The Ancients - The Legacy of the Minoans

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Minoan Crete has kept people captivated for millennia, appearing in countless modern cultural practices till this very day. But who are the Minoans? In this episode, Tristan travels down to Oxford to talk to Professor Nico Momigliano, a leading expert in the history and legacy of the Minoans. Join us as we explore the lives, civilisation, and influence of the Minoan past.

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it has been used to symbolize, to signify different things to different people over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st century. From Freud to flower power to the BBC series Atlantis. We're going to be covering all of that and more. Now, joining me on the pod stage to talk through all of this, I was delighted to head up to Oxford a few weeks back to interview Professor Nicoletta Momigliano. Nico, she is one of the leading experts on the Minoans in the UK. It was a pleasure to chat to her all about this,

all about the legacy of the Minoans. And she also recently featured on a history hit documentary all about this called In Search of the Minoans. So without further ado, here's Nico. Nico, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to talk about the Minoans. Right, the Minoans. And actually, I had no idea how much interest, how much almost an obsession, this creetomania there's been since the rediscovery of the Minoans almost a century ago. It's phenomenal. Yes, it's amazing how I think the beginning of the 20th century, some avant-garde artists just fell in love with things Mainoan. Well, I can understand

that, but I suffer from critomania too, so I'm not very objective about it. But it was something fresh, something very different, something unexpected. And there was something about the Mainons that chimed with all kinds of things going on in the early 20th century, from the suffragette movement to the establishment of Nouveau. So it was the right time. It seems to gain all these different layers, doesn't it? Different meanings for different people. Yeah, for different people. Absolutely, absolutely. From people who are, as I said, interested in the woman question

to people who are interested in creating new canons of art, of what we call early modernism and could draw inspiration from something more primitive, something that was not classical. And Nico, to start it all off, therefore, I mean, just for the background, we've used the term Minoans, but who were the Minoans? And where does this name come from? And how do you pronounce it? I mean, some people say Minoans, some people say Minoans. The big question. And where does this name come from? And how do you pronounce it? I mean, some people say Minoans, some people say Minoans. Certainly Minoans, the name comes from the

legendary King Minos, who is mentioned in many ancient Greek sources, starting from the Homeric poems, and what we now call the Mainoans are the people who lived and developed a sophisticated culture on Crete and in what is often referred to as the Greek Bronze Age, that is the third and second millennium BC. But we find elements of this culture also in other parts of the Aegean, in some Cycladic islands, some settlements on the coast of western Asia Minor, some islands such as Kythera near the Peloponnese, where it is basically accepted by almost every scholar that some people who originated from Crete at some point settled on the island of Kythera sometime in the late third millennium BC. But it's, you know, it's like the centre of this culture, the centre of the Minoan world is the island of Crete. culture, the centre of the Minoan world, is the island of Crete.

And is the centre of the centre of the island of Crete during the Minoan period, how central is the place of Knossos? Well, Knossos is a very important site also because it's probably one of the first, if not the first, settlement on the island, permanent settlement. Because when we talk about prehistoric Crete, yes, we have the Minoan period, but the Minoan period is a convention. We talk of Minoan culture for the third and second millennium BC but it's not that suddenly around 3000 BC we have this new culture that mushroomed overnight. There were people living on Crete permanently from about 7000 BC and one of the first settlements these people who called the Neolithic culture of Crete settled in Knossos. So Knossos must have been almost like one of the first settlements,

if not the first settlement in the island, and must have maintained some kind of importance, perhaps because one of the very first settlements or the very first settlement. Certainly so far on Crete this is the earliest permanent settlement found on the island is at Knossos. There are other settlements on the Neolithic periods but they seem to be slightly later. So it's not just central but also almost like primordial. It's the origin of the people who then developed this wonderful civilization a few millennia later who are the direct descendants of the people who then originally came from the Levant, southern Anatolia. Yes, there may have been other people

arriving at a later stage, but the first people who settled permanently on Crete probably did so at Knossos, about 7,000 years before Christ. Mika, that's so interesting, because when you think Knossos, you think the Minoans, but it sounds like it does actually the founding of this settlement from what the archaeology tells us. It predates the Minoans. Of many millennia. Wow. Yeah, absolutely.

In fact, it was a Neolithic settlement for longer than it was a Minoan settlement. But these are the labels that scholars give to divide long, long periods of time. And the name Minos, as I said, it's derived from ancient literature, because in ancient literature we have references to a king Minos, but we don't know what the Minoans called themselves. There are some documents in second millennium Egypt that refer to people from the Aegean as Keftio. And in the Bible, Crete is called Kaftarim. So there may be a connection between Kaftarim, but we are not sure what exactly they call themselves.

