1.
Syllabary
–
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or moras which make up words. This loosely corresponds to shallow orthographies in alphabetic writing systems, most syllabaries only feature one or two kinds of syllabograms and form other syllables by graphemic rules. Otherwise they are synthetic, if they vary by onset, rime, nucleus or coda, or systematic, some scholars, e. g. Daniels, reserve the general term for analytic syllabaries and invent other terms as necessary. Some system provides katakana language conversion, in addition, the undecoded Cretan Linear A is also believed by some to be a syllabic script, though this is not proven. Chinese characters, the script used for Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages. They are therefore referred to as logosyllabic. The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana, which were developed around 700. They are mainly used to some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words. Because Japanese uses mainly CV syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language, as in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana, あった and かいた. It is therefore called a moraic writing system. Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simple phonotactics, with a predominance of monomoraic syllables, few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic, and those that once did have simplified over time to eliminate that complexity. For example, the Vai syllabary originally had separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda, the modern script has been expanded to cover all moras, but at the same time reduced to exclude all other syllables. g. Ko-no-so for Κνωσός Knōsos, pe-ma for σπέρμα sperma, the Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for coda consonants, but also has a segmental grapheme for /s/, which can be used both as a coda and in an initial /sC/ consonant cluster. The languages of South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages, have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary, in the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or close to regular. For example, the characters for ke, ka, and ko in Japanese hiragana have no similarity to indicate their common k sound, compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are all similar graphically. For example, in Devanagari, an abugida, the characters for ke, ka and ko are के, का and को respectively. English, along many other Indo-European languages like German and Russian, allows for complex syllable structures
Syllabary
–
Writing systems
Syllabary
–
Each
syllable (σ) branches into
consonantal onset (ω) and
rime (ρ) that is divided into
nucleus (ν) and
coda (κ), non-/supra-segmental parameters like
tone (τ) affect the syllable as a whole
2.
Ideographic
–
An ideogram or ideograph is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. In proto-writing, used for inventories and the like, physical objects are represented by stylized or conventionalized pictures, for example, the pictorial Dongba symbols without Geba annotation cannot represent the Naxi language, but are used as a mnemonic for reciting oral literature. Some systems also use ideograms, symbols denoting abstract concepts, the term ideogram is often used to describe symbols of writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese characters. However, these symbols are logograms, representing words or morphemes of a language rather than objects or concepts. In these writing systems, a variety of strategies were employed in the design of logographic symbols, pictographic symbols depict the object referred to by the word, such as an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic word ʾālep ox. Some words denoting abstract concepts may be represented iconically, but most other words are represented using the rebus principle, many signs in hieroglyphic as well as in cuneiform writing could be used either logographically or phonetically. Semantic compounds are semantic combinations of characters, such as 明 míng bright, composed of 日 rì sun and 月 yuè moon, or 休 xiū rest, composed of 人 rén person and 木 mù tree. An example of ideograms is the collection of 50 signs developed in the 1970s by the American Institute of Graphic Arts at the request of the US Department of Transportation, the system was initially used to mark airports and gradually got more widespread. An early proposal was An Essay towards a Real Character, a recent example is the system of Blissymbols, which was proposed by Charles K. Bliss in 1949 and currently includes over 2,000 symbols, emoji Heterogram Icon Lexigram List of symbols List of writing systems Logotype Therblig Traffic sign The Ideographic Myth Extract from DeFrancis book. American Heritage Dictionary definition Merriam-Webster OnLine definition
Ideographic
–
Ideogram in the
Church of the Visitation, Jerusalem
Ideographic
–
"No Dogs!" sign in Spain. The dog illustration is a
pictogram. The red circle and bar is an ideogram representing the idea of "no" or "not allowed".
Ideographic
–
Writing systems
3.
Minoan chronology
–
Sir Arthur Evans developed a relative dating scheme of Minoan chronology based on the excavations initiated and managed by him at the site of the ancient city of Knossos. He called the civilization that he discovered there Minoan, the same scheme was later applied to the Greek mainland and the Cyclades Islands to form a general plan for dating events of the prehistoric and early historic Aegean. The relative chronology is based on the shapes and decorative styles of pottery found at sites on Crete. Arthur Evans began excavating on a hill called tou tseleve he kephala, two of the palace storerooms had been uncovered by Minos Kalokairinos in 1878, whose work ceased at the demand of the land owners. Simultaneously, coins and seals inscribed with a script were also discovered. These came to Evans attention as the curator of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, the area was rumored to have been the site of the ancient city of Knossos. Evans examined the site on March 19,1894, nothing further could be done at that time, but in 1898 Crete became an independent republic. In 1899 Evans purchased the land with his own funds and decided to set up an excavation, attacking the site with crews of hundreds of diggers, Evans uncovered most of the sites 6 acres within 6 seasons. Subsequently he concerned himself mainly with restoration, an activity frowned upon by archaeologists of today and he continued to excavate there and elsewhere and to restore until 1935. Evans was knighted in 1911 for his work, in 1921, the first edition of his monumental work, Palace of Minos, was released, which became indispensable for any department of classical archaeology. On Evans death in 1941, the British School of Archaeology assumed responsibility for the excavation, later turning the property over to the Greek government, while retaining excavation rights. Evans chronological framework had triple divisions each triply divided, a formula that has retained, thus Early Minoan I, II and III, Middle Minoan I. Each subsection he divided into A and B, early and late, wace and Carl Blegen adapted Evans chronology to the Greek mainland and the islands, where the culture was termed Helladic and Cycladic. In 1941 Arne Furumark applied the term Mycenaean to LH and LC, as it is clear that the Mycenaean Greeks dominated at Knossos at some point in Late Minoan, the latter is often included under Mycenaean or called Minoan-Mycenaean. The major study of Cretan pottery was Evans, a very general stylistic trend was from dark decoration on a light background in the Early Minoan to white and red decorations on a dark wash or slip in Middle Minoan. Finally, there was a return to the manner of dark on light in Late Minoan. New body shapes for vessels also emerged and various styles of decoration are evident within Evans chronology, Evans never intended to give exact calendrical dates to the pottery periods. Most criticism does not aim at the overthrow of Evans system, even with these faults the system has no competitors
Minoan chronology
–
Model of the "Palace of Minos" on Kephala at the Museum in Iraklio. Note the central courtyard, the columned porticos, the agglutinative architecture, the frequent light wells and the lack of defenses. Not shown are the extensive water supply and sanitation systems.
Minoan chronology
–
Photograph of the Palace.
Minoan chronology
–
Another View of the Palace.
4.
Linear B
–
Linear B is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek. The script predates the Greek alphabet by several centuries, the oldest Mycenaean writing dates to about 1450 BC. It is descended from the older Linear A, an earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary. Linear B, found mainly in the archives at Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing and it is also the only one of the prehistoric Aegean scripts to have been deciphered, by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris. Linear B consists of around 87 syllabic signs and over 100 ideographic signs and these ideograms or signifying signs symbolize objects or commodities. They have no value and are never used as word signs in writing a sentence. The application of Linear B appears to have been confined to administrative contexts, in all the thousands of clay tablets, a relatively small number of different hands have been detected,45 in Pylos and 66 in Knossos. It is possible that the script was used only by a guild of professional scribes who served the central palaces, once the palaces were destroyed, the script disappeared. Linear B has roughly 200 signs, divided into syllabic signs with phonetic values, the representations and naming of these signs have been standardized by a series of international colloquia starting with the first in Paris in 1956. Colloquia continue, the 13th occurred in 2010 in Paris, many of the signs are identical or similar to those in Linear A, however, Linear A encodes an as-yet unknown language, and it is uncertain whether similar signs had the same phonetic values. The grid developed during decipherment by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick of phonetic values for syllabic signs is shown below, initial consonants are in the leftmost column, vowels are in the top row beneath the title. The transcription of the syllable is listed next to the sign along with Bennetts identifying number for the sign preceded by an asterisk, in cases where the transcription of the sign remains in doubt, Bennetts number serves to identify the sign. The signs on the tablets and sealings often show considerable variation from each other, discovery of the reasons for the variation and possible semantic differences is a topic of ongoing debate in Mycenaean studies. Many of these were identified by the edition and are shown in the special values below. The second edition relates, It may be taken as axiomatic that there are no true homophones, the unconfirmed identifications of *34 and *35 as ai2 and ai3 were removed. Other values remain unknown, mainly because of scarcity of evidence concerning them, note that *34 and *35 are mirror images of each other but whether this graphic relationship indicates a phonetic one remains unconfirmed. In recent times, CIPEM inherited the authority of Bennett
Linear B
–
Linear B
Linear B
–
Linear B tablet discovered by Arthur Evans
Linear B
–
Tablets
5.
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
The Cypro-Minoan syllabary is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age. The term Cypro-Minoan was coined by Arthur Evans in 1909 based on its similarity to Linear A on Minoan Crete. Approximately 250 objects—such as clay balls, cylinders, and tablets, discoveries have been made at various sites around Cyprus, as well as in the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast. Little is known about how this script originated or about the underlying language, however, its use continued into the early Iron Age, forming a link to the Cypriot syllabary, which has been deciphered as Greek. Arthur Evans considered the Cypro-Minoan syllabary to be a result of uninterrupted evolution of the Minoan Linear A script and he believed that the script was brought to Cyprus by Minoan colonizers or immigrants. It is noteworthy that the Linear B script that emerged a century later still retained many features from. All this evidence indicates a one-time introduction rather than long-time development, the earliest inscriptions are dated about 1550 BC. This classification was and is accepted, but in 2011 Silvia Ferrara contested its chronological nature based on the archaeological context. Only the archaic CM found in the earliest archaeological context is indeed distinct from these three and it is noteworthy that the Cypro-Minoan script was absent in some Bronze Age cities of Cyprus, yet abundant in others. On the other hand, as a result of this collapse. As long as the script remains undeciphered, it can only be speculated whether the language was the same as Minoan or Eteocypriot, there were no visible traces of Minoan invasion, colonization, or even significant cultural influence in Bronze Age Cyprus. At that time, the island was part of the Near-East cultural circle rather than Aegean civilizations, based on the above-mentioned classification of the script into several varieties, Emilia Masson hypothetized that they may represent different languages that chronologically supplanted each other. The earliest known CM inscription found in Europe was a tablet discovered in 1955 at the ancient site of Enkomi. It was dated to ca.1500 BC, and bore three lines of writing, other fragments of clay tablets have been found at Enkomi and Ugarit. Dozens of small balls, each bearing 3–5 signs in CM1, have been uncovered at Enkomi. Clay cylinder seals have been uncovered at Enkomi and Kalavassos-Ayios Dimitrios and it is likely that the balls and cylinder seals are related to the keeping of economic records on Minoan Cyprus, considering the large number of cross-references between the texts. The extant corpus of Cypro-Minoan is not large enough to allow for the use of a cryptographic solution to decipherment. According to Thomas G. Palaima, all past and current schemes of decipherment of Cypro-Minoan are improbable, the names on the clay balls can thus be transcribed, some are Semitic, most are presumably in the local language
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
Cypro-Minoan tablet from Enkomi in the
Louvre.
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
Cypro-Minoan
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
The current (2015) consensus about values of certain CM signs, based on their comparison with the Cypriot signs. Created by D. Lytov based on recent publications (Colless, Faucounau, Ferrara, Steele) referenced in the article text.
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
Cypro-Minoan clay ball in the
Louvre.
6.
