The Lost Empire of Atlantis Read online

  Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings of great and marvellous power, who held sway over the island, and over many other islands also.7

  I still dismissed the whole thing from my mind as nonsense.

  As we observed in the skapta restaurant that evening, for the ancient Therans, murals must have been a kind of photography – a documentary as well as a decorative art form. The ships are shown proudly anchored in full view of the admiral’s house, almost as if they were a memorial to him.

  To my mind the harbour at Thera is actually far more impressive than those at either Amnisos or Kommos, the ports on Crete that served Knossos and Phaestos. One could imagine the Minoans from Crete first joining forces with Thera to face the enormous challenges posed by the Bronze Age. This large, deep-water port had the potential to be truly international.

  The paintings tell the tale: of Egyptians in white robes, Africans with black curly hair and intriguing thin prisoners with red skins, who look northern European. They were documentary proof that there was a huge level of trade going on in the Aegean, before the beginning of recorded history.

  In the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion there was plenty of supporting evidence: for instance, we’d found a staggering stone axe, skilfully sculpted in the unmistakable form of a panther (see first colour plate section). Panthers come from South America. Not the Mediterranean. One thing above all kept coming back into my thoughts: the tiny beetle that had been found in the volcanic ash. It came from a totally unexpected place: North America.

  CHAPTER 4

  RETURN TO PHAESTOS

  We returned to Crete with new eyes. Strolling through the market in Akrotiri, we’d seen that on this one remarkable island nature had provided almost everything that ancient man might have needed. It looked as if the Minoan Crete–Thera complex had been an international marketplace, exporting foodstuffs like olives and olive oil, figs and saffron, while importing other goods in return. Perhaps it was also one of the world’s first true cosmopolitan societies? We counted 28 different varieties of fish in the market and sampled what may be the world’s finest olives, plump as plums and twice as tasty.

  Olives formed the basis of early commercial life on the island: the oil, say the experts, has been exported across the Mediterranean for millennia. As Dr J. Boardman wrote:

  Crete started to cultivate olives from the wild specimens early in the Bronze Age around 3000 BC. At Myrtos, a port on the south east coast of Crete, vats from this era for separating olive oil have been found. The early method was to crush the fruit, then plunge it into hot water which separated the oil before skimming it off. From olive stones found at this site it seems Crete may have been the first Mediterranean country to cultivate olives.8

  The island certainly has the ideal geography and climate to do so. Olives are a hardy fruit, able to withstand the long, dry heat of a Cretan summer with its months of drought. A cold spell in winter usually plumps up the fruit for the principal harvest. The olive harvest comes conveniently after those of wheat and grapes, and before the sowing season – November to January. Life begins at 40 for the olive tree, after which farmers can hope for 50 kilograms of oil every second year. Provided they are tended and pruned to prevent them reverting to the wild, olive trees can live for centuries. Farmers plant for their grandchildren and those children plant for their own descendants, in a cycle that has gone on for thousands of years and is one of the first and best examples of sustainable agriculture.

  One peculiarity is that heavy crops come in alternate years. This two-year cycle seems to be the same the world over. On Minoan Crete, the plentiful olive harvest every other year meant that Minoan palace bureaucracies had to come up with complicated arrangements that included extensive storage facilities and detailed planning to distribute the oil. In ancient Greece merchants booked olive presses two years in advance, just as farmers today book combine harvesters.9 Dr Boardman cites evidence of huge quantities of olive oil being held in stock in the great storehouses and vats of the Cretan palaces – the West Magazine of Knossos Palace could store 16,000 gallons. Cretan Linear B tablets record details of the oil that was stored and distributed in the 14th and 13th centuries BC.10

  Just how crucial this product was to the ancient world is demonstrated by the way in which the burning of olive trees eventually became a tactic of warfare, as evidenced in accounts of the wars between Athens and Sparta. Olive oil had numerous uses, quite apart from enhancing the flavour of food. It was used as an offering to the gods, as well as forming the basis of the Minoan cosmetic industry. Vases with a special shape (pelike) were used in the cosmetics trade and sales were carried out with special dippers and funnels. The palace of Knossos has records of hundreds of olive trees being used to create perfumed oil. The cycle of olive production, from harvest to distribution, is depicted on Athenian vases,11 which show men beating the trees with long sticks to get the olives to fall, as they still do today. A statement on one such vase says: ‘Oh, Father Zeus, may I get rich’.

