The Secret of Knossos?

By John Freedman Posted to Contemplating Crete December 1, 2021

Knossos, Crete's most distinguished tourist attraction, is surely doomed forever to be shrouded in mystery and controversy. Right at the center of that, precisely where he wanted to be, stands Sir Arthur Evans, the brash British adventurer/archaeologist who staked his claim to fame on these sprawling 20,000 square meters (215,000 square feet) of ruins located a hair south of the capital city of Heraklion. When Evans found out about this location at the turn to the 20th century, he elbowed everyone else out of the way and took over the task of recovering the ruins that date back 5,000 t 3,000 years back. Everything you want to now about Knossos and Evans is waiting for you at a click on the internet. My purpose here is not to rehash that. What I want to bring you today - aside from some photos of the beautiful site (no matter what is said about it) - is a story you may not have heard. I had not heard about it until I stumbled upon a book called The Secret of Crete by the German geologist Hans Georg Wunderlich. Now, it's hard to say who gets the worst press - Evans, for what even his supporters usually admit is a perfume job on Knossos, or Wunderlich, who had the hubris to look at Knossos and see something entirely different from what the experts, led by Evans, have been saying for over a century. Both know what it means to be put through a meat grinder. The difference, I guess, is that Evans seized the territory so boldly that it will belong to him forever. As Wunderlich ruefully points out, many scholars' reputations have been buillt on, first, buying into Evans' work, and then, second, expanding upon it. By which I mean to say, if Evans' work is ever to be seriously doubted, then all those scholars who have come along after him stand to have their work invalidated. It's a touchy subject, indeed. I have no bones to pick, nor do I have any expertise that would allow me to seriously jump into the story of Knossos arising, being destroyed, arising again, being destroyed again, being forgotten for a couple thousand years and then being rediscovered and, to a large extent, rebuilt by a man whose imagination sometimes ran wild. Virtually none of the gorgeous images we see at Knossos - the charging bull, the cavorting dolphins, the handsome young prince, the beautiful priestess - are actual artifacts. Evans found shards, and had his teams "resurrect" lost images. I'm trying to think of some contemporary equivalent, and I think I'll settle on this; you've surely seen the YouTube "reconstructions" of the faces of Cleopatra, Nero, Alexander the Great, and so on. These reconstruction artists think hard awhile, crunch some numbers on their computer and - voila! - offer you a living version of Julius Caesar's face. I mean, it's fun, rather like Knossos being fun, but... Wunderlich, who obviously had a marvelously contrary way of looking at things, came to Knossos with a completely different point of view. As a geologist, he applied the rigors of his science to the findings at the ancient Minoan palace. It led him in some different directions, and he began to question theories that had held sway for over half a century. (His book was published in 1972, long after the period when Evans was active in Knossos (1900-1931). The difference in the two scholars' findings could not have been greater. Where Evans posited a splendid palace with unheard-of luxuries, Wunderlich saw a temple of the dead. These weren't modern bathrooms and dazzling royal chambers, he argued, they were dank, dark places where bodies were interred. The gorgeous, detailed urns were not intended to hold olive oil or grain, they were coffins of a sort - bodies were put in them. I quote: "The palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Hagia Triada, Mallia, and Kato Zakro, therefore, were not the gay residences of peaceful and artistic rulers, as the imaginations of Sir Arthur Evans and his successors have made them. In reality they were highly involved cult structures built for the veneration and burial of the dead" (pp. 158-59 of the English translation of Richard Winston). Wunderlich leans heavily on research that ostensibly shows a greater connection between Crete and Egypt than has routinely been allowed. For me, in any case, one of his most intriguing theories is that the people we now know as the Minoans (thanks to Evans arbitrarily marrying Crete to the myth of King Minos), were, in fact, known as the Keftiu. After all, we know that the notion of Minoans and Minoan culture is a sort of Disneyland-like catch-all. We have no idea what they called themselves, so we just follow Evans and tie them to the myth of Minos. Frankly, that in itself, is more than enough to make one want to question Evans' methods and decision-making processes. Wunderlich doesn't pull the "Keftiu" name out of nowhere - it is found on Egyptian murals from 3,500 years ago in reference to contemporary visitors from Crete (p. xiii of the Winston translation). Wunderlich had the misfortune of dying two years after his book was published, so he had precious little opportunity to answer his critics. One reviewer writing in The Geographical Journal three years after Wunderlich's death hammers him relentlessly for making things up, drawing incorrect conclusions, manipulating evidence and so on (as though much of Evans' conclusions aren't "artistic manipulations" themselves). The reviewer, Keith Branigan, concludes, "Enough has been said, I hope, to indicate why this book cannot be taken seriously. For the reader who is hoping to discover the secret of Crete for himself, one must recommend not Wunderlich but Evans, Pendlebury, Hutchinson, Hood, Renfrew or Warren." (The Geographical Journal , Nov., 1978, Vol. 144, No. 3, pp. 502-503.) Branigan may be right. I am not competent to pass a professional opinion. I am a historian, however (of literature and theater), and I know how important variants are in the telling of history. We need conflicting theories in order to turn flat sound into stereo or surround sound, or a flat picture into 3D. It is possible that Wunderlich was mistaken, but his book is a fascinating, stimulating read. We also know that Evans often gave us a Knossos birthed in his own fantasies, not always by way of rigorous scientific inquiry. If you're interested in Crete, Knossos and the Minoans, you have no choice but to study the work of Evans. But I would encourage you also to consider what H.G. Wunderlich had to say. If nothing else, his book is a real page-turner. Despite the blanket, not to say, arrogant, dismissals of it by folks like Keith Branigan, there is a lot in it that you will find has the ring of possibility.

All photos and text © copyright 2021 by John Freedman. If you wish to use either text or photos, I will almost surely grant permission as long as you do the courtesy of asking.