by John Freedman | Aug 30, 2020 | Blog
Zakros, the smallest of the four main Minoan palaces on Crete, is nestled just beneath the foothills of a fairly rugged mountain range and the fertile lowlands of a valley split by a small river that runs into the Libyan Sea. It is thought that there would have been a road leading directly from the palace and surrounding town to the waterfront, which was most likely the raison d’être of this settlement. Even today this location on the far eastern coast is quite remote, requiring a relatively long trip from any of Crete’s main cities. (I mentioned in my last post, written about the neighboring small village of Kato Zakros, that my wife Oksana and I were greeted at one of the local tavernas with the words, “Welcome to the end of the world!”) In the time of the Minoans, this would truly have been an isolated place. It probably came into being around 1900 B.C. as a center for trade with Egypt, Cyprus and the Middle East, including Palestine. The original palace, like all of the Minoan palaces, was destroyed in a major earthquake around 1600 B.C., after which it was rebuilt and stood until another earthquake destroyed it for good around 1450 B.C. The ruins lay ignored, at first, and then, later, unknown until the early 1900’s when British archaeologist David George Hogarth uncovered a dozen houses on the site. However, the true discovery of Zakros (pronounced ZAkros) would not come about until the 1960s when the Greek scholar Nikolaos Platon began a systematic dig of the environs. Only then, for the first time in approximately 3,500 years did human eyes encounter the riches that once had graced this land. Unlike the other palaces that were looted and plundered for building materials by those who survived the great quake of ca. 1450, the palace at Zakros appears to have been abandoned immediately and permanently. No later settlements were built from its ruins, or on top of it. Thus, many great treasures – texts on tablets, vessels, figurines, etc. – were still lying here waiting to be discovered when Platon began his excavations. The vast majority of these finds are now held in archaeological museums in the cities of Sitea and Heraklion. The survival of the thirteen tablets bearing texts in what is called Linear A Script, are of special interest and value. Nowhere had such a large number of Minoan texts ever been discovered, and the reason these survived until our time is the very reason that the palace did not. While the entire palace and surrounding town were burnt to the ground, the tablets were baked in the heat of the fire, preventing them from disintegrating over the ensuing millenia. Other surviving objects included: a rhyton made of rock crystal that was shattered into 300 pieces and reconstructed by archaeologists; six talents made from bronze originating in Cyprus; three undamaged elephant tusks that probably hailed from Syria; a cup of olives that, by some miracle, were preserved in a state so fresh they could have been picked this morning from a tree; a large number of cooking utensils; and a spectacular ritual amphora made of multicolored marble. Some of the walls still bear remnants of the elaborate decorations that once covered them. As it is relatively small – 8,000 square meters (86,000 square feet) in all – it is possible to see most everything Zakros has to offer in 60 to 90 minutes. This leaves plenty of time to swim in the sea, lunch at a taverna, and even take a nice, long nap before it is time to watch the sun go down… If you do Zakros in the summer, make sure each member of your party has a full bottle of water. And you’re best off wearing a hat. It can get very hot beneath the summer Cretan sun. I have drawn on several sources to retell this short version of the Zakros palace, primarily: 1) Minoan Crete: Between Myth and History by Litsa I. Hatzifoti (Editions M. Toubis, n.d.), 2) the Explore Crete website, and 3) the Minoan Crete website. All texts and photos © copyright 2020 by John Freedman. Should you wish to copy, repost or use any of the materials in this blog, please contact me for permission. Renewed © copyright 2021 by John Freedman.
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