The Aegean Civilizations: Minoa, Mycenae, and Troy
The civilization before the birth of the ancient Greek civilization is called the Aegean civilization. The Aegean Sea civilization, which has continuity with ancient Greek civilization, begins on the island of Crete under mainland Greece.
There are 484 islands in the Aegean Sea, the largest of which is Crete. Crete is a place where Neolithic people who lived in the Anatolian Peninsula migrated and settled around 6,000 B.C.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, is said to have said, “To cure a disease, go to Crete.” Crete has a mild Mediterranean climate. Based on this environment, we grew crops such as grapes, olives, and herbs, raised livestock, and caught seafood in the sea. As agriculture and fishing thrive, so does the population. As the population grows, we need a lot of food.
But Crete is an island It turned out that there was a limit to securing arable land. In the end, the Cretes decided to do trade. They build ships, develop navigation, and start intermediary trade.
Geopolitically, it was in the middle of Asia and Egypt’s Greek Peninsula, so it was good for intermediary trade. Not long after I started trading, the economic situation on the island of Crete improved noticeably Of course, the economy wasn’t the only thing that got better.
Mesopotamia and Egypt’s advanced civilizations were on their way to Europe It turned out that they were naturally affected. This environment in Crete brings about improved technology and artistic power.
Crete made a variety of tools and weapons using bronze technology and also made beautiful and elegant precious metals, glasses, and ceramics. As a result, export items have diversified and more regions are looking for their products. In short, a luxury brand called Crete was created.
Above all, letters play a decisive role in Crete’s transformation into a decent civilization. The letters of Crete are today called handcrafted letters, or Linear A. This letter is an independent letter that is in poor condition and is not affected by the surrounding civilization, and the number of data found is small, so it has yet to be decoded.
But this Linear A is evidence that Crete Island systematically managed its civilization, controlling production and trade and distributing labor. At this point in the development of civilization, it feels like there’s going to be a single monarch.
Around 1700 B.C., a legendary king named King Minos appeared and led the revival of the Crete civilization. It’s even called the Minoan civilization, which means the civilization of Minos.
The future historian Thucydides said about King Minos.
He was the first to organize a navy under King Minos to achieve the origin of maritime hegemony dominated by the Greeks today. It also conquered islands near Crete and wiped out pirates based on them, making it easier to navigate nearby seas, resulting in commercial benefits.
And later on, the great poet Homer would say this
There is an island called Crete surrounded by the sea on all sides where the winey sea is beautiful and fertile. There are countless people living on the island and there is a king named Minos who is trusted by Zeus once every nine years.
That’s a good thing to say, but there are quite a few Greek myths about the Crete civilization out of nowhere. This is something you might have heard of at least once. Among them, I would like to introduce a piece of myth related to the god Crete and Zeus and King Minos.
Zeus grew up on the island of Crete. The reason is because of his father. Chronos, the father of Zeus, is the god who castrated and kicked out his father, the grandfather of Zeus, Uranos. Uranos throws a word as he is kicked out. It was a curse that you would have a child like you. So you are destined to be kicked out by your child like me. To avoid this fate, Chronos confides in the mouth of the tribe where his wife Leah gives birth.
Leah couldn’t just watch her husband’s actions. So when I give birth to my sixth child, I wrap a rock in a river cloth instead of a child and have him swallow it instead. This sixth child was Zeus, and Leah called Zeus the island of Crete.
Take it out to the mountains. Zeus, who grew up on the island of Crete, went to his father and secretly fed him vomit, and Chronos vomited the stone he swallowed instead of Zeus with his five children. And Zeus, along with his brothers, drove out his father and stood tall as a god of prudence.
Zeus, who rose to power and became the highest god, is depicted as a libertine in mythology. Zeus also approaches Princess Europa of Phoenix Zeus fell in love with Europa’s beauty and turns into a white, smooth bull and approached her.
Europa, who was playing on the beach with her maids, approached her favorite animal, a cow after she found a beautiful white cow. They even get on their backs for fun. But as she gets on her back, Zeus jumps into the sea. And he swims to the island of Crete where he grew up. Three sons are born between Zeus and Europa, who arrived in Crete. Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon.
Here’s an important thing to say. It is said that the first civilization in Europe started from Europa, and the word Europe was named after her. Anyway, as always, Zeus leaves Europa shortly.
