Pod Insights The Ancients Rise of the Minoans About this episode Tristan Hughes journeys into the heart of one of history's most intriguing civilisations: the Minoans. With Professor Nicoletta Momigliano, he explores the origins and rise of these Bronze Age titans on Crete around 7,000 BC, their early settlements, and the emergence of complex societies.
Packed with archaeological insights, Tristan hears about the enigma of the Minoans early settlements, the mysteries of their undeciphered writing system, to the grandeur of their monumental palaces such as Knossos. A fascinating discussion on one of history's most mysterious Bronze Age societies.
MORE
The Minotaur
https://open.spotify.com/episode/72Efg0BmVFYunKg2FsDOQO
The Legacy of the Minoans
https://shows.acast.com/the-ancients/episodes/thelegacyoftheminoans
Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
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0:00 Tristan Hughes? Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:32 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.
1:05 Speaker 02 Granger knows, if you're a procurement manager at an industrial manufacturing facility, you're balancing inventory and budget while sourcing critical supplies across the operation. Too much inventory? Costs climb. Too little? Production slows. Granger's $2 billion in on-hand inventory helps you get what you need when you need it, so you can help keep budgets balanced and lines moving. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click Granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.
1:37 Tristan Hughes? This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Now, you know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance, so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with The Ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel Podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it and which are just an airport
2:19 Tristan Hughes? gate with better snacks and worse lighting, and what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days, and how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology. Plus, the tip I really needed: how to book flights without it turning into a part-time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Tristan here. I hope you're doing well. We're all good here at History Hit Towers. Now, you might not know, but on and off, I've been posting polls on Spotify, asking listeners which topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes.
3:03 Tristan Hughes? Now, one that was popular, overwhelmingly popular, was the Minoans. And I'm delighted with that. There is so much interesting stuff about this Bronze Age civilisation. So much mystery, so many million-dollar questions for archaeologists. In fact, we quickly realised, when recording this episode, that we couldn't do the Minoans justice with just one interview. We needed more time. So this is Rise of the Minoans. We're talking about the roots of these people and how they flourished. There'll be more episodes to continue the story really soon, and we'll delve into more marvels and mysteries of the Minoans, who were complete game changers. So let's get into it.
3:56 Tristan Hughes? 3,500 years ago, the island of Crete was home to one of the most extraordinary Bronze Age civilisations in the world: the Minoans. Named after the legendary Minos, king of Knossos, who controlled the Minotaur in a great labyrinth beneath his palace. Now, the myth of the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull, is of course fictional, but the great wealth and prestige of the Minoans, now archaeology has proven that to be true.
4:26 Tristan Hughes? From their beautiful frescoes to the monumental palaces, the Minoans have fascinated millions ever since their rediscovery in the 19th century. And we're covering part of their story today. It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Today, we're going to explore the emergence of the Minoans on Crete. We'll delve into the origins of this culture at the dawn of metallurgy. We'll look into the surviving sources and the Minoans' mysterious writing system, Liniae. We'll explore the emergence of more complex societies on Minoan Crete centred around great palaces. And strange words like 'wannax' that came to be associated with them. All of that and more is to come in today's chat.
5:12 Tristan Hughes? Our guest is Professor Nicoletta Momigliano from the University of Bristol. Nico has been on The Ancients before to talk all about the legacy of the Minoans, how they were interpreted and reinterpreted by different peoples over the 19th and 20th centuries after their rediscovery. We'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. Now Nico's back to delve into some fascinating topics of the Bronze Age Minoans.
5:43 Tristan Hughes? Nico, such a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. Welcome back.
5:48 Speaker 03 Thank you for having me again. Thank you.
5:51 Tristan Hughes? You're more than welcome to talk more about the Minoans. I mean, are the Minoans, are they still quite a mysterious Bronze Age civilisation, Nico?
