was living. There's a high standard of living on Crete, be it now or be it back in the Bronze Age with those Minosians.

• 11:38Dan Snow?

  Speaking of the Bronze Age in Crete, what people will know probably stems from the myth initially, that myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Was that a popular story? Is that something we've made up? I mean, it was a popular story in ancient Greece? What was it about, do you think?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  It was a hugely popular story in ancient Greece. You find it all over the literature. So it's in the poetry and in the prose and you find it on vases. It's a really popular subject on vase painting and wall painting. And you find the labyrinth as a design on coins from Crete. So this is everywhere. It's one of the fundamental stories of ancient Greece, really.

• 12:19Dan Snow?

  I was always struck by that myth because Crete doesn't feature very prominently in the sort of great power dynamics of classical Greece. You know, people think about the Persian War, the Peloponnesian War. Crete doesn't feel like a big player. But here we've got a myth where Crete's bossing it and King Minos is telling the mighty Athenians what to do and send hostages and stuff. Does that reflect a reality of that earlier period of the history of the Greek world?

• 12:44Speaker 03

  I think there's always a possibility that myth represents history in some kind of way. If you like myth as damaged history is quite a popular idea. And certainly you get the feeling that the civilization on Crete that is connected with Minos was powerful. He's credited in the Greek tradition with being the first to have a sea-based empire, for a start. And in the myth, he's being able to exact tribute from the Athenians to feed the Minotaur. So there seems to be some kind of reflection, I think, of power within Crete way back in that Bronze Age.

• 13:22Dan Snow?

  So let's get the period right. So what is, roughly speaking, when are we talking, do you think? When did the Greeks think this happened? And when do you think it happened?

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Well, the Greeks simply locate it in their mythical past, which is just, it's a bit like once upon a time in a galaxy, long, long away and far, far away. The Bronze Age, the civilisation on Crete is coming to prominence around 1900 B.C. or thereabouts, and it's lasting till in the region of 1450. So you've got a big chunk of that second millennium B.C. there.

• 13:56Dan Snow?

  But this is a thousand years before the Battle of Thermopylae. So that's, that's pretty long back for the Greeks.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  It is a long way back. As I say, it's in their deepest, darkest mythical past. They locate it there. I mean, they, they think of the Trojan War, for instance, as happening around 1200 B.C. by our calculations, and Minos and the Cretans are older than that.

• 14:20Dan Snow?

  Wow. Do you think there could be any truth? Is it realistic that in that period, we could see the first of these many, many maritime empires that start to dominate the Greek-speaking world, a world of little statelets and cities and towns and islands that spread well from eventually all the way to Italy and beyond. But at this period, what from what is now Greece up through into almost the Black Sea? Is that a kind of realistic idea? This sort of empire could have formed in this period?

• 14:46Speaker 03

  It is possible, I think. It seems that this civilisation that's based on Crete was very well-connected with all sorts of other cultures, both to the north of it into the Greek islands and Greece. To the east, they have communications with the cultures in the Near East and also with Egypt as well. So there could be little bits of truth here with like sort of mythical remembrances of true activities, which of course get distorted in the telling and themes and sometimes can be kind of, if you like, a shorthand for history. But I don't think you could rule that out as ways of interpreting these tales.

• 15:27Dan Snow?

  Because Crete, if you look on a map, Crete makes a lot of sense as a crucible of, of an imperial culture, a palatial culture, people talk about, don't they? Because as you say, it's got the Near East, it's got Egypt. In this period, we're looking at the beginning of the New Kingdom in Egypt, when this Minos might have lived, it's possibly even before Tutankhamun. Crete is able to take advantage. It's really on the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean, isn't it?

• 15:49Speaker 03

  It is, it's very well located, it's sort of the southernmost island of, if you like, of the Greek islands, so it's connected northwards into the Greek islands, it's really not that far from the coast of modern Turkey as well, so it has good access into Anatolia and then down those coasts further to the east to Syria and beyond, and then southerly, it's really not that far to Egypt from Crete, so it's located on a, if you like, a perfect cultural crossroads.

• 16:20Dan Snow?

  So we see this civilisation that you've talked about, people say, is it the first European culture, it's an imperial culture, big monumental building, big palaces, quite hierarchical, is that the first time we spot this in Europe?

• 16:36Speaker 03

  One of the things that's so often been said about the Cretan culture is exactly that, that it is the first European civilisation, in a sense, I mean, these days that word civilisation is not the coolest one to use, as you implying that anyone who isn't civilised is uncivilised and that's disrespectful to them, but nevertheless, this is something special and it's something new, this is a formidable and highly advanced civilisation that appears at this time, and it seems to, in a way, outstrip things that have been going before it in the immediate vicinity.