Cretan hieroglyphs
–
Cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered hieroglyphs found on artefacts of early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. It predates Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history, the seals and sealings represent about 307 distinct sign-groups, consisting all together of ±832 signs. The other inscriptions represent about 274 distinct sign-groups, consisting all together of ±723 signs, more documents have been published since then, such as, for example, from the Petras deposit. Definitive edition was published in 2010, the relation of the last three items with the script of the main corpus is uncertain. Some Cretan Hieroglyphic inscriptions were found on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean. It has been suggested there was an evolution of the hieroglyphs into the linear scripts. Also, some relations to Anatolian hieroglyphs have been suggested, the overlaps between the Cretan script and other scripts, such as the hieroglyphic scripts of Cyprus and the Hittite lands of Anatolia, may suggest. That they all evolved from an ancestor, a now-lost script perhaps originating in Syria. Symbol inventories have been compiled by Evans, Meijer, Olivier/Godart, the known corpus has been edited in 1996 as CHIC, listing a total of 314 items. The glyph inventory as presented by CHIC includes 96 syllabograms, ten of which double as logograms, there are also 23 logograms representing four levels of numerals, numerical fractions, and two types of punctuation. Many symbols have apparent Linear A counterparts, so that it is tempting to insert Linear B sound values, Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium B. C. World Archaeology,17, 377–389, doi,10. 1080/00438243.1986.9979977 Yule, Paul, Early Cretan Seals, marburger Studien zur Vor und Frühgeschichte, ISBN 3-8053-0490-0 W. C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script, I, the Clay Bar from Malia, H20, Kadmos 29 1-10. Brice, Cretan Hieroglyphs & Linear A, Kadmos 29 171-2, brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script, III. The Inscriptions from Mallia Quarteir Mu, the Clay Bar from Knossos, P116, Kadmos 30 93-104. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script, Kadmos 31, M. Civitillo, LA SCRITTURA GEROGLIFICA MINOICA SUI SIGILLI. Il messaggio della glittica protopalaziale, Biblioteca di Pasiphae XII, Pisa-Roma 2016, G. M. Facchetti La questione della scrittura «geroglifica cretese» dopo la recente edizione del corpus dei testi. Pasiphae, Rivista di filologia e antichita egee, the Cretan hieroglyphic script of the second millennium BC, description, analysis, function and decipherment perspectives
Cretan hieroglyphs
–
A green
jasper seal with Cretan hieroglyphs. 1800 BC
7.
Unicode range
–
The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
Unicode range
–
Example of fraction slash use. This
typeface (
Apple Chancery) shows the synthesized common fraction on the left and the precomposed fraction glyph on the right as a rendering the plain text string “1 1⁄4 1¼”. Depending on the text environment, the single string “1 1⁄4” might yield either result, the one on the right through substitution of the fraction sequence with the single precomposed fraction glyph.
8.
Specials (Unicode block)
–
Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
Specials (Unicode block)
–
Replacement character
9.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
Unicode
–
Logo of the
Unicode Consortium
10.
Ancient Greece
–
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
Ancient Greece
–
The
Parthenon, a temple dedicated to
Athena, located on the
Acropolis in
Athens, is one of the most representative symbols of the culture and sophistication of the ancient Greeks.
Ancient Greece
–
Dipylon Vase of the late Geometric period, or the beginning of the Archaic period,
c. 750 BC.
Ancient Greece
–
Political geography of ancient Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods
11.
Minoan civilization
–
The Minoan civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands which flourished from about 2600 to 1100 BC. It preceded the Mycenaean civilization of Ancient Greece, the civilization was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. It has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe, the term Minoan, which refers to the mythical King Minos, originally described the pottery of the period. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth and the Minotaur, according to Homer, Crete once had 90 cities. The Minoan period saw trade between Crete and Aegean and Mediterranean settlements, particularly the Near East, traders and artists, the Minoan cultural influence reached beyond Crete to the Cyclades, Egypts Old Kingdom, copper-bearing Cyprus, Canaan and the Levantine coast, and Anatolia. Some of its best art is preserved in the city of Akrotiri on the island of Santorini, although the Minoan language and writing systems remain undecipherable and are subjects of academic dispute, they apparently conveyed a language entirely different from the later Greek. The reason for the end of the Minoan period is unclear, theories include Mycenaean invasions from mainland Greece, the term Minoan refers to the mythical King Minos of Knossos. Its origin is debated, but it is attributed to archeologist Arthur Evans. Minos was associated in Greek mythology with the labyrinth, which Evans identified with the site at Knossos. However, Karl Hoeck had already used the title Das Minoische Kreta in 1825 for volume two of his Kreta, this appears to be the first known use of the word Minoan to mean ancient Cretan, Evans said that applied it, not invented it. Hoeck, with no idea that the archaeological Crete had existed, had in mind the Crete of mythology, although Evans 1931 claim that the term was unminted before he used it was called a brazen suggestion by Karadimas and Momigliano, he coined its archaeological meaning. Instead of dating the Minoan period, archaeologists use two systems of relative chronology, the first, created by Evans and modified by later archaeologists, is based on pottery styles and imported Egyptian artifacts. Evans system divides the Minoan period into three eras, early, middle and late. These eras are subdivided—for example, Early Minoan I, II and III, another dating system, proposed by Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based on the development of architectural complexes known as palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Kato Zakros. Platon divides the Minoan period into pre-, proto-, neo-, the relationship between the systems in the table includes approximate calendar dates from Warren and Hankey. The Thera eruption occurred during a phase of the LM IA period. Efforts to establish the volcanic eruptions date have been controversial, the eruption is identified as a natural event catastrophic for the culture, leading to its rapid collapse. Although stone-tool evidence exists that hominins may have reached Crete as early as 130,000 years ago, evidence for the first anatomically-modern human presence dates to 10, the oldest evidence of modern human habitation on Crete are pre-ceramic Neolithic farming-community remains which date to about 7000 BC
Minoan civilization
–
Minoan civilization
Minoan civilization
–
Minoan
copper ingot.
Minoan civilization
–
Fresco showing three women who were possibly
queens. [
citation needed]
12.
Arthur Evans
–
Sir Arthur John Evans FRS FREng was an English archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age. He is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete, Evans was also the first to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier pictographic writing. He was, on request of the organizations of the peoples of the Balkans. Arthur Evans was born in Nash Mills, England, the first child of John Evans and Harriet Ann Dickinson, the daughter of Johns employer, inventor and founder of Messrs John Dickinson, a paper mill. John Evans came from a family of men who were educated and intellectually active, they were nevertheless undistinguished by either wealth or aristocratic connection. Johns father, Arthur Benoni Evans, Arthurs grandfather, had been headmaster of Market Bosworth Grammar School, John knew Latin and could quote the classical authors. In 1840, instead of going to college, John started work in the mill owned by his maternal uncle and he married his cousin, Harriet, in 1850, which entitled him, in 1851, to a junior partnership in the family business. Profits from the mill would eventually help fund Arthurs excavations, restorations at Knossos, for the time being they were an unpretentious and affectionate family. They moved into a row house built for the purpose near the mill. Grandmother Evans called Arthur darling Trot, asserting in a note that, compared to his father, in 1856, with Harriets declining health and Jacks growing reputation and prosperity, they moved into Harriets childhood home, a mansion with a garden, where the children ran free. John maintained his status as an officer in the company, which eventually became John Dickinson Stationery and his interest in geology came from an assignment by the company to study the diminishing water resources in the area with a view toward protecting the company from lawsuits. The mill consumed large amounts of water, which was also needed for the canals and he became an expert and a legal consultant. However, collecting was endemic to the family, his father and grandfather both had done it and he was more interested in the stone-age artifacts he was discovering while mapping stream beds. As Arthur grew older, he was allowed to assist John in looking for artifacts, ultimately John became a distinguished antiquary, publishing numerous books and articles. In 1859 he conducted a survey of the Somme Valley with Joseph Prestwich. His connections and invaluable advice were indispensable to Arthurs career throughout the remainder of his long life, Arthurs mother, Harriet, died in 1858 when Arthur was seven. He had two brothers, Philip Norman and Lewis, and two sisters, Alice and Harriet and he would remain on excellent terms with all of them all of his life. He was raised by a stepmother, Fanny, née Phelps and she had no children of her own and also predeceased her husband
Arthur Evans
–
Sir Arthur Evans
Arthur Evans
–
The Nash paper mill
Arthur Evans
–
Harrow
Arthur Evans
–
Brasenose College
13.
Mycenaean Greek
–
The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first attested on Crete before the 14th century. Most inscriptions are on tablets found in Knossos, in central Crete, as well as in Pylos. Other tablets have found at Mycenae itself, Tiryns and Thebes and at Chania. The language is named after Mycenae, one of the centres of Mycenaean Greece. The tablets long remained undeciphered, and many languages were suggested for them, the texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories. No prose narrative survives, much less myth or poetry, still, much may be glimpsed from these records about the people who produced them and about Mycenaean Greece, the period before the so-called Greek Dark Ages. The Mycenaean language is preserved in Linear B writing, which consists of about 200 syllabic signs, since Linear B was derived from Linear A, the script of an undeciphered Minoan language probably unrelated to Greek, it does not reflect fully the phonetics of Mycenaean. In essence, a number of syllabic signs must represent a much greater number of produced syllables. Orthographic simplifications therefore had to be made, There is no disambiguation for the Greek categories of voice and aspiration except the dentals d, t,
Mycenaean Greek
–
Inscription of Mycenaean Greek written in
Linear B. Archaeological Museum of Mycenae.
Mycenaean Greek
–
Map of
Greece as described in
Homer 's
Iliad. The geographical data is believed [
by whom?] to refer primarily to
Bronze Age Greece, when Mycenaean Greek would have been spoken, and therefore can be used as an estimator of the range.
14.
Syllable
–
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the water is composed of two syllables, wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a nucleus with optional initial and final margins. Syllables are often considered the building blocks of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic meter, syllabic writing began several hundred years before the first letters. The earliest recorded syllables are on tablets written around 2800 BC in the Sumerian city of Ur and this shift from pictograms to syllables has been called the most important advance in the history of writing. A word that consists of a syllable is called a monosyllable. Syllable is an Anglo-Norman variation of Old French sillabe, from Latin syllaba, συλλαβή means what is taken together, referring to letters that are taken together to make a single sound. συλλαβή is a noun from the verb συλλαμβάνω syllambánō, a compound of the preposition σύν sýn with. The noun uses the root λαβ-, which appears in the aorist tense, the present tense stem λαμβάν- is formed by adding a nasal infix ⟨μ⟩ ⟨m⟩ before the β b and a suffix -αν -an at the end. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the period ⟨. ⟩ marks syllable breaks, in practice, however, IPA transcription is typically divided into words by spaces, and often these spaces are also understood to be syllable breaks. When a word comes in the middle of a syllable. The liaison tie is used to join lexical words into phonological words. In the typical theory of structure, the general structure of a syllable consists of three segments. e. Nucleus and coda are grouped together as a rime and onset are only distinguished at the second level, the nucleus is usually the vowel in the middle of a syllable. The onset is the sound or sounds occurring before the nucleus, and they are sometimes collectively known as the shell. The term rime covers the nucleus plus coda, in the one-syllable English word cat, the nucleus is a, the onset c, the coda t, and the rime at. This syllable can be abstracted as a consonant-vowel-consonant syllable, abbreviated CVC, languages vary greatly in the restrictions on the sounds making up the onset, nucleus and coda of a syllable, according to what is termed a languages phonotactics
Syllable
–
Syllable components as a directed graph
15.
