The Mediterranean in the Ancient World

by Fernand Braudel

  Crete, izo kilometres from Thera, was not only hit head-on by this massive upheaval of the sea, but also shaken by earthquakes, showered with ash and overwhelmed by toxic gases. The whole of the eastern end of the island and even the centre were devastated. A single palace survived at Knossos, damaged but not destroyed. The cities of Phaistos, Mallia, Haghia Triada and Zakro were all destroyed along with their palaces; as were Gournia, Palaikastro, Pseira and Mochlos. The vegetation was annihilated; ash at least ten centimetres thick lay over everything like a blanket and made any cultivation or rebuilding impossible for years. There was a wave of emigration to the western end of the island and probably to the Mycenaean mainland too, as appears from excavations.

  Driven by a north wind, the toxic clouds reached as far as Syria and the Nile Delta. The biblical book of Exodus speaks of a terrifying darkness for three days, during which the Jews held captive by the pharaoh took the opportunity to escape. Some people have tried tomatch this up to the Santorini eruption. Is that too fanciful? Perhaps. Chronologically, it is hard to reconcile the two. But in 1945, I saw with my own eyes the black clouds arising from the terrible bombing of Hamburg: a hundred kilometres away, we literally experienced darkness at noon. The Krakatoa explosion plunged places two hundred kilometres away into total darkness. Nature is even more powerful, alas, than mankind.

  The explosion of Santorini, so long unknown, seems now to be taking on prime importance as a historical explanation. It has been suggested, in an intelligent little book by Rhys Carpenter (1966) and a well-documented study by J. V. Luce, The End of Atlantis (1969), that this may have been the real-life event which formed the basis for the famous legend of Atlantis to be found in Plato – referring to a great island, home to a powerful civilization, which vanished under the sea ‘in a day and a night’. Both authors refer the reader to the beginning of the Timaeus and the Critias. Atlantis, according to the account of the Saite high priest and the Egyptian ‘temple archives’, was situated far to the west, at the limit of the known world. Plato therefore naturally placed it beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, in the middle of the ocean, but for the Egyptians of the eighteenth dynasty, the ‘western limit of the known world’ would have been Crete. So was the destruction of Atlantis possibly a combination of two events, telescoped together in traditional folklore: the end of the Minoan ascendancy and the eruption of Thera?

  Events: human intervention

  This hypothesis suggests that the two key events mentioned above, the explosion of Thera and the Mycenaean conquest, occurred within a short time of each other. If that is true, the Mycenaeans would have arrived in Crete shortly after the cataclysm.

  The Achaeans or early Greeks, Indo-European invaders who were the ancestors of the Mycenaeans, had in fact arrived in Greece towards the end of the third millennium BC. They had mostly settled round the edge of the Aegean, among the pre-existing populations whom they subjugated, destroying their cities and their culture. In Lemnos, for instance, the layer of remains immediately following the burning of the town contains traces of a completely new culture: the shape of the houses, the modes of burial and types of pottery all change. It would not therefore be surprising if the newcomers also imposed their language on the area. But perhaps, after all, the Aegean civilization they overthrew on the Greek mainland was a still-fragile graft, established only along the coast and in a few inland sites, in a territory which was not yet fully settled.

  These first people of the Aegean (the Pelasgians of Greek tradition) had nevertheless left lasting traces. Linguistic analysis offers unequivocal evidence in this respect. The newcomers may have retained their own language, but they also borrowed a great deal from those they conquered. The Greek language thus inherited a considerable number of local borrowings. Place names and personal names tell us this quite forcefully: the names of cities as famous as Corinth, Tiryns or Athens, the very name of Mount Parnassus, above the oracle at Delphi, in the very heart of Hellenic civilization, the ‘navel of the world’ – are not Greek in origin. Neither – sad to say! – are the names of Homeric heroes such as Achilles and Ulysses/Odysseus, or the Cretan names of the arbiters of the underworld, Minos and Rhadamanthus, or of the queen of those dark regions, Persephone. Even more significant is the non-Greek origin of many words connected with agriculture: the names for wheat, vines, figs, olives, lilies, roses, jasmine or marjoram. Lastly, terms to do with the sea are borrowed too: the art of navigation was a gift more precious even than the vine and the olive-tree from the non-Greek peoples of the Hellenic region to their Indo-European invaders. The latter were strangers to the sea: neither thalassa nor pontus are Greek words!