• 17:13Dan Snow?

  How is that reflected in the archaeology, how do we know that, how is it sort of different and outstripping other competitors in this space?

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Yes, it was Arthur Evans, I think, who described Crete as the first European civilisation, because what he'd found there on the island was what he thought of as a palatial culture, so you have extraordinary architecture of the highest quality, wonderful civic amenities in many ways, so you have drainage systems and water systems and that kind of thing that can sustain these communities, you have wondrous artworks, you have fabulous ceramic production as well, so you have a culture that's architecturally sophisticated, it seems to be politically sophisticated, with great artistic sensibilities as well,

• 18:06Speaker 03

  that becomes extremely prosperous and has relationships with the major civilisations around the periphery of it as well at the time.

• 18:15Dan Snow?

  And then do we see colonies of that civilization? We talk about Crete, but you and I have been to Akrotiri, on the island of Santorini, Thera. Gosh, I'll never forget those artworks showing that maritime sort of homecoming or festival. Or is that a Minoan satellite? Is it a colony? Or is there just some cultural harmonisation?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  It's very much plugged into that Minoan world. I think it's probably wrong to think of the Minoan civilisation as being exclusive to Crete, because it manifests itself on a wider basis, as you say, to the island of Santorini, where you can see in graphic form on those fantastic frescoes, these people seafaring and farming and living and worshipping. And further beyond as well, there are certainly island communities that reflect this kind of civilisation throughout the Greek islands, in fact. So this Minoan world is one that's very interconnected, I think. We should always think about these cultures as being not perhaps specific to one tiny place,

• 19:18Speaker 03

  to one island of, say, Crete. But the filaments of this civilisation are extending throughout the island world of what is now Greece.

• 19:27Dan Snow?

  And am I right in thinking that, Muz, that some of those artworks, there is suggestion, wasn't there, of palm trees and images of Egypt and the Nile potentially as well? So you're seeing that in the art?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely. These people are so well-connected. There are these images on those frescoes of places that are exotic and flora and fauna that are not native to the region. One of the things that you find on these frescoes is monkeys, for instance, probably vervet monkeys, which are not indigenous to the Aegean. So those are showing you just, I think, how widely connected these people are, that they have access to cultures far, far away from them.

• 20:03Dan Snow?

  And bronze is important. We talk about the Bronze Age civilisation. Is this, do these people represent the coming of bronze to the Greek world? Do they arrive? Or does the metal arrive and is taken up by the locals?

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Certainly, they exploit it to the maximum, that's for sure. Whether they are the originators of this, I don't know on Crete, but certainly this metal is at the heart of their civilization because it gives them technical facilities to create weaponry, but also farming implements and cooking vessels and what have you. So it allows them to live a life that is far more sophisticated than it had been back in, say, the Neolithic age, where you're just using stone.

• 20:44Dan Snow?

  And you've mentioned a little bit about the sanitation. I mean, it's sophisticated in terms of the way that people are living as well.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Very much so. So the residential places are extremely sophisticated. So on Crete, there are these communities or complexes of buildings that are commonly known as palaces that are really multifunctional spaces. So they're probably for administration and ruling, but also for production and storage of natural resources and also residential and perhaps for distributing things into the countryside and to the people and collecting them together. Also, though, you have outlying proper city settlements and country houses and farms, all of which have been manifested in the archaeology in the last 150 years or so.

• 21:34Dan Snow?

  Tom, the alphabet was writing, account keeping, invoices, spreadsheets.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  They loved it. There's nothing the Minoans loved more than a bit of bureaucracy. And they loved making lists, except that we have a problem, that we don't know what their language was and we haven't been able to decipher it. They wrote principally in a script that's known as Linear A, which we can work out is using syllables and pictograms, usually to record lists of things because there are numbers that we can decipher using a decimal counting system. But what that language is and how we should translate the specific texts that we've got is very, very difficult.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Just about the only word that we can decipher is two syllables that say total. Because you can do the maths on some of these tablets where it's written and you can add up the various things and it comes to a total and there's two symbols that say total. But that's about it. So we don't know what language these people were talking.

• 22:40Dan Snow?