So we have these references to Crete, but for other literary sources, for Bronze Age Crete, for the Minoans, for Knossos, let's say, and you mentioned Minos there, so are Greek myths quite key in our literary sources that survive? Yes, very, very important.

The House of Minos is one of the most unlucky, not the most unlucky, but, you know, between Croesus and Mycenae, it's a bit of a battle as to which one is more unlucky, and the Thebes as well. But yes, there are plenty, plenty of references in ancient sources. Although, unfortunately, a lot of, say, ancient tragedies that had the House of Minos as their topic have actually been lost. You know, we know that Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, great Arctic tragedians, and even some of the comic writers, Aristophanes, did write plays that had to do with the legendary House of Minos, but they're only preserved as either small, small fragments or just as the title of this work that

has now been lost. And then Crete became less important in later periods, partly because of minimal involvement during the famous Persian Wars, when the Greeks defeated the Persians and Athens became more prominent and so on. But yeah. Don't get too close to Alexander the Great and his success as well. Get very, very excited indeed. So we'll go back from there. And just Minos, we're going to go on to the 20th century very, very soon. But just quickly, Minos, he is of minotaur fame yes yes minos of uh minotaur fame although the minotaur

sometimes is called the bull of minos he was only the stepfather really because according to greek legend the minotaur was the offspring of king minos' wife, Pasipha, and a bull, a bull sent by Poseidon to Minos. And Minos was supposed to sacrifice this bull, but this bull was so beautiful he decided not to sacrifice it and sacrifice another bull instead. instead and the gods took their revenge by making Pasipha fall in love with the bull and getting the famous genius Daedalus build a strange contraption so that she could mate with the bull and she did mate with the bull and the result of this was the Minotaur. So, if you like, Minos was a cackled husband who got this strange offspring from this illicit liaison with a bull and his wife. But, in a sense, it was all his fault. Because if you make promises to the Greek gods, you are a fool if you don't keep your promises.

They always punish you. But I think this has very little to do with actually the Minoans, with Minoan Crete, because what Greek myths are, are stories created hundreds and hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years after the fall of the Bronze Age people we now call the Minoans. It's almost like as if you wanted to reconstruct Roman history just using Shakespeare's play and actually possibly even worse because at least Shakespeare would have used some nice written sources of the period, whereas the Greeks only had some kind of oral tradition or the remnants of the Bronze Age structures to make them think and create these strange stories as a kind of explanation for these strange archaeological remains, as they did for example for the Mycenaean walls of Athens, because now if you visit Athens you see different kinds of walls

around the Acropolis, but until the 5th century BC, the fortification walls that were around the Acropolis dated to about 1300-1200 BC. Or the same about the walls of Troy. The majestic walls of Troy were visible for hundreds of years after the destruction of Troy and before Troy was buried under literally layers of time and dust and so on. But people had forgotten who built these walls and so the Greeks invented these wonderful stories that these walls were built by gods, by Poseidon and Apollo. And I think something similar must have happened about Crete, that physical remains of the Bronze Age, the walls of big palaces and perhaps even some of the frescoes that decorated these walls might have remained in place for some generations.

But people had forgotten what these things really were, who built them. And so people created some amazing stories. Is it like the walls of, let's say, Tyrrhenes or Mycenae, where it was always there with the Cyclopean walls? Yes, exactly. It's the same kind of thing, isn't it? Exactly. Exactly. Because people had forgotten who...

The building of these walls, the use of these walls by certain... The people who built them was no longer part of living memory. You know, you need only three, four generations to forget how things really were, especially if you don't have written documents, archives that you can go and look up. And you only rely on oral traditions that are more likely to change than written records.

Must have been the work of the gods and stuff like that thank you well then let's move forwards then to the uh late 19th early 20th century because nicoletta i mean talk me through when knossos the minoans when are they rediscovered well the first systematic excavations were carried out by Sir Arthur Evans starting in March 1900. Although before Sir Arthur Evans, a local member of the local intelligencia bourgeoisie, very appropriately called Minos, minus Kalokerinos, conducted some excavations there in 1878. Why 1878? Well, for two reasons. I think two years earlier, a few years earlier, Heinrich Schliemann had made his amazing discoveries at Mycenae, had written, you know, there is this apocryphal story that he sent a telegram to the king of Greece saying, I gazed upon the face of Agamemnon. He did send a telegram, although he didn't say exactly, I gazed upon the face of Agamemnon. So, in a sense, Schliemann had given flesh and blood to Homeric heroes, or so he thought. Perhaps it's no chance that

