Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete

Creating the Vision of Knossos

Nanno Marinatos

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781780768113
• eBook ISBN: 9780857738837
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion
• Index: History

Before Sir Arthur Evans, the principal object of Greek prehistoric archaeology was the reconstruction of history in relation to myth. European travellers to Greece viewed its picturesque ruins as the gateway to mythical times, while Heinrich Schliemann, at the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly uncovered at Troy and Mycenae the legendary cities of the Homeric epics. It was Evans who, in his controversial excavations at Knossos, steered Aegean archaeology away from Homer towards the broader Mediterranean world. Yet in so doing he is thought to have done his own inventing, recreating the Cretan Labyrinth via the Bronze Age myth of the Minotaur. Nanno Marinatos challenges the entrenched idea that Evans was nothing more than a flamboyant researcher who turned speculation into history. She argues that Evans was an excellent archaeologist, one who used scientific observation and classification. Evans's combination of anthropology, comparative religion and analysis of cultic artefacts enabled him to develop a bold new method which Sir James Frazer called 'mental anthropology'. It was this approach that led him to propose remarkable ideas about Minoan religion, theories that are now being vindicated as startling new evidence comes to light. Examining the frescoes from Akrotiri, on Santorini, that are gradually being restored, the author suggests that Evans's hypothesis of one unified goddess of nature is the best explanation of what they signify. Evans was in 1901 ahead of his time in viewing comparable Minoan scenes as a blend of ritual action and mythic imagination. Nanno Marinatos is a leading authority on Minoan religion. In this latest book she combines history, archaeology and myth to bold and original effect, offering a wholly new appraisal of Evans and the significance of his work. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete will be essential reading for all students of Minoan civilization, as well as an irresistible companion for travellers to Crete.

CHAPTER 1

TREE AND PILLAR CULT

Evans and E. B. Tylor

Before Evans excavated Knossos, the principal concern of Aegean prehistoric archaeology was the reconstruction of the proto-history of Greece, and the relationship of its mythical tradition to the story of Homer. In the eighteenth century, European travellers regarded the ruins of Greece as vestiges of this mythic-historical tradition. The French count Choiseul-Gouffier (1782), who toured the Greek islands and the Troad with a copy of Homer in his hand, constructed historical maps matching epic tradition with physical ruins, and projecting Greek history into prehistory, without second thoughts.¹ The word ‘Mycenaean’ did not exist yet, and scholars called the prehistoric peoples of Greece Pelasgians, a designation derived from Hecateus and Herodotus.² At the same time, the German scholar Karl Hoeck (1794–1877) had the clever idea to separate the cultural horizon of Crete from that of the mainland. He conceived of the people of the island as non-Greeks and therefore baptized the period of the Cretan Bronze Age ‘Minoan’.³

Such was the state of affairs when Heinrich Schliemann made his spectacular discoveries at Troy and Mycenae in the nineteenth century, allegedly uncovering the cities of the Homeric epics. The ruins of Mycenae had been there, of course, visible through the centuries, but Schliemann's rich finds reified the myth. And when he announced his discoveries to the world, it seemed indeed to be the case that the mytho-historical method of previous scholarship had been verified.⁴ The religion of the period was regarded as an early version of the Homeric belief system. When Schliemann found clay figurines in his excavations, he did not hesitate to identify them as early versions of Aphrodite and Hera, and when he found double axes, he identified them as the weapon of Zeus of Labranda (labrys).⁵

Evans's entry into the scene of prehistoric archaeology marks a real revolution, as he attempted to change the method of evaluating evidence almost immediately. I believe (although many would not agree with this assessment) that he liberated prehistoric Cretan archaeology from the tyranny of Greek myth.⁶ However, Evans was never polemical against Schliemann or any other of his contemporaries; he steered scholarship away from Homer, gently directing it to the broader Mediterranean world.

New grounds were broken with ‘Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult and its Mediterranean Relations,’ an extensive article of approximately 100 pages published in 1901. Note that the term ‘Greek’ is conspicuously absent from the title, although Evans did not combat orthodoxy as represented by Schliemann and others (he actually deeply admired Schliemann). Evans always made the concession that some elements of Greek religion were indeed foreshadowed by the religion of Bronze Age Crete, and not uncommonly he utilized Greek myth to entice his public.⁷ He knew how to write a good story and concoct clever puns: ‘Amidst the labyrinth of conjecture we have here an Ariadne to supply the clue.’⁸ The break with the previous tradition is nevertheless obvious.

