Minoan and Mycenaean Greece are considered to be the precursor of classical Greece
    - shared many features together => it makes sense to refer to them together as the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization

The Minoans

-         Minoan civilization gets its name from Minos, a legendary king of Crete who was said by later Greeks to have dominated the Aegean Sea with a great navy

-         Crete is a rocky, mountainous island with little fertile land

-         The Minoans use the good land they had to grow wheat, grapes, & olives, and also kept flocks of sheep – they made wool into fine cloth which was traded to Egypt.  The Minoans also made beautiful painted pottery which was sold abroad.

-         Crete became prosperous through trade, and money was spent on the construction of huge palaces.  Such palaces were probable the capital of a small kingdom.

-         The Minoans were skillful sailors and traders, bringing their goods all around the Mediterranean Sea.  They founded trading colonies on nearby islands.

A later Greek legend about King Minos:

    King Minos ruled not only over the island Crete, but also over many other islands in the Aegean. Since they had killed his sons, people from Athens were forced to pay him an awesome tribute: 7 boys and 7 girls of noble origin who were shipped to Crete, where Minos gave them to a horrible creature, the Minotaurus, who lived in a building full of passageways and blind alleys so arranged as to make it difficult for any human to find his/her way out = the Labyrinth. Theseus, son of the Athenian king decided to kill the monster and joined the group of 13 young Athenians sent to Crete. Ariadne, Minos' daughter helped him. She gave him a ball of thread and he attached one end to the Labyrinth's gate and followed the mysterious passageways looking for the horrible monster; he finally found him, killed him and found his way out of the Labyrinth. Later he killed king Minos as well.

- archaeologists discovered the ruins of the city of Knossos, a civilization that was entirely destroyed when the first Greeks appeared in Greece

- Minoan civilization - was built by people coming from neighboring regions, most probably from Syria or Egypt

- the main feature of Minoan civilization are great palaces - found in Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros
    - impressive constructions - with many rooms, sanctuaries, altars, various workshops => they might have been the model for the legendary Labyrinth

- the king (s) - who lived in those palaces - just like in ancient Near East - were also priests

- little information about the Minoan civilization (archaeological records; Minoan people invented a syllabic script/language – this has never been fully deciphered => called Linear A)

We know that:
- priests performed special rituals => those connected with the lily (a sacred flower)
 * the Lily Prince - a priest performing a ritual dance

-         women had an important position in society => their portraits give us an idea about beauty ideals of Cretan society => later borrowed by Greek civilization

-         the snake goddesses - the two statues found in Knossos => probably represent earth goddesses or priestesses => symbolizing the fertility of earth (Ishtar in Mesopotamia)

-         wall paintings discovered give us some info on activities of the Minoans     

- such as an event where athletes jump over bulls

- also paintings showing the Minoans sacrificing children to their gods

-         the Minoan civilization came to a catastrophic end = the explosion of a volcano on the island of Santorin (Thera), about 150 miles north of Crete

- survivors of the disaster fled across the sea => 200 years later, the first wave of migration reached the island - the Mycenaeans

The Mycenaeans

- the word came from Mycenae - a hill fort in Southern Greece

- the Mycenaeans copied many of their customs from the Minoans: cultural borrowing

- Mycenaeans were the first people who brought military organization to Greece, the first urban centers in continental/mainland Greece and the first royal dynasties

- Mycenaean civilization - shaped in similar way to the Minoan civilization.
    Exception: the authority relied not on religious but military power
    Mycenaean people - first of all warriors (bronze weapons and bronze wagons)

- Mycenean kings built huge fortifications in many parts of continental Greece:
                               - Mycenae
                               - Pylos
                               - Tiryns
=> the highest hill - the center of the royal court - the acropolis
- royal palaces (included many rooms and workshops) - centered on a central rectangular room with a central hearth called megaron - later copied by all religious buildings in Greece

-  the king - wanaka - from which anax derived - a word used by Homer for king Agamemnon and for the gods - was the supreme chief of the army

- many other aristocrats - played subordinate roles in administration and army
- no slaves - as far as we know
- village communities of free people - played the major economic role

How do we know?

- when excavating the royal tombs in Mycenae found: gold jewelry and many clay tablets (with an unknown script => called Linear B, which was later deciphered after World War II).  Major discovery - Why?

1. showed that the language spoken by Mycenaean people was already a kind of Greek language

2. provided a lot of evidence for the Mycenaean society - in which males, especially warriors dominated all other social groups

=> a new wave of migration coming from north put an end to the civil war between various, petty Mycenaean kings

- although they represented one of the first (maybe the first) group of people speaking Greek - Mycenaeans  and their civilization - vanished; was preserved only in Greek legends

==>> the fully equipped Mycenaean warrior - became the model for the Homeric heroes: Achilles, Diomedes, Agamemnon - they all represented idealized images that Greek had about Mycenae (more than 200 years after its collapse)

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