Minos Kalokirnos decided to dig in the palace of his namesake. But his excavations were stopped pretty soon by the local authorities because at that time Crete was still under Ottoman rule. But the population on the island of Crete was mostly Christian, Orthodox, ethnic Greeks. There was a big Muslim population too and other minorities, but the majority of the populations were ethnic Greeks, Christian Orthodox, and they wanted to join the Kingdom of Greece that had already been liberated from Ottoman rule over 50 years earlier, but because they were not part of the Kingdom of Greece, yes, they were afraid that the best finds would end up in the Imperial Museum in Constantinople.

So actually they didn't want people to excavate because they were afraid that the best finds would end up in Istanbul, Constantinople. So they put a stop to Minos Kalokirinosus' excavations, but he'd found enough there to attract the interest of Schliemann. Schliemann wanted to excavate Erkonossos and other people. But then, you know, this is a very long, complex story. Eventually, it was Sir Arthur Evans who managed to acquire the land, get the permit to excavate. And by that time, by 1900, the political situation on Crete had changed. And although it was still not part of the Kingdom of Greece, it had a much more autonomous status. It was effectively ruled by European powers. So there was no risk for the best finds to end up anywhere outside Crete. So Arthur Evans, he's right at the front of this excavation, which gets underway right at the start of the 20th century.

But there also seems to be this other key figure in all of this. Nico, who was Duncan Mackenzie? What is his role? Yes. Well, every excavation is teamwork. And Sir Arthur Evans, when he started digging at Knossos, he wasn't a very experienced excavations. Yes, he had made some excavations before, but also he was not particularly fluent in modern Greek. And he needed somebody to help supervise all the workmen because the excavations at that time, and I have to say even nowadays in Crete, is mostly done by specialist workmen. At that time, they were not specialists, but people simply hired a labour force.

And they were digging, they were using something like 100, sometimes even almost 200 workmen. And he needed somebody who had experience of running an excavation and who could communicate with the locals easily. And he found in Duncan Mackenzie, a Scottish archaeologist, a person with the right skills, because Duncan Mackenzie had excavated on the island of Philakopi, at the site of Milos.

He had excavated a prehistoric settlement there for four years in the late 19th century. And so, and he was ready. He was able to employ him. Mackenzie didn't have a permanent job. He never had a permanent job because then he simply became Sir Arthur Evans' right-hand man. He was what we would call a field director, not the foreman, the field director. They also had a foreman of the excavators who was a... they had several foremen at Knossos, but he was a kind of field director and he was the person who kept a regular record of what was excavated where. So that's why he was crucial. If you want to publish something or

republish things from Evans's excavation, you have to use Duncan Mackenzie's day books. So Mackenzie was working for Evans at this time. And what were some of the key discoveries that they made during that excavation right at the start, at the 20th century? during that excavation right at the start. Right at the start. At the 20th century. Well, one of the reasons why Evans started digging at Knossos is because he wanted to find evidence for literacy in the Aegean Bronze Age because despite the spectacular finds made by Schliemann at Mycenae

and other sites he excav excavated tyrens. And despite the continuing excavations of people after Schliemann in the Aegean, they hadn't really found much evidence for writing. And Evans thought it was strange that a civilization that had produced things like the famous Lion Gate of Mycenae, the famous gold masks from the shaft graves, could be dumb. So he tried to find evidence that even in the Aegean Bronze Age, people used writing. It wasn't also the fact that the people living in the Aegean, had demonstrated a high level of civilization, but they were also in contact with Egypt, the Near East, civilizations that had already used writing for a millennium before.

So it was the search of writing and there were a number of various clues, including the excavations of Minos Kalokirinos, that gave him clues to dig at Knossos, where there would be a good chance to find evidence for writing. And bingo, one week after he started digging, he started finding hordes of written documents, written on clay in what we now call Linear B script. Among the amazing finds was this, the proof that the Aegean Bronze Age, people who lived in the Aegean in the second, third millennium BC were not illiterate. And then also the discovery at Knossos helped to explain the origins of Mycenaean civilization. They discovered something completely new. When Evans started digging at Knossos, he thought he might find another palace like the things found by Schliemann at Mycenae and

Tyrens, but no, he found something older and different. So really just in the first few weeks of the excavations they found this amazing structure, what we call a Mainoan palace, and it's bigger and organised around different architectural principles than Mycenaean palaces and, of course, older too. And within this palace they also found some amazing artefacts, didn't they? Yes, amazing artefacts. As I said, Evans was attracted in particular by the evidence of writing, but of course there were wonderful frescoes, there were wonderful vases made of pottery, stone and other materials, small seal stones but carved with exquisite images. Lots of stuff, statuettes as well.