6:00 Speaker 03 Yes, definitely. Definitely still very mysterious. If only because although we can sort of read some of their writings, we don't understand them. Because the few remaining inscriptions that we have that seem to express the language or languages spoken by the Minoans are very, very few. And although, as I said, we might be able to read them, what we read doesn't sound like any language we really know. People have made all kinds of suggestions. I mean, we may know some of the names of their divinities.
6:44 Speaker 03 Also because we know some of the names of the divinities, we can make educated guesses. From later texts, texts written in Linear B, which is another script that was in use in the Aegean during the Bronze Age, and we know that Linear B expressed a form of Greek. And in some of the Linear B inscriptions, we have names of what seem to be names of deities that are not Greek names. And these deities are recorded in Linear B tablets that
7:24 Speaker 03 were found on Crete at the famous archaeological site of Knossos. And they seem to be a list of local divinities, and they have strange names like Assasara, Pitouna, and so on. But otherwise, they are very mysterious, partly because all we have is images and archaeological evidence. You know, unlike the Greeks, unlike the Romans, or even the Sumerians, or Egyptians, where we have lots and lots of texts, or Minoans, very little. So they are still very mysterious.
8:03 Tristan Hughes? I mean, Nico, as this chat goes on, I will ask more about the writing and that Linear A text that you highlighted just there, and also something called the Phistos disk, which sounds very, very interesting. But if we go to the source material that archaeologists like yourself have for learning more about the Minoans, I mean, what types of sources do you have available to learn more about the mysterious Minoans?
8:27 Speaker 03 Well, we have all the usual sources that archaeologists have. There are finds, there are architecture, frescoes, and also other kinds of evidence, such as what they ate. You know, a lot of what archaeologists dig are just... Garbage, literally, refuse pits where you find all kinds of interesting garbage. And also, we can find more about the Minoans from their own bones. Because apart from settlements, ritual places, places where people perform religious rituals, we also have quite a lot of cemeteries.
9:11 Speaker 03 So we can learn something about the Minoans by just looking at their bones and their rubbish. And their rubbish includes animal bones, but also seeds, pollen levels we can gather from cores dug in the in the soil. And we can tell what they ate and what they cultivated and what they hunted.
9:35 Tristan Hughes? There's nothing that gets a student of archaeology more interested in the topic than a very exciting prehistoric garbage pile, is all I've learnt over the few years, isn't it? Because it might not sound very glamorous, but actually, you can learn so much, as you say, about what they eat, about their lifestyle, their societies. And then also, I guess, DNA, looking at actual human bones, you can start piercing more about who these Minoan figures were.
10:02 Speaker 03 Absolutely, absolutely. And we know from different kinds of evidence, for example, that the island of Crete was not permanently inhabited by human beings until around, let's say, ballpark figure 7,000 B.C. And we also know from all kinds of archaeological evidence, like the one we have just talked about, from what they ate and what they cultivated, that these people arrived on the island of Crete. Around 7000 B.C., as I just mentioned, from somewhere in southwest Turkey
10:45 Speaker 03 or northern Syria, you know, kind of that area of the world. And we know that because before that, on the islands, there was no trace of, say, sheep, pigs, barley, wheat. But these things had already been domesticated, cultivated in that part of the world. So we know roughly where they came from. And from 7000 B.C. onwards, we find permanent settlements on the island of Crete. Before that period, we have evidence that people probably visited the island because we find instruments dating to earlier periods.
11:28 Speaker 03 Because we also have evidence of fauna like pygmy hippos and other animals that
11:35 Tristan Hughes? Pygmy hippos?
11:36 Speaker 03 Yes. That have probably been hunted to death by the people who visited the island. But then people who actually settled permanently came later. So we have a period of explorations and using the island of Crete, the heartland of the Minoan world, well before that. But permanent settlements only a bit later in the Neolithic period, which for Crete is around 7000 B.C.