Logogram
–
In written language, a logogram or logograph is a written character that represents a word or phrase. Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are logograms, some Egyptian hieroglyphs, the use of logograms in writing is called logography. A writing system that is based on logograms is called a logographic system, in alphabets and syllabaries, individual written characters represent sounds rather than concepts. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not necessarily have meaning by themselves, Writing language in this way is called phonemic orthography. Logographic systems include the earliest writing systems, the first historical civilizations of the Near East, Africa, China, a more recent attempt is Zlango, intended for use in text messaging, currently including around 300 icons. The term logosyllabary is used to emphasize the partially phonetic nature of these scripts when the domain is the syllable. For example, Egyptian was used to write both sȝ duck and sȝ son, though it is likely that these words were not pronounced the same apart from their consonants and this can be illustrated with Chinese. Not all Chinese characters represent morphemes, some morphemes are composed of more than one character, for example, the Chinese word for spider, 蜘蛛 zhīzhū, was created by fusing the rebus 知朱 zhīzhū with the bug determinative 虫. Neither *蜘 zhī nor *蛛 zhū can be used separately, in Archaic Chinese, one can find the reverse, a single character representing more than one morpheme. An example is Archaic Chinese 王 hjwangs, a combination of a morpheme hjwang meaning king, in modern Mandarin, bimorphemic syllables are always written with two characters, for example 花儿 huār flower. These logograms, called hozwārishn, were dispensed with altogether after the Arab conquest of Persia, logograms are used in modern shorthand to represent common words. In addition, the numerals and mathematical symbols used in systems are logograms—1 one,2 two, + plus, = equals, and so on. In English, the ampersand & is used for and and et, % for percent, # for number, § for section, $ for dollar, € for euro, £ for pound, ° for degree, @ for at, etc. All historical logographic systems include a dimension, as it is impractical to have a separate basic character for every word or morpheme in a language. In some cases, such as cuneiform as it was used for Akkadian, many logographic systems also have a semantic/ideographic component, called determinatives in the case of Egyptian and radicals in the case of Chinese. In the case of Chinese, the vast majority of characters are a combination of a radical that indicates its nominal category. The Mayan system used logograms with phonetic complements like the Egyptian, Chinese scholars have traditionally classified the Chinese characters hanzi into six types by etymology. The first two types are single-body, meaning that the character was created independently of other characters, single-body pictograms and ideograms make up only a small proportion of Chinese logograms
Logogram
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs, which have their origins as logograms.
16.
Boustrophedon
–
Boustrophedon /ˌbuːstrəˈfiːdən/ is a kind of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters, rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece. By analogy, the term may be used in areas to describe this kind of alternation of motion or writing. For example, it is used to describe the print head motion of certain dot matrix printers. In that case, while the print head moves in opposite directions on alternate lines, the Hungarian folklorist Gyula Sebestyén writes that ancient boustrophedon writing resembles how the Hungarian rovás-sticks of old Hungarian writing were made by shepherds. The notcher holds the stick in his left hand, cutting the letters with his right hand from right to left. When the first side is complete, he flips the stick over vertically, when unfolded horizontally, the final result is writing which starts from right to left, and continues from left to right in the next row, with letters turned upside down. Sebestyén states that the ancient boustrophedon writings were copied from such wooden sticks with cut letters, the wooden boards and other incised artifacts of Rapa Nui also bear a boustrophedonic script called Rongorongo, which remains undeciphered. In Rongorongo the text in alternate lines was rotated 180 degrees rather than mirrored, the Luwian language had a hieroglyph version, hieroglyphic Luwian, that read boustrophedon. The Hieroglyphic Luwian is read boustrophedon, with the direction of any individual line pointing into the front of the animals or body parts constituting certain hieroglyphs. However, unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs with their numerous ideograms and logograms which show an easy directionality, a modern example of boustrophedonics is the numbering scheme of sections within survey townships in the United States and Canada. In both countries, survey townships are divided into a 6-by-6 grid of 36 sections, public Land Survey System, Section 1 of a township is in the northeast corner, and the numbering proceeds boustrophedonically until Section 36 is reached in the southeast corner. Canadas Dominion Land Survey also uses boustrophedonic numbering, but starts at the southeast corner, Rongorongo is the current theory of the first written language on Easter Island. It is believed to be written in boustrophedonics, yet no accurate translation has been deciphered, Rongorongo shares many characteristics with other Polynesian languages groups. The term is used by postmen in the United Kingdom to describe street numbering which proceeds serially in one direction then turns back in the other and this is in contrast to the more common method of odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the street. In art history, it means that you read from bottom left in a series of pictures
Boustrophedon
–
Ancient Greek boustrophedon inscription,
Gortyn code, Crete, 5th century BC
Boustrophedon
–
The
Forum inscription (one of the oldest known Latin inscriptions) is written boustrophedon, albeit irregularly: reading from top to bottom, lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16 run from right to left; lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, and 15, from left to right; 8, 9, and 16 are upside down. (From a rubbing by
Domenico Comparetti.)
Boustrophedon
–
Notice in Avoiuli script written using boustrophedon
17.
Akrotiri (Santorini)
–
Akrotiri is a Minoan Bronze Age settlement on the volcanic Greek island of Santorini. The settlement was destroyed in the Theran eruption about 1627 BC and buried in volcanic ash, the settlement has been suggested as a possible inspiration for Platos story of Atlantis. The site has been excavated since 1967, the earliest evidence for human habitation of Akrotiri can be traced back as early as the fifth millennium BC, when it was a small fishing and farming village. By the end of the millennium, this community developed and expanded significantly. One factor for Akrotiri’s growth may be the relations it established with other cultures in the Aegean. This all came to an end, however, in the late 17th century BC with the eruption of Thera. The excavation is named for a village situated on a hill nearby. The name of the site in antiquity is unknown, Akrotiri was buried by the massive Theran eruption in the middle of the second millennium BC, as a result, like the Roman ruins of Pompeii after it, it is remarkably well-preserved. Frescoes, pottery, furniture, advanced drainage systems and three-story buildings have been discovered at the site, the earliest excavations on Santorini were conducted by French geologist F. Fouque in 1867, after some local people found old artifacts at a quarry. Later, in 1895-1900, the digs by German archeologist Baron Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen revealed the ruins of ancient Thera on Mesa Vouno. Also, a later, R. Zahn excavated in the locality of Potamos, near Akrotiri. Extensive modern excavation was started in 1967 by Spyridon Marinatos, Spyridon Marinatos choice of site proved to be correct, and just a few hours into the excavation, the remains of the buried city began to be discovered. The next step was to determine the extent of the city and he experimented with tunneling into the pumice, but this technique was later abandoned. Excavated artifacts have been installed in a museum distant from the site, with many objects, only a single gold object has been found, hidden beneath flooring, and no uninterred human skeletal remains have been found. This indicates that an evacuation was performed with little or no loss of life. An ambitious modern roof structure, meant to protect the site, collapsed just prior to its completion in 2005, no damage was caused to the antiquities. As a result, the site was closed to visitors until April 2012, all of the pigments used by the artists at Akrotiri for painting the frescoes look as though they are all mineral based, and thus have resulted in the great preservation of the pieces. The colors used in Theran painting includes white, yellow, red, brown, blue, as a result, often on the same fresco, the paint has penetrated the plaster in some areas but flakes off easily in others
Akrotiri (Santorini)
–
Excavation
Akrotiri (Santorini)
–
Image of a town
Akrotiri (Santorini)
–
A view down onto Triangle Square in front of the West House in Akrotiri, Greece. Taken in 2001, 4 years before the roof collapsed.
Akrotiri (Santorini)
–
Fresco ship procession or flotilla. Frieze from the West House
18.
Chania Archaeological Museum
–
The Archaeological Museum of Chania is a museum located in the former Venetian Monastery of Saint Francis at 25 Chalidon Street, Chania, Crete, Greece. The exact date that the building was constructed is unknown although it was mentioned in writing as standing during the earthquake of 1595. It served as a Venetian church inhabited by Franciscan monks, during the period of the Ottoman occupation, the building was used as a mosque and named after Yussuf Pasha, the conqueror of Chania. At the turn of the 20th century it became the “Idaion Andron” Cinema and after World War II it served as a storehouse for military equipment, until it was converted into the museum in 1962. The archaeological collection of Chania itself was housed in various public buildings such as the Residency, the Boys’ High School. In May 2008, the Crete Gazette announced that a new building is due to be constructed in the Chatzidakis Camp in the historical Chalepa area of Chania overlooking the sea. The new archaeological museum of Chania will also include interior and open-air exhibition areas, skywalks, a shop, the museum contains a wide range of coins, jewellery, vases, sculpture, clay tablets with inscriptions, stelae and mosaics. The collection includes a clay sealing from Kasteli, with a representation of a Minoan city, there is a clay pyxis with a representation of a kithara player excavated from a chamber tomb in the area of Koiliaris in Kalyves-Aptera dated to 1300–1200 BC. There is also a tablet inscribed with Linear A script from Kasteli, dated to 1450 BC. The museum has a Roman floor mosaic, depicting Dionysos and Ariadne, there is also a spherical flask, noted for its unusual ceramic type, dated to the Late Minoan III period
Chania Archaeological Museum
–
Archaeological Museum of Cania
Chania Archaeological Museum
–
Portrait bust of a Roman man
Chania Archaeological Museum
–
Roman emperor
Hadrian
Chania Archaeological Museum
–
Roman floor mosaic depicting
Dionysos and
Ariadne
19.
Zakros
–
Zakros is a site on the eastern coast of the island of Crete, Greece, containing ruins from the Minoan civilization. The site is known to archaeologists as Zakro or Kato Zakro. It is believed to have one of the four main administrative centers of the Minoans. The town was dominated by the Palace of Zakro, originally built around 1900 BC, rebuilt around 1600 BC, extensive ruins of the palace remain, and are a popular tourist destination. Zakros is sometimes divided into Epano Zakros, the higher up on the hillside, and Kato Zakros. A ravine known as the Ravine of the Dead runs through both the upper and lower parts of the ancient site, named after the burials that have been found in the caves along its walls. Epano Zakros is 38 km from Sitia, the road passes through Palekastro where it doubles back towards the south. The asphalt road ends at Kato Zakros, Zakro was first excavated by D. G. Hogarth of the British School of Archaeology at Athens and 12 houses were unearthed before the site was abandoned, in 1961, Nikolaos Platon resumed the excavation and discovered the Palace of Zakro. This site has yielded several clay tablets with Linear A inscriptions, Zakros, The Discovery of a Lost Palace of Ancient Crete. Minoan Crete, Zakros page Minoan Crete, Epano Zakros page
Zakros
–
Palace of Zakros ruins
Zakros
–
Libation vase from Zakros
20.
Sitia
–
Sitia is a port town and a municipality in Lasithi, Crete, Greece. The town has 9,912 inhabitants, the municipality has 18,318 and it lies east of Agios Nikolaos and northeast of Ierapetra. Sitia port is on the Sea of Crete, part of the Aegean Sea and is one of the centers of the Lasithi region. European route E75, which ends in Vardø, starts in Sitia, Sitia is served by the Sitia Public Airport. Sitia has not experienced the effects of mass tourism even though there is a beach along the road leading to Vai and several places of historical interest.091 km2. The province of Siteia was one of the provinces of Lasithi and its territory corresponded with that of the current municipality Siteia and the municipal unit Makry Gialos. The are a number of sites in the municipality of Sitia that are protected as National Parks, Aesthetic Forests, in addition, there are several Minoan settlements unearthed in the various archaeological sites in the municipality, such as in Itanos and in Mochlos. According to Diogenes Laertius, Sitia was the home of Myson of Chen, the name Σητεία may come from the ancient Ητεία, written as Itia or Etea in English. The town was expanded and fortified by the Venetians who used it as a base of operations for the Eastern Mediterranean. During the Venetian occupation, the town was destroyed three times, by an earthquake in 1508, by an attack in 1538 and finally by the Venetians themselves in 1651. Sitia was then conquered by the Ottoman Empire, after the Venetians moved out of Crete, the town was abandoned for two centuries until it was resettled by farmers in 1869. The main remnant of the Venetian occupation is the Kazarma, the old fortress overlooking the harbour. The municipality of Sitia is served by Sitia Public Airport with several destinations, the first landing was on June 7,1984. Construction of new building facilities that included a tower was completed in May 1993. Runway and apron extension works were finished in May 2003, recently, the local authorities have completed negotiations with international travel agents for organizing regular charter flights starting from May 2012. The town also has a marina which accommodates smaller fishing boats and yachts, Vai forest and beach, the largest natural palm forest in Europe. Moni Toplou, founded in the mid 15th century, is one of the most significant monasteries in Crete, Kazarma fortress, in the town of Sitia. Richtis Gorge and Waterfall at Exo Mouliana village, various archeological sites with Minoan civilization settlements from the Bronze Age, such as in Itanos and Mochlos
Sitia
–
Sitia Σητεία
Sitia
–
View of the marina.
