Category Archives: Palace

Kato Zakros and Putting Our Skills to The Test!

Today, one of the main sites we visited was Kato Zakros – the smallest of the four Minoan palaces, where the center court is 12 meters across opposed to the typical 22 to 28 meters. By our technique of measurement with our wingspans is about 4 people short: as you can see below the Knossos central court takes all 12 of us to span, but Kato Zakros barely holds 8 of us!

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The remains of the town at Kato Zakro extend right up to the northern edge of the palace, suggesting the town existed first. Since the site was never robbed, when it was found, there was a great wealth of Linear A tablets, bronze swords and tools, and over 10,000 pots from which many conclusions have been drawn.

From our past palatial observations, we had assumed that within the town walls, each community held the supplies to be self sufficient; however, Kato Zakros was different in this regard. While the architecture revealed 4 distinct well or fountain structures (cisterns meant to hold water,) a sign of advanced plumbing, they also discovered storage intended not for grains, but for imports. The fact that they didn’t have much land and space in general to produce all they needed, the increased trade with the Middle East was undeniable. (The assumption furthered by other findings as well, in particular, an elephant tusk and copper ingots.)

A unique characteristic to this palace that we haven’t seen anywhere else is what seems to be a kiln as Vasilli, our pottery instructor described. The long parallel compartments through which the heat would reach the pottery placed above. This palace was unique for its direct combination of spaces for religion, commodity storagep, and archives all very closely in the same space; which probably reared a stronger community than the other palaces.

Later that day, we hiked Petsofas, the sanctuary site above Palaikastro. The hike was steep, yet rewarding (and incredibly windy!) when we reached the top. We put our archaeological caps on and searched for anthropomorphic figurines. Most of what we found were cup fragments and handles – all in all, deeming this yet another successful day!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum and Gortyn

As an art history student, I am most intrigued by how the visceral and intimate relationship between artist and viewer gives insight into social climate and personal expression thorough aesthetic language. Today’s adventure, viewing ancient objects in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, after visiting the archaeological site in which the objects were found, Gortyn, was a particularly enriching experience. 20140117-001259.jpg

Archaeological Site of Gortyn

Oftentimes it is difficult to reimagine the original context in which visual art objects functioned in antiquity. This task becomes especially difficult when we see these objects in pristine museums where the objects are displayed without context. Art objects existed in a certain time and place for a particular reason. As T.J. Clark, a prominent art historian, has noted, visual art objects represent history in a unique way; history is “actually there when the painter stands still in front of the painting, the sculptor asks his model to stand still.” Clark also describes how art represents the coalescing of a particular moment in time for both the artist and the society in which he or she lived. The opportunity to visit Gortyn helped achieve Clark’s mission for visual art objects; for the experience of viewing the art objects and understanding their social history was heightened after visiting the site.

Gortyn, a site in use from 700 BCE to 670 CE, was at its peak during the Roman era, when it served as the capital of the province of Crete and Cyrene. Gortyn’s importance to the Roman Empire is clearly communicated by the amount of imperial art depicting emperors, such as Marcus Aurelius. 20140117-001250.jpg

Marble Portrait of Marcus Aurelius

Additionally, Gortyn asserts itself as a city that is powerful enough to commission grand and magnificent sculpture, such as a copy of the Hellenistic prototype, the Crouching Venus, and is thus able to construct a royal identity on par with that of Rome. By leveraging the visual arts as political capital, Gortyn also spreads imperial narratives by continuing Greek artistic traditions, such as the archaic and classical styles, and aligns itself as inheritors of the Greek civilization.

Though Clark characterizes art in contemporary life as powerless and ineffectual, clearly this was not always so. In antiquity, visual art played an important role is shaping political discourse and imperial narratives; Gortyn effectively used the visual arts to their advantage in this regard. The visual art found at Gortyn clearly indicates how art can be, in Clark’s words, “historically effective” as well as capable of “a series of actions in but also on history.” Though we witnessed Gortyn centuries after its destruction, the visit to the site provided context and insight into the visual art objects seen at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion.

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: Scholarly Debate / Should We Accept What We See?

Having gotten used to waking up to the smell of pies and feasting on goat cheese, chocolate, and spinach pies and mountain tea for the past few days, I was a little disoriented this morning waking up to the sounds of cars from the streets and eating a more “American-like” breakfast with sausages, bacons, and milk.

After a pretty relaxed morning, our first site was the Heraklion Archaeological Museum at the center of town with a large Minoan art collection. Stepping foot into the museum, I quickly noticed the difference between this museum and the others we have visited. Here, we were greeted a guard at the door to check our tickets and every room that was separated by the the different time periods also had a guard. The gray wall color and the blend of a white and gray colored floor matched with clear glass windows to protect the art provided us with a new experience in seeing the details of the paintings and the pottery. The lighting in each of these rooms were bright enough that small details could be noted and good photographs could be taken. We were also alongside many other tourists, which is definitely different than some of the other museums we had visited where we were the only people.