  Heading once again in the direction of Phaestos, this time we drove over the majestic Psiloritis mountain range, the highest point in Crete, where the olive trees vanished in favour of dark green pines, juniper and evergreen oak. Up until quite recently, the shepherds in these hills built beehive-shaped stone huts called mitata; seeing one, I could not help thinking of the prehistoric tholos tombs built by the warlike Mycenaeans, who were later arrivals on this island. The mitata’s traditional, stove-like shape transcends millennia.

  We stopped at a mountain village for Greek coffee. The elderly innkeeper invited us to view the courtyard where there was a wood oven and we shared the space with a cluster of cats nestling for warmth. The enticing smell of roast meat and stuffed eggplants was coming from a large earthenware dish inside the oven. Naturally, we were unable to resist. This turned out to be the best kid I have ever eaten. It was first marinated in olive oil and lemons and then finished by cooking slowly with wine, basil, thyme and wild green vegetables – absolutely sumptuous. Crete’s soil is so fertile that fennel, leeks and other wild leafy vegetables can simply be gathered at the side of the road. The island has the largest number of herbs growing wild in the world. Over the next few days I investigated the food that Cretans ate thousands of years ago, which has been analysed from remains found in their cooking pots. They ate kid cooked in just the same style as the dish we enjoyed. They also ate salads – of lettuce, onions, garlic and celery, again flavoured with olive oil and a variety of fruits and nuts; almonds and pistachios were popular. They drank Retsina (resinated wine) and beer brewed from barley. Like the superb Cretan olive oil, these products would soon become wildly popular abroad.

  As the first view of the ancient palace emerged through the trees I decided to stop for a minute. We got out of the hire car and looked down on the velvet carpet of crops below us, stretching away like the Garden of Eden. We were at an altitude of about 120 metres (395 feet) above sea level. At this height, what were in fact the walls, pools and stairs of the palace looked like hieroglyphic markings. Rivers, we now realised, flowed all around the palace and then tumbled downhill towards the Minoan harbour. Phaestos, light and flawless under the azure sky, was at the centre of a landscape made for adventure.

  As we drove off again we saw a sign pointing down a dusty track. I recognised the name. This was the remarkable Kamares cave I had read about; an extraordinarily deep shaft cave which archaeologists think had a sacred or cult religious role in the very early days of Crete.

  The pottery told us loud and clearly that the Minoans had traded much more than foodstuffs and olive oil. The Kamares designs are dramatic, a modern-looking black and red, and the pottery was first excavated here in the early 1900s. I’d learned by now that it had been highly prized across the entire Mediterranean. It has been found across the Levant and Mesopotamia, from Hazor and Ashkelon in Israel to Beirut and Byblos in Lebanon and the ancient Canaanite city of Ugarit, near what is now the sea-town of Ras
Shamra in modern-day Syria. Judging by the finds in Egyptian tombs and elsewhere across the region, the Minoan skill in art seems to have given the Minoans of ancient Crete a free pass to the glamour, science and civilisation of the two most advanced cultures of the Early Bronze Age: Mesopotamia and Egypt. Minoan creativity must have been a pearl beyond price. Minoan creative output was precious, perhaps almost holy, like the production of silk was to the Chinese.

  We arrived at another one of those strange Cretan road signs that don’t appear to refer to your real destination but end at a blank wall, or in this case a blind bend in the road. At first we shuffled about a bit, not knowing where to go in this remote spot. Then we realised that to get to the mouth of the cave – a steep, knee-taxing ascent – you had to turn off the road and climb on foot. You are rewarded at the top by breathtaking views through the trees to the plain of Messara and the Libyan Sea.

