by Patrick Hunt
We can only imagine Marinatos’s excitement in 1967 when, after barely breaking through the fine ash on the surface, his first explorations near the surface immediately turned up Minoan-style pottery in dense clusters. Marinatos presided over that first season at Akrotiri. His first daunting task was having to move the tons of fine ash that poured like sand over the deepening steep side walls of his dig as he descended. He quickly struck ancient stone walls and window and door lintels of major architectural structures and knew he had found something unique and special. Christos Doumas joined him in 1968 to assist in the excavation and continued through to the turn of the millennium.
Their joint Akrotiri venture between 1967 and 1974 yielded a whole city, revealing block after block of two- and three-story houses with narrow streets set around public squares. So far, over 2.5 acres of city have been excavated without any clear sign of finding the outer boundary of the city. At least ten separate building units with over 120 rooms have been excavated, many with multiple levels, and at least seven more buildings are known to be partly buried under the remaining ash. The site of Akrotiri runs along an old ravine today, its direction roughly north-south, and an ancient road axis (Telchines Road) links all the structures so far. Marinatos and Doumas divided the clusters of building units into mostly letter names, as Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, as well as Xeste 1-4, West House and House of the Ladies. Xeste, named after a style of stone-walled buildings, comes from the Greek word for a dressed ashlar block of stone that fits together with others. This is the main type of construction found in these structures. To date, Akrotiri’s largest excavated unit is Delta, with over forty rooms on several levels of four connected houses. The estimated population before the eruption is very difficult to reconstruct, but if even a conservative guess is made, it is likely that at least five thousand people lived in this city. This estimate is likely if its boundaries extend to about triple or quadruple its excavated area still under the unexcavated volcanic ash. Archaeologists can only guess at the rest of the island in Minoan antiquity, since so much of it was destroyed by the eruption and much still lies under volcanic ash. The archaeological excavations at Akrotiri show that it had considerable earthquake damage at about the same time the heavy volcanic ash fall buried the city, so these two phenomena are probably fairly simultaneous and connected.
The Akrotiri buildings are sophisticated, mostly stone-walled houses with well-planned doors and windows (framed by wooden beams) for ample light. Staircases rose to the upper floors, which were mostly residential areas. It is still astonishing that evidence can be found for plumbing in many of the rooms, along with the skilled use of water, especially in covered drains and even working toilets. It is no wonder that Thera has been called the Pompeii of the Aegean, because like that Roman city, its houses are so well preserved that Doumas could even pour plaster of paris into ash cavities to reconstruct furniture such as small tables. More exciting to some historians is the fact that Akrotiri was sealed by its volcanic destruction close to two thousand years before Pompeii. Thanks to the devastating volcano that sealed it off for almost 3,400 years, Akrotiri is by far the most complete city of the Aegean culture that we may ever know.
A personal tragedy for Marinatos—who continued working into his seventies—was that he suffered a massive stroke at the site of Akrotiri in 1974 and died almost immediately afterward. Christos Doumas capably continued the excavation and restoration work at Akrotiri from shortly after Marinatos’s death in 1974 until 2001, when he officially retired from directing Akrotiri and teaching at the University of Athens. My wife and I were guests at Akrotiri for a week in 1998 with Christos and Alex Doumas, and their kind hospitality to other archaeologists like me is unforgettable. We lived in the House of the Muses on the site of Akrotiri as I pursued my own archaeological research. The gentle breezes from the sea filled our rooms, billowing our curtains and bringing the fragrance of the sea into our dreams at night just as they must have for the residents of Thera thousands of years ago.