Yes, figurines, like the famous figurines of the so-called snake goddesses. Those were found in 1903. And also later on, in later years, they discovered evidence that Knossos was inhabited already in the Neolithic period and that there was a stratification of metres,

metres of Neolithic strata upon which the Bronze Age palace and settlement was built. So this is the beginning of the rediscovery of the Minoans in the 20th century. Yes. And, of course, one of the other things, if you go to Knossos today, the restoring, as it were.

I mean, how do how does Evans, how do they go about restoring the site of Knossos? Well, it's interesting because there are completely different attitudes. Evans started digging at Knossos on the 23rd of March 1900 and only a few weeks later Italian archaeologists started digging another famous Minoan palace, the palace at Festos. And then about a decade later, first Greek and then French archaeologists started digging the other third major palace known on Minoan Crete, Mallia, and then other palaces were discovered later. So as I said, it's not just Sir Arthur Evans, we have also all these other archaeologists who are revealing the Minoans, and not just through excavations of palaces because we also have excavations

of the smaller settlements and that reveal the complexity of the settlements. We also have the excavations of cult places in caves and on mountains and so on. And it's only Evans who has produced reconstructions like those. All the other archaeologists were guided by, I think, different aesthetic principles. There may have been also economic reasons, but it's only Evans who reconstructed so extensively his finds. Why exactly? Well, in some cases, some of the restorations started out of necessity, not to reconstruct, but to preserve.

But then I think Evans got caught up with his kind of mission of being like a prophet for the Mainoans or a speaker for the Mainoans. He's the first who produced one of the most influential reconstructions of Mainoan life, Mainoan creed. And I think it was part of his almost like missionary zeal to make the world interested in the Mainoans to reconstruct it, because not everybody would have been able to appreciate the ruins without his reconstructions. I think he must have thought that. Also, yes, I suppose already perhaps in certain parts of the early 19th century, people were beginning to think in terms of not restoring too much. Certainly now, the attitude is to be absolutely minimalistic.

But at that time, I think people felt more than a desire and the need to present something that was more complete rather than just fragments. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. well nico these restorations i said these artifacts they found the colorful frescoes so much so much he's saying it was this missionary zeal to get people across the globe really interested in the minoans it succeeds because at the start of the 20th century creto mania it quickly fascinates people across the world yes yes and it is largely thanks to evans

because he made the most spectacular discoveries but not just him. Let's not forget that there were also spectacular discoveries that intrigued, fascinated people elsewhere. But Evans was very good. Remember before becoming director of the Ashmolean Museum and devoting all his life to archaeology, he was also a journalist. He was a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in what is former Yugoslavia. He lived in Dubrovnik. And although he has always had an interest in archaeology, he was also interested in the political situation and so on. So he was very good at writing and publicising his finds and so on. But also, there were a number of French archaeologists who wrote dozens of articles, not in specialist magazines, but popular, important magazines that would

be read by people with various interests, whether it was literature or music. And they also wrote lots of articles about the discoveries at Knossos, the discoveries in Crete in general, and in magazines published in Paris. And also that helped very much, this Cretomania, this fascination with Crete. In fact, some of the artists of the early 20th century who were inspired by things mine own, one of them is a Spanish-Venetian artist called Mariano Fortuny in Madrasa,

who produced beautiful scarves and dresses, madrasa who produced beautiful scarves and dresses some of these things made famous by Proust in his à la recherche or they were worn by famous actresses and so on he was inspired for some of these textiles by the motifs of Mainoa and Crete but he never set foot in Crete, as far as we can tell. So he must have got to know about these things through publications in art magazines and so on. So it's not just artists who are inspired by this rediscovery, Minos. It's performance artists as well. Yes, yes. Well, it was especially, you know, artists living in Paris where, you know, there was a lot of interdisciplinarity already there. You know, people who produced costumes and sets for ballet or operas or were in touch with painters, were interested in art generally. Or people who wrote plays were also interested in psychoanalysis or

were proto-feminists. And this is during the Belle Epoque. This is pre-1914 World War I. It's exactly. It's the late Belle Epoque. It's the period from about 1900 to 1914. Yes, the people of the Belle Epoque. Many had never been to Crete, but some did go to Crete. Some visited Crete. One of the people who visited Crete was a Russian artist called Leon Bax, who produced lots of sets and costumes for the famous Ballet Russe. And he visited Crete in 1907 and just fell in love with Crete and used motifs from Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece in many of his works. And also I've got Isadora Duncan. Yes well Isadora Duncan she visited Knossos