  To visit the cave, you scramble through the gaping mouth of the entrance and down the giant, slippery boulder steps – built surely for monsters – scrabbling and sliding over the scree. The plunging path leads into a huge vaulted chamber, nearly 100 metres (330 feet) long. The atmosphere is intense and other-worldly; dark and alive with the spirit of an ancient age. The slope downwards is steep, some 40 metres down to a wide boulder-strewn floor, then it turns into a narrow, twisting passage. A second, much smaller inner chamber slopes down another 10 metres. You move in complete darkness until you reach an unmistakable, rather foetid smell: water. No wonder this evocative place remained embedded in folk memory. Deep in the bowels of the mountain, it is easy to see how a cave like this might have inspired the myth of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. In myth, the young hero Theseus, blindfolded, had to try to find his way out of a place that you imagine to be as clammy and slippery as this: a labyrinth that was in truth a prison. There he would have had to confront the half-man, half-beast.

  When the cave was excavated in 1913, hundreds of shards of Kamares pottery were found, together with animal bones, fragments of terracotta animal figurines and tools in both stone and bone, as well as six iron spearheads that were probably post-Minoan. Going by the differently dated finds, experts believe that the Minoans used the cave during the whole of the Bronze Age era (c.3000–1100 BC).

  The cavern is so huge, so daunting and so easy to defend that in later times it had a history of being used by whole villages to escape from danger. Yet the sheer amount of ancient Minoan Kamares pottery found inside it suggests that this wasn’t simply a refuge: it had been used over the centuries for long-forgotten sacred rites. Caves seem to have been highly significant to the Minoans, in religious terms. Professor Marinatos found scores of precious bronze weapons hidden in the Arkalochori cave and hundreds of cult items have been found here at Kamares, from figurines to double-headed axes.

  An extensive network of roads links the palaces at Palaikastro and Kato Zakros with the southeastern part of the island. I wondered if these ancient palaces had been among the earliest known city states, run like independent fiefdoms with dependent villages, much like medieval European towns. It seemed not. The engineers who built Crete’s prehistoric roads had set up way stations and watch-towers, suggesting that lots of valuables had perhaps been moved along the roads. The Minoans had wanted to protect the goods travelling along them. Yet if each palace had been independent – and especially if those palaces were each other’s rivals for political dominance – that degree of co-operation was unlikely. So in the Minoans we were talking about an amazingly sophisticated and developed people. It seemed they understood the value of an interconnected society. They had cared for and looked out for each other; they had worked together for the common good.

  We reached Phaestos, or Festos as the locals call it, in the heat of the noon, and waited in a tiny village café for the sun to lose its strength while I plunged back into my research. In the 14th century BC, said Professor Alexiou, the bounty of Crete – its skilled metal-work, olive oil, pottery, saffron and so on – was exchanged as gifts between eastern Mediterranean rulers. In return, the Egyptians sent exotica: gold, ivory, cloth and stone vessels containing perfumes.

  The wealth of pottery, sculpture and jewellery that had been found on Crete was so old that no one could accurately date it, according to Professor Alexiou. So many ancient Minoan artefacts are in Egypt that experts are best able to date Cretan finds by comparing them to Egyptian ones, whose chronology is better understood. According to Professor Alexiou:

  The absolute date in years of the various Minoan periods is based on synchronism with ancient Egypt, where the chronology is adequately known thanks to the survival of inscriptions. Thus the [Cretan] Proto Palatial Period [2000–1700 BC] is thought to be roughly contemporary with the [Egyptian] XIIth dynasty [1991– 1783 BC] because fragments of [Cretan] Kamares pottery attributed to Middle Minoan II [c.1800 BC] have been found at Kahun in Egypt in the habitation refuse of a settlement found in the occasion of the erection of the royal pyramids of this [XIIth: 1991–1783 BC] dynasty. One Kamares vase was also found in a contemporary tomb at Abydos [Egypt – Valley of the Kings]. The beginning of the Neo Palatial period [Crete – 1700 BC] must coincide with the Hyksos epoch [1640–1550] since the lid of a stone vessel bearing the cartouche of the Hyksos Pharaoh Khyan was discovered in Middle Minoan III [c.1700–1600 BC] levels at Knossos [Crete]. Equally the subsequent Neo Palatial Cretan period [1700–1400 BC] falls within the chronological limits of the new kingdom with particular reference to the [Egyptian] XVIII dynasty [1550–1307 BC]: an alabaster amphora with the cartouche of Tuthmosis III [1479–1425 BC] was found in the final palatial period at Katsaba [Crete] . . ..12

