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| Cretan history |
| Since the dawn of time |
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| The gilded bull head, a symbol of Minoan power. |
The origin of the name Crete has not been determined with certainty, since there are a number of competing etymologies. One of the Hesperides was named Crete, as was the wife of King Minos and also one of the nymphs who married Zeus Ammon. Any of these could have lent their name to the island. Also, Kres, the son of Zeus and the nymph Ida could be the godfather of Crete, especially since the island's highest mountain is named after his mother.
Crete, according to many historians, has been inhabited since Paleolithic times and has witnessed continuous human civilized activity for the last 10,000 years. Although the Minoan civilization was a distinct, Cretan phenomenon that did not spill over to mainland Greece, Crete features prominently in Greek mythology putting it right in the middle of Greek civilization since the beginning.
Zeus, the father of Gods and men was born in the Dikteon or Ideon Cave. And it was to Crete that he carried Europa after abducting her from the shores of Phoenicia, present-day Lebanon.
Europa gave birth to three sons, Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. After consolidating his power over the whole island, Minos married the witch Pasiphae, sister of the witches Calypso and Circe, of Odyssey-fame. Minos dedicated a temple to Poseidon and, to honor the sea God, he asked him for a bull to sacrifice in his honor. The bull Poseidon delivered, a beautiful, great white bull, was so amazing that Minos decided to sacrifice another, lesser animal in its place, a sacrilege that made Poseidon so furious that he cursed Pasiphae to develop a serious case of lust for the great white bull.
In order to satisfy her overwhelming desire, the queen hid inside a wooden model of a cow, built by the engineer Deadalus, and mated with the bull, thus giving birth to the Minotaur, a monster, half-man and half-bull. The Minotaur (the "Bull of Minos", from "tauros" which is the Greek word for bull) was constrained in the Labyrinth, also built by Deadalus, and was later killed by Theseus, an Athenian prince who, thus, rid Athens of its annual obligation to send to Crete 10 boys and 10 girls to feed the Minotaur.
Compared to this saga, one has to admit, almost anything Hollywood has ever produced, or is likely to produce, is bound to sound like unimaginative, half-baked chit chat.
For a very attractive and complete account of Cretan mythodology and Minoan history, the illustrated "Minoan Crete: From Myth to History" (Adam Editions), published in many languages, can be had in many bookstores around the island, and also at many museum and archeological sites' shops.
The island's recorded history begins in the Neolithic period, around 7,000 BC. The first urban centers in Crete were formed around 2,000 BC around the palaces of the local rulers that stood in the middle of agricultural societies. Farm surpluses constituted wealth, and this period witnessed the development of trade ties within the island and with neighboring lands. These arrangements lasted for about 600-700 years and flourished during what we now call Minoan civilization, in the middle of the second millenium BC.
The center of the Minoan civilization was undoubtedly Knossos, 10 km south of today's Heraklion town. Knossos ruled Crete so absolutely that it faced no danger of invasion from inside or outside, as evidenced by the lack of fortifications around the palace. The palaces at Zakros, Malia, Festos, and elsewhere were satellite administrative centers that were built to control Knossos' trade with Cyprus, mainland Greece, and other trading partners.
The great Minoan civilization is believed to have ended with the eruption of the volcano at Santorini. Recent discoveries by archeologists at Columbia University and the University of Hawaii confirm the hypothesis, from the 1930s, of Greek archeologist Spyridon Marinatos who proposed that the destruction of Knossos and Cretan civil society was caused by the tidal waves and the ashes of a catastrophic eruption of the Santorini volcano, only 110 km (70 miles) north of Crete, that must have occured around 1600 BC. The waves buried the coastal towns and destroyed the fleets, isolating the island from the outside world, whereas the ashes, that covered the atmosphere for months, lowered the temperature, destroyed agriculture, caused famine and trigerred massive social unrest.
That was the end of ancient Crete's glory. Since then, the island has not played a major cultural role and it has been ruled by a multitude of foreign invaders. For centuries, its coasts served as hideways for pirates, until Rome subdued the whole island around 70 BC. Paul's disciple Titus brought Christianity to Crete in 58 AD. The island was conquered by Saracens in the 9th century and re-conquered by the Byzantine Empire 150 years later.
The Byzantine era ended in 1204, with the fall of Constantinople to the hordes of the Fourth Crusade and the advent of Genoan and Venetian knight rule across the Aegean. Chania, Rethymnon, and Heraklion became Venetian strongholds in this period, with important fortified harbors that survive to this day. The island's most important city was present-day Heraklion, then called Chandakas, from the Greek word "chandaki", which means deep trench. Chandakas was the last Cretan territory to fall under Turkish Ottoman rule, in 1669, after 21 years of seige. The fall of Heraklion concluded the fall of what is today Greece to Turkish rule.
The Greek revolution that lasted from 1821 to 1830, and ended with Greek independence after the signing of the Treaty of London, did not include Crete, which was rocked by a number of uprisings in the 19th century. Finally, during the 1897 war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, the fleets of Britain, France, Russia, and Italy invaded Crete and ended Turkish rule, after the local authorities made the mistake to kill the British consul and some consular guards.
The island became an independent territory, under the command of Prince George of Greece, and was united with the mainland after the 1912-13 Balkan Wars that resulted in Greece expanding to almost its current borders. |
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