Tonight, the Greeks before the Greeks: the people of the palaces, a thousand years before Homer.
Ancient Greece · Part 1 · Palaces and heroes · B1
Minoans and Mycenaeans: The Palaces of Bronze Age Greece
Part 1 of Ancient Greece: long before Athens and Sparta, the first civilisations of Greece built great palaces on Crete and the mainland. They painted bulls and dolphins, kept accounts on clay, and were remembered by later Greeks only as heroes in Homer. Used to and would for past habits, and there used to be, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
SOPHIA
DEMETRIA
King Minos and the Labyrinth? Agamemnon and Mycenae?
SOPHIA
The names are from myths. But the palaces were real, and some of them are still under the ground, waiting.
MARCOS
Waiting for what?
SOPHIA
For people with spades. Things to come.
Read: palaces on Crete and the mainland
Before you read
Crete and mainland Greece, about 2000–1100 BCE
On the island of Crete, from about 2000 BCE, people built great palaces at Knossos, Phaistos and Malia, with storerooms, workshops, painted walls and drains. Modern scholars call them Minoans, after King Minos of the Greek myths; we do not know what they called themselves. They wrote in a script called Linear A, which nobody can read.
On the mainland, from about 1600 BCE, warrior kings built fortified palaces at Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns and Thebes. These Mycenaeans took over Crete around 1450 BCE. They wrote an early form of Greek in a script called Linear B, mostly for palace accounts.
Around 1200 BCE, in the Bronze Age collapse, the Mycenaean palaces were destroyed and writing was forgotten in Greece. Later Greeks remembered this world only through stories: Minos and the Labyrinth, Agamemnon and the Trojan War.
Myths remember palaces that people forgot.
PHILO
Read the story. What did the Minoans paint? What happened on Thera? What do the Linear B tablets record?
SOPHIA
Then answer Section A.
The story
Retold for this lesson from the excavations of Crete and mainland Greece.
At Knossos there used to be a palace so large and complicated that later Greeks may have imagined it as the Labyrinth. Its walls were painted with dolphins, lilies, processions and young people leaping over the backs of charging bulls. Every year, perhaps, the palace would hold festivals with these dangerous games. Its storerooms used to hold huge jars of olive oil, wine and grain, and its scribes would record everything on small clay tablets.
About 3,600 years ago, the volcano on the island of Thera, north of Crete, exploded in one of the greatest eruptions in human history. The town of Akrotiri was buried under ash, with its painted houses still standing, like a Bronze Age Pompeii; its people seem to have escaped in time. Some people later connected the disaster with Plato’s story of Atlantis, but there is no real evidence for that.
On the mainland, the kings of Mycenae used to bury their dead with gold masks, swords and cups. At Pylos, when the palace burned around 1200 BCE, the fire baked hundreds of clay tablets hard. They are lists: sheep and goats, bronze and perfumed oil, offerings to gods called Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and Dionysus, and groups of women workers, many of them slaves, some from towns across the sea.
Did the Trojan War really happen? At Troy, in north-western Anatolia, there was a real city, destroyed more than once around this time. But whether a Greek army ever besieged it to bring back a queen is something nobody can prove.
Used to for past habits and states
MARCOS
The Minoans used to paint dolphins on their walls. The storerooms used to hold huge jars of oil. People didn’t use to write in Greek on Crete. Did they really use to leap over bulls?
SOPHIA
used to + infinitive for past habits and past states that are no longer true. Negative: didn’t use to. Question: Did … use to…?
Would for past habits
DEMETRIA
Every year the palace would hold a festival. The scribes would record every jar. The kings would bury their dead with gold.
SOPHIA
would + infinitive also describes repeated past actions, often in stories. But not states: say the palace used to be large, not the palace would be large.
There used to be
PHILO
There used to be a palace at Knossos. There used to be paintings on every wall. There didn’t use to be walls around the Minoan palaces.
SOPHIA
there used to be = something existed in the past but does not now. Words: palace, fresco, storeroom, tablet, script, eruption, ash, excavation.
Sophia’s evidence check
| Claim | Label | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Great palaces stood on Crete from about 2000 BCE. | Consensus | Excavations at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and other sites. |
| Linear B is an early form of Greek. | Consensus | It was deciphered in 1952. |
| The Thera eruption happened around 1600 BCE. | Debated | Radiocarbon and archaeology give dates a century or so apart. |
| Thera was Plato’s Atlantis. | Consensus: no evidence | Atlantis is a story Plato told to make a point. |
| The gold mask from Mycenae belonged to Agamemnon. | Consensus: no | It is centuries older than any possible Agamemnon. |
| The Trojan War happened. | Debated | Troy was real and was destroyed; the war of the poems cannot be proved. |
Sophia’s comparison: the Keftiu in Egypt
SOPHIA
The Egyptians knew the Minoans. In the tomb of a great official of Thutmose III, at Thebes, men from “Keftiu” are painted bringing gifts: tall cups, jars and ingots, wearing Cretan kilts and long hair. And in the Nile Delta, at Avaris, archaeologists will find Egyptian walls painted in the Minoan style, with bulls and bull-leapers.
MARCOS
So Cretan painters worked in Egypt?
SOPHIA
It seems so. The Bronze Age world was connected: Egypt, Crete, Mycenae, Ugarit and the Hittites traded, married and copied each other’s art.
PHILO
And the Greeks of today think their history began with Homer. It seems it began much earlier, and much closer to Egypt.
Sophia’s summary
| Words and forms | Use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| used to + infinitive | past habits and states | The Minoans used to paint dolphins. |
| didn’t use to / did … use to | negatives and questions | Did they use to leap over bulls? |
| would + infinitive | repeated past actions | The scribes would record every jar. |
| there used to be | something that existed then | There used to be a palace at Knossos. |
| palace, fresco, tablet, script | archaeology | The fire baked the tablets hard. |
| eruption, ash, buried | disaster | The town was buried under ash. |
Practice
Read the story for Section A, then do the rest. Press “Check my answers” at the end. You can try again as many times as you like.
A · The story
Read the story and choose the best answer.
1. Why do we call the people of Crete “Minoans”?
2. What did the Minoans paint on their walls?
3. Which script can nobody read?
4. What happened at Akrotiri?
5. What do the Pylos tablets record?
6. Who painted the Keftiu?
B · Grammar and vocabulary
Write the missing word or words.
7. The Minoans to paint dolphins on their walls. (use)
8. Did they really to leap over bulls?
9. Every year the palace hold a festival.
10. There used to a palace at Knossos.
11. People didn’t to write in Greek on Crete.
12. The town was under ash. (bury)
C · Right or wrong?
Is the sentence correct English?
13. “The Minoans use to paint dolphins.”
14. “There used to be a palace at Knossos.”
15. “The palace would be very large.”
16. “Did they use to keep oil in jars?”
Talk and write
Discussion and writing
Then and now. Talk about your town or your family: what used to be there, what people used to do, and what they would do every year.
Discuss. 1. Why do myths remember places that people forgot? 2. Why might the Minoan palaces have no walls? 3. Is it fair to name a people after a king from a myth?
Write (100–130 words). A day at Knossos. Describe life in the palace, using used to, would and there used to be.