12:07 Tristan Hughes? So these people come over, as you say, from present day Anatolia, from Turkey. They're farmers, so they're bringing their livestock with them. So can we say that they are the ancestors of the Minoans? Or are they proto-Minoans? Or when roughly do you go from these being like the Stone Age farmers who preceded the Minoans to actually the beginnings of the Minoan civilization in Crete?
12:31 Speaker 03 Yes, the beginning of what we archaeologists have called and continue to call Minoan civilization is around 3000 B.C. And between 7000 B.C. and 3000 B.C., it is very likely, possible that other people also reached the island from other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. But certainly
12:56 Speaker 03 A lot of the population of the people that we call Minoan must have descended from the first colonizer of the island. That is certain because, you know, there is no massive extinction of people, there is no clear mass migration of people from other areas. There is evidence of people moving from other parts of the Aegean and possibly distant Mediterranean onto Crete at different times of the second millennium B.C. And the movement of people, the migration of people is a constant of Mediterranean life. To think that, you know, there is no changes, that there are no new arrivals of populations ever,
13:41 Speaker 03 that the population is just the descendants of this small group. It's just not how life works in any country, in any situation.
13:50 Tristan Hughes? No, I think you're right, Nico. And we've done a few podcast episodes on the ancients over the years on Stone Age movements of people across oceans and seas, whether you're in the islands of Britain, and Orkney and Shetland and Ireland and Brittany, or, as you say, in the Mediterranean. So lots of movement in those thousands of years. Before we then get to the beginnings of Minoan civilization, as you've mentioned there, so around 3000 B.C., Nico. So that's exactly the same time, places like New Grange in Ireland, the great passage to him in New Grange in Ireland is being built. So that's a fascinating comparison there, and before the pyramids. Nico, is this also aligned in regards to time period?
14:32 Tristan Hughes? Do you see the rise of the Minoan civilization also with the rise of metallurgy with copper and then bronze?
14:38 Speaker 03 Yes, indeed, indeed. Although there is evidence that metallurgy was already being exploited a bit earlier than that, but it's when it starts becoming more common. So what we call the Minoan Age, the Minoans period, is another way of calling the Bronze Age of Crete. In fact, some people don't even like the term Minoans civilization. Some people have said we should ditch this name because it's after mythical figure and we don't have any evidence that anybody called Minos or Minos ever existed. We should ditch this term.
15:18 Speaker 03 It is a term that has too much baggage and we should simply call this the Cretan Bronze Age. I like Minos, I think it's very memorable.
15:28 Tristan Hughes? I think so too, and I think the name Minoans has an instant appeal and allure to many people across the world, and I think that will be shown by the popularity of this podcast episode too. But you raised there an important point, and almost a quick tangent by me, kind of going back to the sources that you have to study the Minoans. So naturally archaeology and bones and DNA are important for learning more about the Minoans. Of course, you've got the figure of King Minos and the story of the Minotaur, which are closely linked and we've done an episode on in the past. Now, how important a source is Greek mythology and these mythological stories of things like the Minotaur? How important are they in also learning about the Minoans? Can we say that they help archaeologists at all?
16:12 Speaker 03 Well, I think all these stories tell us much more about the later Greeks than they actually tell us about the people who lived on Crete in the Bronze Age. These are just stories that were invented later by people who, I think, lost something in translation. People who encountered ruins of palaces that they didn't remember, who were built by and were built for. So Greek mythology doesn't tell us very much about the Cretan Bronze Age.
16:53 Speaker 03 It's as if you were trying to learn about Roman history from Shakespeare's Roman plays. These sources that we have.
17:04 Speaker 03 Contain some memories, but they are pretty garbled memories. And they are far more like inventions, stories to explain realities that were no longer part of living memories. I said, to explain ruins or rituals that perhaps had lasted for centuries. And the origins of these rituals had been forgotten. We know that people in the Bronze Age, Minoan people, were very fond of taking votives, having parties on top of mountains. And they brought with them votives to give to their deities.
