Ok! Our next review is the
introduction to the ancient Aegean,
so we'll be covering the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean cultures
in this lecture -- focusing in on the
area of Greece.
So this is mainland Greece -- modern-day
Greece today
We'll be starting off in some of the
islands here in the Aegean Sea, then
moving down to the island of Crete,
right down here, and finally to what's
called the Peloponnese --
this area where the Mycenaean culture
was really thriving later on.
So that'll be our main focus today, so the
islands, then down to
Crete, then up to the Peloponnese here. So beginning with the Cycladic culture,
we focus in on these islands, which you
can see a little bit more clearly here,
as we zoom in this picture and then this is
zooming in on a variety of the
islands there, so isands like Paros,
and Syros. You can see all those in this
slide. The types of sculptures that we see in
the Cycladic culture
tend to look a little bit like this. So
this is an example -- this is our key work from the
Cycladic culture, and it's a male lyre
player, so a
man that's playing a harp -- a kind of harp or musical instrument.
You can see a little duckbill suggesting a
kind of bird
head, suggesting the kind of music that's being
played there.
And the figures themselves are very
geometric from this period, and that's
how they became
very popular in the 20th century because
it was very similar to the kind
modernist aesthetic people that people appreciated in the 20th century.
so a lot of people wanted these types of
sculptures. These sculptures
that were made of marble -- that now all the
pigment had come off them. They're this very
pure white
color -- the pigment was gone and you have
these
very geometric forms, so the head is
generally reduced to an oval,
the arms are very much reduced to simple
forms, the harp or the lyre is very much reduced to simple forms,
so this was very appealing to people in
the 20th century -- appealing to
modern artists, and this has led to
a major problem of a lot of forgeries of
these sculptures being produced,
so it had to be relatively small  -- some of
them are quite large, and they can be many
feet tall --
but a lot of them are smaller. This one's nine inches tall, so not even a foot tall.
So, if you can get some marble from
this area and some tools
that would be similar to the types of tools that would be used at that time, if you can
accelerate
the aging process of the stone, you
can have a forgery on your hands, so we do
have this problem with forgeries
with these Cycladic sculptures because
they did become so popular
beginning about a hundred years ago with
the rise of modern art, so
these are just two views of one that we do know
what's called its "provenance", so we
know the history of its excavation and
collection and
ownership, so and knowing a work's
"provenance" is very important especially
an ancient work of art because you don't 
want to have a work of art
that could be a forgery,
and you also don't want to have a work of art that was excavated illegally,
so you want to make sure that you know where
the excavation took place.
Sometimes, you go to a museum and the work will say "Provenance
Unknown", but they'll maybe make a guess about where it came from,
so usually you like to know where the provenance is so you have the most complete
information about the work and you can do the best
interpretation of it by knowing that
provenance. Next up, we have the Minoan culture
going down to
the area of Crete here. The representation
of the human figure becomes a little bit
less
geometric in the Minoan period, and we also see
evidence of a lot of extensive
architecture during this period, so
in the Cycladic period, we don't have any writing from
that period, so what we see in the
works of art, is primarily guesswork --
for example, the piece that we were just
looking at, we
presume -- because it was found in the area of a burial -- this is a figure that would
entertain the deceased, someone to bring
comfort to the deceased
as they head off to the afterlife, but we
don't have any writing from
that period. We do have writing, however, from the Minoan culture, and also from the
Mycenaean culture, so just keeping that
in mind as we move
forward. So we do see architecture in the Minoan culture,
and we do see painting, and so we will look
at some of that at the Palace of
Knossos, which is the largest palace
right here in the center of
Crete. So here is the Palace of Knosses.  You can see it's relatively complex
in its overall form. It
does possibly have this myth that seems
to be
related to it -- may be developed out of
this particular
Palace. We do call it the "Minoan" culture,
and this comes from King Minos. This
legendary or mythological king
-- there's a number stories about him
in mythology. And one of them has to do
with a Labyrinth,
so some people have begun to associate
the labyrinth of King Minos
with the palace that we see here. Based
on what we have though, we know it was the
largest palace on Crete during this period.