  And we don't know if there was a king called Minos. Do we know of any individuals or any names?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  We don't have specific names of individuals on any of these documents. What we do have perhaps is a clue to their name. We don't know what they called themselves. We call them Minos, but we don't know what they called themselves. But it looks like other languages that are referring to them. You get keftiu in Egypt, you get kaftor in Hebrew, you get kataru in Akkadian, the Babylonian language. So it's likely that these keftiu are known to other cultures and that's what they call them. But what they call themselves, that we don't know.

• 23:24Dan Snow?

  More on Canosus after the break.

• 23:31Dan Snow?

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• 26:36Dan Snow?

  So we've given them a random name, subsequent generations gave them a mythological king. The only thing that is interesting, isn't it, when we walked around Knossos is there's a lot of bulls. I mean, that is a sort of link with some of the iconography of the Minotaur. Was it a culture that seemed to venerate bulls, celebrate that animal?

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Very much. The bull is a really important animal. It's very prominent in all sorts of different artworks. I mean, the bull is a powerful creature and it's associated very often with fertility and strength and power. But it really seems that there is a great veneration and respect for the bull in Cretan culture. You find it again on frescoes, you find it on sculptures as well. Particularly a number of them where there's almost like some kind of ritual of bull leaping, which is some kind of spectacular sport, which seems to maybe as a way of dominating the animal and bringing it under control. But the bull is a great focal point of much of the imagery that we find on Crete.

• 27:37Dan Snow?

  Tell me, what do you make of Knossos? What do you make of that extraordinary site? We identify as loosely as a palace. What do you think might be happening there?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  I think there's probably more to it than palace. It's hard to define what it is really. There's a space that Arthur Evans thought was perhaps a throne room. But people have now sought to interpret that in different ways as perhaps it's a kind of initiation room or something like that. But Knossos has a great central courtyard and around it is built a number of storage facilities, massive storage facilities for grain and wine and olive oil. There are religious aspects of the site. There are lots of things that they call lustre basins that are perhaps used for religious ceremonies. There's a great staircase which seems to have residential accommodation at the bottom of it.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  So there seems to be a combination of administration and religion and perhaps rule and the collection and distribution of food and other resources as the centre of a very active and very thriving community.

• 28:49Dan Snow?

  Interesting, but not necessarily evidence for a king, a court, a really, really strong, hierarchical form of government.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  There doesn't appear to be at that point, which is slightly odd. You would perhaps expect there to be that. There's nothing there that you can pinpoint that looks like a palatial structure in its own right. Nothing like you would find in Egypt, or perhaps you would find in mainland Greece at a later time. So it seems to have a special flavour of something that's perhaps more communal, rather than explicitly hierarchical.

• 29:25Dan Snow?

  Any labyrinths beneath the ground there?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Oh, there's the big question, really. The whole thing appears quite labyrinthine. It's quite a complicated structure, and it's built on many layers. It has underground levels. So it's one of those things where you see it and you think, oh, yes, it's got to be. This is a confused and confusing and labyrinthine kind of structure that perhaps could feed its way into the mythological stories of the Minotaur and so on. That's certainly how it was interpreted originally, particularly because people wanted so desperately to plug the myth into the architecture that they'd found. I think these days people think of it as being a bit more coherent than that, but it does nevertheless give you these

• 30:12Speaker 03

  sort of exquisite teasers of labyrinth-ness in the way that it's put together.

• 30:16Dan Snow?

  When does this all come to an end? What do we know about the end of not just Knossos, but of Minoan civilisation?

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Again, this is one of those million-dollar questions, really. But what we see on the island is a change in the culture that happens, like I said, the dates are always argued about. But we see this change in the culture on Crete, maybe around 1450 B.C.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Where a number of new things start to happen. So the burial practices change. So you have what they call these warrior graves now. So graves that are filled with weaponry and these sort of boar's tusk helmets and bronze goods in a way that the people have not been burying their dead in the past before. You also get a new language, which is utterly crucial. So those Linear A tablets that we can't decipher really are superseded by a script that's known as Linear B, which we now know to be Greek. So the administrative language of the island becomes Greek.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  So there's a new culture coming in. And we also see actually far afield that the distinctive dress of the Minoan people on frescoes in Egypt gets painted over with the dress of people from mainland Greece, reflecting kind of changes in the island and the way that people perhaps were dressing. So what you see is a cultural change that's quite profound. What triggers this is argued about. So it could be the arrival of Mycenaeans from mainland Greece in a takeover. On the other hand, it could be, if you like, more of a cultural takeover with the people

• 32:12Speaker 03

  adopting these customs of the mainland, perhaps at an elite level. But whatever we see is that something fundamentally changes. And the culture shifts from our Minoan one to one that is deeply embedded and linked with the culture of the mainland of Greece. So it may be Mycenaeans coming in. And what it certainly is, is Mycenaean culture coming into the island.

