Anatolia

Aegean, Main Bronze Age Centers & Migrations c. 3000-1500 BCE -

observe movement down from the North into mainland Greece, sea movements between Crete and the mainland (foundation for Minoan thalassocracy, Mycenean invasions on reverse route), and between Crete and Greece to the Easter islands and coast of Anatolia. Not shown is sea movement from Crete S. to Egypt.

On Map Aegean Bronze Age, note coastal sites of many centers - "unguarded".

KNOSSOS, NE coast Crete: Palace plan, H&F 2.44. "Labyrinth"

effect of winding into throne room suites. Foundations visible of great store-rooms. [cf. myth of palace as containing the first maze, made by Daidalos, with the bull-headed king's son inside as a monster, the Minotaur; Iliad excerpt shiled of Achilles, Daidalos' "dancing floor" for the princess Ariadne, the Minotaur's sister.}

No walls; no "temple" separate from audience and living waureters of the ruling inhabitants.

- Context: General view ruins - 2 airviews

North Entrance, view, H&F 2.43 with reconstructed 2nd story portico portion visible, paved courtyard in front; characteristic Minoan painted columns with upward flare, wallpaintings running along wall behind. For column&entablature unit compare the Mycenae Lion Gate central motif.

Compare: Thera, Room of the "Ship frieze", detail H&F 2.58, with elevation of crowded city at left - flat roofs, many windows, multi-story, dominating a harbor. (Cf. Phaecia, Alcinous' city.)

-context: topographic realism - view of Thera itself, the modern town of Akrotiri at its cliffs.

Knossos Palace, view from perimeter roof with stylized bull's-horns ornament, and

view, SE Entrance bulls' horns, to frame view towards the mountains of central Crete (where Zeus was born). Think about looking at the palace from below, also, and seeing such elements against the sky like a crest, as if the house itself was a great bull.

Compare: H&F 2.47 The HAgia Triada Sarcophagus, c. 1600, stuccoed and painted limestone, 1.35 m long. Herakleion Mus. (Minoans and Myceneans both bury with grave goods, but sarcophagi are not all that common.) Sarc. is painted as if a big box made of wood, with legs also like a chest; ornament borders are very // motifs in the palace wall ornaments (guilloche and interlace patterns), and painted too on the building inside the image. (That the sarc. is painted plaster on stone is like building too!) The idea that the sarcophagus itself is like a house you will meet again.

Image: ritual taking place in the open air between a sacred building, left, and right an openair shrine, marked out by putting up two pillars as if giant double-axes (labrys). The building at the left seems meant to be the "house" of the dead person, who may stand befor it tightly wrapped? (nb. Minaons do not bury in above ground tombs); men bring him animals and a boat-shaped container. The building stands in or on a stepped ashlar masonry terrace, with tree(s) growing along its edge. (Compare, the Mycenae tholos tombs as houses of the dead). Ritual at right is performed by a priestess who pours a liquid offering (compare her stooping figure to the Saffron Gatherer), followed by another woman and by a male lyre-player. We don't know what the change in background color means. Red/brown for men, white for women is standard Egyptian, and later, Greco-Roman coloration.

- Compare: One of the "Snake-goddess" figurines (priestesses?, cf. H&F 2.46 from Knossos, Herakleion Mus., c. 34.3 cm high. Many of these now shown to be forgeries - this one (not H&F) may be real. Made of faience (like ceramic, but more like a glassy paste - an Egyptian technique, which needs very hot furnaces.

Compare: Bull's Head Rhyton, H&F 2.50, in Herakleion Museum, c. 1500. Soapstone/steatite, with real horns, and inlays of crystal, mother of pearl and (red) jasper. 30.5 cm high (just under life-size); engraved as if this is a dappled bull. For? liquid offerings, as on the sarcophagus. Nb. in Greek mytholgy the bull is sacred to/ an incarnation of Poseidon god of the sea (river gods have bull horns or heads too), who is also god of earthquakes, as well as to Zeus - it is his favorite sacrificial offering. So the Cretan bull cult goes well with a culture that has sacred mountains and is oreinted to the sea.

Personal & House Art

Landscape: THERA The Room of the Swallows, "Springtime" scene H&F 2.48 with polychrome rocks, lilies. darting swallows. "White" for open air.

Personal objects: Lion Hunt Dagger blade, 22.8 cm long (hilt missing - must have been in an organic material like wood), c. 1600-1500 From one of the Mycenae royal tombs, now Athens - the dead man had all his armor with him. bronze blade, the center is a tapering field colored black with cut-out and engraved inlays of gold and silver, and gold nailheads at hilt. Lion Hunt (there are no lions on Crete!) - warriors attacking at right, note figure-8 bulls-hide (dappled) shields on two warriors. Niello technique is described in Iliad, Shield of Achilles.

