Welcome back to Tiny Epics.
I'm really excited to introduce today's guest: Professor Nanno Marinatos.
She's a prominent historian of religion and a leading authority on Minoan religion.
She's published a number of books that go right to the heart and soul of the fascinating Minoan Civilization which we'll be discussing.
She also happens to share a unique connection to the man who famously excavated the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete:
Archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.
Who also happens to be the subject of her book which we'll be discussing a little bit later:
Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete.
The Minoan Civilization flourished for many centuries on the island of Crete during the Bronze Age.
But they really hit their peak starting at around 1750 BC, during the so-called Neopalatial Period.
Just to give an idea of how far back that is,
the Minoans built their elaborate palace of Knossos more than a thousand years before the ancient Greeks built the Parthenon.
I'll go ahead and hop right into it and ask:
Could you give us an idea of Minoan life in the 2nd millennium BC, and how you view them?
Well I view it as a highly civilized culture.
And by which I mean that there was a refinement and a sense of beauty and peace about life.
A very good attitude towards life which is reflected in the art.
One would be challenged to find a place so, as I imagine it, so happy, so sophisticated today.
If one were to compare it with a city in Syria or Mesopotamia or Egypt, I think Crete was less barren.
Because it was an island.
It had physical beauty. There was a lot of space.
And, you know, the sheer beauty of the place was amazing. The vistas. The views they had!
In Egypt you go and you see these pyramids.
And they're very impressive but they really dominate the landscape.
But in Crete the building is always part of the landscape, not a tyrant over the landscape.
And it's bringing nature from the outside inside.
A bit like Japanese architecture where you open up the house and it becomes one with the garden.
And that's what the Minoans did too.
In fact they even had doors and devices that they would pull off and then they would bring, so to say, the garden inside the building.
So any Hollywood star would envy the houses they had.
It's just amazing to me that all this was happening during so-called prehistory,
when civilizations around the world were really just getting going.
Could you tell us more about where Crete is located and the role that perhaps played in the Minoans' development?
Crete is a huge island. I mean for Greek standards it's a huge island.
And it's kind of autonomous, but at the same time it's part of a larger Mediterranean world
But it has a very privileged position because it's very close to Egypt.
So it received influences from Egypt as well as from the Near East.
And so from early on the Cretans realized that they could have a powerful navy.
And so slowly, by the 2nd millennium between 2000 BC and 1500 BC they built an empire.
And of course we have royal families.
The chief royal family must have been at Knossos. A huge palace!
Now imagine Knossos had about 100,000 people in Minoan times.
100,000 people in 1500 BC!
So an immense palace, an immense town.
The other palaces are, I assume, populated by relatives or vassal Kings of the major royal family
And they're necessary to administer the whole island.
So that's why we have many palaces. But Knossos is the major one.
The center.
And if we were to go back in time, to say 1700 BC, what would have gone on there at Knossos?
Not very different from what an Egyptian palace or a Near Eastern palace would have been.
It included quarters that were dedicated exclusively to religious ritual. Why?
Because the king and the queen, by their position, were also at the very top of the religious hierarchy.
And that's a fact.
Throughout the Near East and throughout Egypt the king is "ex-officio",
also the high priest and the queen is the high priestess.
So you have to devote space for religious ritual.
But also ceremonies, also some trade business.
So it's a kind of center of secular as well as religious power.
Since you've mentioned Knossos being the central seat of the Minoan empire,
I know that you have a very special and personal connection to this particular site.
Could you tell us more about this?
So let me start with a bit of history.
My father Spyridon Marinatos arrived in Crete as a member of the Archaeological Service.
He was made into a director of antiquities when he was so young...
because his predecessor, the director of the antiquities there, had a sudden stroke.
And so he died.
And my father was the best person to replace him because he was his second man.
Plus he knew European languages, he had been in Germany, he had energy...
And so he got this position, which was overwhelming to him
but also he wanted to make something out of it.
Now we are in 1926. Remember how long ago this is
in between the two great wars.
And he meets Sir Arthur Evans, who was...
a tour de force of a man. A walking cyclone!
He was restoring Knossos at the time.
And my father, since he was part of the Greek Service, was asked to supervise.
In other words he had to be there to be the Greek inspector for these restorations... that they shouldn't destroy anything and so on.
So the two men met there.
And they had a bit of a clash at some point because my father wanted to do his duty
and make sure that everything went according to protocol.
Evans said: who is this young man to tell me what to do?
And so an incident was created. But in the end my father apologized.
Evans was delighted with the apology, and then...
he became so kind to my father and promoted his career a great deal.
So it was a very important relationship, I think, for my father.
I should also mention that in my father's archives I found quite a few letters that they exchanged.
So I have this, so to say, physical evidence of Sir Arthur Evans... his writing...
I can touch the letters and that gives an extra dimension.
And I have the letters in my possession. They are almost a fetish for me.
And these letters are an important part of the book you published about Sir Arthur Evans and his discoveries.
Can you tell us why you decided to write this book?
So what I tried to do is to understand Evans from the perspective of ideas. Where did he come from?
What made him tick?
And I discovered amazing things. For example that his father, Sir John Evans,
was a colleague of Darwin.
And so Darwin and Darwinism was a very prominent in the Evans household
because the father, the Evans father and Darwin, collaborated.
Evans's father was a prehistorian.
He studied prehistoric tools and so did Darwin
in order to understand the origin of species.
So in some ways Evans is very Darwinian in the sense that he wants hard evidence
and builds hypothesis on the hard evidence.
So it sounds to me that without his painstaking work
we probably wouldn't know nearly as much as we do today about the elegance and sophistication of Minoan culture.
Which makes me wonder about the critics out there who feel he used too much artistic license
Or that he was overly romantic, perhaps, when it came to restoring the palace.
There seems to be an awful lot of different opinions floating around out there.
You are absolutely right. He has gotten so much publicity.
And the criticism is not only unfair but sometimes inaccurate.
Not only because my father was there, but because Evans documents himself exactly how he did things.
For example: if he restored a column it's because there was a base.
And the base gives you the dimensions of the column and then you know exactly how high it went.
If he restored a staircase it's because he knew there was a second story.
So you have to get to that second floor somehow, right?
And if he restored a fresco it's because he knew the exact spot where it had fallen.
And where would it be placed on the wall? There was only one possibility.
So everything is worked out with Darwinian precision.
The interesting thing that happened, Lance, is that when my father found the untouched frescoes at Akrotiri, Thera...
50 years later! Half a century later...
they were exactly as Sir Arthur Evans had predicted!
So I think his restorations were vindicated by finding so many authentic paintings.
Wow, just incredible!
Thank you so much for sharing this slice of history with us regarding your father and Sir Arthur Evans.
I think it's also a good place to stop because it lays the foundation for what we'll be discussing next in the 2nd part of this interview.
And a lot of viewers out there are probably wondering:
who or what did the Minoans worship exactly? And why?
It was a mystery that Sir Arthur Evans devoted much of his life discovering.
And professor Marinatos has a lot to say about this topic and the vital role it plays in understanding this incredible civilization.
If you're not already subscribed to the channel, be sure to take a moment to do so
to be notified when Part 2 of this interview is released.
Thanks so much for watching!