  But the lessons were quickly learned. In Argos the newcomers were introduced to the network of established links, in particular with Crete. The island, just then on the crest of a wave of prosperity, was a beacon for the Cyclades and the nearest mainland coasts. In the eighteenth century BC, potters on both mainland and islands, possibly emigre Cretans themselves, began to imitate Cretan models, in the so-called Camares style: seals, jewels, and decorative Minoan motifs were exported and copied. In the fifteenth century, a uniform culture of Minoan inspiration, linked to the Middle East, spread throughout the southern Aegean, so that it is often impossible to tell whether an objectfound at Phylakopi, say, on Melos, or at Aegina, Mycenae or Pylos was imported from Crete or produced locally.

  Mycenae is the most striking example of this process. Since the city asserted itself over the other cities of Argos, the term Mycenaean has become the standard name for the whole civilization. In fact, that civilization really took off during the period of the new palaces in Crete: witness to its splendour are the princely tombs in Mycenae which have been found intact: they date broadly from the sixteenth century BC(with a few somewhat older ones and others from the early fifteenth). It is curious to find in them, alongside the preponderant Cretan influence, very clear traces of Egyptian influence too. It is true that between i55oandi470-i450, the Mycenaeans and Cretans seem to have engaged in friendly exchange as well as trading side by side, not only in the Aeolian islands, where their pottery has been found in close proximity, but also in Rhodes, where the Mycenaeans appear to have intermingled with the Cretan colony, and even in Egypt, where documents mention Keftiu (Crete) and ‘the Islands in the Middle of the Great Green’, a term thought to refer to all the non-Cretan Aegean islands, plus the Peloponnese.

  This parallel rise of Cretan and Mycenaean trade in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries is sufficient to explain the wealth of the tombs at Mycenae, the abundance of gold objects (the gold came from Egypt) and in particular the amazing gold masks covering the faces of the dead: this was a non-Cretan custom, probably imported, like the gold, from the banks of the Nile. Another hypothesis is that Cretan sailors might have acted as transporters for a mercenary force of Mycenaeans, called in by the pharaoh Amosis in about 1580 BC, to get rid of the Hyksos from the Delta. These mercenaries may have been identical with the Haunebu, the heavily armed soldiers whose lances, helmets, shields and long swords would have made short work of the Asian intruders. They might have gone home laden with Egyptian gold. But there is no scientific evidence to support this romantic legend.

  True or not as this may be, the Mycenaeans undoubtedly followed in the footsteps of the Cretans. Both their civilization and their economy cannibalized the centuries-old model which they found in Crete and which they destroyed, almost unintentionally. Mycenaean expansion, if I am not mistaken, followed the upward trend of trade: it was a success related to the economic climate. And since that expansion was rapid, the area of the sea covered by Mycenaean shipping and influence first duplicated then went beyond the area of Cretan sway. They reached Rhodes and Cyprus, elbowing their predecessors aside, before moving on to the coast of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, where their pottery was landed in great quantities at Amarna. They also travelled westwards: ‘Fragments of Mycenaean pottery are to be found almost everywhere in Italy’. The signs all point to a rapid
and energetic expansion, perhaps using force, as was the case in the straits leading to the coast below Ilium: the Trojan war, dated about 1250 BC, was in the Mycenaean period. Their ventures beyond Troy into the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) may also have used force.

  There can be no doubt that the civilization of Mycenae, of Tiryns, Pylos, Argos, Thebes and Athens, was flourishing. In the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, huge palaces were built on the Cretan model, with the same columns and identical styles of fresco. The open central courtyard of the Cretan version was however replaced by the megaton, a large room with a hearth in the centre surrounded by four columns: it had no chimney and the smoke went out through a hole in the roof. The megarorty we might note, was a feature introduced from Asia Minor.