I don't know whether Isadora I don't think she produced a ballet based on things Knossian, but we know that apparently she made an impromptu dance at Knossos when she visited there. That completely shocked my poor Duncan Mackenzie. But yeah, in terms of ballet, I think it's more, you can find more things by Noam in the Ballet Russe than in Isadora Duncan, but she was definitely, definitely fascinated by Evans's excavations, so much so that she visited them. So it has a strong influence on artists, on performance artists.

If we go back to this whole Kingdom of Greece question and Cretan identity at the start of the 20th century, how do Evans's excavations and the excavations of the French archaeologists and the Italian archaeologists and the others helping out, how do all of these discoveries at the start of the 20th century influence Cretan identity at that time? Oh, very, very much. Partly because, thanks to Evans and others, Minoan Crete was constructed as the first European civilization. And the idea of calling this the first European civilization, of course, helped both the local Cretans and the European and American archaeologists who were digging there.

It made people feel less, perhaps, colonized, if you like, because they could present this as being enterprises for the rediscovery of a common past. Because at the very beginning of the 20th century, most archaeological activities were carried out not by Cretans, but by European and American archaeologists because they had the money. Excavations are an expensive thing. And the Cretan state, because Crete was called the Cretan state between 1898 and 1913. 1913 is when Crete is united with the kingdom of Greece and in this period the Cretan state had hardly any money to do any excavations.

Most archaeological excavations were carried out by foreigners. The situation changed over the course of the years but at least in this way if you say you're digging in the first European civilization first of all it makes Cretans feel good because they say well it's not just the Greeks but the Cretans in particular it's our island that can be seen as the cradle of western and European civilizations and it also was useful for the European scholars who were digging there. But Cretans like to think of themselves as exceptional, as special. And the fact that they feel that they are the descendants of the Mainoans helps feeling exceptional.

Identity. Yes, yes. Their identity. Yeah. feeling exceptional identity yes yeah and so we see this emergence of creta mania this golden age of creta mania right at the start but the first world war comes and then it goes and so we get to the interwar period between 1918 and 1939 but creta mania continues it continues as i It continues as I throw away my piece of paper in excitement. Cretomania, it persists post-World War I. Absolutely. Do we know why? Why does it persist? Why does it continue?

Well, partly because there are new discoveries made on Crete. In the 1920s, Evans starts a new series of excavations at Knossos and other, there are new discoveries on Crete that help this, but also because, well, you could say every generation, every needs to actually, the Minoans are, in some quarters, less appreciated because they're seen as decadent. Minoans and Mycenaeans are often used as a foil to each other, and especially in periods after wars where you see they're seen as opposite. And after the rediscovery of Minoan Crete in the early 20th century, the Minoans were seen as the original people. The Mycenaeans sometimes were seen as simply as imitators of the Minoans. But in the period between the wars, first of all, a lot of people start thinking even more, become even more convinced that the Mycenaeans were Greeks even before the decipherment of Linear B and the Minoans almost like decadent Roman empire and the Mycenaeans as youthful barbarians. And, you know, this is also the period of the growth of Arianism and Nazism and so on. And for some scholars, the Mycenaeans were like the Germanic tribes that invaded Rome. So youthful, vigorous barbarians that got rid of these decadent southerners, the Mainoans.

Wow, fair enough. But did some people see Minoan creatures, let's say, this lost paradise, this peaceful society? Yes, yes. Why does this idea come about? The origin of the Mainoans as peaceful go back perhaps even before the Second World War. And it's partly because, as I said, even before the cipherment of Linear B, some scholars were already convinced, believed that the Mycenaeans were the ancestors of the later Greeks and therefore were Indo-Europeans, people speaking a Indo-European

language, and people who had done studies of Indo-European languages had classified Indo-European societies as patriarchal society, war-like societies because of the words in their language, whereas Evans thought that Minoan Crete maintained some vestiges of matriarchy. So already people were seeing Minoans as associated with things that were masculine, warlike and the Minoans as things matriarchal and feminine because of the characterisation of Indo-European society and this society that was non-Indo-European that showed importance of females in their iconography and so on.

