MINOAN MUSINGS .....

It's Spaghetti Night tonight. Just when we thought we were the only Brits in our village, suddenly we find that there are quite a number of us – some we know and some we don't know – but the village we visited five years ago which was quiet, sleepy and where we were greeted so kindly by several elderly Cretan residents as complete strangers from a foreign land, has changed quite a lot. All of a sudden, there is a bit of a buzz with lots of cars and trucks coming and going in the square, the little primary school seems busier, local craftsmen and artisans have work to do. Little by little, we have made a small social nub of ex-Pats and have started arranging to coordinate Greek classes and cheerful bring-along suppers, so that we can keep in touch with each other and find somewhere else to go when the tavernas are shut for the winter, the weather hits us with full force and we are holed up indoors.

Autumn is creeping in slowly. We have just started to add one extra layer on the beds and close the windows in the evenings and are putting off the evil moment when we have to haul out the boxes holding all the long sleeves and warm trousers which will be needed for the winter. According to our local Crete weather forecast, we will have rain on Sunday! Fortunately we have had our winter wood load delivered and have arranged some weatherproofing over it to keep it reasonably dry. Each new morning brings in a crop of dried up leaves on the upstairs terrace and the front porch and K is looking out his pruning knife so that we can pollard the shady tree at the front of the house, which is now beginning to look more and more threadbare.

I am still fired up by the wonderful course I attended in Knossos last week and abstract efforts at my art class on Tuesday reflected all the Minoan designs we had been absorbing over the three days we were there. Hosted by the British School of Athens we arrived at a building called The Taverna (which had confused me when I read the programme as we seemed to be gathering for an awful lot of eating) but which turned out to be a former wayside inn and developed and used by the British School as a base for Archaeology students. The accommodation was wonderfully clean and well equipped – for archaeology students – but a bit turn of the century in the whole gamut of mod cons! However, we all took a huge bunch of keys, since there were numerous doors to negotiate, and settled into our rooms, quite expecting an H Rider Haggard hero to appear and launch us into an episode of King Solomon's mines. The Taverna had been used by Sir Arthur Evans and his builders while his house, the Villa Ariadne, was being built in 1906. Arthur Evans was the British fellow who organised the original dig to uncover the large Palace at Knossos, the legendary home of King Minos and hence the term for the people of this time - the Minoans.  We looked around at the enormously tall pine and cedar trees which had all obviously been planted at this time. They provide wonderful shade for the gardens now and there were plenty of comfy cane chairs on the verandahs to sit and chat between outings and talks.

Villa Ariadne

We went on about eight site visits in and around Knossos in the 3 days. Some palaces, some villas, and a cemetery or two. We needed help to marry up the plans in our hand with what was on the ground and to use our imagination to wonder at the sophistication of people who lived at least/approx 1500 years BCE. We visualised inside and outside staircases, light wells, and kept hearing odd phrases such as the site of a lustral basin and attention to peak sanctuaries. (For a good 15 minutes, my bad hearing was boggling like a dimwit at the idea of pig sanctuaries … !!! [We live and we learn and I checked that a lustral basin = sunken room entered down a short flight of steps found in Minoan palaces so described by Sir Arthur Evans].

On a trip to Heraklion central by bus, we visited the Archaeological Museum – a must – and saw the craftsmanship of the early, middle and late Minoans plus a few later Ancient Hellenic and Roman artifacts. The ceramics were stunning in fantastic shapes and forms with beautiful decoration which seemed so contemporary to my eyes. 

my effort!

Roy and Jan's effort!

We had two afternoon sessions of sorting discarded pottery shards, drawing some of the pieces and a
challenge of reconstructing pots from replicas obtained for this purpose. We had some spectacular
successes but my effort looked terrible. The course ended with a visit to a potter who had made
a speciality of producing copies of the Minoan designs, but had also researched the evolution of
kilns, potters’ wheels, firing techniques and different decorations available to these Bronze Age
master craftsmen.

It took a few days to recover from all the early starts, scrambling to reach awkward sites and general exertion, but we had all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Next stop Phaistos, next April!