And before I leave, I arrange for the marriage of the king of Crete, Asterius, and Europa. Anyway, the marriage was accomplished, and Europa’s three sons grew up to be princes of the island of Crete. And the time has come to take over the throne.
The King Minos who deceived Poseidon
Minos, of the three sons, did not sit still and wait for the throne like the other brothers. He actively moves to find Poseidon, the god of the sea. Minos asks Poseidon to send a white bull in public to show that he is king.
Poseidon asked what he would get if he did that, and Minos said he would kill the white cow that he had sent him to perform a memorial service. Poseidon, which was thirsty for ancestral rites, is allowed on the spot.
Poseidon, as promised, sent a beautiful white bull, and people said that God recognized Minos as king. So Minos became king. But He changed his mind because he is also a human. The cow was so beautiful when he offered it to Poseidon.
Above all, Queen Pasiphaë, who loved cows so much, begged me not to offer them. Eventually, Minos offered Poseidon an old and sick cow as a sacrifice. Naturally, the embezzlement of the sacrifice was quickly discovered by Poseidon, and angry Poseidon cursed Minos’ queen Pasiphaë to love the cow in question at all.
Interestingly, this cow was in heat whenever it saw a cow, but never allowed human access, so there was no way for Pasiphaë to approach the cow. Eventually, Pasiphaë, blinded by jealousy toward a cow, asks for help from the best inventor of the time, Dailos.
Daidalos made a fake cow model, and the queen was able to enter the fake cow and touch the bull through a hole in her side. The problem is that there was a hole in this cow’s butt. In the end, Queen Pasiphaë does not stop touching the cow and ends up playing zoophilia with the cow. The monster born here is a Minotaur.
The baby had a head, a cow, and half a man. This is the Minotaur, a combination of a man and a bull. King Minos was quite embarrassed when he saw the baby. But he couldn’t bring himself to kill Minotaur, who was born to a queen for his sins. However, it couldn’t be left alone because Minotaur ate humans, not waste, and added warmth as the days went by.
King Minos ordered Daidalos to build a labyrinth that would never come out once he entered. So Minotaurosis is trapped in a labyrinth. So this is the story of Minotaurus trapped in a labyrinth.
Minos succeeded in locking up Minotaur, an anti-human being born to his wife, Pasiphae, in a labyrinth, but it was still difficult to find his food. Because they had to feed humans. Minos threatens to feed 14 young men and women in Athens, a small country, every year.
And in fact, every year, young people were sacrificed as sacrifices. Not seeing this, the prince of Athens, Theseus, volunteered to his father, King Aegeus, to go as a sacrifice. So I’m going to kill the Minotaur and break the chain of this tedious link, and King Aegeus couldn’t break the stubbornness of Theseus.
Instead, the king tells the prince to tell him the result by the color of the sail when he comes back because he is worried. If you succeed, you should come back with a white sail. So Theseus becomes rich and is dragged to Crete.
But Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, happened to see her and fell in love with her at a glance. And she thinks. The death of this beautiful boy is a huge loss to mankind. And she finds out a secret recipe for escape from the labyrinth to the kingdom’s best engineer, Daedalus.
That’s how you tie a bundle of silk thread to the entrance, and when you come back, follow the loose thread. Finally, Theseus kills the Minotaur and safely escapes the labyrinth following Ariadne’s instructions. But on his way back to Athens, Theseus is inspired by victory and forgets to set a white sail.
Seeing a ship returning with a dirty sail from a distance, Aegeus could not overcome the sadness of losing his son and eventually threw himself into the sea. The sea where King Aegeus jumped in and killed himself is the sea of Aegeus, the Aegean Sea.
On the other hand, King Minos of the city of Crete blames Daydalos for telling Ariadne how to escape. Daedalus was confined to the palace with his son Icarus after only doing royal favors for his whole life. Even if he had designed it himself, there was no way to escape the labyrinth without thread.
But Daidalos was a human being who couldn’t do everything. He collects feathers from birds, weaves them into threads, glues them together with wax, makes wings, and escapes the prison with his son.
Daedalus warns Icarus to always fly only in the middle of the sky and the sea because their wings melt when they get close to the sun and their wings get wet when they fly too low.
But Icarus was too excited to listen to his attention. He flew high, and eventually, the sun melted wax, and crashed to death. Daedalus takes his son’s body and buries it on a nearby island. Later, this island was called Icaria Island.
