Treasure Seekers: Glories of the Ancient Aegean Page #5

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corridors and rooms.

He began to think that

the palace itself had inspired

the myth of the labyrinth,

for he found 1400 rooms

stretched over 6 acres.

The palace was reasonably

well preserved,

but nothing like as well

preserved as it now feels.

It is really quite important to walk

into a place and have a sense of walls

and ceilings as well as

just foundations

the come up to about knee level.

So with things like

the grand staircase,

of which he was hugely proud,

I think a lot of people have cause

to be grateful to Evans

for allowing them the chance

to walk down a Minoan staircase

and to be surrounded by Minoan columns

and even restored frescos on the wall.

It has been a wonderful experience.

Evans was inspired by the frescos.

The fragments suggested a world

surprisingly modern,

a handsome people who lived

in harmony with nature.

But the images were

indistinct and broken.

So Evans took another leap.

He hired a team of artists

to help him fill in the blanks.

What emerged from Evans palette was

a world of grace of sensuality,

unlike any other in ancient times.

There were no images of war.

Women were on an equal footing

with men.

Priestesses led the worship

of a mother goddess.

How much of this inviting world

was truly Minoan,

and how much the creation of

Arthur Evans?

He idealized the Minoans.

He had no real concept that

there could be

an darker side to their nature,

any war-likeness.

They were, for him, sort of

latter-day hippies, really.

They were people who lived

in an almost perfect world,

a world which I think Evans saw

in contrast to the real world.

They were always a bit of

an escape for him.

During Evans years at Knossos,

the outside world was shattered

by the violence of World War I.

Evans was horrified

by the brutal technology

and raw power of the 20th century.

Just as he had escaped

from industrial England in his youth,

he found solace in the refined world

of the Minoans.

They became almost real to him,

a perfect people who lived

in an ideal world.

In his writings only once

did Evans admit

that his Minoans might have had

a violent side.

He couldn't help noticing that

everywhere he looked in the palace

he saw menacing images of bulls.

They reminded him of

the innocent youths and maidens

sacrificed to the Minotaur.

One fresco haunted him,

a charging bull with a young acrobat

in the midst of a suicidal leap.

What could be the meaning

of this cruel sport,

so like the bloody rituals

of the Roman amphitheater?

"The sports of the Roman

amphitheater may thus in Crete

may be trace back to prehistoric times.

Perhaps the legends of Athenian

prisoners devoured by the Minotaur

preserve a real tradition of such

cruel sports."...Arthur Evans

But most of the time Evans Minoans

seemed to have lived with all the grace

and polish of their eminent

discoverer.

He was Sir Arthur now,

widely honored and renowned.

He entertained frequently,

but remained a private person,

more at home in the world he created.

He spent much of his later years

writing a history of the Minoans called,

"The Palace of Minos."

In defiance of modern technology,

he wrote all four volumes in longhand

with a white goose-feather quill pen.

Many of his friends

said his handwriting

was even beginning

to look like Linear A.

Throughout his writings Evans insisted

on the superiority of his Minoans.

He believed they had

dominated the Aegean,

lording over the more warlike tribes

of mainland Greece.

Even in the face of

conflicting evidence,

he insisted that only an earthquake

precipitated their fall.

Other archeologists disagreed.

They pointed to evidence which showed

that the Minoans had been conquered

by the Mycenaeans sweeping in

from Greece about 1450 B.C.

Evans could never accept the image

of his Minoans as a captive people.

To the end of his life Evans remained

true to his dream of the Minoans.

All over Crete other excavators

were digging,

revealing the outlines of

other palaces

that had flourished at the same time

as his Knossos.

Their methods were not the same as his-

science had taken over archeology.

No longer would a single vision

recreate a civilization.

The days of the treasure seekers

were over.

There are instances

where we can see him

as being wrongheaded,

pigheaded, just plain wrong.

But what really strikes you

very forcibly is that

if you're starting any piece

of Minoan research,

if you're asking any questions,

you can almost always go back to

Arthur Evans' writings

and find a starting point.

You may not agree with

what he says about it,

but he almost always been there

first and thought of the question.

Regardless of whether it was true

or not, Evans image of Minoan culture-

its elegance and grace-

captivated the Western imagination.

It continues to inspire more than a

million visitors to Knossos every year.

The treasure he'd unearthed

was more than gold.

It was the vision of a civilized world

deep in the dark recesses of

the European past.

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