Sitia
–
Panorama of Sitia.
Sitia
–
Richtis waterfall,
Richtis Gorge.
21.
Archanes
–
Archanes is a former municipality in the Heraklion regional unit, Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Archanes-Asterousia, the municipal unit has an area of 31.516 km2. It is also the site of an ancient Minoan settlement in central Crete. The discovery of ancient roads leading from Archanes to Juktas, Anemospilia, Xeri Kara, Archaeological evidence indicates that ancient Archanes spread out over the same area as the modern town of Archanes. Spyridon Marinatos and N. Platon excavated minor areas in the region, in 1964, Yannis Sakellarakis dug trial trenches at the Tourkoyeitonia site and uncovered the first evidence of a palace site. Since 1966, Archanes has been excavated by the Greek Archaeological Society under the supervision of John Sakellarakis, in the Minoan era, aqueducts delivered water to Kephala Hill from spring water sources at Archanes, which are also the source of the Kairatos River. Troullos is the easternmost site of the Archanes settlement, Tourkoyeitonia, in central Archanes, is the site of its palace, likely built in the Middle Minoan period. Excavations began here in 1964 by J. Sakellarakis, a variety of Porphyrite stone lamps, vases, amphorae, cooking pots, cups, lamps, tools and every-day domestic items such as tweezers have been unearthed as the site. Southwest of Tourkoyeitonia, more of the palace is found, while little remains of the architecture, the walls that are preserved are Middle Minoan III–Late Minoan IA. Linear A tablets and the model of a house were excavated at The Archive along with MMIII-LMIA pottery and several unworked pieces of crystal, obsidian. The man-made enclosure of a spring, first partially excavated in 1921 by Sir Arthur Evans was later completed by J. Sakellarakis in 1964, the floor is laid with pebbles and the walls are poros-stone. Evidence indicates that it was built between Middle Minoan IB and Middle Minoan IIIA, destroyed during Late Minoan IA and then restored, the Reservoir is within the palace grounds. A large paved area, is dissected by walkways which in the form a triangle, is found at the site called The Theatre Area or Aghios Nikolaos. Two stepped altars are found here, one on a walkway, there is a painting of a reconstruction of this area in Sakellarakis Crete Archanes guidebook on page 49 which does this area more justice than a description. The economy revolves around grape and olive processing and marketing, both products account for some 96% of its total agricultural products. The Agricultural Cooperative of Archanes, set up in 1931, is one of the oldest in Greece, a quarter of the wine production is exported to Germany, France and the Netherlands, and the rest of the production is largely marketed domestically. Since the late 1990s, attempts have been made to convert part of wine making step by step to organic, Archanes Municipality Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Archanes
Archanes
–
Archanes Αρχάνες
Archanes
Archanes
–
A street in Archanes
22.
Chania
–
Chania is the second largest city of Crete and the capital of the Chania regional unit. It lies along the north coast of the island, about 70 km west of Rethymno and 145 km west of Heraklion, the official population of the municipal unit is 53,910, while the municipality has 108,642 inhabitants. This consists of the city of Chania and several towns and villages, including Kounoupidiana, Mournies, Souda, Nerokouros, Daratsos, Perivolia, Galatas. Chania is the site of the Minoan settlement the Greeks called Kydonia and it appears on Linear B as ku-do-ni-ja. Some notable archaeological evidence for the existence of this Minoan city below some parts of todays Chania was found by excavations in the district of Kasteli in the Old Town and this area appears to have been inhabited since the Neolithic era. The city reemerged after the end of the Minoan period as an important city-state in Classical Greece, the first major wave of settlers from mainland Greece was by the Dorian Greeks who came around 1100 BC. Kydonia was constantly at war with other Cretan city-states such as Aptera, Phalasarna, in 69 BC, the Roman consul Caecilius Metellus defeated the Cretans and conquered Kydonia to which he granted the privileges of an independent city-state. Kydonia reserved the right to mint its own coins until the 3rd century AD, the early Christian period under Byzantine rule and the rule of the Arabs, who called the settlement Al Hanim, are not well documented. Under the Arabs, the Christian population was persecuted and moved to the mountains, the Byzantine Empire retook the city in 961 AD. In this period the Arabic name of the city was changed into Greek Chania, byzantines began to strongly fortify the city in order to prevent another Arab invasion, using materials from the ancient buildings of the area. By this time Chania was the seat of a bishopric, which would be known under Venetian rule as Roman Catholic Diocese of La Canea, after the Fourth Crusade and the fall of Byzantium in the Hellenic area, Crete was given to Bonifacio, Marquess of Montferrat. He in turn chose to sell it to the Venetians for 100 silver marks, Chania was chosen as the seat of the Rector of the region and flourished as a significant commercial centre of a fertile agricultural region. The Venetian rule was strict and oppressive but slowly the relations between the two parts improved. Contact with Venice led to close intertwining of Cretan and Venetian cultures, without, however, the citys name became La Canea and its fortifications were strengthened, giving Chania the form that it still has today. On the other hand, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, many priests, monks and artists took refuge in Crete and reinforced the Byzantine religion, the city of Chania during the period that followed was a blend of Byzantine, Venetian, and Classical Greek cultural elements. Many of the important buildings of the town were built during this era, however, the walls did not prevent the Ottoman army from overrunning the city in 1645 after just two months siege. The Ottomans landed near the Monastery of Gonia in Kissamos, which they plundered and they seized Chania itself on 2 August 1645. Huge numbers died in the siege, later, most churches were turned into mosques
Chania
–
View of the Venetian port of Chania.
Chania
–
Hellenistic head of a woman from the cemetery of ancient Kydonia in the
Archaeological Museum of Chania.
Chania
–
The old harbour during the Venetian era.
Chania
–
Venetian shipyards.
23.
Gournia
–
Gournia is the site of a Minoan palace complex on the island of Crete, Greece, excavated in the early 20th century by the American archaeologist, Harriet Boyd-Hawes. The original name for the site is unknown, the modern name comes from the abundant hollow vessels found all over the site. Gournia lies in the municipality of Ierapetra in the prefecture of Lasithi, the overarching term Bronze Age means something different depending on the culture and region of the world being studied. The Aegean Bronze Age is defined according to the place, which are mainland, Aegean islands and these are referred to as Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan respectively. Although Crete is an island in the Aegean, their culture is so distinctive from the considered to be Cycladic that it stands on its own. Archaeologists abbreviate the chronological periods using two prefixes, the first one always refers to the major Bronze Age period which are Early, Middle and Late. The second letter stands for the place, H for Helladic, M for Minoan, lastly, some of these periods are further divided and distinguished from each other by adding Roman numerals and sometimes letters for subperiods. Thus, EM IIB refers to the last half of the period of the Early Minoan Bronze Age. Harriet Boyd Hawes excavated the Minoan village for three seasons in 1901,1903 and 1904. Boyd and her team were able to expose almost the entire town, uncovering sixty houses, a building which she called palace, the cemetery. Gournia and other Minoan sites were settled along the north coast where seasonal storms, particularly in the winter, bring the salt inland making the land unsuitable for crops. Nonetheless, the location of the settlement is due to being at the island’s narrowest point, connecting not only the east to the west. This makes Gournia the main trading center of the island in Minoan times, there is evidence that the Minoans traded with the Egyptians as evident by the Cretan artifacts found in Egyptian sites and the opposite is also true. Moreover, the influence of this relationship can be seen in art, Sphoungaras is located 150 to 200 meters from the Gournia ridge, looking over the coast. Its natural rock shelters, openings in the rock, provided the Minoans for a space to bury their dead without the need for physical labor to create or built tombs. The cemetery was in used from EM II to the end of LM I. These burials were first excavated by Harriet Boyd and later revisited by Richard Seager in 1910 and Soles, some of the artifacts found were various types of complete vases, jewelry, and seals made out of ivory. The North cemetery is located along a steep and rocky ridge about 80 meters from Gournia, first discovered by Boyd and her team in 1901, she discovered what she described as “intramural burials, ” later coining the term “house tombs” to refer to them
Gournia
–
View of the ruins at Gournia.
24.
Hagia Triada
–
Hagia Triada is the archaeological site of an ancient Minoan settlement. Hagia Triada is situated on the end of a prominent coastal ridge, with Phaistos at the eastern end. Hagia Triada has yielded more Linear A tablets than any other Minoan site, important finds include the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, the Chieftains Cup, the Boxer Vase, and the Harvester Vase. Hagia Triada is in south central Crete, 30–40 meters above sea level and it lies four kilometers west of Phaistos, which is situated at the western end of the Mesara Plain. The site was not a Minoan palace but an upscale town, after the catastrophe of 1450 BC, the town was rebuilt and remained inhabited until the 2nd century BC. Later, a Roman villa was built at the site, nearby are two chapels, Hagia Triada in the deserted village and Hagios Georgios, built during the Venetian period. Hagia Triada, as was nearby Phaistos, was excavated from 1900 to 1908 by a group from Italian Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene, directed by Federico Halbherr and Luigi Pernier. The site includes a town and a palace, an ancient drainage system servicing both, and Early Minoan tholos tombs. The settlement was in use, in forms, from Early Minoan I until the fires of Late Minoan IB. Archaeologists unearthed a sarcophagus painted with illuminating scenes from Cretan life and it is the only limestone sarcophagus of its era discovered to date and the only sarcophagus with a series of narrative scenes of Minoan funerary ritual. However, it is possible that the Minoan religious beliefs were mixed with the beliefs of the Myceneans and it was originally used for the burial of a prince. In the center of one of the sides of the sarcophagus is the scene of a bull sacrifice. On the left of the long side, a woman who is wearing a crown is carrying two vessels. By her side, a man dressed in a long robe is playing a seven-stringed lyre and this is the earliest known picture of the classical-Greek lyre. In front of them, another woman is emptying the contents of a vessel—perhaps the blood of the sacrificed bull—into a second vessel and it seems that the blood of the bull was used for the regeneration of the reappearing dead. This scene is reminiscent of a description of Homer, where the dead needed blood, on the left, three men holding animals and a boat are approaching a male figure without limbs, ahe presumably represents the dead man receiving gifts. The boat is offered for his journey to the next world, according to a Minoan belief, beyond the sea, there was the island of the happy dead Elysion, where the departed souls could have a different but happier existence. Rhadamanthys was the judge of the Elysion, and this probably predates some later Orphic beliefs
Hagia Triada
–
Archaeological site of Agia Triada
Hagia Triada
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The famous
Hagia Triada sarcophagus
Hagia Triada
–
The "Harvesters vase" from
Agia Triada (1500-1400 BC).
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
25.