The eruption destroyed the Minoan fleet on Crete and its ash spread to Palestine
Although many may have thought he was premature in 1939, Marinatos did not just jump to an irrational connection between Thera’s eruption and a possible huge impact on Minoan civilization. Archaeologists excavating on the larger island of Crete, seventy miles to the south, have discovered the port of Amnisos, the primary Minoan harbor on the north coast. Perhaps the most challenging artifacts to interpret turned out to be a destroyed fleet of ships, apparently smashed by a tidal wave that came from Thera itself at the time of eruption. Such a tidal wave would have accompanied massive underwater earthquakes, coalescing the waves into one giant tsunami that shattered the Minoan navy like matchsticks. This could have seriously compromised Minoan control of the Aegean Sea, a domination of the seas often called thalassocracy, with consequences in politics and commerce as well as military control. Such a conclusion would be an extension of what Marinatos thought back in 1939 but lacked supportive evidence to prove. Additional evidence of the cataclysm has also been found at Akrotiri, an event that must have resulted in some kind of possible Minoan naval collapse around the Aegean.
In Crete, Marinatos also excavated parts of the ancient port site of Amnisos and found a huge deposit of volcanic pumice there in the town. The Minoans fleeing Thera may have gathered pumice—an extremely light volcanic stone, filled with air bubbles—that rained from the sky, some of which would have floated awhile on the sea around the traces of Thera. Some scholars have recently suggested that the pumice was stored in ritual vessels on shrines at Amnisos, suggesting a religious fear or dread of the volcanic activity remembered from Thera. While the Thera eruption did not end Minoan civilization, it is likely to have been a contributing factor to eventual Minoan demise within a century.
The destruction of Thera must have been one of the most dramatic natural catastrophes in ancient history. Many scientists at various conferences about Thera have suggested that the power of the enormous volcanic explosion—caused in part by the pressure of boiling seawater, superheated and expanding, bursting through solid rock deep in the volcano’s heart—would have exceeded that of a several-kiloton nuclear bomb. They suggest that this eruption’s force would have been so loud that its sound would have been heard as far away as the Strait of Gibraltar to the west, as far south as central Africa and as far north as Scandinavia. The fallout—windblown ash covering hundreds of miles—has been well documented. The “shadow” of ash would have been deposited all across the eastern Mediterranean, including Anatolia (modern Turkey), as the high-altitude prevailing winds of the jet stream carried it eastward hundreds of miles. Eastern Crete was covered in places by ash layers several inches deep. Pumice washed up on the island of Anaphi fifteen miles away to a height of about forty feet, as high as a four-story building. The tidal wave would likely have reached the coast of Israel in little more than one and three-quarters of an hour and may have been around twenty feet high at that end point, judging by the pumice deposited there. This kind of seismic force, generated by underwater earthquakes accompanying the eruption, could have easily wiped out harbors and low coastal cities for hundreds of miles, indeed contributing to a temporary loss of maritime shipping and thoroughly disrupting an economy based on sea trade. So Marinatos was probably not far from the truth in theorizing that the Minoan civilization was partially brought to its knees by nature.
Akrotiri’s preserved frescoes show the high level of art and civilization on Thera
Art is often an extension of a rich cultural life and an expression of wealth and leisure, but art is not so much a luxury as a creative outflow of a culture. Often, art expresses a culture’s values in some way via visual information about life and religion. If we can reconstruct and read that art, in this case from a lost city, we may be able to grasp a deeper understanding of that culture.
Perhaps the most important discoveries at Akrotiri are the beautiful Minoan frescoes that covered many walls. Many
of the houses of Akrotiri still have whole walls decorated floor to ceiling with colorful frescoes in the Minoan style, rich in nature and scenes of everyday life. Akrotiri has the highest concentration of surviving Minoan art because, much like Pompeii, it was completely buried in the ash fall of volcanic eruption and then immediately abandoned. Only since 1968 has this Minoan art reemerged to be appreciated again after 3,400 years. These frescoes of all hues include beautiful depictions of Minoan life, nearly all of which tell us how much the people of Thera loved nature.