  Exploring the palace was not our mission today. We planned to walk south from the palace precincts to the prehistoric port of Kommos. What may even be the world’s first paved road lay just a few hundred metres away from where we were sitting. Venturing out into Pitsidia village at about 3.00 p.m, we headed for the pretty, crescent-shaped beach of Matala. We would find the excavation of the port somewhere along here. Finally, we found a half-obscured sign on the right, next to a small supermarket. Tamarisk trees offered some pleasant shade along the way.

  We marvelled at the road’s perfectly fashioned stonework. The finely cut ashlar stone bed even has a slight camber: water would still drain off it easily after winter storms. The Minoan town was spread out over a low hilltop to the north and on the hillside south of it. Archaeologists say that Kommos’ larger buildings were built c. 1450–1200 BC: that is, in the Minoan Neopalatial and Postpalatial periods.

  It was remarkable to look over the low walls of the ancient town and think of how this quiet spot might once have felt, bustling with sailors making and mending their equipment, perhaps with vendors selling goods and refreshments on the quay.

  The University of Toronto has been carrying out excavations here since the 1970s. Most – but not all – of the remains of Kommos consist of a single layer, or course, of cut stone. But the archaeological digs prove that this town had once been a major harbour, with large and imposing houses, grain storage, a central square and some monumental buildings. We could see raised paths and rows of steps, along with what looked like long, open, broad areas that would have been paved with stone, perfect for landing cargo. An enormous palace-like building, called for now J/T, had an extensive colonnade facing on to a court in its centre. It does not seem to have had the spaces for religious ceremony that you would expect in a palace.13 Its back wall and much of its floor had been covered with vividly coloured and spiral frescoes.

  The so-called ‘Building P’ was also fascinating. It might have been a storage yard for the Minoan fleet’s sailing ships, when masts were lowered during the winter non-sailing months. Alternatively it was a vast storage shed, capable of warehousing large amounts of goods, ready for shipping. It had at least four 5.60 metres – (18 feet) – wide east–west galleries, which had no signs of closure at the west, where they face the sea. A broken Minoan limestone anchor was found in one of
the long galleries, the kind used by large seagoing ships. Analyses have found that the stone for the anchor slab was quarried in Syria. It is pierced by three holes: one for the thick rope linking it to the ship and two smaller ones for the pointed wooden stakes that would hold the anchor to the sea floor. Having found huge storage jars here in the 1920s, Arthur Evans speculated that this could have been the ‘Customs House’ of Crete. He was not far wrong. According to the University of Toronto:

  Our excavations have borne out Evans’s suppositions regarding the commercial nature of the site and greatly surpassed our own expectations of what might be found at this beach-side spot. After 25 years of digging, Kommos is revealed as a major harbour, with monumental Minoan palatial buildings, massive stone storage complexes and a Minoan town (ca. 1800–1200 BC) . . . The portable finds, which range from stone anchors to local and imported pottery and sculpture, speak of the seagoing interests and mercantile nature of the place. Vessels from Cyprus, Egypt, and Sardinia indicate the sphere of trade contacts enjoyed by the citizens of Bronze Age Kommos.14

  As we walked around the sea port’s perimeter we realised that its once sturdy houses and storerooms would have withstood the roughest gales. They would have had to. With the strong northwest trade winds in your face you could almost imagine this was a long-lost Cornish fishing village, lying semi-ruined in a welter of ancient weathered stone. Rolling in from the great width of open sea between Crete and North Africa, the waves are impressive and strong; totally unlike the usual soothing calm of the Mediterranean.

  What these ancient walls wouldn’t have withstood was a tsunami. Kommos, facing the Libyan Sea, hadn’t had to, which is why so much of it has survived.