When was knossos made

For the visitor however, the restorations render the incomprehensible strata of ruins along with their past grandeur a bit more obvious, and bring the majesty of Minoan life at the palace a little closer. Links: Knossos at GreekLandscapes. Knossos Knossos was undeniably the capital of Minoan Crete.

The ruins of a prepalatial building at the bottom of one the Koulouras. Picture of Knossos Palace. The Knossos Grand Staircase leading to the royal chambers.

The Shield frescoes are visible behind the characteristic Minoan columns. The columns supporting the portico of the Hall of the Double Axes. Storage Magazine of the West wing with pithoi.

Irrigation drain at Knossos. The Snake Goddess. Armored ships patrolled the Cretan coast. Only from the air would their escape be possible. But how;. Daedalus' inventive mind did not take long to find the solution. He made giant feathers from wicker twigs and cloth and glued them with wax.

He advised his son how to fly, waxed his wings on his shoulders and they flew together over the high mountains of Crete for freedom. The spectacle they witnessed was unique and the trip to the ethers was unrepeatable. For the first time, the man tore the blue horizon and conquered the celestial roads. They left slavery behind and traveled to distant and dreamy places.

Like a newly hatched bird, flooded with happiness, Icarus sometimes flew high, greeting the bright Sun and sometimes low, cooling its wings in the blue waters of the sea. In vain his father shouted at him not to approach the bright disk of the Sun. Evil came quickly. The hot rays of the Sun softened the candle and melted the bindings of the wings.

The unfortunate young man fell into the sea near an island and drowned. Fate stood hard for the mindless and reckless young man. Daedalus, in agony, came down and looked around the dead body. The island that was buried was named Ikaria and the sea that Icarus drowned in was named 'Ikario'. Uncomforted, Daedalus arrived in Kymi, where he built a temple in honor of the god Apollo, to whom he dedicated the wings that gave him freedom.

Once you have finished your tour of the ruins of this great civilization, it will be time to visit the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion and get an even better taste of Minoan grandeur. The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion is ranked second in terms of traffic for this month, nationwide after the Acropolis Museum. It is considered one of the most important museums in Europe.

It is located in the heart of the city of Heraklion. During the Venetian occupation, the catholic monastery of St. Francis was located here. It was destroyed by the earthquake of It was the most important and richest monastery in Crete, decorated with exceptional Byzantine frescoes. Construction of the museum began in the early 20th century and was completed in On the ground floor of the museum, there are 13 rooms open to the public, while on the first floor there are pieces from the original murals from the Palace of Knossos.

All the exhibits of the Museum of Heraklion come exclusively from the archeological sites of Crete, and their exhibition has been done over chronological periods. Unique in its kind is the famous Disk of Phaistos, with hieroglyphic writing points and ideograms. The contents of our album are unknown.

Remarkable are the gold jewelry found in Minoan necropolises, the mirrors with ivory handles, the eyebrow tweezers, the ivory combs, as well as the swords with the golden handles. Excavations have shown that there was a settlement here in the 8th millennium BC, perhaps even before and that a palace existed as early as the 4th millennium BC.

The foundations of many palaces have been found and most of what we see today belong to the period between the 16th - 14th century BC. It has later constructions after the end of the Minoan civilization, but this does not mean the end of the inhabitants here. Knossos palace was to become an important settlement during the Mycenaean period, as well as during the Hellenistic and Roman eras and was not abandoned until the Middle Ages.

The first major excavation was carried out in by the wealthy art lover from Heraklion Minos Kalokairinos, while Crete was still under Turkish occupation. Minos Kalokairinos excavated part of the western warehouses and brought to light many large 'pithos'.

The excavation lasts until , while the palace complex was excavated in 5 years, a time that is considered minimal with current methods and techniques. Evans proceeded with the restoration of the palace with cement, a technique that is today criticized as arbitrary and aggravating for the Minoan edifice.

Since then, archaeological research has been ongoing and a program has been launched to maintain the palace from damage. From the findings of the excavations, we find that a female deity was worshiped in Knossos.

The figures with a topless woman holding snakes in her hands are believed to have been the goddess of the ancient Cretans. Another was the sacred symbol of the double ax and the bull that was also worshiped here. There were toys, the bullfights, where young men and women jumped over the bulls while many works of art with horns and bullheads have been found in Knossos.

One idea is that a series of natural calamities, such as earthquakes, hit the island. Another idea is that Crete was invaded by a people called the Mycenaeans, whom researchers know came to occupy Knossos. The Mycenaeans were a Greek-speaking people who apparently moved to Crete from the mainland.

They wrote in a language we call "linear B," and thousands of inscribed clay tablets bearing the script, and baked from fire, have been found at Knossos. Recent research into these tablets provide clues into the lives of women who lived in Mycenaean-controlled Knossos. For instance the tablets show that "Knossian women were attested to as owning their own land, and were recorded in ways completely analogous [comparable] with male land holders," writes Barbara Olsen, a professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, in her book " Women in Mycenaean Greece, the Linear B tablets from Pylos and Knossos " Routledge, Various women were also attested as having massive amounts of food-stuffs, slaves, raw and finished textile products, and luxury goods such as gold and bronze vessels," wrote Olsen in her book.

McEnroe also notes that the Mycenaeans embarked on a program to rebuild parts of the palace and create new frescoes. Compared to the earlier frescoes the range of motifs "is remarkably narrow," he writes. Instead the fresco program was stripped down to a few bare essentials. Bulls, tribute-bearing processions, heraldic devices and decorative friezes form of the bulk [of the decorations]," he writes.

Knossos appears to have been destroyed sometime before B. The Mycenaeans would see their civilization collapse around B. In the period after this collapse the people of Crete took to the hills, living in elevated settlements in hopes of surviving the calamity that had befallen the ancient world. The restoration work that Evans did a century ago was extensive and controversial. Some archaeologists believe that he imagined some details in his restoration work that were not present in ancient times.

Also some of the techniques he used caused damage to the palace which conservators are still trying to undo. For instance "an exceptional feature of the architecture of Minoan palaces of Knossos, Crete, is the unique light reflected from the surfaces. This is attributed to the extensive use of mineral gypsum selenite , originating from a local quarry," writes a team of conservators in a paper published in a supplement to the journal Studies in Conservation.

It made the palace seem more majestic and helped bring the Minoan culture to life. Information was updated October , but can change without notice. Please confirm directly with service providers. Facebook Instagram Twitter Pinterest. Join the Facebook Group. We describe our travel style as "laid back luxe" and enjoy a mix of outdoor adventures and historic sites.

Support Travel? Yes Please! ProPhoto Website. Share Tweet Pin The restored North Entrance with a fresco of a charging bull.