17:46 Speaker 03 Perhaps people, even after the collapse of Minoan civilization, continued to walk up mountains and take votaries. But people couldn't remember exactly why, or they decided to change deities. Some form of saccharity attaches itself to certain localities. And people continue to use these places for their rituals. If you think, for example, the Athenian Acropolis, the temple of Athena was a mosque and a Christian temple for longer than it ever was a Greek temple dedicated to Athena.
18:29 Speaker 03 In Sicily, in Syracuse, one of the most important churches of Syracuse was built using an old Greek temple. There is a form of saccharity that attaches itself to certain places. And people continue to use them to venerate these places. But they change the divinities that are venerated there. But there is something about the saccharity of the place. And there is something that people remembered about Knossos, or Knossos, as I prefer to say. Probably ruins of the great Minoan palace stood there for centuries,
19:12 Speaker 03 even after it was abandoned, destroyed and then abandoned. And people attached wonderful stories to these ruins, like the stories of King Minos and the Minotaur and the labyrinth, and so on and so forth.
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19:58 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.gle/workspacewithGemini.
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21:32 Tristan Hughes? I've got in my notes that, I mean, of course, we think of the palaces when you get to the Minoans, but I don't think those appear straight away. So do we have an idea what these earliest Minoan societies looks like? Should we just be imagining small farming settlements dotted around the place?
21:48 Speaker 03 Yes and no, in the sense that, yes, certainly, at first, even the great site of Knossos was just like, almost like a migrant camp. It was tiny, but then population grew. And yes, we had lots of small settlements, settlements of perhaps one hectare or even less, two hectares, where perhaps only five or six families live. But then we also get, at some point in the middle of the third millennium, even larger settlements, settlements where the population was probably reaching already
22:31 Speaker 03 perhaps 1,000, 1,500 people. But also throughout the history of Minoan Crete, and also in later periods, you have a combination of different types of settlements, smaller places, larger places. But already, even before the construction of the palaces, there seemed to have been some places that were more larger than others, where people were already attracting larger populations. And one of them was Knossos. And people always have to remember that palaces are not isolated buildings, as indeed Buckingham Palace is not an isolated building.
23:14 Speaker 03 It's bang in the centre of a thriving city of London. And the same with Minoan palaces. They are not isolated buildings. They emerge within larger settlements.
23:28 Tristan Hughes? So the foodstuffs that they would have, so I'm guessing crops, pastures for animals? Is it like sheep and cows maybe, please?
23:36 Speaker 03 Sheep, goats above all.
23:37 Tristan Hughes? Sheep and goats above all.
23:39 Speaker 03 Cattle a bit less, but there is also cattle. Because that's what the kind of environment can sustain better.
23:48 Speaker 03 You know, for cattle, you need quite a lot of water. And there are areas of Crete where there is some water, but sheep and goat, top.
23:58 Tristan Hughes? Sheep and goat economy. Those Bronze Age Minoans, they loved it. Are olives and wine, are those also big parts of the farming out there?
24:05 Speaker 03 Oh, God, yes. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And already cultivated even before the palaces. And we can see that also very, very well when you take cores inside the soil of Crete, the spike in the pollen from olives and vines that you get in the third millennium, it's already something quite remarkable. So, yes, you know, are you wondering whether they were already having a lot of drink? Yes, I'm sure they did.
24:39 Tristan Hughes? So the Cretans were growing wine and olives by some 5,000 years ago. That's insane. So, Nico, let's go on to those settlements that you've already highlighted. So you mentioned different sizes of settlements even during the third millennium B.C. and those bigger places like Knossos. How do we then get to the next level with the emergence of palaces? Do we know much about the context of the appearance of palaces?
