As well as watercolour reconstructions of some of the palace’s famous frescoes, highlights include beautiful pottery decorated with patterns of repeated rosettes, or strikingly detailed octopuses Linear B tablets and intriguing examples of yet-to-be deciphered Minoan hieroglyphs religious items jewellery and a drinking vessel perfectly replicating a triton shell in marble. You are initially met with relics of Evans’ excavations – notebooks, photographs, intricate plans of the hundreds of rooms that were uncovered, section drawings – and then turn a corner into a large room showcasing some of his discoveries, immersing you in Minoan culture. Today he is often overshadowed by Arthur Evans, but the Ashmolean sets out to redress the balance with an array of photographs, documents, and a towering pithos storage vessel highlighting Kalokairinos’ achievements.įrom this scene-setting space, visitors then move into a much brighter, airier room where, beneath soaring ceilings, sky-blue joins the palette of red and black, and painted scarlet columns give the feel of being inside the palace itself. (1870-1890) and Mycenae (1876), and he too made spectacular finds, uncovering the remains of what would become known as the Great Palace at Knossos – although local authorities put a hasty halt to his investigations, fearing that finds would be spirited away by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, under whose control the island still partly lay. Kalokairinos’ search had been inspired by Heinrich Schliemann’s discoveries at Troy Leaving behind mythical narratives to explore the material record, the next part of the exhibition concerns the advent of archaeological investigations at Knossos, particularly the site’s rediscovery in 1878 by a local businessman, the fittingly named Minos Kalokairinos. Image: © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, Heraklion Archaeological Museum Ephorate of Antiquities of Heraklion Legends in a material world This is a rhyton or drinking vessel dating to 1450-1375 BC. While excavations at Knossos are yet to yield evidence of a Minotaur, bull imagery proliferated across the site. In the display cases below, meanwhile, you see how Knossos’ Greek and Roman inhabitants proudly embraced their legendary heritage, minting coins with labyrinth designs how the famous maze was adopted as a medieval Christian symbol and a host of colourful historic maps reflecting early attempts to relocate the site. High up on the walls, snippets from Classical writers including Catullus, Virgil, and Diodorus Siculus encircle the space, adding to the sense of layer upon layer of shifting interpretations. Within this section of the exhibition, visitors also learn about how the myth evolved through time and different tellers. Demonstrating the myth’s longevity in the other direction, its neighbour is another maze-like motif that was created by Mark Wallinger in 2013 for display within the labyrinthine tunnels of the London Underground network. Within the same space, an even earlier fragment of painted plaster – once part of a floor within Knossos’ Great Palace – preserves a winding ‘labyrinth’ design 1,000 years older than any written form of the legend, indicating how long such imagery has been associated with the site. Close-by, a short animation silently summarises the best-known version of the Minotaur story, dating to the 1st century BC – but the tale has much earlier origins, as attested by a selection of decorative 6th-century BC vases displayed opposite. The sculpture had once adorned a fountain in Roman Athens, and was probably a copy of an earlier Greek bronze. Almost as soon as you pass through the gallery doors, you are confronted by the eponymous monster, carved from marble and no less menacing for having lost its horns and limbs long ago. The first portion of the displays, contained in an atmospherically lit red-and-black space, explores the myth of the Minotaur. In Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth and Reality, these illuminating bodies of evidence have now been reunited for the duration of the exhibition: of the more than 200 items on display, more than half are loans from Athens and Crete. At the time, Cretan law required the majority of Evans’ finds to remain in Greece, but the Ashmolean retained his excavation archive. The Oxford-based museum is a fitting home for an exhibition on this theme: Knossos’ most famous excavator, Arthur Evans, carried out his 1900-1905 works during his tenure as Keeper (essentially, Director) of the Ashmolean, and these investigations still dominate interpretations of the site today. Image: © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford Knossos on Crete is renowned as the legendary home of the labyrinth-dwelling Minotaur – a heritage that its later inhabitants clearly prized, as this coin with a maze motif from c.300-270 BC attests.
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