It was built during what's known as "The New
Palace period" between 1700 and 1400 BCE,
after an earthquake had destroyed an earlier
palace at the site.
Previously, the Minoans were known as a
very peaceful people. They don't seem to
have had
too much warfare the way the Mycenaeans did. However, there have been recent
excavations
that reveal some evidence of
fortifications or walls,
so it seems that warfare was
a part of their lives, and eventually
the palace will be sacked by the Mycenaeans, taken
over by
the Mycenaeans. Alright, so there you can see a reconstruction of the Palace of Knossos. The 
individual that came to lead
the excavations: Sir Arthur Athens.
He included a lot of restorations. You can
see some of the columns restored there.
You can see some of the fresco back here that is
restored, so
when the house was discovered, they did go
ahead and do quite a bit of restoration
that is now somewhat controversial,
but the palace itself is very well
visited by tourists, and I think
having these restorations do help people
in
reconstructing or getting an idea of
what the palace may have looked like,
however, that materials are somewhat
different than they would have been
originally. So, you can see the
complexity the palace where this idea
labyrinth maybe had
come from, and so you do you have this
story about King Minos, and the story of the
labyrinth, and this question of 
what's the mythology? What about the mythology is true? Was there actually
a King Minos, or is it all just story that
developed later on in ancient
Greece. But the story is that there
is this Palace of
King Minos, and there was a Minotaur
that lived in that maze or that 
labyrinth, and that the maze
was constructed by King Minos'
architect,
and so the Minotaur was the son of Pasiphae,
who was the wife of King Minos. King Minos had gotten in some trouble with
[the god] Poseidon. She falls in love a bull belonging to the sea god Poseidon,
and so she ends up having this Minotaur.
And you can see this half bull/ half
man, who's being killed by the Greek hero Theseus, so we see
Theseus here. This is from a Greek vase painting.
You can see the blood coming out, as he's
being killed. So the Minotaur was really
terrorizing
people because he did require human tribute in his
labyrinth, and so eventually especially the Athenians had had
enough of this. They sent Theseus there. He
kills the Minotaur and there's a whole story 
along with that, so
possibly this "Palace of Knossos" could could be the starting 
point of that myth -- of that story about the
labyrinth
due to its complexity. As we look at the
plan, we can see
there's a large central court, extensive 
areas for storage,
so-called throne rooms, possible areas
to do with
religion or worship, although the
religion this period
is not known. A lot of the details aren't
known for certain.
But again, you're just getting a sense of the
complexity of the palace here.
These are some of the reconstructions. Minoan columns start off quite thick
at the top and then taper downwards to
a smaller base,
so just keeping that in mind.
Originally, the columns would have been
wood, and they've been replaced by cement.
You can also see
paintings back here -- probably of
shields,
so the Minoan shields were wide at the top,
and then wide at the bottom -- leaving the area
where the waist would be
as a little bit more tapered inward.
The most famous fresco at the "Palace of Knossos", which is heavily restored -- so 
the darker areas are original, the 
lighter areas
are modern restoration and additions -- is 
"The Bull Leaping Fresco", so you see a figure grabbing onto the bulls horns. The bull will
flick its head, that figure will flip onto
the back of the bull,
and then finally finish over here. 
These figures are sometimes thought to be
women due to their lighter skin. This is
presumably a man,
so that's one suggestion, however, these
women
don't seem to have the kind of indications of breasts that we look for,
but anyways another question to do with
this fresco:
is this religious or is this just entertainment? Unfortunately, we
don't know for sure, but presumably
this was a popular activity. We do see
evidence
of bull leaping in the ancient Near East,
as well as in Egypt,
so it does seem to have spread around
the Mediterranean at this point.
Alright, our final site is Mycenae, which
is in the Peloponnesian region.
