Cnossus Sentence Examples

Candia, the former capital and the see of the archbishop of Crete (pop. in 1900, 22,501), is officially styled Herakleion; it is surrounded by remarkable Venetian fortifications and possesses a museum with a valuable collection of objects found at Cnossus, Phaestus, the Idaean cave and elsewhere.

By the close of this period a manufactory of fine faience was attached to the palace of Cnossus.

The succeeding Late Minoan period, best illustrated by the later palace at Cnossus and that at Hagia Triada, corresponds in Egypt with the Hyksos period and the earlier part of the New Empire.

Late Minoan art in its finest aspect is best illustrated by the animated ivory figures, wall paintings, and gesso duro reliefs at Cnossus, by the painted stucco designs at Hagia Triada, and the steatite vases found on the same site with zones in reliefs exhibiting life-like scenes of warriors, toreadors, gladiators, wrestlers and pugilists, and of a festal throng perhaps representing a kind of " harvest home."

Of the more conventional side of Late Minoan life a graphic illustration is supplied by the remains of miniature wall paintings found in the palace of Cnossus, showing groups of court ladies in curiously modern costumes, seated on the terraces and balustrades of a sanctuary.

The earlier class (A) is already found in the temple repositories of Cnossus belonging to the age immediately preceding the great remodelling of the Earlier picto= graphic script.

The remains of several shrines within the building, and the religious element perceptible in the frescoes, show that a considerable part of the Palace of Cnossus was devoted to purposes of cult.

Shrines of the Double Axes have been found in the palace of Cnossus itself, at Hagia Triada, and in a small palace at Gournia, and many specimens of the sacred emblem occurred in the Cave Sanctuary of Dicte, the mythical birthplace of the Cretan Zeus.

The discovery that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe and its associated divinities has now supplied a striking and it may well be thought an overwhelming confirmation of this view.

It appears certain from the associations in which they are found at Cnossus, that these Minoan bull sports formed part of a religious ceremony.

It is interesting, as bringing out the personal element in the traditional royal seat, that an inscribed sealing belonging to the earliest period of the later palace of Cnossus bears on it the impression of two official signets with portrait heads of a man and of a boy, recalling the " associations " on the coinage of imperial Rome.

The powerful fleet and maritime empire which Minos was said to have established will no doubt receive fuller illustration when the sea-town of Cnossus comes to be explored.

The contents of the royal tombs, on the other hand, reveal a wholesale correspondence with the fabrics of the first, and, to a less degree, the second Late Minoan age, as illustrated by the relics belonging to the Middle Period of the later palace at Cnossus and by those of the royal villa at Hagia Triada.

The ceiling of that of Orchomenos, and the painted vases and gold cups from the Vaphio tomb by Sparta, with their marvellous reliefs showing scenes of bull-hunting, represent the late palace style at Cnossus in its final development.

His name is preserved in the Sicilian Minoa, and his tomb was pointed out in the neighbourhood of Agrigentum, with a shrine above dedicated to his native Aphrodite, the lady of the dove; and in this connexion it must be observed that the cult of Eryx perpetuates to much later times the characteristic features of the worship of the Cretan Nature goddess, as now revealed to us in the palace of Cnossus and elsewhere.

Shortly before this date the palaces both of Cnossus and Phaestus had undergone a great destruction, and though during the ensuing period both these royal residences were partially reoccupied it was for the most part at any rate by poorer denizens, and their great days as palaces were over for ever.

The evidence of a partial restoration of the domestic quarter of the palace of Cnossus tends to show a certain measure of dynastic continuity.

There is evidence, moreover, that the script and with it the indigenous language did not die out during this period, and that therefore the days of Hellenic settlement at Cnossus were not yet.

The palace of Cnossus is on the hill of Kephala about 4 m.

Pernier have brought to light another Minoan palace, much resembling on a somewhat smaller scale that of Cnossus.

The Phaestian palace belongs to two distinct periods, and the earlier or " Middle Minoan " part is better preserved than at Cnossus.

The west court and entrance belonging to the earlier building show many analogies with those of Cnossus, and the court was commanded to the north by tiers of stone benches like those of the " theatral area " at Cnossus on a larger scale.

North of the central court is a domestic quarter presenting analogies with that of Cnossus, but throughout the later building there was a great dearth of the frescoes and other remains such as invest the Cnossian palace with so much interest.

In its structure and general arrangements it bears a general resemblance to the palace of Phaestus and Cnossus on a smaller scale.

In contrast to the palace of Phaestus, the contents of the royal villa proved exceptionally rich, and derive a special interest from the fact that the catastrophe which overwhelmed the building belongs to a somewhat earlier part of the Late Minoan age than that which overwhelmed Cnossus and Phaestus.

The buildings here show a stratification analogous to that of the palace of Cnossus.

At Cnossus, save some blocks of the amphitheatre, the Roman monuments visible in Venetian times have almost wholly disappeared.

According to the received tradition, Minos was a king of Cnossus in Crete; he was a son of Zeus, and enjoyed through life the privilege of habitual intercourse with his divine father.

Among the most important of these were - Lyttus or Lyctus, in the interior, south-east of Cnossus; Rhaucus, between Cnossus and Gortyna; Phaestus, in the plain of Messara, between Gortyna and the sea; Polyrrhenia, near the north-west angle of the island; Aptera, a few miles inland from the Bay of Suda; Eleutherna and Axus, on the northern slopes of Mount Ida; and Lappa, between the White Mountains and the sea.