- Gold Cups from Vapheio, c. 1500, Athens, 8.9 cm ht.: Drinking set taken to the grave, also in a tholos tomb. Gold is beaten out from behind, and then engraved and punched over modelled surfaces ("repousse'")

Common 'sketchbook" tradition: compare fallen warrior/ youth with arms flung over head beneath charging bull, to dagger-blade scene. Landscape elements, compare Thera frescoes.

- Cup Pair: one violent (bull charged man, bull struggles in net-trap), peaceful/humorous one (bull noses cow, H&F 2.51 cow has leg tied to stake her out to catch bull). Compare Shield of Achilles themes.

Common "sketchbook" tradition: compare Thera, Room with boxing boys and *antelope pair, to Vapheio cup bovine couple.

Connections to Egyptian wall-painting:

Thebes, 18th Dyn. Tomb of Rekmira, det.: Minoan offering bringers (embassy? trade?) with Minoan costume, hair-style, and artifacts.

Hagia Triada Harvester Vase, Crete; view whole vase with other side, and det. of the continuous shoulder frieze (12.5cm wide here), H&F 2.49. c. 1500, Herakleion Museum. Soaptsone/steatite. Note sistrum rattle (Egyptian). Workers as main, not subordinate subject; cut-off effect makes it look as if they are seen moving through a grain-field.

THERA SECTIONS: painted rooms from Akrotiri/Thera, ca. 1550. Painted plaster (not true fresco, where paint is put on wet plaster). Cf. views bedroom with bed frame in situ, landscape fresco behind.

H&F 2.48 The Springtime Fresco Room - multiple views.

H&F 2.59: Saffron Gatherer, c. 1550, Athens. From a room with continuous landscape, like the Spring/ Swallows room. Crocuses grow from its rocks; we think the finely dressed young girl (with shaved head and ponytail like the Boxers) is gathering saffron (the pollen threads in the middle of certain crocuses) as she clambers on the rocks.

Room of the Blue Monkeys - another landscape room with monkeys (from Africa) who are sometimes thought to be trained saffron gatherers.

[*Saffron: a very highly prized & expensive spice, still a staple of Spanish cooking, (what turns paella rice yellow), which = the dried stamens of a kind of crocus holding their golden pollen. Very painstaking to gather, very valuable in relation to weight and so an excellent luxury export good.]

Boxing Boys & Antelopes Room 3/4 view

H&F 2.58 Ship Frieze Room, det. "The Flotilla". 17 in./42.3 cm ht. Det/ from a continuous marien landscape frieze going around 3 sides of a large room at the top of the wall, like the view over a balcony parapet or through windows. Going round the frieze we seem to traverse the seas between the N. African coast, Libya and the Nile mouth, and the Minoan islands. Some of the action seems to be hostile, against foreigners.

Right Wall: Minoan Harbor city and flotilla H&F 2.58, ships on the open sea, and a city on another coast.

View, Mycenae citadel from NE

det. "Cyclopean" masonry, in citadel entrance tunnel

Lion Gate, H&F 2.54 c. 1500-1300, at citadel entrance, right by Grave precinct, on way to palace megaron.

Door to "Treasury of Atreus" H&F 2.55, great tholos tomb in the grave circle. View down the entrance way (dromos), cf. H&F 2.55 and 2.56. c. 1300.

Similar construction and effects: huge multi-ton monoliths carved down but left looking raw for jambs &/or lintels, with a "relieving triangle" space left over the door, filled in with decorated stone slabs.

Det. Lion Gate "pediment": heraldic composition. two lions or griifins flank "Palace" sign - Minoan type column on stpped foundation, carrying piece of decorated entablature.

context: compare Knossos, view of a column through a door, and view "throne room", priest/king sat on throne flanked by painted griffins in landscape.

"Treasury of Atreus" Tholos Tomb - view dromos and great door,

Reconstruction with (see H&F) its ornament shown - spiral-ornamented columns in green stone, and infill for the "pediment" in bands of carved pink and green stones.

View interior - you can see the inner door, to a further chamber (compare the royal megaron in the middle of the citadel) set at right angles to the main circular chamber. We think that the outside of the tholos would have been mounded over with earth to make a tumulus, but with the passage left visible to the facade.

"Mask of Agamemnon" H&F 2.57, c. 1500, life-size, sheet gold beaten and engraved. From the Mycenae tholos tombs, now Athens, made to cover the face of a dead king (like an Egyptian mummy mask).

context: personal weapons and inlaid dagger form these assemblages (the LionHunt Daggerb is from these tombs too).