The Mediterranean in the Ancient World

by Fernand Braudel

  External shocks

  Before the decline of the first Aegean civilization, Crete’s prosperity had already emerged in about 1500, but in an oddly limited form, as if an advanced economy had carved two islands out of one big one: on one hand a small fragment in the east, between Zakro and the gulf of Mirabello, centred on the site of Vasiliki and the off-shore island of Mochlos; on the other hand, the central plain of Messara, vast but enclosed and set apart by its natural wealth, evident to us from its collective burial sites, with their tholoi. Unlike the rest of the Aegean, which in the third millennium was receiving almost everything from the west coast of Anatolia, Crete had contacts with Syria and, directly or indirectly, with Egypt. Was it for this reason that, even before zooo, this former poor relation of the neolithic Aegean was developing an active, outward-looking and original civilization, reformulating for its own use its diverse borrowings from elsewhere?

  There were no real cities yet, or palaces, in this forerunner of ancient Minoan civilization. But the tombs on the east coast have yielded some rich finds: pitchers with spouts in the Anatolian style (as in the rest of the Aegean); stylized marble statues of goddesses; tools and weapons made first of pure copper, then of bronze; gold jewels already showing distinctive features; original kinds of pottery, including ‘teapots’ with long spouts, apparently imitations of metal originals; and above all, many stone vases of obvious Egyptian inspiration (some even imported), which have caused much debate among the experts. It isnow thought that Crete did not have direct links with the Nile in the early third millennium, the date when these vases occur in Egypt itself, but rather indirect links via Byblos. But was this a straightforward import trade, or did Crete allow entry to refugees from the Nile, who had travelled by way of Syria? And if so, when? At the time of the distant conquest of the Delta by Narmer? Or from the first intermediary period, in the twenty-third century, which witnessed so much looting of very ancient Egyptian tombs? Such theories might account for the penile sheaths which male Cretan costume included from a very early time (and which are thought to be characteristic of the Delta as much as of Libya); they might also explain the many pottery seals found in the Messara plain (at Hagia Triada), dating from the very early Minoan period, pre-2200, and directly imitated from seals of the first intermediary period in Egypt – themselves Asiatic in inspiration. Other specialists simply think that the Cretans who went to Byblos travelled on to Egypt with the local traders.

  By the end of the third millennium, at any rate, Crete was already poised for take-off. But at the beginning of the twentieth century BC, and as if by chance, there was a remarkably sudden burst of expansion: cities and palaces rose and flourished; wheels and wheeled traffic arrived in the island; the potter’s wheel was adopted there in about zooo and, miraculously, this did not harm the quality of the pre-existing pottery, on the contrary. The boom was so remarkable that it has again been suggested that it could be explained by some ‘migration’: peoples from the Syrian or Palestinian coast might have taken refuge in Crete, fleeing from Lugalzaggisi, the Mesopotamian ruler of the third Ur dynasty, who at this time opened up the way to the ‘upper sea of the setting sun’.4 The legend of Europa being carried off by Zeus from the Phoenician coast and taken to Crete across the sea might contain a grain of truth.

  But does one need to invoke any migration to explain what can be quite adequately accounted for by the renewed vitality of trade and ‘international’ relations in the early second millennium? From the time of the ancient Minoan civilization, before 2000 BC, the Cretans had adopted a hieroglyphic form of script, and this feature alone indicates how detached they were from the Aegean world and its illiterate barbaric invaders. Cretan sailors were certainly familiar with the route to the Syrian coast. Cut off from the Aegean world, Crete looked towards Cyprus, Ugarit and Byblos; and through these places, it made contact with Egypt and Mesopotamia, without which any serious development would have been unthinkable. Crete was from then on enmeshed in a context of eastern civilization.