25:04 Speaker 03 It's a million dollar question, in a sense. I mean, people have been debating exactly what led to this next step forever and ever. I mean, since Sir Arthur Evans. And why do we have the emergence of palaces on the island of Crete and not, for example, in mainland Greece, where we have similar developments? There is something that happens towards the end of the third millennium B.C. and possible, there may be some evidence of some big droughts affecting part of the eastern Mediterranean, possibly even elements of warfare, and some people managed to react.
25:51 Speaker 03 To adversity in different ways. And one way in which perhaps the people on Crete reacted to some form of adversity was to create more complex society, more bureaucracy. There is also the fact that already throughout the third millennium, Crete had very close contacts with very complex societies like Egyptian society. And for example, it is very likely that the Minoans got the idea of using writing for bureaucracy, seals, seal impressions to control the movements of goods
26:35 Speaker 03 or to lock rooms that stored particular goods. They got possibly some of these ideas from Egyptians or other contemporary societies with whom they were already in contact. Because, you know, earlier we were talking about migrations. In addition to migrations, and people think of mass movements of populations, but there are even smaller migrations that happen because of trade routes and trade links, and sometimes for marriage purposes. And we have evidence that Minoan Crete was in contact
27:16 Speaker 03 with all kinds of other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean, and Egypt in particular, already from the final Neolithic and from the third millennium B.C. So it's, I think, another reason why perhaps certain things may have happened on Crete before they happened in other places. Because somebody got the idea of using bureaucracy, extracting more taxes from their neighbours, exploiting other people from nearby civilizations that had already developed this kind of social organisation, more complex.
27:55 Tristan Hughes? Exactly, so new social organisation ideas could come from those trade routes, which is a really good point to highlight there, Nico.
28:02 Speaker 03 I'd like people always to think of, say, what happens, for example, in the UK. When the Romans arrive here, big changes. You know, the Romans didn't stay here very long. I think it was too cold. I'm joking, but even simply the contacts with other civilizations, more complex organizations, sometimes can bring other changes in neighboring countries, even if they're not necessarily conquered.
28:33 Tristan Hughes? Well, you certainly do see that, Nico, in Britain before the Romans arrive and the elites in the south and east wanting to get access to that Roman wine and starting their kind of new practices based on it. And so you do see that influence. So it's interesting to speculate whether that kind of neighboring power influence from Egypt or somewhere did influence the creation of the idea of palaces and so on. With these palaces, I'm sure they evolve over the hundreds of years, Nico. But I mean, just how monumental and complex did they become in their design? And what do we think were the functions of these massive buildings?
29:11 Speaker 03 That's exactly another million dollar question. I mean, we have clear evidence of what some of the rooms in the palaces were used for, because some rooms were clearly used for storage of products. We know that. Other rooms had more ceremonial function. Other rooms had perhaps ritual functions, like little shrines. In terms of monumentality, well, I can imagine that the Palace of Knossos or Knossos is built around a central court, which is about fifty meters long.
29:54 Speaker 03 Now, isn't that about like a football pitch or perhaps a bit smaller than a football pitch? I don't know.
30:00 Tristan Hughes? Don't test me, yes.
30:01 Speaker 03 No, exactly. I don't know. No, I think it's smaller than a football pitch, but you know, fifty meters, fifty yards, it's a long rectangular square. And this is built around this. There are hundreds of rooms. There are clearly at least two floors in part of this construction, because we find remains of stairs and so on. So there are vast structures. Okay, not as large as Buckingham Palace, but for those periods, they are large structures.