Knossos
–
Knossos is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and is considered Europes oldest city. The name Knossos survives from ancient Greek references to the city of Crete. The coins came from the Roman settlement of Colonia Julia Nobilis Cnossus, a Roman colony placed just to the north of, the Romans believed they had colonized Knossos. The second palace was built on a grander scale over the old Palace after an earthquake destroyed it. The structure and ruins we see today are from the second Palace, during the Bronze Age, the town surrounded the hill on which the palace was built. The site was discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos, the excavations in Knossos began in AD1900 by the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans and his team, and they continued for 35 years. The palace was excavated and partially restored under the direction of Arthur Evans in the earliest years of the 20th century. Its size far exceeded his expectations, as did the discovery of two ancient scripts, which he termed Linear A and Linear B, to distinguish their writing from the pictographs also present. The palace of Knossos was undoubtedly the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and it appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and storerooms close to a central square. The palace was abandoned at some time at the end of the Late Bronze Age. The occasion is not known for certain, but one of the disasters that befell the palace is generally put forward. The hill was never again a settlement or civic site, although squatters may have used it for a time, however, fieldwork in 2015 revealed that during the early Iron Age, Knossos was rich in imports and was nearly three times larger than indicated by earlier excavations. Except for periods of abandonment, other cities were founded in the vicinity, such as the Roman colony. The population shifted to the new town of Chandax during the 9th century AD, by the 13th century, it was called Makruteikhos Long Wall, the bishops of Gortyn continued to call themselves Bishops of Knossos until the 19th century. Today, the name is used only for the site now situated in the expanding suburbs of Heraklion. In the first palace period around 2000 BC the urban area reached a size of up to 18,000 people, in its peak the Palace and the surrounding city boasted a population of 100,000 people shortly after 1700 BC. The name Knossos was formerly Latinized as Cnossus or Cnossos, and occasionally Knossus, Gnossus and this site history is to be distinguished from the ancient. In Greek mythology, King Minos dwelt in a palace at Knossos and he had Daedalus construct a labyrinth, a very large maze in which to retain his son, the Minotaur
Knossos
–
Restored North Entrance with charging bull fresco
Knossos
–
A
labrys from
Messara.
Knossos
–
View to the east from the northwest corner. In the foreground is the west wall of the Lustral Basin.
Knossos
–
View to the south. The hill in the background is Gypsades. Between it and Knossos is the Vlychia. The South Entrance is on the left.
26.
Malia (municipality)
–
Malia is a coastal town and a former municipality in the northeast corner of the Heraklion regional unit in Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Hersonissos and it lies 34 kilometres east of Heraklion, the Cretan capital city. The town was the seat of the municipality of Mália, the municipal unit also includes the villages of Mochos, Krasi, and Stalida, and has a total land area of 60.720 square kilometres. The town is a tourist attraction, primarily for its significant archaeological site, the Minoan town ruins lie three km east of the site and cover an area of approximately 1 square kilometre. The original name for the town is not known, the palace of Malia, dating from the Middle Bronze Age, was destroyed by an earthquake during the Late Bronze Age, Knossos and other sites were also destroyed at that time. The palace was rebuilt toward the end of the Late Bronze Age. Most of the ruins visible today date from this period of construction. The palace features a giant central courtyard, 48m x 23m in size, on the south side are two sets of steps leading upwards and a maze of tiny rooms. Also here is a carved stone called a kernos stone. On the north side of the courtyard were storage rooms with giant earthenware pithos jars and these were used for holding grain, olive oil and other liquids, the floor of these rooms has a complex drainage system for carrying away spilled liquids. The palace of Malia was discovered in 1915 by Joseph Hadzidakis and it was fully excavated from 1922 onwards by the French School at Athens in collaboration with Greek scholars. In 1921 the French School of Athens was invited to continue its work,1981, Pascal and Claude Darcque Bourrain further investigated the NO corner of the palace. The soundings in the years 1981 and 1982, conducted by Olivier Pelon have brought new insights into the precursors of the palace, since 1988, the excavations of Alexandre Farnoux and Jan Driessen have been continued. The Palace of Malia has an area of 7,500 m2 and is oriented as all Minoan palaces to NS. With regard to design and equipment, it is smaller and more modest compared to Knossos and Phaestos, around this Central Court the district or ensembles are arranged, whose communication was made possible through corridors and routes. Each of these quarters has been assigned a function, but each of these chamber ensembles should be considered on its own. Olivier Pelon differentiated 4 functional areas, representative, residential, cultic-religious and economic From the Central Court, thereby the typical projections and recesses of the Minoan Palace façades arise. The façade was given a different meaning, Undoubtedly, the west façade is the most important in Malia, in the center, it consists of carefully hewn cuboid blocks of sandstone, which are built on a base along the entire width
Malia (municipality)
–
Malia and bay of Malia
Malia (municipality)
–
Malia Strip during the day
Malia (municipality)
–
Ruins of the Palace
Malia (municipality)
–
A model of the Palace
27.
Mochlos
–
Mochlos is a modern island in the Gulf of Mirabello in eastern Crete, and the archaeological site of an ancient Minoan settlement. There is evidence that Mochlos was not an island in Minoan times, the name Mochlos also applies to the small fishing village and resort located on the main island of Crete, opposite Mochlos island. The island is administered from Tourloti which is only 9 km away, Mochlos was first excavated by Richard Seager in 1908 at the western end of the island, where a prepalatial cemetery was found. At that time, tombs, pithos burials and pit graves were uncovered, in the 1970s, Jeffrey Soles documented the tombs and cemetery uncovered by Seager. The cemetery was in use from Early Minoan II to Middle Minoan IA, the main Minoan settlement is at the south end of the island. The earliest buildings are from Early Minoan IB and the ruins visible today on Mochlos date from Late Minoan IB, northwest of the modern town of Mochlos, a three-storey building was found from the Late Minoan I period. The building included two pillar crypts, a staircase and a kitchen and this building is the largest of the Late Minoan I town. Two buildings were also uncovered behind the town of Mochlos. One was used for crafting bronze, ivory and stone, the other was for making pottery. Excavations continued 1989-1994 under the direction of Jeffrey Soles from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, some excavations continue, but the core work on the project is study and publication of data. Ten Late Minoan I metal hoards were recently excavated at Mochlos, among them are foundry hoards, traders hoards and ceremonial assemblages. Lead isotope analyses indicate that copper oxhide ingots and fragments from these hoards originated in Cyprus
Mochlos
–
The island of Mochlos with town in the foreground.
Mochlos
–
Minoan gold necklaces, 2500-1500 BC, from Mochlos and Platanos
28.
Mount Juktas
–
A mountain in north-central Crete, Mount Juktas, also spelled Iuktas, Iouktas, or Ioukhtas, was an important religious site for the Minoan civilization. Located a few kilometers from the palaces of Knossos and Fourni, at the base of Juktas, at Anemospilia, is a site that has suggested to some that the Minoans practiced human sacrifice, but the evidence is currently somewhat in question. Mount Juktas is the site of one of the most important peak sanctuaries in the Minoan world, every year, people from towns down in the plains below Mount Juktas bring flowers in procession to the chapel. Juktas was first excavated in 1909 by Sir Arthur Evans and it can be regarded as an adjunct archaeological site to the important Knossos site a few kilometres distant. Among the finds at the Juktas Minoan peak sanctuary were clay human and animal figurines, stone horns, stone altars, bronze double axes, see references for a more comprehensive inventory. Pottery sherds from the date back as far as Middle Minoan IA
Mount Juktas
–
Juktas is said to resemble the face of Zeus.
29.
Palaikastro
–
Palekastro is a small village at the east end of the Mediterranean island Crete. Already in Minoan times the region was a centre of trade, the port of Itanos, today several meters below sea level, is mentioned in ancient times. The Palaikastro Kouros is a figure of a youth that was recovered in fragments between 1987 and 1990. The village remains free from mass tourism, the main business of the approximately 1100 inhabitants continues to be agriculture. Olives and grape vines are cultivated and a few fisherman remain, commercial fishing however is difficult these days because of the substantial over fishing of the Mediterranean Sea. Tourism is an important source of income and is likely to remain so. At the east edge of the village, visible from a distance and this hill gave Palekastro its name in the Middle Ages when the region was dominated by the sovereign power of Venice. On its flat summit the Venetians established a fortress, in the course of the centuries the stones were cleared away and used by the people of the region to build houses. Finnish progressive rock band Kingston Wall have a song titled Palékastro on their album II, Palaikastro Archaeological Site The Palaikastro kouros
Palaikastro
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Palekastro: panorama
Palaikastro
–
Palekastro: Main Street
30.
Phaistos
–
Phaistos, also transliterated as Phaestos, Festos and Latin Phaestus, currently refers to a Bronze Age archaeological site at modern Phaistos, a municipality in south central Crete. Ancient Phaistos was located about 5.6 km east of the Mediterranean Sea and 62 km south of Heraklio, the second largest city of Minoan Crete. The name, Phaistos, survives from ancient Greek references to a city in Crete of that name, shown to be, in fact, the name is substantiated by the coins of the classical city. They display motifs such as Europa sitting on a bull, Talos with wings, Heracles without beard and being crowned, or Zeus in a form of a naked youth sitting on a tree. On either the obverse or the reverse the name of the city, or its abbreviation, is inscribed, such as ΦΑΙΣ or ΦΑΙΣΤΙ and these few dozen coins were acquired by collectors from uncontrolled contexts. They give no information on the location of Phaistos, the simple geometric problem posed by these distances from known points was solved with no difficulty by the survey. The location pinpointed was the end of a hill, or ridge. A village of 16 houses remained on the ridge, but the vestiges of fortification walls indicated a city had existed there. A half-century later, on removing the houses, Federico Halbherr, excavation ended in 1904, to begin again after another half-century, in 1950. By this time it was understood that the palace had been constructed at the beginning of the Proto-Palace Period, after 1955 the place name,
Phaistos
–
View of Phaistos
Phaistos
–
Entryway to the palace
Phaistos
–
Detail of the archaeological site of Phaistos
Phaistos
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Bird clasping a fish. Decoration of a clay alabastron from Kalyvia, Phaistos, Crete. Early postpalatial period (1350-1300 B.C.)
31.
Heraklion
–
Heraklion is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete. It is the fourth largest city in Greece.3 km2, Heraklion is the capital of Heraklion regional unit. The Bronze Age palace of Knossos, also known as the Palace of Minos, is located nearby. The Arab raiders from Andalusia who founded the Emirate of Crete moved the capital from Gortyna to a new castle they called ربض الخندق rabḍ al-ḫandaq Castle of the Moat in the 820s. After the Byzantine reconquest, the city was known as Megalo Kastro or Castro. The ancient name Ηράκλειον was revived in the 19th century and comes from the nearby Roman port of Heracleum, english usage formerly preferred the classicizing transliterations Heraklion or Heraclion, but the form Iraklion is becoming more common. Heraklion is close to the ruins of the palace of Knossos, though there is no archaeological evidence of it, Knossos might well have had a port at the site of Heraklion as early as 2000 BC. They built a moat around the city for protection, and named the city ربض الخندق and it became the capital of the Emirate of Crete. The Saracens allowed the port to be used as a haven for pirates who operated against Imperial shipping. In 961, Byzantine forces under the command of Nikephoros Phokas, later to become Emperor, landed in Crete, after a prolonged siege, the city fell. The Saracen inhabitants were slaughtered, the city looted and burned to the ground, soon rebuilt, the town was renamed Χάνδαξ, Chandax, and remained under Greek control for the next 243 years. Chandax was renamed Candia and became the seat of the Duke of Candia, the city retained the name of Candia for centuries and the same name was often used to refer to the whole island of Crete as well. To secure their rule, Venetians began in 1212 to settle families from Venice on Crete, after the Venetians came the Ottoman Empire. During the Cretan War, the Ottomans besieged the city for 21 years, from 1648 to 1669, in its final phase, which lasted for 22 months,70,000 Turks,38,000 Cretans and slaves and 29,088 of the citys Christian defenders perished. The Ottoman army under an Albanian grand vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha conquered the city in 1669, under the Ottomans, the city was known officially as Kandiye but informally in Greek as Megalo Castro. During the Ottoman period, the harbour silted up, so most shipping shifted to Chania in the west of the island, in 1898, the autonomous Cretan State was created, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Prince George of Greece as its High Commissioner and under international supervision. During the period of occupation of the island by the Great Powers. At this time, the city was renamed Heraklion, after the Roman port of Heracleum, in 1913, with the rest of Crete, Heraklion was incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece
Heraklion
–
The
Venetian fortress of Rocca al Mare (1523–1540) guards the inner harbor of Heraklion.
Heraklion
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The snake goddess (c.1600 BCE) in
Heraklion Archaeological Museum.
Heraklion
–
St. Matthew of the Sinaites Byzantine church
Heraklion
–
Α part of the Venetian harbour (used as shipyards).
