The ruins at Hisarlik (see last Friday's post) contain eleven different settlement layers that span over 3000 years of human habitation. Schliemann believed the fabled city of Troy was represented by the second of these layers (Troy II), which modern archaeology now dates to roughly 2600–2250 BCE, over a thousand years too early for the events described in Homer's The Illiad. The most likely candidate (thus far) for fabled Troy? -- layer VIIa, dated to roughly 1300–1190 BCE. But the very existence of an historical Troy remains very much a matter of debate:
While Calvert and Schliemann were excavating at Hisarlik, another wealthy devotee of ancient pre-Classical Mediterranean civilizations was studying undeciphered seals in his position as Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. In 1894 Arthur Evans visited Crete to try and decipher two unknown scripts that showed up repeatedly on many of the seals he was studying at the Ashmolean. (He published the first results of his study a year later, terming the unknown hieroglyphic script Linear A and the unknown pre-alphabetic script Linear B. More about these shortly.)
While in the general area Evans had visited Schliemann's excavations. At the time, both he and Schliemann were aware of excavations that had been undertaken along the north coast of Crete near the Kefala hill (Knossos). First excavated in 1878 by an Herakleion merchant and antiquarian named Minos Kalokairinos, the site had been shut down a year later by Ottoman authorities, but not before U.S. Consul William Stillman had suggested this might be the location of the fabled Cretan labyrinth.
Schliemann had tried to buy the site, but refused to pay the exorbitant sum requested. When Evans inherited his father's estate in 1899 (nine years after Schliemann's death), he bought the site himself.
A 2003 article in Athena Review tells what happened next:
Using a sizable local work force, Evans began large-scale, systematic excavations at Knossos in 1900, and by the end of 1903 had uncovered ... foundations of [several] large, sprawling structures....
...Evans drew heavily from post-Bronze Age, ancient Greek mythology to postulate the site as the palace of the legendary King Minos. This conclusion is now much disputed..., but early on gained solid footing among many archaeologists as well as in the popular imagination.... Evans interpreted the complex layout of the palace at Knossos as "labyrinthine," and connected this with the double-axe symbol or labrys found engraved on columns at the palace. [H]is identification of Knossos' civilization as Minoan made a compelling if (at times) somewhat strained metaphor, given the associated myths of King Minos, the labyrinth, and the Minotaur.
Besides his pioneering work in excavating the main palace site, among Evans' most significant discoveries at Knossos was the recovery of about 3000 ancient Linear A and B writing tablets. Linear B eventually proved to be an early form of ancient Greek from a later, Mycenaean occupation of the site. Linear A, a script representing the language of the Minoans, still remains largely undeciphered.
Evans recounted his finds in a number of books, the First Editions of which are both rare and expensive in anything approaching Fine condition. The first volume of his Scripta Minoa (depicted below, via the Internet Archives) was published in 1909. Although two further volumes were promised, a second volume was in fact not published until 1952, eleven years after Evans' death (1941). The second volume, which contains elements of what Evans originally had proposed for both volumes 2 and 3, takes Linear B as its focus:
Evans' own account of the excavations at Knossos were published as five volumes (in seven) over a 15-year period (1921-36). The original set below currently is on offer at Librairie Herodote. The set was reprinted in 1964 by Biblio & Tannen (there also are modern on-demand reprints which do not include illustrations or the Index):
Many titles about Evans and his finds have been published over the past century:
Modern titles tend to be much more critical of his interpretations than earlier titles, based as they are on decades of additional archaeological work in the area:
Evans' methodology usually receives less criticism than his interpretations, and both seem to receive less criticism than his heavy-handed attempts to reconstruct parts of the site:
Restorations and reconstructions of portions of the walls and foundations often used reinforced concrete..., with reconstructed timber frames and other wooden structures painted in a pink or buff color. Numerous examples of the now famous frescoes, discovered mainly as small fragments, were boldly restored.... These restoration methods have been often criticized for both over-interpretation of sometimes scanty remains, and for using materials foreign to Minoan architecture....
What greets the modern visitor to Knossos is very much one man's vision of what once may have been....
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