30:35 Speaker 03 They are obviously controlled by the elite of Minoan society, but whether this elite was a kind of monarchical system, as the myth of King Minos would imply, or more like a corporate group, a kind of theocracy, these are speculation. One thing that is clear, and it's very peculiar about the Minoans, is that the iconography of the elite and the iconography of the rulers and the difference between elites and priesthood is very difficult to distinguish. And sometimes even you can't tell whether something that is being depicted
31:20 Speaker 03 is necessarily a deity or a priestess or a priest representative of that deity, or whether this could be a member of the elite. In other contemporary societies, it's easier to understand, also because we have the help of inscriptions. But it is something peculiar about Minoan Crete that there doesn't seem to be the elevation of one person particularly above others, or if there is, it's not so clearly visible. And also, for lots and lots of centuries, especially until the mid of the second millennium B.C.,
32:03 Speaker 03 a lot of the tombs are communal tombs, like family or clam vaults, used over centuries with dozens of burials inside. And again, there doesn't seem to be specific burials that are elevated above others. And that has been interpreted by some people as showing that perhaps this was a slightly more egalitarian society, or at least that it was not. So hierarchical as in later periods where you have a supreme ruler.
32:42 Speaker 03 But as I said, we perhaps it was simply people simply chose not to show this in their iconography.
32:50 Tristan Hughes? So do we think then that there were other purposes to these palaces? Right from the beginning, do we think it may be as administration centers? You know, as the societies get more complex and centers of community? Do we get any of those sorts of ideas from palaces?
33:05 Speaker 03 Absolutely. As I said, there is a storage function illustrated by the storage rooms we have, an administrative function illustrated by the tablets, the seal impressions that people use. If literacy is not very widespread, how can you explain to people that they shouldn't enter a particular room or that certain goods are meant for somebody else? One way of showing this is by using seals and seal impressions, which are still used in the modern world sometimes. And as I said, there are religious functions.
33:47 Speaker 03 I mean, there are rooms that seem to be devoted to some kind of cult. Some of the frescoes that are painted on some of these rooms seem to indicate that there were some ceremonies taking place in the near, inside, outside the palaces. What would these ceremonies mean? Clearly, some of these ceremonies must have had some kind of religious function.
34:22 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.
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35:32 Tristan Hughes? So Niko, over time with the palaces, as the Minoan period progresses, just one more question on the palaces and the social hierarchy before we move on. Do we then get a sense as time goes on that there is a more clear social hierarchy? And you do get almost rulers at the top? Because I've got in my notes like a name like the Wanax and figures like that. So does it become more clear that there was almost a king-like figure who resided in these palaces as time went on?
36:00 Speaker 03 Yes. At some point, you mentioned the figure of the Wanax or Wanaka. And we know about this figure because the name appears in the Linear B tablet. And we can read the Linear B tablets because they're written in Greek, even if sometimes they contain words that are not Greek, like indeed Wanaka. Wanax. I mean, it's a word that probably comes from Minoan, but it's transferred to Greek because the word Wanaka then becomes later Greek Annax, a word that we find in classical Greek.
36:45 Speaker 03 We find it in Homer, for example. In Homer, though, has already changed slightly its meaning.
36:52 Speaker 03 And so, sure, by the time we have an administration on the island of Crete that uses Linear B instead of Linear A, there is clear evidence then that there is a more, even more hierarchical structure. And that there is a figure that is the first, I would say, not even the first amongst equal, primus inter pares, the Latin expression, first among equal. It's a bit more than the first among equal. And it's a figure that has also a religious function. And some people have suggested that perhaps this is the equivalent of a king,
37:35 Speaker 03 a monarch, a monarch that not only has religious function, but some people believe also was believed to be a bit divine, a bit like pharaohs in Egypt. But, you know, there is no great clear agreement on this. But Linear B tablets date to, let's say, from about 1450, 1400 B.C. And it's a period when, according to many scholars, there is a switch, that is, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans have taken over the administration of Crete.
38:14 Tristan Hughes? Rights.
38:15 Speaker 03 And are based mostly at Knossos. So we have not a change in population. We don't have necessarily a massive migration of people from mainland Greece, but some people who decided to change the administrative language from the language used by the Minoans to Greek. Some people would like even to see, think that the Minoans decided to change the language of their administration. But, I mean, I personally don't buy it.