And because of the cliché that women are not as warlike as men. of the cliche that women are not as warlike as men. And because Evans at some point also produced an idea that at some point Minoan Crete was very peaceful, like the Romans, as there was a Pax Romana, a Roman peace after Augustus and so on, there was a period in the Minoan age that seemed to be a Pax Minoica, a Minoan peace. But, you know, like the Pax Romana, like the Romans, the Minoan peace was only relatively brief and may have been just a piece inside Crete and not necessarily outside Crete, according to Evans. But then, in the 1960s, after the Second World War and with the Vietnam War and the growth of flower power and pacifist movements, the Mainoans became even more a symbol of feminism and pacifism. It's really the apogee of the Mainoans as pacifist and feminine civilization comes more after the Second World

War. That's really interesting. It has its roots in pre-World War II. Yes, it has its roots. But it's after World War II that it really comes to the fore, you said, with the peace movements and Vietnam War in the 60s and all of that. Yeah, flower power. Flower power. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And also, going back slightly, how does Sigmund Freud fit into all of this, the famous neurologist?

Well, Sigmund Freud fits with the archaeology and the main ones. Well, first of all, because one of his best friends was an archaeologist and he had always had a passion for archaeology. He often compared psychoanalysis to archaeology, digging layer after layers in the psyche as an archaeologist digs layer after layers in the soil of an excavation. So there is a similarity. And again, Freud, as indeed many other people, including Evans, believed that societies evolved from a matriarchal to a patriarchal stage. And the fact that, for Evans, Maino and Crete was a matriarchal society really worked very well, suited very well, some of Freud's ideas and some of his most controversial ideas about inherited memory. most controversial ideas about inherited memory. In a nutshell, Freud's theory of inherited memory was that different periods of history left sediments in people's psyche. And so my non-crete

represented a pre-Oedipal matriarchal phase, even individuals' psyche. And he treated poet Hilda Dolittle, or HD, for neurosis. And he made a minor diagnosis for her because she was bisexual and she at the time was having an affair with another woman and he diagnosed her bisexuality and hysteria as her psyche having regressed to this matriarchal phase that had left kind of sediment in the memories of the psyche of her psyche as it had done in the psyche of every european person nico it's fascinating how like how these ideas you know from pre-evans and going back to them and how they almost evolve into different ways or the different ways they're interpreted by different people and he says in this kind of way of work it seems like it they're interpreted by different people and he says in this kind of way of work it seems like it reached its height as we've said just a bit earlier in the second half of the 20th century

with as said the flower power and the emergence of the feminists matriarchal or the peaceful movements yeah yes yes indeed as i said it's the idea that all societies evolved from a matriarchal to a patriarchal stage is a very, very old idea. Well, it's an idea that goes back at least to the early, mid-19th century. An idea is not just found among archaeologists. On the contrary, some of the most preeminent supporters of this idea are social scientists, anthropologists, and so on. And this idea that we have a matriarchal stage followed by a patriarchal stage is something that then was adopted also in other disciplines, from religious studies to archaeology. even before Evans, people who wanted to study the origins of Greek religion, were interested in the origins of Greek religion and were working in the late 19th, early 20th century, had sort of predicted or hypothesized that before the Olympic gods, patriarchal Olympic gods, with Zeus as the supreme god.

Before this kind of religion, there was an earlier stage with an iconic or instead of anthropomorphic deities or matriarchal stage instead of… And this was picked up again, in a sense, after the Second World War. We have the emergence among feminist groups of a movement about theology, people who have their different beliefs, but beliefs that why should the supreme deity be male? I mean, in Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions, we think of a supreme deity as male, but why should it be male? Or indeed, why should it have a sex in any case, a gender? But, you know, with second wave feminists and so on, there are groups

of people who maintain that the supreme being is female, not male. And so, as it seems that the archaeological discoveries really, and these thoughts also really influence what people think of the Minoans, their reception of the Minoans, as we get to the second half of the 20th century, post-World War II, the start of 21st century, what are some of the key archaeological discoveries, revelations that happened that once again influenced the reception of luminaries? Well, the first thing that springs to mind, although it's not exactly an archaeological discovery, but it's the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris and the fact that he demonstrated that it was a form, this strange script represented the form of ancient Greek. And other spectacular discoveries that also, I think, influenced views of the Minoans,

the excavations made by Spiridon Marinatos at Acrotiri, at the site of Acrotiri on the island of Thera, the so-called Pompeii of the Aegean. And I think the first, the decipherment of Linear B, created even more of a dichotomy between Minoans and Mycenaeans, because Minoans are definitely Greek. They spoke Greek, whereas the Minoans spoke a language that we don't know. We can make some educated guesses, but we don't have a proper decipherment of the script called Linear A, which precedes Linear B. Linear B is a development of Linear A, but Linear B and Linear A and Linear B have many signs in common, but we can read and understand linear A. We can read, but we cannot quite understand linear A. One thing that seems