The Mycenaeans moved on to Crete. They established themselves at
Knossos. Mycenae was the most
significant site of this period. It's
located right about here, so
right about here on this map, and eventually
the entire civilization does fall and
we're going to 
enter into the Greak "Dark Ages", but this
does seems to have been very much a
warring [military] period out -- very preoccupied with
war, which is maybe where we got the story
of the Trojan War because
we hear about sites like Mycenae and Tiryns,
and the cities that we hear about in the Trojan War
seem to be thriving during this Mycenaean period.
So we see impressive masonry [stone work], forms of
corbeled vaults, which we sometimes call
Cyclopean masonry.
These really tall or really large
stones
creating these relatively tall forms
of
corbeled arches, where the stones
are being laid down courses and then slowly
closer and closer together to create what we call a false arch
or a corbeled arch.
So, the most famous site is Mycenae.
It's known from Homer's poetry as the
home of King Agamemnon.
He was the brother, of course, of Menelaus, who was the husband
of Helen, who, according to legend, was
abducted in the Trojan War.
If the Trojan War really did
happen, it was probably
at a place called "Hissarlik", which is
in modern-day Turkey,
and it probably took place about 1200
BCE,
that is when we have a level of
destruction that seems to have occurred at the
city of Hissarlik.
It doesn't seem to be as grand,
however, as how it was portrayed in the
poetry.
The Iliad and Odyssey by Homer were
composed later and they probably were passed
down through oral traditions before that.
This site was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann, who we see here and then his wife
dressed up
in some of the jewels that he discovered, so
as I mentioned
1200 BCE is about the time when the war would
have taken place
if this war actually happened, however,
mythology makes it much more grand than
the excavations seem to reveal.
We do have a few things surviving
from Mycenae, however. We do have the lion
gate -- the lion presumably warded off evil. They're surrounding a Mionan-
style column. You can see this
large, Cyclopean masonry,
and you have what's called a "relieving
triangle", so that the lion is this kind
thin relief sculpture
that isn't going to weigh down as much on
that the lintel. So the idea is you create
this
"relieving triangle" -- this strangle that relieves the weight
on the lintel and then leaves a space for
decoration
that's both functional and attractive,
so warding off evil and protecting the
city,
and the idea was that anyone who
approached this gate, you could easily
attacked them from
up above and from either side, and hopefully
the lions would scare them off as well.
We also find this kind of mask that was originally called the "Mask of Agamemnon,"
however it's about three hundred years
too old based on 
when Agamemnon would have lived, if he actually
did live.
You can see it's a kind of beaten gold and
would have been placed 
within the burial ground. It's in
a Grave Circle that's
now inside the city walls or was later
put in side the walls
my Mycenae, but originally was outside the
city walls,
but it does relate to this mythology of Agamemnon
with what Heinrich Schliemann called it when he discovered it,
however we know for sure the date is
quite off here.
And finally we have what's called the
"Warrior Vase", which was found in
a house just outside of the citadel of Mycenae, and what's exciting about this vessel
is it comes from about exactly the time
the Trojan War would have occurred, so
about 1200 BCE.
It's in the shape of a mixing bowl and the style
isn't necessarily that refined, but you get
a sense
of some of the things that are mentioned in
Homer's poetry such as the
Boar's tusk helmets, so you can see there little
tusks sticking out from the helmets. You
can see these figures going off with the
type of
armor and shields that they would have carried.
And it's interesting because you see a figure bidding them goodbye off to 
the side. So you see a woman here
raising her arm and then these
figures moving in the opposite direction
and then on the other side you either have
maybe an opposing army
or an army that's joining with them, and the whole idea in the Trojan
War was that a number armies banded
together or came together
all go save Helen. Presumably,
if the Trojan War really
did happen at the site of Hissarlik,
it was probably over resources or other
reasons not really over a woman,
but that makes for a much better story.
Next time, we'll be moving on 
ancient Greece after the Greek "Dark Ages."