• 32:40Dan Snow?

  More on Knossos after the break.

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• 33:48Speaker 02

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank,

• 34:32Speaker 02

  USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 34:44Dan Snow?

  Previously, people liked to look for dramatic causes of sudden downfall, didn't they? And there was the eruption of Thera, Santorini now, the middle was blown out of the island. There were there have been tsunamis and that was real, but you're just saying that might not have been the absolute existential event for this way of organising themselves.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  The Santorini eruption must have had a profound effect on life on Crete. The problem that we have with this is that there probably hasn't been a bigger volcanic eruption since that one, and it was immensely powerful. Our problem with this is putting the dates to it. So it seems at this point that the date of the eruption is perhaps at the end of the 17th century BC, so roughly say 1625. So you have quite a big time lapse before the arrival of that Mycenaean culture on the island. So whether the eruption has, if you like, triggered a chain of events that takes a

• 35:45Speaker 03

  long time to play out is conceivable. On the other hand, it could be that the island recovered, it wasn't perhaps affected in the dramatic and negative way that one might imagine in a sense. The ash fall on the island was not particularly heavy, for instance. Tsunamis certainly did hit the coast, but much of the island culture is on the opposite side of the island. So in a sense, the jury is still out on that, is that the Santorini eruption would obviously have created major cultural realignments in the in the region and perhaps realignments of trade routes.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  But as a sort of single smoking gun for the eradication of the Minoans, that's probably too crude a yardstick, if you like.

• 36:36Dan Snow?

  Not a great time for Minoan culture, if we can call it that, on Santorini itself, on Thera itself, one of the largest volcanic events in human history, arguably noted as far away as China. So the Akrotiri, certainly a bad time to be a citizen there.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Oh, actually catastrophic time to be a citizen there, yeah. Because there is this fantastic archaeological site that we visited together, which has been buried under metres and metres and metres of volcanic material, preserving the buildings and the frescoes in an absolutely remarkable way. But certainly that community, which would have been, I think, a very thriving trading hub, was completely eradicated. It had links to Crete, to the islands, to Anatolia, as far as Syria, to Egypt. All of a sudden, that is immediately taken out of the scene. So there would have to be a major realignment of trading routes and that kind of thing,

• 37:34Speaker 03

  the exchange of goods and ideas throughout the region as a result of that eruption, for sure.

• 37:39Dan Snow?

  So at some stage, the Mycenaean culture, perhaps Mycenaean people, are taking over Crete. Do they use Knossos? Do they adapt at all? Do we see a Mycenaean Knossos as it fall into disuse and disappear?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Yes and yes. Initially, we have this, I feel like, Mycenaean or Mycenaeanising takeover, and Knossos remains in use. And you get a slightly kind of hybrid Minoan-Mycenaean culture in the last phases of the palace, which lasts for, again, the archaeologists argue about this, maybe a generation, maybe a couple of hundred years, until you see the sort of fizzling out of the Mycenaean culture itself, as the Bronze Age comes to an end and the Iron Age comes to a start. So certainly, the palace at Knossos continues in use after it's taken over by the new culture on the island.

• 38:33Dan Snow?

  But it does disappear from the sort of historical record, doesn't it, for a while? It's so-called, quote unquote, lost.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Yes, it is lost. Knossos itself, it stays there in the consciousness of the Greeks, in the literature. So it's, Odysseus talks about it in the Odyssey, where he says that, "Out in the wine-dark sea there lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land, washed by the waves on every side, and there there were ninety..." Cities, including Knossos, where King Minos ruled. So there's a consciousness of it. And in the classical period, there is still a settlement at Knossos that's putting out coins, which have little labyrinth motifs on them as well. And there is a Roman takeover of the island.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  If you like, there's a degree of continuity, but there's kind of a bit of a gap in what is conventionally called the Dark Age of Greece. Don't ever use that term with an archaeologist who's interested in that period.

• 39:37Dan Snow?

  Thanks for the warning.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  But there is a, if you like, there's a kind of hiatus there and where the use of writing drops out as well because they don't need the administration anymore. So you lose the writing for a while, but you still have the myth, if you like.

• 39:53Dan Snow?

  Tell us about Arthur Evans. Who was he in? What drew him to this part of the world?

