Arthur Evans

The Minotaur to us has become a cruel master, calling every seventh year for his toll of victims, Athenian youths and maidens.

this is because his figure is presented to us distorted by athenian chauvinism but on the cretan ceiling discovered by sir arthur evans the minotaur is no monster to be slain he is a king-god he is seated on a primitive throne the folding stool in use among the ancients just such a folding stool made by daedalus of crete was preserved as a monument of the ancient kings in the erechtheum at athens The head of the monster is indistinct, but of his divine bull's tail curling up behind his throne there is no doubt.

In front of him stands a worshipper in adoration.

So is it always, to your own worshippers you are a god, to the conquerors of those worshippers, who project their own hate, you are a monster, a devil.

He was a man with a bull's head and bull's hooves.

Now, there is no such thing as a man, an actual living man, with a bull's head and hooves.

Is the Minotaur, then, a fancy monster, or what is the reality behind? What is the Minotaur in terms of his worshippers? the answer is clear certain illuminating the minotaur is one of his own worshippers a royal worshipper wearing a ritual mask a bull's head and horns and possibly though not certainly a bull's hide in egypt diodorus tells us it was the custom in the ruling house to put on the head and foreparts of lions bulls and snakes as tokens of royal dominion sir arthur evans kindly tells me that the ritual form of the minotaur as bull-headed man can he believes be traced right back to the hieroglyphs of egypt the minotaur is but king minos masking as a bull The object is, of course, that the royal functionary, as representative of the whole state, may get for it the force, the mana, of the holy animal.

That like Hannah, his horn may be exalted.

And in Linear B tablets from Knossos, we find repeated references to priestesses as economic actors, receiving land grants, controlling temple treasuries, directing the flow of agricultural surplus.

Then there are the figurines, discovered in 1903 by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in a subterranean chamber of Knossos known as the Temple Repositories.

The two snake goddess figurines, crafted from faience, that shimmering glass ceramic material favored across the ancient Mediterranean, are among the most arresting objects the Bronze Ages left us.

The smaller figure stands 29.5 centimeters tall, a woman in a tight-fitting bodice, breast-bared in the Minoan manner, wearing a bell-shaped skirt layered in horizontal flounces.

They were waiting for us.

They've been waiting for us there for three and a half millennia.

And the frescoes survive, in fragments, in reconstructions, in the imperfect but passionate restorations carried out under Arthur Evans in the early 20th century.

The Ladies in Blue.

Nor must I forget to mention the lotiform column found by Mr.

De Morgan in a tomb of the old empire at Abusir, or the interesting discovery made by Mr. Arthur Evans of seals and other objects from the prehistoric sites of Crete and other parts of the Aegean, inscribed with hieroglyphic characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at one time have existed by the side of the Hittite hieroglyphs, and may have had its origin in the influence exercised by Egypt on the peoples of the Mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty.

In volumes four, five, and six we find ourselves in the full light of an advanced culture.

The nations of the ancient East are no longer each pursuing an isolated existence and separately developing the seeds of civilization and culture on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile.

In Babylonia, the American expedition, under Mr. Haynes, has at Niffer unearthed monuments of older date than those of Sargon of Akkad.

Nor must I forget to mention the lotiform column found by Mr. de Morgan in a tomb of the old empire at Abusir, or the interesting discovery made by Mr. Arthur Evans of seals and other objects from the prehistoric sites of Crete and other parts of the Aegean, inscribed with hieroglyphic characters which reveal a new system of writing that must at one time have existed by the side of the Hittite hieroglyphs, and may have had its origin in the influence exercised by Egypt on the peoples of the Mediterranean in the age of the twelfth dynasty.

In volumes four, five, and six we find ourselves in the full light of an advanced culture.

The nations of the ancient East are no longer each pursuing an isolated existence and separately developing the seeds of civilization and culture on the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile.

But nevertheless, at the time, his finds were sensational.

So the other archaeologists that we associate with this approach of looking at myth and legend to try and locate sites is is the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.

And that's really where we're centred today because he was operating on Crete and discovered, in inverted commas, in the bigger sense, Minoan culture.

And he begins right at the end of the 19th century.

Fairies were seen there too.

When folklorist Arthur Evans collected traditions surrounding the roll rites during the 19th century, he found that local peoples still remembered stories of supernatural beings around the kingstone and the surrounding hills.

The ancient monuments had become a place where several kinds of folklore overlapped.

Witches and fairies, petrified men and moving stones, curses placed upon those who interfered with them, and wishes granted to the fortunate.

Yet somebody in Long Compton was still writing down stories about women who could turn themselves into animals.

The witches had not quite left the village, and Granny Faulkner was far from the only story they remembered.

Some of the most remarkable accounts connected with Longcompton had already been collected more than 30 years earlier when archaeologist and folklorist Arthur Evans began asking people around the Rollwright Stones what they had been told about the place.

Evans published what he gathered in 1895, and rather than finding only the familiar legend of the witch and the petrified king, he discovered a much larger collection of beliefs that still seemed to belong naturally to the landscape.

Pooping truly is history's great equalizer.

And when us archaeologists uncover a toilet, it's usually a treasure trove of information.

In this episode, we're lifting the manhole cover of history to discover the oldest flushing toilet ever found.

Trust me, it's much older than you think.

I mean, yes, she did have a flushing loo.

It was a fancy water closet that allowed her to say goodbye to her royal waste through a complicated series of valves, handles, and levers.

But archaeologists have recently discovered a flushing toilet that predates Queen Liz's loo by about 2,000 years.

Sorry, Your Majesty.

Now, it's very tempting to take all of these Potnias and roll them up into a single original all-powerful mother goddess.

And that idea was very influential for decades, tracing back to Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos.

Evans reconstructed Minoan and Mycenaean religion as centered overwhelmingly on a great goddess, with other divine figures often treated as her aspects, attendants, or subordinate companions.

And even scholars today admit that if you judge the Mycenaean pantheon from the images alone, you might conclude that it was focused largely on a goddess.