West House, Room 5, contains several striking examples, including an exotic fantasy that may have been inspired by Egypt and the Nile, good evidence for trade with Egypt. Unusual animals, some mythical like griffins, chase each other along rivers where palm trees grow. In the nearby Fisherman fresco, a young man holds a bountiful catch of small tuna hanging from each hand. According to Doumas in 1983, the most important Akrotiri fresco is the Flotilla painting, also in this room, where a fleet of Minoan ships rows from one harbor to another. The ship details in this fresco tell us much about seafaring and ship construction of the Bronze Age. In Beta, Room 1, is a scene called Boxing Children, where boys with long plaits of black hair gracefully spar. On the diagonal wall in the same room is a scene of six antelopes, so freely and yet masterfully painted that they somehow appear both abstract and perfectly natural at the same time. Blue monkeys cavort in a painting from Beta, Room 6, and these were first thought to have been imaginary animals until blue monkeys were reported from remote equatorial East Africa after the nineteenth century. This spectacular imagery suggests the surprising wealth of Thera, especially if it could show paintings of—or even import—such animals.
From Xeste 3, Room 3, one of the largest frescoes is still being painstakingly assembled out of thousands of tiny plaster chunks. This is the enigmatic and marvelous Saffron Gatherers, possibly depicting a goddess receiving adoration in offerings of saffron, long associated with spring and fertility. For several days I was able to watch the student conservators work for hours piecing together tiny plaster fragments. There were exultant shouts when they made perfect matches out of the bewildering array of seemingly never-ending pieces.
One masterpiece of ancient art that shows how close we are to the Therans is found in the area of Delta, Room 2. This is a perfectly preserved painting and one of the most beautiful, now known as the Spring fresco. The walls of this room are covered with clumps of lilies blooming from volcanic rock outcrops. Poised in the air over the flowers are Theran swallows, birds that today still dive and swoop along the island cliffs above the deep caldera far below. As the frescoed swallows circle each other with graceful wings over the blooming lilies, set against the sky, they appear to playfully dance in a bird courtship or mating ritual. Standing on the very edge of the cliff where blue sea engulfs the entire horizon, I have seen identical swallows dancing and diving along the dizzy heights, at the meeting of sea and sky almost close enough to reach and touch. One might immediately think of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus on Crete, yearning to fly and inspired to try from watching such birds. Clearly these Akrotiri wall paintings show that the people of Thera observed, revered and loved nature long before a violent natural disaster would ultimately destroy their city.
Rich trade with Egypt may have centered on valuable local items like emery
What was the source of wealth that made Akrotiri’s art of such high quality? One easy answer is gathered from the evidence that Akrotiri and the Minoans at large had great trade contact with Egypt, to the mutual benefit of both cultures. Much of that evidence seems to come from the surviving art of Egypt, Crete and Thera. Egyptian elements are often seen in Akrotiri wall paintings, especially the Nile River scenes of West House, Room 5, where ducks and mallards appear to be directly copied from examples viewed in Egypt. Another possibility is that Minoan artists trained under Egyptian artists or that Egyptians also traveled to Akrotiri. Many Egyptian examples of traditional Nilotic scenes exist, such as those found a few centuries after Thera was destroyed in Nebamun’s tomb paintings in Thebes.
Additionally, tomb paintings from Thebes in Egypt, especially from the Eighteenth Dynasty around 1550-1450 BC, also depict Minoan traders who crossed the sea to Egypt. Minoans painted in Rekhmire’s and Senmut’s tombs, for example, bring materials from Crete in vessels along with other items like bull heads, which both peoples’ religions venerated. Not only are Minoans seen in Egypt but Egyptians are seen in Minoan art, for example, the Jewel Fresco of Minoan Knossos, with its person of “African” features wearing Egyptian-style jewelry. The Minoans were possibly known in Egypt as the Keftiu, which may be a reference to Crete and certainly refers to a people of the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean islands.