  But it is not my intention to linger long over Mycenae and Tiryns, or to describe the features of this warlike society, with its kings of Indo-European type and its warriors who went to their tombs accompanied by sumptuous armour. What interests us about the Mycenaeans is the Cretan civilization which they took over, and which therefore became embedded in what would become the Greek civilization of later centuries. Mycenae provided the intermediary stage, an imperfect one as it happened, since it came to a dramatic end, but the only possible one, since in about 1400 or a little later, the final destruction of Knossos meant that the entire Cretan and Creto-Mycenaean legacy was to be found in Argos.

  Returning to Knossos then, the city was undeniably captured by the Mycenaeans – but when? There is some evidence for a date of 1460–1450, in particular the Egyptian painting on the tomb of Rekmire in Thebes, where Cretan men bearing offerings to Rekmire have been ‘re-clothed’. The painter has eliminated the classical costume with penile sheaths – traces of them can still be glimpsed – and has replacedthem with a Mycenaean-style loin-cloth, ending in a point. In another tomb dating from several decades later, ‘the men of Keftiu and the islands of the Great Green’ are still wearing loin-cloths. Was this just a change in fashion? Or was it a kind of recognition by Rekmire, the minister who received foreigners at Thebes on behalf of the pharaoh, that there had been a change of dynasty in Crete? From about 1400 at any rate, all mention of Keftiu disappears from the Egyptian inscriptions. Other signs are that the repairs to the palace of Knossos, after the explosion of Thera, mark the appearance of tablets written in Linear B, similar to those in Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. And lastly there is a clear change of style, both in pottery and burials, between the R(ecent) M(inoan) IB (which enables us to date the major volcanic episodes on the island) and the so-called ‘palace style’, RMII, which appears at Knossos and Knossos alone. It is logical to conclude, in the light of recent work on the Thera catastrophe, that the Mycenaeans were able to take advantage of the desolation produced in Crete to occupy Knossos, the only palace left standing at the heart of Cretan power. After all, the island had witnessed the destruction not only of many towns with great loss of life, but of several ports and settlements in the Aegean islands which were equally badly affected. There was a vacuum to be filled. The Cretan diaspora, probably in all directions, which followed these disasters, contributed in large measure to the rising star of Mycenae. Crete eventually attained comparative prosperity once more, but would never thereafter be more than a Mycenaean province.

  But who then was responsible for the final destruction of the palace at Knossos which the Mycenaeans had occupied? Here all the uncertainties return, including uncertainty about the date. One explanation is that the oppressed Cretans rose up against the new masters of Knossos and sacked the palace, in about 1400 BC. This has often been suggested but the evidence seems to be contradictory. For example, the fact that the Greek language on the tablets in Knossos is more developed, and therefore in theory later in date than that on the tablets in Pylos, is a problem. Other scholars think we ought to revise our ideas radically about the date of the destruction of Knossos, either putting it in the mid sixteenth century BC and attributing it to enemies, possibly simply neighbouring towns, against whom the Mycenaean cities built enormous ramparts – or else putting it much later, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, in which case Knossos simply shared the fate of the other Mycenaean cities and palaces. But that is another story, to which we shall return later.

  The key to the future of the Mediterranean: Cretan civilization

  In the end, what was to have greatest significance in the overall destiny of the Mediterranean was Cretan civilization itself. The problem is that to use the term ‘civilization’ begs many questions – and we have very few of the answers. Only fragmentary images of everyday Cretan life have survived – a handful of ‘snapshots’ which a novelist could turn into a narrative only by using a great deal of imagination. As for Cretan institutions, I have already referred in passing to the gist of what is known: very little. We know there were priest-kings, palaces, cities, communities of artisans, and seafarers. But the organization of this society remains far more mysterious than that of Babylonia or Egypt. The absence of any written documents is a daunting obstacle (the decipherment of the Linear B tablets did not remedy this, since they consisted almost entirely of inventories, and in any case dated from a late period). The only avenues open to us are religion and art.

  We know enough about Cretan religion to be able to glimpse something of it, but not enough to be certain of anything, nor in particular to grasp its structure, which might have helped reveal the secrets of the island’s social organization. Once we reach the period when the gods of Olympus occupied Crete – when Zeus, escaping his terrible child-eating father Cronos, took refuge in the sacred cave on Mount Ida – then we find ourselves faced with a familiar mythology: the gods referred to in Linear B are all Achaean. But what about the earlier period? A mythology in which divinities are lent human form needs images of several gods engaging in collective exploits. But in ancient Minoan Crete, there is absolutely no sign of them. Religious significance was clearly attached to many objects found in the palaces which were the high places of the official religion (there are no temples in the modern, Mesopotamian or Egyptian sense of the word in Cretan cities), or in the sanctuaries on mountain tops, in caves or sacred groves: trees, columns, the two-headed axe, the horns of bulls and ritually knotted scarves all had some religious importance. Some animals were sacred: the snake and the dove, symbols of earth and heaven. But only one divinity appears to be in evidence: the omnipresent goddess-mother, who sends us back to the earliest human mentalities, and the dawn of religion. She is directly descended from the fleshy goddesses of the early neolithic age in Crete: these figures, holding up their breasts with their hands, were patently fertility symbols, that is dispensers of bounty. After all, what could the Cretan people possibly wish for, since they were not divided regionally among different hostile tribes and did not have local gods in rivalry with one another, except that the goddess of nature should protect their fields and flocks, the land and sea, the animals and the people she had created, and that she should cure them from bodily ills? These do indeed seem to be the attributes of the miraculous statue of the so-called goddess ‘of the Poppies’.

  On this account, the term monotheism has been applied to Crete, perhaps correctly. Why should one make distinctions between the goddess with the snakes, the goddess with the flowers and the goddess with the doves? But monotheism is normally connected to new and forward-looking religions, whereas nothing could be more ancient than the Earth Mother, queen of Nature. The usual process was that she evolved into a divine couple, a god and goddess (the god always rather less impressive), or into a trinity providing them with a child. The sixth millennium BC in Catal Hoyiik was ‘monotheistic’ by this reckoning, as were the stone-age hunters who revered the ‘Venus’ of the Gravettian era. I am inclined to suggest that the Aegean, which received all its culture from neolithic Asia Minor rather than from the densely settled civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, remained faithful to the fertility goddess of the early farmers, instead of adopting the pantheon of gods to be found in more
advanced civilizations, and from which the male gods were for the first time displacing the female goddesses.

  The impression persists, however, that in religion, as in art, the Cretans took over and thoroughly transformed whatever cultural borrowings came from elsewhere. The priestess-vultures in the lugubrious ceremonial depicted on the walls of Catal Hoyiik are a far cry from the whirling young women represented on so many Cretan frescoes or jewels – dainty ballerinas dancing with swirling skirts. This is a quite different approach to life and death, a sort of escape from the religious dread which was natural among primitive peoples. If we survey everything we know about the ritual life of the Cretans: the flocking of the faithful to the cave on Mount Ida or the cave of Erleithya near Amnissos; the crowds of believers thronging into the central courtyard of the palace to attend a ceremony; the bullfights in which there was no killing, but a spectacular and dangerous display of acrobatics; the massive processions at harvest time, as depicted on a fine vase of black steatite, where all the participants are shown open-mouthed, laughing or singing; or even the enigmatic sarcophagus of Haghia Triada, which shows a dead man standing in front of his tomb and attentively receiving the last offerings of the living: in all these representations, there is no sign of people living in dread of their gods, their priests, or the fear of death. On one fresco in Knossos, women in light-coloured dresses, yellow, blue and white, dance bare-breasted in front of a large crowd seated under blue olive trees. Another picture, in an only partly surviving and unidentified fresco, shows what may be a bullfight in the palace courtyard. Seated in the place of honour are more women, ladies of the court or priestesses perhaps, and behind them hundreds of heads crowded together. The colours are bright: red, blue, yellow, ochre and white. It is clear that some ritual is being performed in both ceremonies, yet the atmosphere is one of a joyful popular festival, a society in which men and women meet each other freely. One has only to compare these scenes with the fresco at Mari known as the ‘investiture’ fresco (eighteenth century b c) – in which the king Zimri Lim solemnly receives sacred emblems from Ishtar, goddess of war, in the presence of other divinities, animals and hieratic beasts – to be convinced that these are two separate worlds deeply divided by their religious attitudes and their conception of life.