  Palaces and cities as indicators

  The great cities and palaces are those at Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Zakro, a site excavated in 1946. Unless there are more marvels waiting to be discovered on the site of former Kydonia to the west (as tradition hints that there might be), the list of large urban and palace complexes is complete. There were also a few more modest palaces or noblemen’s villas. Indeed there was scarcely a cultivated plain or active town which did not have its local palace and prince: these include Arkhanes, just a few kilometres away from Knossos, where bronze-age walls can still be seen incorporated into the walls of present-day houses; Monastiraki which controls the fertile valley of Amari; Kanli Kastelli or Gournia, with its ‘houses piled round the little palace and its courtyard, just as medieval towns clustered around their church or chateau’.

  If these sites are plotted on a map, the pattern is revealing. Unless new finds do turn up, there is absolutely nothing in the west of the island. Yet it was just as fertile as the east and certainly better watered. This must prove that Crete was influenced from outside, and from the eastern side of the compass only. In similar fashion, western Argos and peninsular Greece west of Mount Pindus and Mount Parnassus long remained areas inhabited by primitive peoples (according to Spyridon Marinatos).

  Plotting the rise of these centres over time is also instructive. There were, broadly speaking, two generations of palaces: the first from zooo to 1700; the second, from 1700 to 1400. Fire, earthquake, foreign invasion or social revolution – every kind of explanation has been put forward for the many vicissitudes of the Cretan palaces. What is certain is that they were destroyed and rebuilt on the same site more than once, and that the period of the second palaces corresponds both to economic prosperity and to the spread of the high art of Crete.

  What is also certain is that the number of palaces corresponds to alarge number of city-states. The Minos was not a pharaoh. Knossos probably never exerted tight political control over the rest of the island until the Mycenaean conquest, if then. Its political and possibly religious hegemony was exercised over what we may imagine as a loose federation of city-states, each with its own prince, on the model of the early Sumerian cities, or rather the pocket rulers of the towns of Syria. The whole enterprise was a peaceful one – hardly any Cretan cities had ramparts.

  Moreover, alongside every palace there was a city, built at the same time if not earlier. Just a few steps from the outer esplanade at Knossos, one is in an urban settlement which may have had as many as 60,000 or 100,000 inhabitants. This city of artisans, shopkeepers and sailors did not necessarily obey its masters in deed and word. It is logical to suppose, as H. van Effenterre did in a brilliant article, that there was a class of merchants with their own private commercial interests, outside the strict control of the palace economy. The island’s dispersed overseas trade, and the many merchant ‘colonies’ it had founded in Syrian or Aegean towns must have encouraged this economic independence. It is also not impossible that these notables played some political role in a patrician system of rule within the city; or that the people, meeting in a public square, may have had its say in some form of agora; or that the king might have played the role of an arbiter – like the Minos of legend – as a religious leader rather than head of state. If we agree with van Effenterre about this, then Minoan Crete might have been an early version of the future Greek city-state. The hypothesis is a seductive one, although the arguments put forward to support it– the existence of an elders’ council chamber at Mallia and of a public room near the palace – could equally well apply to certain Babylonian cities, where we know that the merchants were organized and masters of their own affairs, but without playing a political role.

  The last point of which we can be certain is that these luxurious palaces were the ceremonial setting for a divinity as much as for the man who, here as elsewhere, probably derived his authority entirely from his title and function as priest-king. Was the so-called Throne Room at Knossos,
with its gypsum seats and its fresco of griffins, later restored by Evans, a public reception room for the Minos, or a sanctuary reserved for the earth-mother goddess? All the Cretan palaces contain a multitude of religious artefacts: tables for libations (as at Mallia), statuettes representing the goddess, rhytons, double axes (labrys), consecration horns, shields in the shape of a figure eight, or the strange ‘sacred knots’ made of pottery or ivory, representing a knotted scarf with a golden fringe.

  So the palaces were at once temples, stately residences, and huge warehouses in which much of the economic life of the island was concentrated.