But what about the material evidence for trade—the actual artifact trade goods—between Egypt and Akrotiri or Minoan culture? What would the Aegeans have that Egypt wanted? This question is a little more complicated yet it relies less on interpretation than art does. Instead, we have texts, on what are called Linear A and B clay writing tablets, as well as the archaeological record to flesh out trade details. Unfortunately, while we can now read substantial Linear B tablets (Proto-Greek or Mycenean, mostly mainland texts), the script tablets of Linear A (Minoan or Cretan island texts) are still a muddle. Furthermore, no clay tablets of either Linear A or B script have been yet retrieved on Thera. But in this case, the exchange of actual trade can be confirmed through several different avenues including artifacts, but also found in ancient Egyptian vocabulary.
As mentioned, very ancient, predynastic (pre-3000 BC) Egyptian stone vessels made from diorite appeared in Crete in the Minoan Age (2100-1550 BC), if not before. Diorite is a hard stone that is very distinct and plentiful in Egypt but has not been found naturally to date in Cretan geological sources. Peter Warren and others have studied and published these vessels excavated from Minoan sites, which have been scientifically shown to be carved from Egyptian diorite.
On the other hand, there do not seem to be many commodities that the wealthy Egyptians would need from the Aegean. Certainly these early “Greek” commodities included olive oil and probably textiles, as Mycenaean archaeologist Cynthia Shelmerdine has convincingly shown. However—and this is a very provocative idea—there was a very valuable stone substance found only in the Aegean for which Egyptians would have a ready market but no local supply themselves. Perhaps this exotic stone not found in Egypt was all the more desirable because for thousands of years, Egypt’s stone industries had been using very hard stone for sculpture, architecture, jewelry and amulets. Egyptians experimented with all kinds of technologies, always searching for the best materials to work with. This imported stone for which the Egyptians would have paid a premium was emery (scientifically known as corundum), and it was harder than anything else the Egyptians had for stone polishing. Second only to diamond on the Mohs scale of hardness, emery is rated as 9 to diamond’s 10. Even quartzite and dolerite, the next hardest stoneworking tools in Egypt, are only about 7.5, and they are found naturally in Egypt’s geology. Emery was then exclusively found on the Aegean island of Naxos, which was in close contact with Thera and possibly controlled by it. As I discovered on Thera in the artifact storage house at the site, the Bronze Age port of Moutsouna on eastern Naxos was shipping emery to elsewhere, including Akrotiri.
For years, Egyptologists have said that emery was not imported to Egypt until the Ptolemaic period (300 - 47 BC). This is when the word shows up in Ptolemaic Greek as smeris (the root word today for “emery”). But a few years ago I found the word ysmerii as an exotic imported stone in the Egyptian records of Pharaoh Thutmose III, circa 1450 BC, and that old argument about emery went out the window. This is still tentative, but here is a possible logical scenario: If Thera was a middleman “capital” Aegean island that controlled trade between Naxian emery and Egyptian markets—especially the royal stone workshops, which could afford this expensive and exotic stone, hardest in the ancient world—and if Theran culture ha
d a monopoly on this stone and controlled this commodity of the Aegean trade (as in Plato’s Atlantis), Egypt would have to pay a high price for it. Emery would assist the Egyptians in making their countless hard stone sculptures; and only emery gave Egyptian masons the means to achieve a polish on hard stone sculpture like granite or quartzite, a polish that no other stone material could bring. Is this one possible reason why the people of Thera could afford such a high standard of art and civilization?
The destruction of Thera helps to date the end of the Middle Bronze Age
There is still deep controversy today among historians and archaeologists about both the chronology and the reasons why the Middle Bronze Age ended in the Mediterranean. The date offered for years in textbooks as the vague end of the Middle Minoan (around the Middle Bronze Age) and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age has been 1550 BC. Trying to match this date to an abrupt end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the New Kingdom in Egyptian dynasties has been very tricky, and Egyptian history calls this the Second Intermediate Period, between 1700 and 1550 BC. But the newly accepted early date of Thera’s destruction, around 1620 BC, falls exactly in the middle between these dates, equidistant between the ambiguous end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, which some place now around 1700 BC.