38:49 Tristan Hughes? But that point seems to suggest, Nico, if the palaces emerged several centuries before the arrival of Linear B and this Mycenaean outdoor influence, that the actual kind of local Minoan rulers beforehand, their, how they used the palaces, potentially very different with the arrival of this Mycenaean people?
39:09 Speaker 03 Yes, because also we know, for example, that words change meaning. Especially when they move from one language to another. And even if the term wanaka, wanaks, that you brought up, because we can read the Linear B tablets, can be interpreted as a kind of kingship, is often translated as king. That doesn't necessarily mean that it had the same meaning in a Minoan context. In Homer, for example, the term wanaks, wanaka, has already changed meaning.
39:47 Speaker 03 And the top dogs in the Iliad and the Odyssey are usually called basilaeus. And that is again the term that is normally translated as king. The term basilaeus already appears in Linear B, but it does not indicate the top dog. It's just minor, local ruler somehow associated with metalwork. So already between, say, the Linear B tablets and Homer, 700 years difference, let's say, the term basilaeus has changed meaning. So who knows?
40:32 Speaker 03 I believe that probably both terms wanaka, basilaeus, originate from Minoan Crete, because they are not Indo-European terms, words. They don't seem to have an Indo-European origin. So it's a language that seems different from Greek. But what was their actual meaning in Minoan Crete? We just don't know.
40:57 Tristan Hughes? So it seems like there's a lot of mystery regarding the hierarchy early on in the story of the Minoans, especially before you get the arrival of Linear B and the function of the palaces and so on. Very briefly, before we go on to connections, what are the main cities? Do we think are the main settlements in Minoan Crete? Let's say in the second millennium B.C. We've got Knossos already, but should we be imagining if there are quite a few palaces around, almost like little independent polities on the large island of Crete?
41:27 Speaker 03 Yes, whether they are independent polities all the time, again, it's another vexed question. But let's say in the first half of the second millennium. We have palaces, important palaces, not just at Knossos, but also Festos, Malla, for example. And then some of these palaces are destroyed. Some of these palaces and also other settlements seem to be destroyed. And some of the distractions are due to earthquakes, some seem to be due to fire and so on. And then they are built anew. And at some point, some people think that Knossos probably starts getting the upper hand.
42:10 Speaker 03 When exactly this happens? Again, it's a matter of speculation and not everybody agrees. Then we also have palaces, you know, in the mid second millennium. We also have the constructions of small palaces. We have big, big palaces with central court at Malla, Festos, Knossos, Zachro. But also we have smaller palaces, even in places that are only an hour drive from Knossos. There is one at a place called Galatas, a mini palace. One of the big mysteries is that we have a really big settlement in east Crete,
42:53 Speaker 03 near a palace on the far east of the island. Beautiful place, wonderful place to go swimming too, by the way, is Kato Zachro. And very near it, there is a huge settlement called Palaeaster. And this is really large settlement. And people have been digging there since nineteen or two, but it doesn't seem to have a palace. So either people have been digging in the wrong place or this was a mega site that didn't have a palace.
43:26 Tristan Hughes? So do we know much then, Nico, about the Minoans and their wider connections with the Mediterranean world? If the people are first of all venturing to Crete, you know, thousands of years ago, they must surely have quite wide ranging connections by the time of the Minoans in the Bronze Age.
43:43 Speaker 03 Absolutely, absolutely. I mentioned their contacts with the Egyptians. You know, we have finds of Egyptian things on Crete starting already in the third millennium. And vice versa, we have things from Minoan Crete in Egypt.
44:00 Speaker 03 Ditto for other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, from Syria, you know, the regions that we now call the Levant, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, again. We have objects from this area that were found on Crete and vice versa. We even have, for certain periods, frescoes produced in Minoan style, found in Egypt, in Syria, in what is modern day Israel. Isn't that amazing? So were they people exchanging not just goods, but also perhaps craftsmen? As people did in the Renaissance.