obvious is that linear A is not Greek, because otherwise we would be able to read and understand that too. So in a sense, I think it creates even more of a dichotomy for some people because of that. And the discoveries at Akrotiri, well, became very, very popular because they provided an easy solution for the decline and fall of the Minoans, wiped out by gigantic tsunamis and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and so on. But the situation is a bit more complicated than that. But people like these grandiose narratives where natural disasters instead of nasty people wipe out civilizations. And I think they will become even more popular in some ways now with climate change and so on,

because there are people who are already seeing some parallels between climate change, the rising sea levels and so on, and civilizations that are wiped out by tsunamis and things like that. Well, you can see, can you kind of see the kind of that reception, that Cretomania continuing into the early 21st century? Yes. And we have to talk about this. We have to talk about that BBC series on a few years back. Yes, of course.

Atlantis. Atlantis. have to talk about that bbc series on a few years yes of course atlantis or we can talk even about wonderful album by a group called giant squid called minoans who was partly inspired by the you know the disaster in japan with fukushima yes but but also because they knew about the story of the eruption and tsunamis that hit Crete and so on, and they connected these disasters with the changing climate or disasters created by, not necessarily by climate change, but by human error, although, you know, climate change, you could say, is also created by human errors, human mistakes. And so, yes, the BBC series showed how the eruption of Santorini had a impact in the Aegean and especially on Crete, suggested that all the

Mainoan navy was wiped out. The thing is that Mainoan civilization continued after that. It's inevitably something, an event like that must have had all kinds of consequences. Even just some people have argued that just the fact that Akrotiri, Santorini, the island, was an important trading post and the disappearance of this hub or trade, the Mainoan trade networks, could have long-term impact on the decline and fall of Mainoan Crete. Other people suggested also that this eruption may have created psychological effects on Crete and social changes, loss of belief in certain divinities and so on that could

eventually lead to some takeover, some weakening of the Minoans. But it was not the direct cause. And some people love the idea that it could be the direct cause. Well, let's keep a bit more on music and how you see the reception of the Minoans' critomania in music in the 21st century in opera. Because, Nico, first of all, this name, which is on the sheets, which I know you know a lot about, I mean, who is Harrison Birtwistle? Well, Harrison Birtwistle is one of the most famous British living composers.

And in 2008, he was commissioned by Covent Garden to create a new opera. And he created a new opera titled The Minotaur. To be honest, the main inspiration for the opera wasn't necessarily Crete in the Bronze Age, but it was the later Greek myths about our friend the Minotaur, Theseus and Ariadne and so on. So I think he was mostly inspired by later Greek myths about Theseus and the Minotaur, Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. But at least in one of the scenes, he was inspired by a proper But at least in one of the scenes, he was inspired by a proper Bronze Age Cretan artifact. We talked about before, we mentioned before, one of the snake goddesses because there is one scene that talks about the oracle in the cave of Sykro, a cave, a famous cave in Crete, where he imagines Ariadne and others go and ask for advice. The oracle is a gigantic snake goddess, a really, really gigantic snake goddess,

this costume. And I know because I interviewed Sir Harrison Birt Whistle and he did visit Crete. So perhaps this remained in the back of his mind, a connection. It's very difficult sometimes to disentangle later Greek myths and Bronze Age realities, but we have to try to do so, I think. Not completely, but try and understand that later Greek myths are not a description of what happened in the Bronze Age. It is so interesting how some of those artefacts from the original Evans excavation, like the snake goddess, or for instance, the saffron gatherer fresco, of all the artefacts, there seems to be some like that, which seem to have been used in the reception of Minoans

across the length of the 20th century for various purposes, for cretomania. Yes, yes. And some frescoes have been used even for something very mundane, like creating textiles to make cushions and sofas and tents. In the early 1920s, we were talking earlier about some continuing Cretomanian. Evans made further excavations and discovered some beautiful frescoes in a building just outside the palace at Closos, which is known as the House of the Frescos.