32.
Pseira
–
Pseira is an islet in the Gulf of Mirabello in northeastern Crete with the archaeological remains of Minoan and Mycenean civilisation. At that time the town of some 60 buildings was ranged round its open square. Like many contemporary Late Minoan IB sites, it was violently destroyed, a remnant of its population cleared spaces in the rubble and for a time continued to dwell in the ruined town. A Minoan seal-stone from the representing a ship is a reminder that the harbour was essential. The Minoan community supported itself by fishing and subsistence agriculture and they deeply tilled and terraced agricultural sites where they manured the thin limy soil with human waste from the settlement. They did not enclose their planting sites, as the much later Byzantine practice was. Dams collected seasonal run-off, for water was scarce on the island, artifacts from the necropolis included clay vases, stone vessels, obsidian, bronze tools and jewelry. Burials broke off in Middle Minoan, before the town underwent its Late Minoan expansion, excavations at Pseira have been clouded by successive development in prehistoric stages obfuscating respective earlier stages, in contrast with more clearly defined strata in Knossos, for example. Excavation at the House of the Rhyta disclosed evidence for some Minoan cult practice that add to our understanding of some Minoan rites, chemical traces in a rhyton suggest barley, beer, and wine. The drinking rites that were observed in the room were apparently accompanied by feasting. McEnroe Pseira VI, The Pseira Cemetery I, The Surface Survey, edited by Philip P. Betancourt and Costis Davaras 2003 Topography, Pseira VII, The Pseira Cemetery II, Excavation of the Tombs edited by Philip P. List of islands of Greece http, //www. minoancrete. com/pseira. htm
Pseira
–
Pseira: View from the coast of Crete near Platanos
Pseira
–
The island of Pseira from the coast near Platanos.
Pseira
–
Pseira island, in the distance, can be seen from the Kastro, an archeological site overlooking
Azoria.
33.
Psychro
–
Psychro Cave is an ancient Minoan sacred cave in Lasithi plateau in the Lasithi district of eastern Crete. Psychro is associated with the Diktaean Cave, one of the sites of the birth of Zeus. Psychro is 1,025 metres above sea level, the cave is located in the prefecture of Lasithi. The Dictaean cave is famous in Greek mythology as the place where Amalthea, the archaeology attests to the sites long use as a place of cult worship. The nurse of Zeus, who was charged by Rhea to raise the infant Zeus in secret here and it is one of a number of caves believed to have been the birthplace or hiding place of Zeus. The mountains, of which the cave are part, are known in Crete as Dikte, the cave was first excavated in 1886 by Joseph Hatzidakis, President of the Syllogos at Candia, and F. Halbherr. In 1896, Sir Arthur Evans investigated the site, in 1899, J. Bones among the ash layer attest to sacrifice of bulls, sheep and goats, deer and a boar. More recent excavation has revealed the use of the cave reached back to Early Minoan times, the lower grotto falls steeply with traces of a rock-cut stair to a pool, out of which stalactites rise. Much earth had been thrown down by diggers of the Upper Grotto, Hogarth reported, in the vertical chinks of the lowest stalactites, Hogarths team found toy double-axes, knife-blades, needles, and other objects in bronze, placed there by dedicators, as in niches. The mud also at the edge of the pool was rich in similar things. In 1961, the art historian and archaeologist John Boardman published the finds uncovered by these, while clay human figurines are normally found in peak sanctuaries, Psychro and the sanctuary on Mount Ida stand out as the only sacred caves that have yielded human figurines. Psychro is also a sacred cave for a bronze leg, also known as a votive body part. More common sacred cave finds at Psychro include stone and ceramic lamps, Psychro yielded an uncommon number of semi-precious stones, including carnelian, steatite, amethyst, jasper and hematite. Psychros artefacts are now on display at the Heraklion Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Louvre, jones, Donald W.1999 Peak Sanctuaries and Sacred Caves in Minoan Crete ISBN 91-7081-153-9 Rutkowski, B. and Krzysztof Nowicki,1996. The Psychro Cave and Other Sacred Grottoes in Crete, the Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro, A Study of Extra-Urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete Hellenic Ministry of Culture
Psychro
–
Stalagmite in the cave
34.
Pyrgos Tylissos
–
Tylisos is a town and a former municipality in the Heraklion regional unit, Crete, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Malevizi, the municipal unit has an area of 131.064 km2. It is an ancient Minoan peak sanctuary and town, the Municipality of Tylisos was created in 1999 and includes 11 villages. The economy is based on agriculture, mainly cultivation and olive cultivation. At the same time stock farming of sheep, goats and chickens, Tylisos was excavated 1909-1913 by Joseph Hadzidakis, 1953-1955 by Nicholas Platon and in 1971 by A. Kanta. The town was in use Early Minoan II to Late Minoan IIIA, structures include houses, a cistern and an aqueduct with clay pipes. Excavation finds have included a pithos with Linear A inscriptions, stone horns, there are also a significant number of caves including the Kamilari Cave, Hainospilios Cave, Trapeza Cave, Doxa and Arkaliospilio. There are also two gorges which are namely, the Almiros gorge, the Gonies gorge, agrotourism is also a very popular among visitors all year round. Arolithos village, Ktima Kares and Agrotikon are the most visited sites for this, the Archaeology of Ritual, Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology UCLA publications, pp. 9–22 Minoan Crete, Tylissos page
Pyrgos Tylissos
–
Ancient Tylissos
35.
Skotino cave
–
The Skotino cave is one of the largest and more impressive caves among the many caves found in Crete. The cave lies high on a hill northwest of the village of Skotino and it is also known as Agia Paraskevi cave from the church dedicated to Saint Paraskevi built on top of it. The cave is 160 meters deep and 36 meters wide, the first archaeological examination on the site were carried out by Arthur Evans, the well-known British archaeologist who unearthed and partially restored Knossos in the early 20th century. A more comprehensive exploration was carried out by French and Greek archaeologists in the 1960s, the cave was still used in Classical Greek and Roman eras, when the fertility goddess Artemis or her Roman equivalent Diana replaced the Minoan deity. The Rough Guide to Crete, 7th edition
Skotino cave
–
View with the church is at top right.
36.
Kea (island)
–
Kea, also known as Gia or Tzia, Zea, and, in antiquity, Keos, is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit and it is the island of the Cyclades complex that is closest to Attica and is also 20 km from Cape Sounio as well as 60 km SE of Athens. Its climate is arid, and its terrain is hilly, Kea is 19 km long from north to south and 9 km wide from west to east. The area is 128.9 km2 with the highest point being 560 m above sea level, the municipality, which includes the island Makronisos, has an area of 148.926 km2. Its capital, Ioulis, is inland at an altitude and is considered quite picturesque. Other major villages of Kea are the port of Korissia and the village of Vourkari. After suffering depopulation for many decades, Kea has been rediscovered by Athenians as a convenient destination for weekend. The population in 2011 was 2,455, in the Archaic period, the island was divided between four city-states, Ioulis, Karthaia, Poieessa and Koressos. During the classical period, Kea was the home of Simonides and of his nephew Bacchylides, coins retrieved from the island from the 3rd century BC feature dogs or stars with emanating rays, highlighting Sirius importance. During the Byzantine period, many churches were built and the prosperity of the island rose and it was Byzantine until, in 1204, it was captured by the Venetians in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. The Archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, came here in exile after his city fell to the Crusaders in 1205 and it was recaptured by the Byzantines under Licario in 1278. In around 1302 during the Byzantine–Venetian War, it fell to the Venetians. Kea was taken from the Venetians by the Ottoman Turks in 1537, along with the rest of the Cyclades, Kea joined Greece following the Greek War of Independence in 1821. HMHS Britannic, the largest ship sunk in World War I, which was the ship to the RMS Titanic. It is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see, the island is famous for scuba diving, with excellent visibility, rich marine life, and wall, cavern and wreck diving. The water temperature ranges from 20°-26°C, the highlight for recreational divers is the wreck of the unique paddle/wheeler steamship Patris which sank in 1868. She was a passenger steamer 66 m long, in service in the Aegean Sea, owned by the Hellenic Steamship Co. based on Syros island and she hit the reef off Koundouros Bay at Makriopounda, Kea island on 24 February 1868 with about 120 passengers aboard. No casualties were reported owing to the proximity of land, the world-famous wreck of the HMHS Britannic, sister ship of the Titanic, located 1.5 nautical mile offshore, is at a depth of about 120 m
Kea (island)
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Kea Island
Kea (island)
–
Coin from ancient Kea; with a dog and a star
Kea (island)
–
Temple of Athena (Karthaia) on the island
Kea (island)
–
Ioulida
37.
Kythera
–
Kythira is an island in Greece lying opposite the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese peninsula. It is traditionally listed as one of the seven main Ionian Islands, administratively, it belongs to the Islands regional unit, which is part of the Attica region. The island is located between the Greek mainland and Crete, and from ancient times until the mid 19th century was a crossroads of merchants, sailors. As such, it has had a long and varied history and has influenced by many civilisations. This is reflected in its architecture, as well as the traditions and customs, influenced by centuries of coexistence of the Greek, Venetian, and Ottoman cultures. Kythira and the island of Antikythira were separate municipalities until they were merged at the 2011 local government reform. The municipality has an area of 300.023 km2, the municipal unit 279.593 km2, the province of Kythira was one of the provinces of the Piraeus Prefecture. It had the territory as the present municipality Kythira. There are archaeological remains from the Helladic period, contemporary with the Minoans, there is archaeological evidence of Kythiran trade as far as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Kythira had a Phoenician colony in the archaic age, the sea-snail which produces Tyrian purple is native to the island. Xenophon refers to a Phoenician Bay in Kythira, the archaic Greek city of Kythira was at Scandea on Avlemonas, its ruins have been excavated. Its acropolis, now Palicastro, has the temple of Aphrodite Ourania, in classical times, Kythira was part of the territory of several larger city-states. Kythira was independent, and issued her own coins, in 195, in Augustus time, it was again subject to Sparta, being the property of Gaius Julius Eurycles, who was both a Spartan magnate and a Roman citizen. By this time, the Greek cities were in practice subject to the Roman Empire, Kythira continued to exist under the Roman Empire and its Byzantine successor state for centuries. Christianity is attested from the fourth century AD, the time of Constantine, according to her legend, archaeological evidence suggests the island was abandoned about 700 AD. When Saint Theodore of Cythera led a resettlement after the Byzantine reconquest of Crete in 962 and he established a great monastery at Paliochora, a town grew up around it, largely populated from Laconia. When the Byzantine Empire was divided among the conquerors of the Fourth Crusade, during the Venetian domination the island was known as Cerigo. Ottomans called this island Chuha Island, kythirans still talk about the destruction and looting of Paliochora by Barbarossa, it has become an intrinsic part of the Kytherian folklore
Kythera
–
Cythera's capital (Chora) with the Castle
Kythera
–
Antikythera mechanism,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Kythera
–
Ruins of
Paliochora
Kythera
–
View of Kythira Castle
38.
Melos
–
Milos or Melos is a volcanic Greek island in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. Milos is the southwesternmost island in the Cyclades group, the island is famous for the statue of Aphrodite, and also for statues of the Greek god Asclepius, the Poseidon and an archaic Apollo in Athens. Milos is a popular tourist destination during the summer, the Municipality of Milos also includes the uninhabited offshore islands of Antimilos and Akradies. The combined land area is 160.147 square kilometres and the 2011 census population was 4,977 inhabitants, obsidian from Milos was a commodity as early as 15,000 years ago. The mining of obsidian did not lead to the development of permanent habitation or manufacturing on the island, instead, those in search of obsidian arrived by boat, beaching it in a suitable cove and cutting pieces of the volcanic glass from the quarries. The position of Milos, between mainland Greece and Crete, and its possession of obsidian, made it an important centre of early Aegean civilisation, Milos lost its arms-making importance when bronze became the preferred material for the manufacture of weapons. The first settlement at Phylakopi arose in the Bronze Age, flourishing as the extraction of obsidian was in the decline, the first settlers were tuna fishermen. The famous fresco of the fish was found in the ruins of the Pillar room and was executed with delicate colouring. Stylistic similarities to Minoan frescoes are suggested, and it could perhaps have been the work of a Cretan artist, part of the site has been washed away by the sea. The antiquities found at the site covered three major periods, from the Early Cycladic period to the Mycenaean period, at the site much pottery was excavated, with several changing styles and influences over the sites long occupation. In the early occupation of the site, there are similarities and imports from other Cycladic islands. The quantities found at the Cycladic sites have taken to suggest a Minoan control over the region. At Phylakopi a Megaron structure, which is associated with the Mycenaean palaces, such as those at Tiryns, Pylos. This has been taken to suggest that the Mycenaeans conquered the settlement, the evidence is not clear, though again it could be a legacy of the islanders adopting foreign elements into their culture. Particularly unexpected was the discovery in the 1970s of a shrine at the site, the shrine is unprecedented in the Bronze Age Cyclades and has provided a valuable insight ito the beliefs and rituals of the inhabitants of Phylakopi. The site was abandoned and was never reoccupied. The first Dorian settlement on Melos was established no earlier than the 1st millennium BC, dorians are the ethnic group to which the Spartans belonged, but the Dorian settlers of Melos made themselves independent. They eventually established a city whose site lies on the shore of the bay
Melos
–
Milos Island in August 2014.
Melos
–
The ancient theatre.
Melos
–
Venus de Milo,
Louvre.
Melos
–
Coin from Melos, 2nd century BC, Obverse:
Apple (μῆλον mēlon) Reverse: The
Palladion (right),
krater (left).
39.
Samothrace
–
Samothrace is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. It is a municipality within the Evros regional unit of Thrace, the island is 17 km long and is 178 km2 in size and has a population of 2,859. Its main industries are fishing and tourism, resources on the island include granite and basalt. Samothrace is one of the most rugged Greek islands, with Mt. Saos and its tip Fengari rising to 1,611 m. Samothrace was not a state of any significance in ancient Greece, since it has no natural harbour and most of the island is too mountainous for cultivation. It was, however, the home of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, among those who visited this shrine to be initiated into the island cult were Lysander of Sparta, Philip II of Macedon and Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The ancient city, the ruins of which are called Palaeopoli, was situated on the north coast, demetrios of Skepsis mention the Samothracian Mysteries. The traditional account from antiquity is that Samothrace was first inhabited by Pelasgians and Carians, at the end of the 8th century BC the island was colonised by Greeks from Samos, from which the name Samos of Thrace, that later became Samothrace, however, Strabo denies this. The archaeological evidence suggests that Greek settlement was in the sixth century BC, the Persians occupied Samothrace in 508 BC, it later passed under Athenian control, and was a member of the Delian League in the 5th century BC. It was subjugated by Philip II, and from then till 168 BC it was under Macedonian suzerainty, with the battle of Pydna Samothrace became independent, a condition that ended when Vespasian absorbed the island in the Roman Empire in AD70. Apart from the sanctuary, decisive role in the great development of Samothrace played also her two ports from which passed the sea road Troas - Macedonia. Furthermore, an important role played as well her possessions in Perea, st. Theophanes died in Samothrace in 818. The Byzantines ruled until 1204, when Venetians took their place, only to be dislodged by a Genoan family in 1355, the island came under Greek rule in 1913 following the Balkan War. It was occupied by Bulgaria during the Second World War, from 1941 to 1944, the modern port town of Kamariotissa is on the north-west coast and provides ferry access to and from points in northern Greece such as Alexandroupoli and Kavala. There is no airport on the island. Other sites of interest on the island include the ruins of Genoese forts, the picturesque Chora and Paliapoli and it was discovered in pieces on the island in 1863 by the French archaeologist Charles Champoiseau, and is now—headless—in the Louvre in Paris. It had the territory as the present municipality. List of settlements in the Evros regional unit Samothrace temple complex Winged Victory of Samothrace Samothrace travel guide from Wikivoyage Official Samothrace webpage
Samothrace
–
View of the Chora (Samothraki)
Samothrace
–
Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Palaiopolis.
Samothrace
–
Samothrace, with Mount Fengari in the background.
Samothrace
–
Waterfall and pond, characteristics of the island.
40.
Santorini
–
Santorini, classically Thera, and officially Thira, is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km southeast of Greeces mainland. It is the largest island of a small, circular archipelago which bears the name and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km2, the municipality of Santorini includes the inhabited islands of Santorini and Therasia and the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi, and Christiana. The total land area is 90.623 km2, Santorini is part of the Thira regional unit. Santorini is essentially what remains after a volcanic eruption that destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island. A giant central, rectangular lagoon, which measures about 12 by 7 km, is surrounded by 300 m high, the main island slopes downward to the Aegean Sea. On the fourth side, the lagoon is separated from the sea by another smaller island called Therasia. The islands principal port is Athinios, the capital, Fira, clings to the top of the cliff looking down on the lagoon. The volcanic rocks present from the prior eruptions feature olivine, and have a presence of hornblende. It is the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc, the volcanic arc is approximately 500 km long and 20 to 40 km wide. The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, the Minoan eruption, another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis. Before then, it was known as Kallístē, Strongýlē, or Thēra, the name Thera was revived in the nineteenth century as the official name of the island and its main city, but the colloquial name Santorini is still in popular use. During the Ottoman Empires domination of the Aegean Sea, the Turkish exonym for the island was Santurin or Santoron, Oia is now called a Κοινότητα, within the municipality of Thera, and it consists of the local subdivisions of Therasia and Oia. The two main sources of wealth in Santorini are agriculture and tourism, in recent years, Santorini has been voted one of the worlds most beautiful islands. Santorini remains the home of a small, but flourishing wine industry, white varieties also include Athiri and Aidani, whereas red varieties include mavrotragano and mandilaria. The Cyclades are part of a complex that is known as the Cycladic Massif. The complex formed during the Miocene and was folded and metamorphosed during the Alpine orogeny around 60 million years ago, Thera is built upon a small, non-volcanic basement that represents the former non-volcanic island, which was approximately 9 by 6 km. The basement rock is composed of metamorphosed limestone and schist
Santorini
–
View across collapsed caldera
Santorini
–
Fira, main town of Santorini
Santorini
–
Satellite image of
Santorini caldera. The large island to the east is Thera, with Aspronisi and
Therasia making up the rest of the caldera ring, clockwise. In the centre is the larger
Nea Kameni and the smaller Palea Kameni.
Santorini
–
Volcanic craters at Santorini today
41.
Mycenae
–
Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 kilometres southwest of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 11 kilometres to the south, Corinth,48 kilometres to the north, from the hill on which the palace was located, one can see across the Argolid to the Saronic Gulf. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the centres of Greek civilization. The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae, at its peak in 1350 BC, the citadel and lower town had a population of 30,000 and an area of 32 hectares. Although the citadel was built by Greeks, the name Mukanai is thought not to be Greek, legend has it that the name was connected to the Greek word mycēs. Thus, Pausanias ascribes the name to the legendary founder Perseus, the earliest written form of the name is Mykēnē, which is found in Homer. The reconstructed Mycenaean Greek name of the site is Mukānai, which has the form of a plural like Athānai, the change of ā to ē in more recent versions of the name is the result of a well-known sound change in later Attic-Ionic. An EH–MH settlement was discovered near a well on top of the Kalkani hill southwest of the acropolis. The first burials in pits or cist graves manifest in the MH period on the west slope of the acropolis, during the Bronze Age, the pattern of settlement at Mycenae was a fortified hill surrounded by hamlets and estates, in contrast to the dense urbanity on the coast. Richer grave goods mark the burials as possibly regal, mounds over the top contained broken drinking vessels and bones from a repast, testifying to a more than ordinary farewell. A walled enclosure, Grave Circle A, included six more shaft graves, with nine female, eight male, Grave goods were more costly than in Circle B. The presence of engraved and inlaid swords and daggers, with points and arrowheads, leave little doubt that warrior chieftains. Some art objects obtained from the graves are the Silver Siege Rhyton, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Cup of Nestor, Alan Wace divided the nine tholos tombs of Mycenae into three groups of three, each based on architecture. His earliest – the Cyclopean Tomb, Epano Phournos, and the Tomb of Aegisthus – are dated to LHIIA, burial in tholoi is seen as replacing burial in shaft graves. The care taken to preserve the shaft graves testifies that they were by then part of the royal heritage, being more visible, the tholoi all had been plundered either in antiquity, or in later historic times. Within these walls, much of which can still be seen, the final palace, remains of which are currently visible on the acropolis of Mycenae, dates to the start of LHIIIA,2. Earlier palaces must have existed, but they had cleared away or built over. The construction of palaces at that time with an architecture was general throughout southern Greece
Mycenae
–
The
Lion Gate at Mycenae.
Mycenae
–
A view of the citadel.
Mycenae
–
The Tomb of Aegisthus outside the walls of the citadel.
Mycenae
–
View from the
acropolis, or high city.
42.
Tiryns
–
Tiryns /ˈtɪrᵻnz/ or /ˈtaɪrᵻnz/ is a Mycenaean archaeological site in Argolis in the Peloponnese, some kilometres north of Nauplion. Tiryns was a fort with occupation ranging back seven thousand years. It reached its height between 1400 and 1200 BCE, when it was one of the most important centers of the Mycenaean world and its most notable features were its palace, its cyclopean tunnels and especially its walls, which gave the city its Homeric epithet of mighty walled Tiryns. In ancient times, the city was linked to the myths surrounding Heracles, two of the three walls of the megaron were incorporated into an archaic temple of Hera. The site went into decline at the end of the Mycenaean period and this site was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in 1884-1885, and is the subject of ongoing excavations by the German Archaeological Institute at Athens and the University of Heidelberg. In 1300 BCE the citadel and lower town had a population of 10,000 people covering 20-25 hectares, despite the destruction of the palace in 1200 BCE the city population continued the increase and by 1150 BCE it had a population of 15,000 people. Tiryns was recognized as one of the World Heritage Sites in 1999, Tiryns is first referenced by Homer who praised its massive walls. Ancient tradition held that the walls were built by the cyclopes because only giants of superhuman strength could have lifted the enormous stones. After viewing the walls of the citadel in the 2nd century CE. Tradition also associates the walls with Proetus, the sibling of Acrisius, according to the legend Proetus, pursued by his brother, fled to Lycia. With the help of the Lycians, he managed to return to Argolis, there, Proetus occupied Tiryns and fortified it with the assistance of the cyclopes. The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times and its base was powerful, and was constructed from two concentric stone walls, among which there were others cross-cutting, so that the thickness reached 45 m. The superstructure was clay and the roof was made from fire-baked tiles, the Acropolis was constructed in three phases, the first at the end of the Late Helladic II period, the second in Late-Helladic III and the third at the end of the Late-Helladic III B. The surviving ruins of the Mycenaean citadel date to the end of the third period, the city proper surrounded the acropolis on the plain below. At the beginning of the classical period Tiryns, like Mycenae, when Cleomenis I of Sparta defeated the Argives, their slaves occupied Tiryns for many years, according to Herodotus. Herodotus also mentions that Tiryns took part in the Battle of Plataea in 480 BCE with 400 hoplites, even in decline, Mycenae and Tyrins were disturbing to the Argives, who in their political propaganda wanted to monopolize the glory of legendary ancestors. In 468 BCE Argos completely destroyed both Mycenae and Tiryns, and transferred - according to Pausanias - the residents to Argos, however, Strabo says that many Tirynthians moved to found the city of Halieis, modern Porto Heli. Despite its importance, little value was given to Tiryns, its rulers and traditions, by epics
Tiryns
–
General view of the Citadel of Tiryns, with Cyclopean masonry.
Tiryns
–
Plan of Tiryns excavations.
Tiryns
–
Masonry tunnel
Tiryns
–
Fresco with a representation of a wild boar hunt. From the later Tiryns palace.
43.
Laconia
–
Laconia, also known as Lacedaemonia, is a region in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. The word laconic is derived from the name of the region by analogy—to speak in a concise way, as the Spartans were reputed by the Athenians to do. Laconia is bordered by Messenia to the west and Arcadia to the north and is surrounded by the Myrtoan Sea to the east and by the Laconian Gulf and it encompasses Cape Malea and Cape Tainaron and a large part of the Mani Peninsula. The islands of Kythira and Antikythera lie to the south, the island, Elafonisos, situated between the Laconian mainland and Kythira, is part of Laconia. The Evrotas is the longest river in the prefecture, the valley of the Evrotas is predominantly an agricultural region that contains many citrus groves, olive groves, and pasture lands. It is the location of the largest orange production in the Peloponnese, lakonia, a brand of orange juice, is based in Amykles. The main mountain ranges are the Taygetus in the west and the Parnon in the northeast, Taygetus, known as Pentadaktylos throughout the Middle Ages, is west of Sparta and the Evrotas valley. It is the highest mountain in Laconia and the Peloponnese and is covered with pine trees. Two roads join the Messenia and Laconia prefectures, one is a mountain pass through Taygetus. The stalactite cave, Dirou, a major tourist attraction, is located south of Areopolis in the southwest of Laconia, Laconia has a Mediterranean climate with warm winters and hot summers. Snow is rare on the coast throughout the winter but is common in the mountains. In ancient Greece, this was the region of the Spartan state. For much of antiquity the Spartan sphere of influence expanded to Messenia. Significant archaeological recovery exists at the Vaphio-tomb site in Laconia, found here is advanced Bronze Age art as well as evidence of cultural associations with the contemporaneous Minoan culture on Crete. Laconia was at war with the Kingdom of Macedonia and saw several battles, at the end of the Mycenaean period, from the early-2nd century BC until 395 AD, it was a part of the Roman Empire. In the medieval period, Laconia formed part of the Byzantine Empire, following the Fourth Crusade, it was gradually conquered by the Frankish Principality of Achaea. In the 1260s, however, the Byzantines recovered Mystras and other fortresses in the region and managed to evict the Franks from Laconia, by the mid-14th century, this evolved into the Despotate of Morea, held by the last Greek ruling dynasty, the Palaiologoi. With the fall of the Despotate to the Ottomans in 1460, with the exception of a 30-year interval of Venetian rule, Laconia remained under Ottoman control until the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence of 1821
Laconia
–
Eurotas (river) outside the city of Sparti.
Laconia
–
Municipalities of Laconia
Laconia
–
The theater of ancient
Sparta with modern Sparti and Taygetus in the background.
Laconia
–
Palace of
Mystras
44.
Greek mainland
–
Greece is a country in Southern Europe, located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The country consists of a mainland and two additional smaller peninsulas projecting from it, the Chalkidice and the Peloponnese, which is separated from the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth. Greece also features a number of islands, of various sizes, both large ones including Crete, Euboea, Rhodes and Corfu, and groups of smaller ones such as the Dodecanese. According to the CIA World Factbook, Greece has 13,676 kilometres of coastline, Greece is largely mountainous, with its latitude ranging from 35°00′N to 42°00′N and in longitude from 19°00′E to 28°30′E. As a result, the country has considerable climatic variation, Greeces climate is divided into three main classes, A Mediterranean climate features mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures rarely reach extremes, although snowfalls do occur even in Athens. An alpine climate is primarily in Western Greece. A temperate climate is found in Central and Eastern Macedonia and parts of Thrace, including Komotini, Xanthi and this climate is characterized by cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers. Greeces largest island, Crete, due to its position and vast size. As such, the climate in Crete is primarily temperate, the atmosphere can be quite humid, depending on the proximity to the sea, while winter is fairly mild. Snowfall is common on the mountains between November and May, but rare in low-lying areas, especially near the coast, during the summer, average temperatures may reach the low 30s °C, with maxima touching the mid 40s. The south coast of the island, including the Mesara Plain and Asterousia Mountains, falls in the North African climatic zone, in southern Crete, date palms bear fruit and swallows remain all year round, without migrating to Africa. Greece is located in Southern Europe, bordering the Ionian Sea and it is a peninsular country, possessing an archipelago of about 3,000 islands. It has an area of 131,957 km2, of which land area is 130,647 km2. Land boundaries with Albania, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey measure approximately 1,110 km in total. Of the countrys territory,83. 33% or 110,496 km2 is mainland territory. Greeces coastline measures 13,676 km. 80% of Greece is mountainous, the Pindus mountain range lies across the center of the country in a northwest-to-southeast direction, with a maximum elevation of 2,637 m. Mount Olympus is the highest point in Greece and the fourth highest in relative prominence in Europe
Greek mainland
–
A geographical map of
Greece and its offshore territories
Greek mainland
–
NASA photograph of Crete
Greek mainland
–
Mount Olympus
Greek mainland
–
Volcanic crater,
Santorini
45.
Crete
–
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, 88th-largest island in the world and the fifth-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete and a number of surrounding islands and islets constitute the region of Crete, the capital and the largest city is Heraklion. As of 2011, the region had a population of 623,065, Crete forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece, while retaining its own local cultural traits. It was once the centre of the Minoan civilization, which is regarded as the earliest recorded civilization in Europe. The island is first referred to as Kaptara in texts from the Syrian city of Mari dating from the 18th century BC, repeated later in Neo-Assyrian records and it was also known in ancient Egyptian as Keftiu, strongly suggesting a similar Minoan name for the island. The current name of Crete is thought to be first attested in Mycenaean Greek texts written in Linear B, through the words
Crete
–
NASA photograph of Crete
Crete
–
Lefka Ori
Crete
–
Port of Heraklion
Crete
–
Lefka Ori (White mountains).
46.
Aegean islands
–
The ancient Greek name of the Aegean Sea, Archipelago was later applied to the islands it contains and is now used more generally, to refer to any island group. The vast majority of the Aegean Islands belong to Greece, being split among nine administrative regions, the only sizable possessions of Turkey in the Aegean Sea are Imbros and Tenedos, in the northeastern part of the Sea. Various smaller islets off Turkeys western coast are also under Turkish sovereignty, most of the islands enjoy warm summer temperatures and cold winter influenced by the Mediterranean climate. In the Treaty of Peace in 1947, these Italian-controlled islands were ceded to Greece, media related to Islands of the Aegean Sea at Wikimedia Commons
Aegean islands
–
Satellite view of the
Aegean Sea and Islands
47.
Pylos
–
Pylos, historically also known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and it was the capital of the former Pylia Province. It is the harbour on the Bay of Navarino. Nearby villages include Gialova, Pyla, Elaiofyto, Schinolakka, the town of Pylos has 2,767 inhabitants, the municipal unit of Pylos 5,287. The municipal unit has an area of 143.911 km2, Pylos has a long history, having been inhabited since Neolithic times. It was a significant kingdom in Mycenaean Greece, with remains of the so-called Palace of Nestor excavated nearby, named after Nestor, in Classical times, the site was uninhabited, but became the site of the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian War. Pylos is scarcely mentioned thereafter until the 13th century, when it became part of the Frankish Principality of Achaea, increasingly known by its French name of Port-de-Jonc or its Italian name Navarino, in the 1280s the Franks built the Old Navarino castle on the site. Pylos came under the control of the Republic of Venice from 1417 until 1500, the Ottomans used Pylos and its bay as a naval base, and built the New Navarino fortress there. It takes that name from the surrounding the place. A Greek one, Avarinos, later shortened to Varinos or lengthened to Anavarinos by epenthesis, in the late 14th/early 15th centuries, when it was held by the Navarrese Company, it was also known as Château Navarres, and called Spanochori by the local Greeks. Under Ottoman rule, the Turkish name was Anavarin, after the construction of the new Ottoman fortress in 1571/2, it became known as Neokastro among the local Greeks, while the old Frankish castle became known as Palaiokastro. The soil about Navarino is of a red colour, and is remarkable for the production of an abundance of squills, which are used in medicine. The remains of Navarino, consist of a fort, covering the summit of a hill sloping quickly to the south, the Gialova wetland is a regional blessing of nature. It is one of 10 major lagoons in Greece, and has been classified as one of the important bird areas in Europe. It has also listed as a 1500-acre archaeological site, lying between Gialova and the bay of Voidokilia. Its alternative name of Vivari is Latin, meaning fishponds and it is Gialova, too, which plays host to a vary rare species, nearing extinction throughout Europe, the African chameleon. Pylos has evidence of human presence dating back to the Neolithic Age. Bronze Age Pylos was excavated by Carl Blegen between 1939 and 1952 and it is located at modern Ano Englianos, about 9 km north-east of the bay 37. 028°N21. 695°E /37.028,21.695
Pylos
–
The bay of Pylos.
Pylos
–
Pylos from the north
Pylos
–
Mycenean tomb,
Palace of Nestor
Pylos
–
The port
48.
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
–
Thebes is a city in Boeotia, central Greece. It played an important role in Greek myths, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed a Mycenaean settlement and clay tablets written in the Linear B script, Thebes was the largest city of the ancient region of Boeotia and was the leader of the Boeotian confederacy. It was a rival of ancient Athens, and sided with the Persians during the 480 BC invasion under Xerxes. Theban forces ended the power of Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC under the command of Epaminondas, the Sacred Band of Thebes famously fell at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC against Philip II and Alexander the Great. Prior to its destruction by Alexander in 335 BC, Thebes was a force in Greek history. During the Byzantine period, the city was famous for its silks, the modern city contains an Archaeological Museum, the remains of the Cadmea, and scattered ancient remains. Modern Thebes is the largest town of the unit of Boeotia. Thebes is situated in a plain, between Lake Yliki to the north, and the Cithaeron mountains, which divide Boeotia from Attica and its elevation is 215 metres above mean sea level. It is about 50 kilometres northwest of Athens, and 100 kilometres southeast of Lamia, motorway 1 and the Athens–Thessaloniki railway connect Thebes with Athens and northern Greece. The municipality of Thebes covers an area of 830.112 square kilometres, the unit of Thebes 321.015 square kilometres. In 2011, as a consequence of the Kallikratis reform, Thebes was merged with Plataies, Thisvi, and Vagia to form a larger municipality, the other three become units of the larger municipality. Five main cycles of story may be distinguished, The foundation of the citadel Cadmea by Cadmus, the building of a seven-gated wall by Amphion, and the cognate stories of Zethus, Antiope and Dirce. See Theban pederasty and Pederasty in ancient Greece for detailed discussion, the immolation of Semele and the advent of Dionysus. The Greeks attributed the foundation of Thebes to Cadmus, a Phoenician king from Tyre, Cadmus was famous for teaching the Phoenician alphabet and building the Acropolis, which was named the Cadmeia in his honor and was an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural center. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed cist graves dated to Mycenaean times containing weapons, ivory, *Tʰēgʷai in LHIIIB lost contact with Egypt but gained it with Miletus and Cyprus. In the late LHIIIB, according to Palaima, *Tʰēgʷai was able to pull resources from Lamos near Mount Helicon, and from Karystos and Amarynthos on the Greek side of the isle of Euboia. As a fortified community, it attracted attention from the invading Dorians, and this centralizing policy is as much the cardinal fact of Theban history as the counteracting effort of the smaller towns to resist absorption forms the main chapter of the story of Boeotia
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
–
Remains of the Cadmea, the central fortress of ancient Thebes
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
–
Theban workshop (Oinochoe type), 7th century BC.
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
–
Map of the Topography of Ancient Thebes.
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
–
Silver
stater of Thebes (405-395 BC). Obverse: Boeotian shield, reverse: Head of bearded
Dionysus.
