![]() ![]() Below and to the left of this sword is a dagger with with perforated gold plate, possibly “Egyptianizing” (Schoep 2010, p. It was found in the North Wing of the palace. The ivory must have been imported from Egypt. The featured image at the top of this article features one of these, namely a sword with a large pommel made of elephant ivory. The collection includes two swords that were found in the North Wing of the palace. 18 BC the swords from Malia are among the earliest known swords in the Aegean (Fortenberry 1990, pp. Photo: Josho Brouwers.Ī beautiful collection of Minoan swords and daggers from Malia are on display on the ground floor of the Archaeological Museum at Iraklion. The sword at right features a large ivory pommel and was found in the North Wing palace itself. The dagger in the centre was found in the same room as the aforementioned sword in the palace’s West Wing. The Type A sword at left features an ivory hilt still partially covered in gold plate, with a rock crystal pommel. A closeup of the hilts of two swords and a dagger found in Malia, as also depicted in this article’s featured image (lacking one dagger). While some have suggested that swords may have developed in Crete independently from the Near East, Fortenberry has pointed out in her PhD thesis that the Cretan sword is influenced by blades from the Near East (Fortenberry 1990, p. The earliest are dated to the nineteenth century BC, which falls in what we refer to as the Middle Bronze Age, the heyday of Minoan civilization. The earliest swords in Crete are relatively long and referred to as Type A swords (for a convenient overview of the history of Aegean sword types, see Molloy 2010, pp. Swords are essentially longer daggers – though exactly how one distinguishes between a long dagger and a short sword is a matter largely of individual preference blades that are rather too big to pass as daggers, but too short to be called swords are often referred to as dirks, which are strictly stabbing weapons. Of course, the sword didn’t spring into being from nothing. The sword is the first dedicated weapon, an object whose sole purpose, if we reduce the object strictly to its function, is to injure and kill other human beings (see also Molloy 2010, p. ![]() Unlike all other ancient weapons, like the spear or the bow, the sword wasn’t originally developed to hunt animals or, like the axe, to function as a tool for chopping wood. When it comes to weapons, swords occupy a special place. Furthermore, weapons and other objects associated with warfare were also dedicated at Minoan sacred sites, such as the Psychro Cave (Whitaker 2015, pp. A general interest in violence is all but explicit even in such scenes like the famous bull-leaping fresco from Knossos. Many gems and seals that have been unearthed feature warriors and armed conflict. Indeed, Minoan art amply demonstrates the cultural significance of martial imagery. Similarly, there is no evidence that the “Minoans” were remarkable more peaceful, as I mentioned in my discussion of the Chieftain Cup (which itself is an object that likely has a martial connotation). Leaving aside the thorny issue of whether or not the “Minoans” and “Mycenaeans” actually regarded themselves as different “peoples”, archaeologist Oliver Dickinson (2014) has conclusively shown that the “Mycenaeans” don’t seem to have been any more or less warlike than other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean. As usual, of course, the reality is much more complex. If the Minoans were peaceful, the Mycenaeans were thought to have been the opposite: a warlike, bloodthirsty people who even managed to conquer the supposedly peaceful Minoans in the fifteenth century BC. 27 BC-AD 14), established at the start of his reign. In several of his volumes on Knossos, Evans claims that the high culture on Crete during the Middle Bronze Age was due to a Pax Minoica (“Minoan Peace”), a term that consciously sought to recall the Pax Romana that the first Roman Emperor, Augustus (r. One example of this influence is how the Minoan Cretans are regarded as generally peaceful. This article was originally published on the defunct Ancient World Magazine website and is now re-published here.Įven after more than a century since his original discoveries at Knossos, Arhur Evans continues to exert a profound influence on how we interpret the Minoan culture on Crete (see Schoep 2018). ![]()
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