But the innovations are remarkable. They consist first in the broadening of the horizons of Bronze Age religion by the inclusion of Egypt and the Near East. Second and more importantly, he adopts a position against the simplistic evolutionist idea that progress is steady and inevitable over time and that later cultures are always more advanced than earlier ones (this trend had been established in the field of Classics since the eighteenth century).⁹ Contrary to the opinion of some contemporary scholars,¹⁰ Evans had an unusual and sophisticated notion of historical progress and conceded the possibility of regression. Much of this was owed to Charles Darwin and his entourage, about which more will be said later on. Suffice it to mention here that in Descent of Man, Darwin argued that cultures were capable of both intellectual and moral regression and that backward steps in civilization were demonstrable in history. ‘We must remember that progress is no invariable rule,’ he said, because who had ever surpassed the Greeks?¹¹ To his friend, the geologist Charles Lyell, Darwin wrote that natural selection ‘implies no necessary tendency to progression.’¹²

Following this line of reasoning, Evans did not find it problematic to suggest that the culture of Knossos, which was earlier by a thousand years than that of Athens, was as advanced as the latter, perhaps even more so.

To truly appreciate his originality and reaction against linear evolutionism, we must take a brief look at the work of two of his classicist colleagues at Cambridge, Gilbert Murray and Jane Harrison. Murray assigned all prehistoric religions to the ‘Age of Ignorance’,¹³ and so did Jane Harrison. In her third edition of Themis (1927), she describes herself as an old evolutionist, a believer that older religions were characterized by primeval rituals and yearly demons.¹⁴ Evans, however, found that Minoan religion did not belong to the age of ignorance, because it included anthropomorphic gods and the latter were represented in a highly sophisticated manner. These conclusions were simply ignored by the Cambridge school. A classical scholar once said, apparently in the presence of Evans, that he (i.e. the scholar) ‘cared more for the products of the full maturity of the Greek spirit than for its immature struggles’. Evans reacted in anger.¹⁵ He refused to accept that Crete had engaged in immature struggles and insisted that it had reached full maturity, if not complete perfection. Its peoples had scripts, he said, and he did not consider it unlikely that they had produced poetry and literature. He deduced this from the visual material that bespoke narratives reminiscent of the literary accomplishments of Homer. Of course, no classical scholar was willing to accept such a bold assessment, but Evans insisted to the end of his life that the Crete of that age afforded mankind a glimpse into a brilliant moment ‘in the history of European civilization.’¹⁶ He tried a different argument as well, utterly Darwinian in its tone. Greek culture did not come out of nothing, he said, but it must have had precedent in the Mediterranean, just like the organs of evolved animals had precedents in lower organisms. Thinking most likely of Darwin's revolution he wrote:

These are the days of origins and what is true of the highest forms of animal life and functional activities is equally true of the vital principles that inspired the mature civilization of Greece.¹⁷

As he got older, Evans became more outspoken about the superiority of Minoan religion and aggressively defended its rare brilliance.¹⁸ But to return to 1901, his most important innovation was the introduction of a new mental toolkit for the study of Minoan religion, derived principally from the work of the anthropologist E. B. Tylor and the Darwinist group.

Arthur Evans's father, Sir John Evans, had played no small role in the formation of a social and intellectual network that concerned itself mostly with the early origins of man, and with man's mental evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. John Evans was affectionately known among his friends at the Royal and Geological Societies as ‘flint-Evans’ because of his important studies on stone tools in prehistoric Britain. This is how he caught the attention of Darwin, with whom he exchanged letters.¹⁹ John Evans was also a friend of the prehistoric specialist John Lubbock, a friend of Darwin's; the group thus became further consolidated through social interactions and ideas. Another member of the Darwin entourage was E. B. Tylor, the most eminent anthropologist in Britain after the publication of his two-volume work Primitive Culture (1871).²⁰ Concerning this book, Darwin wrote to his friend Wallace: ‘By the way have you read Tyler [sic] & Lecky? Both these books have interested me much.’²¹ Darwin often cites Tylor in support of his own ideas about morality and religion.²² On his side, Tylor regarded Darwin as one of the most influential figures in the development of modern thought.²³

The ideas of Darwin and Tylor reflect similar conceptions about civilization, especially as concerned man's intellectual and moral capacities. Both stressed the unity of early mankind, and the capacity of all peoples to possess intellect, no matter how primitive. They did not doubt that the cultivation of intelligence and moral attitudes resulted in progress and so did not take progress for granted. The potential was there, but it did not occur automatically – it was earned by hard labour. In history, regressions did occur.