44:45 Speaker 03 You know, sometimes people in various courts of Renaissance Europe exchanged really good craftsmen, or really good craftsmen sought the patronage of different people around the different courts of Europe.
45:04 Tristan Hughes? It does seem that there's quite a bit of movement, isn't there? You know, of people. So these trade routes, these connections that the Minoan Cretans had in the third, second millenniums B.C., it's allowed the exchanging of goods, importing, exporting, but also of ideas too.
45:18 Speaker 03 Ideas, people. We only have proxies. They must have exchanged things like food stuff. They must have exchanged things that doesn't survive. But we have the containers, the clay containers that were exchanged. Yes, they exchanged ideas because, for example, we know that there are certain Egyptian divinities. You know, the Minoan artisans, they start changing them to suit more local tastes.
45:52 Speaker 03 So absolutely, change of ideas and and let's not forget, ideas don't have legs. Ideas are exchanged through people travelling around. And we should never think that because we are talking of five thousand years ago, that people were not moving around.
46:12 Tristan Hughes? We've largely covered in our episode today, the story of the early Minoans, their origins, their rise. And we haven't really covered the end, and I feel that will all be in another episode, writing, religion and so on. I think the last thing then I'd like to ask before we wrap up is keeping on that trade thing a bit more. Purple dye, I mean, how important is like the maritime world and and things like purple dye to the Minoans? I want to ask this as the last question before we finish.
46:41 Speaker 03 Well, it was certainly important because you find remains of purple dye productions at many archaeological sites on Crete. I can't think off the top of my head, to be one hundred percent honest, if they have already found evidence for purple dye production as early as the third millennium. But certainly in the second millennium, there is plenty of evidence. And sometimes linked to small islands also around the island of Crete. Some American colleagues have excavated one of these areas where they, you know, a little settlement on a small
47:23 Speaker 03 island off the coast of South Crete that seemed to have been a settlement used exclusively for this purpose, for extracting purple dye. The last time I worked on an excavation on Crete was at the site of Palecastro. And there too, we found a pile, a huge pile of shells. Because purple comes from this poor animal that lives inside the shell.
47:51 Tristan Hughes? So these are the murex shells. So that's good to clarify, isn't it? The purple dye is extracted from this this shelled.
47:57 Speaker 03 From the animal.
47:57 Tristan Hughes? Yes, on seashores.
47:59 Speaker 03 You don't want to be near purple shell production. It really stinks. A colleague of mine decided to do some experimental archaeology and extracted a number of these poor animals from their shells and let them macerate.
48:17 Speaker 03 And the sting, I don't think I've ever felt, smelled anything as bad as that.
48:23 Tristan Hughes? Nico, this has been really interesting. As mentioned, I know we've only really covered the earlier story of the Minoans, but it is interesting, isn't it, how with the third millennium, with the second millennium B.C., before the arrival of the Mycenaans, you know, with the archaeology that you have, there's still so much more to piece together. As mentioned at the start, it's still very mysterious and it feels like there is, there's a lot more to talk about and a lot more to speculate about, but we've made a start.
48:51 Speaker 03 And people always think that although people have excavated at Knossos since 1900, they found everything. It's just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more that can be excavated anywhere on Crete.
49:06 Tristan Hughes? There we go. Nico, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.
49:11 Speaker 03 No problem. Lovely to talk to you as usual. Thank you.
49:18 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was Professor Nicoletta Momigliano giving you an introduction to the Minoans and how they rose to prominence more than 3,500 years ago. As mentioned right at the beginning, we realised quickly when doing this episode that we needed more than one episode to do the Minnoans justice, to cover their entire story. So don't you worry, we'll be doing more Minnoan episodes in the future where we explore more of the marvels and mysteries of the Minnoans. Stay tuned for those. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you leave us a rating as well,
50:00 Tristan Hughes? well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe.
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