The island first attracted the notice of archaeologists by the remarkable archaic Greek bronzes found in a cave on Mount Ida in 1885, as well as by epigraphic monuments such as the famous law of Gortyna; but the first undoubted Aegean remains reported from it were a few objects extracted from Cnossus by Minos Kalokhairinos of Candia in 1878.

The great number of tribute-tallies found at Cnossus perhaps indicates that the centre of power was always there.

Theatral structures found at Cnossus and Phaestus, within the precincts of the palaces, were perhaps used for shows or for sittings of a royal assize, rather than for popular assemblies.

Thanks to the exploration of Cnossus, we now know that Aegean civilization had its roots in a primitive Neolithic period, of uncertain but very long duration, represented by a stratum which (on that site in particular) is in places nearly 20 ft.

Thereafter, by exact observation of stratification, eight more periods have been distinguished by the explorer of Cnossus, each marked by some important development in the universal and necessary products of the potter's art, the least destructible and therefore most generally used archaeological criterion.

The earliest palace at Cnossus was built probably in Period II.

Passing by certain fragments of stone vessels, found at Cnossus, and coincident with forms characteristic of the IVth Pharaonic Dynasty, we reach another fairly certain date in the synchronism of remains belonging to the XIIth Dynasty (c. 2500 B.C. according to Petrie, but later according to the Berlin School) with products of Minoan Period II.

To this wave were owed in all probability the Nilotic scenes depicted on the Mycenae daggers, on frescoes of Hagia Triada and Cnossus, on pottery of Zakro, on the shell-relief of Phaestus, &c.; and also many forms and fabrics, e.g.

The absence of fortifications both at Cnossus and Phaestus suggest that at this time Crete was internally peaceful and externally secure.

The golden treasure of the Mycenae graves, these critics urge, is not more splendid than would have been found at Cnossus had royal burials been spared by plunderers, or been happened upon intact by modern explorers.

I.-Lion-Guarded Goddess And Shrine, On A Clay Sealing From Cnossus.

The palace at Cnossus was once more destroyed, and never rebuilt or re-inhabited.

Gortyna was, next to Cnossus, the largest and most powerful city of Crete.

He lived at Cnossus for periods of nine years, at the end of which he retired into a sacred cave, where he received instruction from Zeus in the legislation which he gave to the island.

There is no doubt that there is a considerable historical element in the legend; recent discoveries in Crete (q.v.) prove the existence of a civilization such as the legends imply, and render it probable that not only Athens, but Mycenae itself, was once subject to the kings of Cnossus, of whom Minos was greatest.

Both subjects and style show close analogy to the paintings in the palace at Cnossus in Crete.

Cnossus was also assigned as the site of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was confined.

When the rest of Crete fell under the Roman dominion, Cnossus shared the same fate, and became a Roman colony.

Aenesidemus, the sceptic philosopher, and Chersiphron, the architect of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, were natives of Cnossus.

As the excavations at Cnossus are discussed at length in the article Crete, it must suffice here briefly to enumerate the more important.

The extraordinary importance of Khyan was further shown by the discovery of his name on a jar-lid at Cnossus in Crete.

Khyan's monuments, inconspicuous as they are, actually extend over a wider area - from Bagdad to Cnossus - than those of any other Egyptian king.

They were of short stature, with dark hair and eyes, and generally dolichocephalic. Their chief centres were at Cnossus (Crete), in Argolis, Laconia and Attica, in each being ruled by ancient lines of kings.

As to its chronological relation to the Cretan sites - Cnossus, Phaestus, &c., and the "Minoan" civilization as determined by Dr A.Evans, see the discussion under Crete.

Khian, the powerful but obscure Hyksos king of Egypt, whose prenomen might be pronounced Sweserenre, is perhaps a possible prototype, for objects inscribed with his name have been found from Bagdad to Cnossus.

By the older writers it was placed near Cnossus, and is represented on coins of that city, but nothing corresponding to it has been found during the course of the recent excavations, unless the royal palace was meant.

Frazer both explain Pasiphae's monstrous union as a sacred ceremony (iepos yap,os), at which the queen of Cnossus was wedded to a bull-formed god, just as the wife of the iip X wv lwnXein in Athens was wedded to Dionysus.

The earlier and later palaces at Cnossus and Phaestus, and the interrupted phases of each, seem to point to a succession of dynasties, to which, as to its civilization as a whole, it is certainly convenient to apply the name " Minoan."

Elsewhere at Cnossus, in the smaller palace to the west, the royal villa and the town houses, we find the evidence of a similar catastrophe followed by an imperfect recovery, and the phenomenon meets us again at Palaikastro and other early settlements in the east of Crete.

About a kilometre distant from the palace of Phaestus near the village of Kalyvia a Late Minoan cemetery was brought to light in 1901, belonging to the same period as that of Cnossus (Savignoni, Necropoli di Phaestos, 1905).

The great palaces now excavated at Cnossus and Phaestus, as well as the royal villa of Hagia Triada, exhibit the successive phases of a brilliant primitive civilization which had already attained mature development by the date of the XIIth Egyptian dynasty.

In these domestic contests the three cities that generally took the lead, and claimed to exercise a kind of hegemony or supremacy over the whole island, were Cnossus, Gortyna and Cydonia.

The richest grave of all was explored at Vaphio in Laconia in 1889, and yielded, besides many gems and miscellaneous goldsmiths' work, two golden goblets chased with scenes of bull-hunting, and certain broken vases painted in a large bold style which remained an enigma till the excavation of Cnossus.

In later periods at Cnossus accumulation seems to have proceeded at a rate of, roughly, 3 ft.

It has also participated in the exploration of Cnossus and other important sites in Crete.