The above is what Evans inherited from his father's generation. The special influence of Tylor cannot be doubted as the latter was a personal friend of Evans the elder, often travelling with him to explore dolmens, and discover prehistoric stone tools.²⁴ Tylor was on his part indebted to Arthur's uncle, the anthropologist Sebastian Evans, and thus was connected by multiple ties to the Evans family. Tylor naturally became a mentor figure to young Arthur, and when the latter became famous through his excavations at Knossos, and his portrait was presented to the Chancellor of Oxford University, Tylor was among the distinguished men who attended the ceremony.²⁵

What did Evans learn from Tylor and his kit of ‘mental anthropology’, as Tylor himself named his work?²⁶ One issue, perhaps the most important one, concerned the essence of civilization itself, which Tylor saw as a combination of moral and aesthetic attitudes. Was mankind from its inception capable of sympathy with other humans and even animals? The answer was affirmative. Sympathy or empathy was the ability to enter the mind of another being and share in their suffering; this constituted the basis of moral behaviour. Such a thesis had been proposed by Darwin, and there is merit to it, since it is said that criminals often lack empathy.²⁷

As for religion, it exerted a benign influence on man's imagination, provided that reason was involved.²⁸ Tylor considered early man the mother and father of modern man, but also stressed that ethics could be improved by cultivation of customs, education, social practices, and self-discipline: this is what constituted high civilization.

Evans's view of civilization is essentially the same as Darwin's and Tylor's. It consisted in the cultivation of aesthetics on the one hand, and instinctive empathy with other live beings, even animals, on the other (this is why he considered the involvement of Minoans with nature so important). Unlike his contemporary classicists who believed that ‘early’ goes together with ‘primitive’, Evans understood the complexity of human history as a series of peaks and regressions. Minoan culture was a peak (in terms of its aesthetic and humanistic achievement), after which came a relative regression, until there was another peak with the Greeks and Romans.

He also learned from Darwin and Tylor that the study of religion is enhanced by use of comparisons and analogies across time and space, and that mankind had an essential unity. This conclusion followed from Darwin's premise that all mankind had a single origin in their remote ancestry and, as already mentioned above, that even primeval man had mental faculties similar to those of the present day.²⁹

A few words must now be said about the theory of animism, which is the main theme of Tylor's work. Man was always a keen observer of nature and noted differences between live entities, such as plants and animals, and lifeless ones, such as stones. Animals and plants grew but also decayed; by contrast, matter remained static and immutable. Primitive man attributed the difference to the presence, or absence, of soul (anima). What was life except the insertion of soul into inanimate matter? Primitive man thus found a logical theory to explain life and Tylor called this phenomenon ‘animism’. The theory had the merit of also explaining why dream-spirits entered the body of human beings at night and possessed them during sleep.³⁰ Even Darwin was impressed by this explanation of Tylor and adopted it to interpret phenomena of religious experience:

It is also probable, as Mr. Tylo...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Tree and Pillar Cult
• 2. Mourning Kybele: Arthur Evans and James Frazer
• 3. The Whirligig of Time: The Narrative of the Palace of Minos
• 4. Monotheism
• 5. The Ring of Nestor
• 6. The Ring of Minos
• 7. The Final Years: Evans’s Restorations and his Vision of Knossos
• 8. Sir Arthur Evans and Spyridon Marinatos
• 9. The Last Visit of Evans to Crete
• 10. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum: The War and the Death of Evans
• Appendix 1 Letters between Sir Arthur Evans and Spyridon Marinatos
• Appendix 2 Letters between Edith Eccles and Spyridon Marinatos
• Appendix 3 The Relationship of John Pendlebury and Spyridon Marinatos
• Appendix 4 Letter of Spyridon Marinatos to Humfry Payne
• Appendix 5 Letters of Priest Nikolaos Pollakes to Spyridon Marinatos and his wife Maria Evangelidou
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover