The cradle of

Minoan and
Mycenaean art

April 30
2014

The bold, spare contours of the marble sculptures created five millenia ago in
southern part of the Aegean, had inspired modern artists from Picasso and Modiglani to
Henry Moore. Painted pottery, finely wrought metalwork, and carved stone seals, figurines
and jewerly survived to document the ingenuity of the craftmens of Minoan Crete and
Mycenaean Greece, the very first great civilization of Europe. The artistic strives of these
socities were descendants of the remarkable achivements of later Greek art. .
There are no known written records left so, the art of these ancient civilizations is
the only source which can give us information about them. Both Minoan and Mycenaean
cultures were strongly influenced by Egypt and Near East, which was reflected through their
architecture and art. The main reason was expanded overseas trade with these civilizations:
they had easy access to the same materials Egyptian had used...
Minaon civilization (culture) represented people of the island of Crete, after the
reign of legendary King Minos from 18 to 15 century B.C. Their way of living was similiar to
nowadays ideas of life in heaven: they had no worries except basic concerns of neccesities
for life. In conrast, Mycenian civilization (has been known) had been famous for their
martial nature, which was persisted through ages in tradition of war faught by people all
over the Greece against Troy.

Rhyton, a vessel used for pouring

Liquids during sacred rituals

Minoans were closely

attached to the nature
and had attempted to live
in harmony with natural
world. The sea and the
creatures that inhabit it
also inspired the Late
Minoan from Palaikastro
(new palaces at Knosos)
and elsewhere.
No temples or
monumental statues of
gods or monsters had
been found in Minoan
Crete except some small
figurines and sculptors.
The gods they awe were
associated with powerful
animals.

The statue had been found known as the Snake Goddes was presented like
woman holding snakes in her hands and supporting a felineon her had. They also had
strongawe for a lion and a bull. Those sources witness their affection for mortality rather
than deity.

Minoan architecture was based on their palaces which concentrated political and
economoic power as well as the artistic activity.The first, Old Palace, period came to an
abrup end when fire destroyed these grand structures. Rebuilt buildings had become a
cynonim for the golden age of Crete. Cretan palaces were well constructed, with thick walls
composed of rough, unshaped field stones built in clay. The builders used stone madonry
at corners and around door and window openings. The painted wooden colums had capitals
and shafts. The spheroid, cushion like Minoan capitals resembled those of the later Greek
Doric order, but the column shafts tapered from a wide top to a narrower base, the
opposite of both Egyptian and later Greek columns.

Stairwell in the residential quarter of the palace at

Knossos, ca. 17001400 BCE.

Major palace, which they are known for, was built on Knosos. The name of this
culture came from the legend of a king who ruled the palace of Knossos, which was home of
king Minos. According to the myth the hero Thesus was said to have battled with the bullmad Minotaur. After defeating the monster, Theseus found his way out of the mazelike
complex only with the aid of the kings daughter, Ariadne. She had given Theseus a spindle
of thread to mark his path through the labyrinth 1and thus to find his way out safely again.
Mural paintings liberally adorned the palace at Knosos, constituiting one of its most
striking features. The brightly painted walls and the red shafts and black capitals of the
wooden colums provided rich effect. The paintings depicted many aspcects of Minoan life
(bull-leaping, processions, and ceremonies) and nature (birds, flowers, and marine life).
1

The English word labyrinth derives from the plan and scores of rooms of the Knossos palace. Labrys means
double ax, and it is a recurring motif in the Minoan palace, referring to sacrificial slaughter. The Labyrinth
was the House of the Double Axes.

The love of nature manifested itself in Crete

on the surfaces of painted vases even before the
period of the new palaces. Cretan potters fashioned
sophisticated shapes using newly introduced potters
wheels and decorated their vases in a distinctive
style. The painter seted creamy white and reddish
brown decoration against a rich black ground. The
central motif was a great leaping fish and perhaps a
fishnet surrounded by a host of vurvilinear abstract
patterns including waves and spirals. The swirlining
lines evoked life in the sea, and both the abstract
and the natural forms complement the shape of the
vessel. The tentacles of the octopus reached out
over the curving surfaces of the vessel, was
embracing the piece and ephasizing its volume. This
was a realization of the relationship between the
vessels decoration and its shape, which was always
problem for the vase painters.
This Mycenaean octopus pottery from
reflects the influence of Minoans.

From 1500 B.C. onward, Crete was under the increasing influence of Greek mainland,
in fact, the Mycenaeans may have occupied Crete after an island-wide destruction about
1450 B.C. The Mycenaeans connection with Minaon Crete played a decisive role in how they
shaped and developed their culture, especially arts. The craftsmen of the Early Mycenaean
period tried to imitate the products of the Cretan art creating real works of art which were
distinguished, as the Minoan ones, for their elegance and magnificence.
Rareness of the raw materials played a very important role in demonstration of
social prestige. That is the main reason why Mycenaean kings imported precious materials
from countries of the East. That alloweded manifacture to flourish and Mycenaean art
began to change.
Although Mycenaeans architecture had been strongly influenced by Minoan, it seemed to
be different because of Myecnaean martial nature. Their architecture represented the
expression of a powerfull society: Mycenaean palaces proved the wealth of kings who ruled
them. Major classes include the palace, the city planning, fortifications and their immense
tombs. For the large meeting hall, called a Megaron, they used extremely large blocks of
stone as well as large fortification walls built around the cities and corbal valuting. The use
of such bolders in construction testified their engineering prowes. Later Greeks thought that
giant Cyclopes must have built them, so they called the great walls Cyclopean walls. Physical
evidence of their architecture was the citadel of Mycenae with its impressive Lion Gate.

Lion The Gate was the outer getaway built on a natural rock outcropping and on the
right by a projecting bastion of large blocks. Any approaching enemies had to enter this 2o
feet wide channel and face mycenaen defenders above them on both sides. The gate itself
consisted of two great monoliths capped with a huge lintel. Above lintel, the masonry
courses formed a corbeled arch, leaving an opening that lightens the weight the lintel
cerries. Filling this relieving triangle was a great limestone slab where lions carved high relief
stand on the sides of a Minoan-type column. Similar groups appeared in miniature on
Cretan seals, but the idea of placing monstrous guardian figures the entrances to palaces,
tombs, and sacred places had its origin in the Near East and Egypt.
Just inside the Lion gate, archeologist found Grave Circle. It had predated the Lion
Gate and the walls of Mycenae by some three centuries. Grave Circle enclosed six deep
shafts that had served as tombs for kings and their families. The Mycenaeans laid their dead
to rest on the floors of theese shaft graves with masks covering their faces, recalling the
Egyptian funeraly practise. They buried women with their jewerly and men with their
weapons and golden cups.
The Mycenaean made masks, which had often been compared to Tutankhamens 2gold
mummy mask. It was not known whether the Mycenaean masks were intended as portraits,
but the goldsmiths recorded different phyisical types with care. They portraited youth faces
as well as mature ones. This was one of the firs attempts in Greece to render the human
face at life-size.
Large-scale figural art was very rare on the Greek mainland. The trianglar relief of the Lion
Gate atis exceptional, as is the painted plaster head of a woman, goddes, or, perhaps,
sphinx found at Mycenae. This head may be a very early example of a monumental cult
statue in Greece.

The treatment of the human face was more primitive in Mycenaean mask, whereas Tutankhamens mask
stood in a long line of monumental Egyptian sculptures going back more than a millenium.

The immportance of pottery, architecture and artwork of these two cultures is reflected
trough their influence to civilizations that existed after them. They established presendence
for Classical Greece and western civilization as a whole and participated in creating
civilizations that we live in.