Crete and Thera

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Crete and Thera

• CLA 210 Ross Scaife

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Early in the Late Bronze Age, the volcano at the
center of the island of Santorini (or Thera)
erupted on a scale which may have had no parallel
among eruptions over the past four or five
millennia by volcanoes located in or near densely
populated areas of the globe. - Rutter
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Chronological disputes

• Traditional dating of eruption c. 1500 BCE
• More recent dating to c. 1623 BCE (ice core
  sampling and dendrochronology)

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Excavations

• Spyridon Marinatos, from 1967, followed by his
  daughter Nanno Marinatos, and Christos Doumas
• The Greek Pompeii
• Suggested reading (Art Library)
• C. Doumas, The Wall Paintings of Thera
• S. Immerwahr, Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age

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Excavations at Thera
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Excavations at Thera
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The Plan
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The Plan Key Locations

• Springtime Room (in Sector Delta)
• Room of the Boxing Boys and Antelopes (in Sector
  B)
• Frescoes from the West House
• Fishermen
• Nilotic landscape (east wall, miniature)
• Ship frescoes (south north walls, mininatures)
• Xeste 3

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Springtime RoomSector Delta, Room 2
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Sector Beta, Room 1
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Antelopes
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Boxingboys (Thera)
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Compare boxer rhyton from Hagia Triada
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West House (reconstruction)
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Summary
The West House is a relatively small, but
well-organized building. In the ground floor
there are storerooms, workshops, a kitchen and a
mill-installation. The first floor is occupied by
a spacious chamber used for weaving activities, a
room for the storage mainly of clay vessels, a
lavatory and two rooms, the one next to the
other, embellished with magnificent murals. The
first was decorated with the two frescoes of the
Fishermen, the fresco of the Young Priestess and
the famous Flotilla miniature frieze. (Greek
Ministry of Culture) West house, Room 5 Two
life-sized nude fishermen in narrow panels below
a frieze of variable width on the upper wall
showing - fleet moves between two towns (south
wall 40 cms. high)- river landscape (east wall
20 cms. high)- religious ceremony on a hill and
warriors disembark from ships in two seemingly
distinct scenes (north wall 40 cms. high). -
The frieze ran along the west wall as well, but
little of this portion of it has survived.
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Offering Table (West House)
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Chieftains Cup from Hagia Triadha
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Chieftains Cup (reverse)
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East Frieze (West House)
Nilotic scene
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East Frieze (West House)
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East Frieze (West House)
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South Frieze (West House)
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South Frieze (West House)
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South Frieze (West House)
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A computer-generated reconstruction of what a
Minoan ship might have looked like 3,500 years
ago was presented at the War Museum in Athens
yesterday by a group of naval historians and
shipbuilding experts who hope to sail a seaworthy
version from Crete to Piraeus in the summer of
2004. In what promises to be a challenging
exercise in experimental archaeology,
shipbuilders in Hania, western Crete, will
assemble the 24-oared wooden galley using the
simple copper tools the Minoans had at their
disposal. Kathimerini, Jan 21, 2002
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South Frieze (West House)
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South Frieze (West House)
Detail of large town
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North Frieze (West House)
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North Frieze (West House)
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North Frieze (West House)
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North Frieze (West House)
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Xeste 3
Xeste 3 Large edifice, at least two-storeys
high, with fourteen rooms on each floor. Some
rooms were connected by multiple doors and
decorated with magnificent wall-paintings. In one
of them there was a "Lustral basin", considered a
sacred area. The most interesting of the frescoes
are the ones of the Altar and of the Saffron
Gatherers. The former depicts three women in a
field with bloomed crocuses and an altar, and the
latter, female figures engaged in collecting
crocuses which they offer to a seated goddess,
flanked by a blue monkey and a griffin. Judging
from the architectural peculiarities of the
building and the themes of the frescoes, one may
conclude that Xeste 3 was used for the
performance of some kind of ritual.
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Xeste 3, Room 3
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Xeste 3, Room 3
The frescoes from this area of the building
decorated the walls of both the ground floor and
an upper story. On the ground floor, the
northeastern part of the room was occupied by a
sunken "lustral basin" of Minoan type. At the
level of the upper story, young women on the
north and east walls gather crocuses in a rocky
landscape and bring them from both sides to a
central "goddess" seated on a platform supported
by altars on the north wall. Immediately flanking
the "goddess to left and right and in postures
of worship/adoration are a monkey and a griffin
respectively. On the north wall at the ground
floor level, three more girls appear as follows
at the left, a girl walking right and holding out
a necklace in one hand in the center, a seated
girl facing right and clutching her forehead in
pain because she has hurt her foot, which is
bleeding and at the right, a girl walking left
but facing right toward the door or altar on the
east wall. The east wall is entirely occupied by
what appears to be an ashlar wall with an
elaborately decorated, closed door at its center,
directly above which is a pair of "horns of
consecration dripping with a red substance which
is likely to represent blood the "wall", door",
and "horns of consecration" may all together
constitute a large altar toward which the
attention of all the girls on the north wall is
directed. Other fragmentary figures, including
more girls as well as at least one male figure,
are considered to belong to the decoration of the
west and south walls at both levels. -- Rutter
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Xeste 3, Room 3
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Xeste 3
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Goddess on her throne in Xeste 3, flanked by
griffin and a blue monkey
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Girl puts saffron in a basket before the throne,
Xeste 3
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Saffron gatherers, from Xeste 3
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Saffron gatherer, from Xeste 3
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Xeste 3, Room 3
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Suggested reading (Art Library)

• C. Doumas, The Wall Paintings of Thera
• S. Immerwahr, Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age