Minoan Palace-Temple Analysis

Zerrin Mutlu
Response paper: The Minoan Palace-Temple
December, 10, 2015 The Minoan Palace-Temple Schoep discussed the Minoan palace-temple through Evans’ arguments. Considering both Evans’ and Schoep’s arguments about the Minoan palace-temple, the arguments of Schoep was more rational. Evans’s argument depended on the popularity and his thoughts did not criticize until 2000s. Preziosi and Hitchcock highlighted that there was no convincing evidence about the functions of the large building structure. Thus, in my opinion these large building structure could not be palace-temple structure because the ideas of Evans’ did not based on solid

He mentioned that Crete was different from contemporaries. His background influenced his arguments and led to misinterpretation but interestingly his arguments accepted universally. He thought that Minoan civilizations was one of the cornerstone of the European civilizations and he tried to connect Europe with Crete by the material culture. For instance, he emphasized the writing of Crete that Linear B was similar kind of script with Europeans’ and he said the tablets from Assyria and Babylon were written with cuneiform writing and this showed the links between Crete and Europe. He mentioned that Minoan civilization different from contemporaries in the eastern Mediterranean. So he used the palace-temple argument to differentiate Minoans from others. As Farnoux said he created different kind of kingship for Minoans. He always underlined the uniqueness of Crete and so he tried to impose the superiority of Europe over eastern Mediterranean using Crete because of the Orientalist idea of Europe in the 19th century. He mentioned that the civilization of Crete was far away from the influences of other civilizations. He said Crete was insular island but not isolated so Minoans transformed some importation goods to something new. Crete had links with Anatolia, Egypt and Cycladic islands via trade so Minoans affected by other civilizations especially in terms of religion. Evans said they had close link with Anatolia and both had the Mother

The presence of the little shrine does not prove that this building is temple. When we looked to the palaces in the Near Eastern, these buildings included storage rooms, production areas, living quarters and main room for gatherings. Generally king and high elites inhabited in these large palace complexes. However, in Minoan court buildings we do not have any evidence that king resided in this court building so we cannot say that this building was palace because it is not proper to palace context. Also, temples were generally religious center and they had also storage rooms, production centers and even their own lands for agriculture. However, their main function was religious and generally there were found a lot of evidence to prove the idea of temple. In the Knossos court building example, we have just little shrine and the traces of feasting activities in the court areas. Also we should think about that the palace itself was also used for ceremonial center. Thus, this little