Jessica Price

So yeah, "Minoan" refers to the idea that Crete was ruled by King Minos, who ruled a mighty maritime empire from the island. He's mentioned by Thucydides and Herodotus, and IIRC, there's been stuff found in Mesopotamian ruins made with materials that may have come from Crete.

So it's probably likely that the ancient Cretans, during the period that we now call "Minoan," were part of an active, interconnected Mediterranean society that stretched from Persia to Greece, that they were a powerful maritime culture, and even that they had a king named Minos.

(Irony sidebar: in all of this Victorian rush to prove the superiority of European culture over that of the ancient Near East and Africa, they're lionizing a dude who's the son of Europa, a Phoenician (Canaanite) princess. Like, the very NAME comes from a Middle Eastern woman.)

So anyway, because Diodoros distinguished between two different kings named Minos, Arthur Evans decided that "Minos" was actually a title like "Pharaoh" rather than a name (because that's... way more likely than being named for a great-grandparent?).

Thus, "Minoan" could be used to refer to the culture of Bronze Age Crete. Voila. The Minoans. And, okay. We had to call them something, and we don't know what they called themselves because they left behind no writing that we can read.

We might, however, have tried our best to call them whatever they called themselves, or at least what their contemporaries called their culture, which according to Egyptian and Neo-Assyrian records was probably Keftiu or Kaptara. I guess a British guy needed to name them, tho.

So anyway, Evans had a model in mind for his attempts to reconstruct this society, and that model was another "benevolent" island empire: the Victorian Empire and its ruler, Queen Victoria. With some flourishes from Egypt and Mesopotamia, of course.

So he definitely had a very specific project in his fascination with the area, & that was to prove that ancient Europeans were as literate as their Near Eastern/African contemporaries. So he was on the hunt for script, carved gemstones with "alphabetic"-looking symbols, anything.

Now, I dunno, it might be worth stepping back for a moment here and asking WHY this particular signifier was so important. Our entire conception of what makes a "sophisticated" or "important" society is largely based on what records they leave behind.

And we tend to focus on writing because the modern West is a very writing-centered culture. But cultures that don't center writing aren't necessarily less sophisticated (and we might even question what we mean by "sophistication"). They're definitely not objectively "better."

They're just easier for us to understand, because unless their descendants are still maintaining those oral traditions, we don't know what they are.

The Minoans DID employ a writing system, of course, but it hasn't been deciphered. So all we really can know about them comes from their art, architecture, objects, etc. They can't *talk* to us the way, say, the Sumerians can.

And ironically, despite Arthur Evans' obsession with using the Minoans to prove ancient European literacy, it ended up being far more convenient for him (and other Victorians of his mindset generally) that they didn't have any writings we could read. Blank slate.

So anyway, giant palace at Knossos, CLEARLY King Minos's palace. Evans found some inscribed tablets there and decided they must be the Law of Minos. Evans declared Minos "another Moses or Hammurabi, receiving the law from the hands of the divinity himself..."

They were deciphered after his death, and turned out to most likely be Mycenaean, not Minoan. They were also inventory lists, not laws.

He found a big chair, called it the "Throne of Ariadne," but later changed his mind and decided it was the seat of a priest-king, and declared it "the oldest throne in Europe."

He wrote volumes about how (in Lapatin's words) it was a "peaceful European island nation, led by an enlightened aristocracy, ruling a maritime empire and producing sophisticated, refined artworks." You know, like England.

And Evans wrote "there has come into view a primitive European civilization, the earliest phase of which goes back even beyond the days of the First Dynasty of Egypt." Hor-Aha took the throne around 3100 BCE but okay?

So anyway, Evans believed that the Minoans were superior to their successors, and to the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland, who he characterized as completely dependant on the Minoans. Citation needed, as we poor unenlightened Internetters would say.

And the Minoan art style was so pleasingly modern! Like Art Noveau!

Oh yeah, speaking of Isadora Duncan, she showed up at Knossos, where, upon seeing the Grand Staircase, she "could not contain herself and threw herself into one of her impromptu dances." she sounds utterly insufferable

and her whole thing was being scared of ragtime because Black people (I'm not making this up) pretty sure what everyone ACTUALLY liked about her was her costumes

anyway, gotta go, but when I pick this up again: Evans worldbuilds a matriarchal religion (but don't worry, it was just an "inferior" stage of development to patriarchy!)