And Austrian-Swedish designer was inspired by this fresco to create some beautiful textiles, textiles that are still for sale in the shop in Stockholm, Sven Tekt. It's a bit like a very, very posh Ikea, if you like, but much, much more expensive and posh. And he produced, a few years later, these textiles. And they are still making sofas, tents, and stools, cushions, using this textile inspired by the frescoes from the house of the frescoes at Knossos excavated by Evans in the early 1920s. Wow, legacy endures over a hundred years, isn't it? And I mean, we're keeping on clothing then, we've got to talk about therefore the Athens 2004 opening ceremony, because of course that's another example, isn't it it's another example where really the cretan fashion designer called

maria coco salaci created some of the the costumes for the opening ceremony of the athens 2004 olympic games and the one of the opening tableau is a snake godness keeps. Keeps going, keeps going, keeps going. Just before we quickly wrap up for all this, Nico, this has been absolutely brilliant. There is one thing that actually I'm going to kind of go back in time again, but you mentioned we were talking about the 1920s earlier. I mean, what's the whole influence of the Minoans,

of the rediscovery on the Minoans, on artists, on the two different techniques, might be the wrong word, complete amateur on this, Art Nouveau versus Art Deco. I mean, what's the Minoan influence on these art types? Different, very, very different.

I would say that perhaps Art Nouveau has influenced the Minoans in the sense that Art Nouveau starts, of course, before the rediscovery of Mainoan Crete. And I think one of the reasons why people fell in love with the Mainoans immediately, avant-garde artists, is precisely because Art Nouveau had paved the way for the Mainoans. This reaction against more classical, classicizing art, an interest in flowers. artists like Klimt, artists of the Jugendstil, of Art Nouveau, prepared the taste of Europeans to accept the Mainoans. The interest in more privative arts, in simple, more lapidary styles, if you like.

simple, more lapidary styles, if you like. It's Art Nouveau that prepared the taste of Europeans for the Mainoans. That's why they like them so much. So I think it's almost more important to stress this than the way in which Art Nouveau artists employed the Minoans. But yes, we have that as well. It's just that Art Nouveau emerged before. It's already starting in the late 19th century, before the rediscovery of Crete. But then, of course, that you have people like Leon Bax, that you have people like Leon Bax, Frantisek Kupka, the one I mentioned before, Fortuny, and others who make use of Mainon motifs for their works. But because they were ready for the Mainons. If the Mainons had been discovered in the 18th century,

I think it would have taken more time to get a Cretomania. Just to make another example, this is nothing to do with Minoan art but with Cycladic art. I don't know if you have in mind. What I have in mind is this beautiful marble statuette. They were rediscovered, people were already buying some of these statuettes in the early 18th century and some possibly even in the late 18th century, certainly by the early 19th century. But they were considered, they were described as ugly, as crude, rude and so on. But then artists like Picasso, Henry

Moore, Brancusi and so on, they started producing things that were inspired by them. But why? Because thanks to Art Nouveau, Art Deco, early modernism, they've changed. And it's after people like them that these statuettes started to be appreciated, appreciated as work of art. And to the extent that cemeteries in the Cycladic Islands started being looted because they became desirable, desired objets d'art. But it's because the taste changed thanks to early modernism. Nico, that's absolutely remarkable and it's really interesting the whole context, how the context of the time periods, whether it's the early 20th into war can really influence perceptions of minoan crete and the influence in creta mania i mean why has all this

material culture from minoan crete since its rediscovery at the start of the 20th century why do you think it's developed these multiple layers why do you think it's developed these multiple layers? Why do you think it's emerged to have these multiple, these different meanings for different people over the decades, now over a century since they were rediscovered? Well, because people find in the Minoans what they want to find. For Evans, you could say that the Minoans were highly civilized, imperialist power, but very civilized. For others, the Mainoans are primitive and yet modern. For others, still, they are a bastion against patriarchy because they reflect. They are a mirror to ourselves, because every generation needs to rediscover the Minoans. And it's not just the Minoans, but think of the Romans or the Greeks. The

way in which people interpret or reinterpret Greek tragedies or Greek art always changes, because we find something we want to find. For me, you know, you could say every generation, every individual, every nation has the Mainoans they deserve and they desire. I mean, what does that tell us, therefore, about the future of Cretomania? Well, I think in the near future, there will be more studies about the Mainoans and how they coped with ecological disasters. But I mean, this was already in the air. I mentioned earlier to you this post-metal rock band in San Francisco called Giant Squid and their album called Mainoans, where you can see already some ecological disasters and using the Mainoans as prophecies for a way of reflecting about the fragility of human life in front of natural disasters, but also thinking about man-made ecological disasters and how we react

to them. So I think that's my prediction for the near future, for the very distant future. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? Indeed, we'll have to see. We'll have to see indeed. Nico, unless you'd like to add anything else, what I can say, this has been an absolute joy. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you.

Thank you.