  Crete and the economic cycle

  The beginnings of Cretan urbanization had corresponded to a general improvement of the economy at the start of the second millennium BC. The second age of palaces, an even more thriving period, corresponded to increased demand in the Egyptian New Kingdom, just then embarking on its grand and dramatic foreign policy, by expelling the Hyksos and intervening in Asia. The new wind of cosmopolitanism blowing through the Middle East was responsible almost unaided for Crete’s material wealth. This dependence on the outside world explains why Crete continued to prosper materially until about i zoo, when it was hit by a wave of catastrophes. Certainly the earlier Mycenaean conquest (about 1400?) and the destruction which accompanied it had not dented Cretan prosperity. Those newcomers had found a place for themselves in the former pattern of economic activity in Crete without apparent disruption.

  During the first half of the second millennium, Crete adapted to this prosperous external trade which was gradually turning it into the centre of a huge network. It began to develop into a naval power of the first rank. But can one really speak of a ‘thalassocracy’ or of a ‘Cretan sea-borne empire’? As we have already noted, Crete was not a powerful political machine. Its sailors no doubt had their ports of call: Thera (Santorini), Melos, the obsidian island, Cythera, which could be seen on a clear day from the west coast of the island, and was a look-out point on the route to the Peloponnese and points west – all of these had been occupied by Cretan mariners and even settlers. Cretan merchants had settled at Miletus on the coast of Asia Minor, in Rhodes, Cyprus, Ugarit and probably, like the Syrians themselves,in the ports of the Nile Delta. Minoan ships had sailed to Malta, Sicily and southern Italy.5 But these contacts, defence posts and facilities, usually on a friendly footing, did not add up to an empire.

  They did, on the other hand, carve out a sphere of cultural influence: Cretan art and design invaded the whole of the Aegean. On Melos, the palace of Phylakopi, for instance, rebuilt in the seventeenth century BC, with its columns and its fresco of flying fish, was cast in the image of Knossos. They also indicated that Cretan trade had conquered the sea, with all the consequences and profits that entailed. Finding enough men to man the oars and sailing vessels of Crete had only been possible by recruiting sailors from throughout the Cyclades and as far away as Caria in Asia Minor. The folk memory of Carian pirates first being pursued by the Cretans and then becoming effective policemen of the sea in their service probably has some truth in it. This kind of thing would happen many more times in the history of the Mediterranean, where there were so few sailors that a fleet of any size simply had to rely on foreign recruits. This was to be as true of Athens in the age of Pericles, Istanbul under the Turks, or Renaissance Venice, as it had been of Minoan Crete.

  With these developments, the trading activity which had hitherto concentrated on the eastern tip of the island would soon establish its main axis further west, based on the road between Knossos and Phaistos, the former on the north coast, the latter on the south. It is not surprising that these should have been the two largest palaces on the island (Knossos represented 20,000 square metres of buildings, probably up to three storeys high). They stood at either end of a north-south road joining the two coasts of the island, an excellent example of an isthmus route, that is a short overland road between two shipping centres. This vital road was naturally well maintained: it was paved, ran across a viaduct at the southern end, and was used by pack animals – probably more often than by the sedan chairs or heavy four-wheeled vehicles of which models survive. The wheel first appeared in Crete in about 2000 or 1900 BC, probably imitated from Syria or Mesopotamia.

  The road joining Knossos and Phaistos suggests that there was increased activity on the southern shores of the island. This could have been associated either with coastal shipping on east-west routes to Rhodes, Cyprus and Syria; or, more plausibly, with direct crossings to the African coast, Cyrenaica or Egypt. General histories have argued for too long that navigation on the high seas out of sight of land, in particular the Rhodes-Egypt crossing, cannot have been undertaken until about the third century BC, in the Hellenistic period. It must surely be accepted now that this major feat – and it certainly was one – had been accomplished earlier. The modest sailing ships of Minos had been the bold pioneers. A late piece of evidence, but all the same earlier than the Hellenistic period, unequivocally supports this view. Odysseus, arriving home in Ithaca disguised as a Cretan merchant, is described as saying: ‘I proposed to go on a voyage to Egypt. I equipped nine ships and men flocked to them. For six days, these brave people feasted with me. On the seventh we set sail, and from the plains of Crete a fair and full north wind took us straight there, as if on the current of a river. We had only to sit and let the wind and our pilots take us. In five days we had reached the fine river Egyptos.’ We might note that this feat would not be surpassed even many centuries later, in the days of Barbarossa and the Turks. The north wind was the secret responsible for these performances. One had to have the courage to trust to it – but the rewards made it worth while: Egypt was a land of gold and treasure.