• 39:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, Arthur Evans was the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, at the back end of the 19th century and into the early 20th. And he was interested in all sorts of things, but he was particularly interested in ancient writing scripts. And he was kind of pulled into an interest in Cretan Knossos by a Cretan guy, whose name was Minos. Actually, his name was Minos Kallakairinos, who had been excavating and poking about in the region for quite some time. And in, I think it was 1878, he found some very large storage jars on the site that is now

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Knossos, which nobody was really connecting with the ancient tales up till that point. But he found these and he told various people about them. And Evans was particularly interested in them. And there was a kind of a bit of a race, a bit of an international race now to try to find the palace at Knossos. And Evans ultimately was the winner in that race. So he'd gone, perhaps, seeking a writing system to develop his interest in ancient scripts. But what he found was what he called the first European civilization at Knossos. It was remarkable.

• 41:19Dan Snow?

  And why did he start digging where he did? There must have been a bit of local knowledge around.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  It was exactly that local knowledge. It was this Minos Calacarinos had found these storage jars on the site of what is Knossos. And so there was this possibility that they could delve into the culture and find something new. So Evans went and really went all in. And it didn't really take him very long, once he'd started excavating, to unearth most of what he called the Palace of Minos.

• 41:51Dan Snow?

  So it begins in 1900. Is it a well organised, modern excavation? Or is it just a massive sort of tomb robbing exercise? Are his records useful to you guys now?

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean Evans takes a bit of stick, but his methods for the time were as good as they could be. I think he did it with as much credibility as he possibly could. And even though a lot of what he did is controversial, particularly the, what he called the reconstitutions of the buildings, where he restored and repaired and perhaps reimagined quite a lot of it, that's controversial and remains so. On the other hand, he published, and he published scrupulously and on a huge scale. He produced a work called The Palace of Minos in four mighty volumes, cataloguing his excavations and the finds and so on. So

• 42:44Speaker 03

  there's a sense in which you can take his work and go back and almost like re-excavate it, using his own diaries and records of the site. So on the one hand, he was at the cutting edge for his day, which now seems very crude. But I think ultimately, his heart was in the right place. Although certainly he had his own agendas, and he had things that he wanted to achieve in his own right, I think, and his own interpretations and own spin that he wanted to put on what he found.

• 43:15Dan Snow?

  Well, the interpretations and spin is interesting because he does reconstruct or re-erect parts of Knossos. And do modern scholars think those are now pretty accurate? Or are they figments of his imagination?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  A bit of both, I think, you know, I mean, he was using other evidence, he was using the the remains that he actually found, but also there are illustrations of buildings and little models of buildings that you find throughout the site. So there's evidence that you can use to create an image. And he also had to make sure that the the whole place wasn't destroyed as well. So they they used a lot of concrete, partly to try to preserve what they were finding. So there's much of it that's speculative and controversial and unpopular, I think, with modern archaeologists as well. On the other hand, though, he created a remarkable image of these people that is still very persistent and is still drawing

• 44:10Speaker 03

  like a couple of million people to that site every year.

• 44:13Dan Snow?

  Extraordinary thing. And who knows, in the future, further excavations elsewhere, further analysis of language, we may learn a lot more about these people that we call them Inoans.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So I mean, it's a dynamic area of archaeology. They're still excavating in in remarkable ways. The major sites have largely been done, although they do revisit those. And also, there's work being done on now in the countryside to find perhaps the smaller communities, little country houses and farms and what have you, and shrines that are out in the country to give us further information about all those people and the way that they lived and how they interacted with their own environment.

• 44:53Dan Snow?

  Well, thank you very much coming on the podcast, Steve. That was great. It was fun talking to you. It reminds me of our happy old days together.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Fantastic, Dan. No, it's been a big pleasure. So thank you very much.

• 45:05Dan Snow?

  See you soon.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 45:11Dan Snow?

  Well, thanks for listening, folks. If that doesn't make you want to book a trip to Crete, I give up. I give up. I don't know what will. And our travels together are not over. Join me for the next episode of the podcast as we head to London, the place of my birth, my hometown, where I'll take you behind the scenes of another palace, one that was built by the conqueror, William the Conqueror. It was only ever breached once by a revolt of peasants. It was also home to a polar bear, and the site of the marriage and execution of Anne Boleyn. It is, as you will have guessed already, the Tower of London. Don't forget to follow in your podcast players, you don't miss it. See you next time.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep

• 46:45Speaker 04

  theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Subject to credit approval. Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 47:53Dan Snow?

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