The Heraklion museum has collections ranging from the archaic to the Late Roman period, and most of the pieces of findings were from nearby sites including Knossos, Gortyn, and Ierapetra. In the first room, we entered we saw that the pieces that were found were included on a larger canvas and the missing parts were restored. This restoration process takes in what is known from what is found and completes the remainder of the paintings by interpreting the findings to provide a more complete picture of what they were depicting. This process can be problematic in the sense that as viewers we cannot “un-see” things, so we would only take into mind what is restored and not try to figure out from the pieces that were actually found.

One of the pieces we saw was the “Tripartite Shrine”, which is also known as the “Grandstand Fresco”. This scene is thought to depict a scene taking place at the Central Court of the palace of Knossos with open space in the front and spectators on the side. The building has the horns of consecration. The females conversing in the front are more detailed in their depiction and their higher class status is noted, and a large crowd of people are in the back and only their heads are visible. This painting gives people a general ideal of what kind of place Knossos was, but it should be noted that whether or not the setting is Knossos is still under debate by scholars.

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This is the first time that we also saw art pieces with high relief composition. One to take note is the “Prince of Lilies”, which is very characteristic of Minoan Crete. The life-sized figure is composed of parts that are not joined together, so the majestic headdress is still under debate as in whether it’s for the man or for the bull who is part of this larger mural composition but not depicted here. Likewise, the identity of this man is still much under debate because Sir Arthur Evans who excavated Knossos argued that he was the ruler of Knossos or a priest king, while other scholars suggest that he is an athlete.

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So is it a good idea to try to complete a piece provided that you only retrieve minimal information from the findings? This may not always be accurate as shown by Sir Arthur Evans. He made a copy of the pieces that he found at Knossos and using the pieces that he had recovered as shown on the left, he thought that the painting was of a boy placing flowers in a basket as a offering. After a piece of the muzzle of the monkey was identified, it was determined that the fresco was actually a portrait of a money picking up flowers and placing them in baskets that is offered to a goddess as a gift as shown on the right. Monkeys play an important role in Minoan culture and religions. If that extra piece had not been recovered, everyone would have assumed that it was a boy doing the offerings and not the monkeys. This revelation provides a more accurate and new view of the Minoan culture that would have otherwise been misunderstood. Therefore, the process of restoration, which is important and easier for viewers to see a more complete piece, is helpful but can sometimes be misleading.

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We continue our tour of these museum and see a wonderful collection of terra cotta pots, dedalic figurines found in tombs and sanctuaries, and sculptures of Roman emperors. After more free time to explore the vibrant city, we are off to another tour of Heraklion with Marinella!

Comparing Phaistos with Agia Triada

At times it’s difficult to relate to ancient communities because of the vast differences in things like technology, education, and language. But by congregating in groups and sharing activities through culture and religion I find that we are similar than we might expect. We noticed these similarities today as we visited the different ruins and learned about the many spaces and their functions. After another delicious breakfast of countless pies, we drove to the palace of Phaistos, one of the most notable in Crete. We entered the ruins by walking down a grand staircase, and then a second, narrower, staircase that led us to the central court facing Mount Ida to the north. 20140114-231048.jpgThe court, one of the most distinguishing features of a palace, was enormous and was likely used for religious events or a location to distribute food. To the west were magazines, some containing pithoi or small stone containers and to the north was the area of the “royal” residence.

20140114-231139.jpgIn order to reach the “king’s” hall from the court, we had to walk through a narrow corridor which could easily have been blocked off. Actually, this space reminded me of the Palace of Versailles, where, in order to reach the king’s private chambers, one has to enter a series of increasingly private and ornate rooms and finally walk through the Hall of Mirrors. The Minoan chambers included the familiar pier-and-door partition and light well which added to the luxuriousness of the rooms.

Perhaps one of the most useful aspects of Phaistos is that it includes an old Protopalatial palace and the newer Neopalatial palace. The Protopalatial area includes another central court that was distinct in that it included a raised walkway (probably for a religious procession) and a stone platform in the corner which may have been used for seating or bull leaping.

A few ruin stops later, we visited Ayia Triada (literally “holy trinity”). Unlike Phaistos, Ayia Triada is considered more of an administrative complex than a palace because of the lack of lustral basins, the smaller size of the Minoan Halls, and the many Linear A tablets and sealings found there.

20140114-231201.jpgDuring the New Palace period, Ayia Triada was even more prosperous than Phaistos, which is evident in features such as the wall murals. Since Ayia Triada is located so close to Phaistos, one would think that it would adopt similar features to the palace, but there are slight differences that are interesting such as the light well being located in the middle of a room instead of the end. The specific use of Ayia Triada is something of a mystery: it was thought to hold food for the population because of its many magazines, but in actuality it only has enough storage space to sustain a portion of the population. The mystery of Ayia Triada is the most intriguing to me: that even after excavating a site and digging up various artifacts it’s still impossible to understand the purpose of a building, probably because people constantly use spaces for a variety of purposes; for example, the gym near my house also has a chapel and a game room and I once stayed at a hotel that housed a small museum. Comparing Phaistos with Agia Triada just enforces the idea that culture is multifaceted, regardless of whether it was developed thousands of years ago or within the last decade.