  It is striking all the same to note that most of the Cretan seaports are on the north coast, between Knossos and the gulf of Mirabello. Crete’s function was essentially that of a staging post between Europe, Asia and Africa. To the north, the island faced countries which had become more backward than itself – peninsular Greece and Argos with which it had maintained contact since the Achaean invasion – while to the west lay the even more primitive regions of southern Italy and Sicily. How far did its sailors venture towards these distant places? We do not know with any certainty. And once more we are faced with the obscure and controversial question of the first sea voyages from east to west.

  Like all seafaring peoples, the Cretans often acted as carriers for others, delivering in foreign ports merchandise which they had not manufactured themselves. But their own import-export trade was nevertheless considerable. Their fine painted pottery has been found in Melos, Aegina, Lernos, Mycenae, Cyprus, Syria and Egypt. Theyalso exported fabrics (their bright colours were sought after in Egypt, the land of white linen), jewels and bronze weapons: the latter have been found in Cyprus where the Cretans went to buy copper, although their own island had a few deposits of it. Their obsidian came from Melos and Yali, and Egypt provided them with many semi-precious stones and amethysts, used for engraved seals.

  These trades indicate that there was a large population of craftsmen. A city like Gournia appears to have been a weaving centre. The ‘industrial’ boom was such that Crete may actually have been exporting skilled labour, to Egypt for instance (from the nineteenth century BC and much later to Amarna) and no doubt to Mycenae as well. But even at the height of its prosperity, Crete also depended on the labour of its foresters, peasants, shepherds and fishermen. It exported wood, especially cypress, along with olive oil and wine. Yet it seems to have imported wheat – a sign of a developed economy where everything was interlinked.

  Accidents: intervention by the gods

  Nevertheless Crete had its share of dramatic incidents, and always following a familiar pattern: palaces were destroyed, rebuilt, then destroyed and rebuilt again, until they finally disappeared. The experts rarely agree about the dates and causes of these catastrophes. But they could only be of two kinds: either the gods (or nature) were responsible, or they were provoke
d by men and the violence of war. The two events which have given rise to most controversy are one natural disaster, the volcanic eruption of the island of Thera, and one man-made cataclysm: the conquest of the island by the Mycenaeans.

  The explosion of the island of Thera (Santorini), which was first identified by S. Marinatos in 1939, has since then fascinated so many archaeologists, vulcanologists and underwater explorers that we can more or less reconstruct what may have been ‘the greatest natural catclysm in history’. Santorini, which still seems to be active (the last eruption was in 19Z5-6), is a sort of Vesuvius, today three-quarters under water. With its ‘walls of lava and ash, alternately black, red and green, on which are perched the dazzling white villages, it is the strangest landscape in the whole archipelago’.

  It was in about 1500 BC that a volcano which had apparently been extinct for thousands of years started to become active again. A series of violent earthquakes, traces of which can be detected in the ruins at Knossos and Phaistos, had heralded an eruption or eruptions which buried the Cretan or Cretan-influenced villages on Santorini itself under several metres of lava. The inhabitants apparently had time to flee. But all this was a mere prelude. In about 1470 or 1450 BC, the island literally exploded – like Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda in ad 1883.

  The scale of that more recent disaster enables us to imagine the violence of the explosion of Thera – apparently four times more destructive, if one measures the amount of the cone of the volcano which was destroyed. But the scenario seems to have been similar: several years of earthquakes, followed by a series of eruptions and finally a massive explosion, creating a fantastic cloud of burning ash, accompanied by a tidal wave. In the case of Krakatoa, the sixty-foot-high waves destroyed three hundred towns and villages, tossing a ship and several railway engines over the rooftops. At Thera, in the Aegean, where the relatively shallow sea was under enormous pressure, the tidal wave must have been even more fantastic, the waves higher and certainly much faster-moving.