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This is not Crete yet, it is the port of Emborios on the small island of Halki where the ferry stopped to drop off and take on a few passengers.
A short while later we stopped in the port of Diafani on Karpathos Island.
And also in Pigdalia further south on Karpathos.
Finally, the ferry landed in Crete at Agios Nicolaeos where I got a bus for Iraklion, the capital of Crete. I found a hostel called "Rent Rooms Hellas" where I had a bunk in a seven bed dorm for 10 $US which was quite reasonable considering it was the high season at the end of May.
The first humans arrived on Crete around 5000 BC and developed slowly until the emergence of the Minoan culture around 2800. The Minoans built great palaces (Knossos, Phaestos and Malia) and developed one of the earliest syllabic alphabets called linear A. Their civilisation was already well developed when their palaces were destroyed in 1628 BC by the gigantic volcanic explosion of the nearby island of Thera (Santorini). The great Knossos palace was however rebuilt and the Minoan civilisation still progressed until it suffered destruction again around 1450 BC.
Crete then fell under the influence of the Mycenaean until their decadence around 1300 BC. The linear B alphabet was developed during this time. Cretan city-states were then dominated by the warlike Dorians around 1100 BC, They stagnated during Athens' golden age and its wars with Sparta that left the door open for Philip and Alexander the Great. Crete then became part of the Roman and Byzantine empires. Arab Saracen pirates based their operations there from 824 to 961 when Byzantium took it back. After sacking Constantinople in 1204, the crusaders sold it to Venice who fortified it against the Ottoman Turks who eventually conquered it in 1670. Finally, it became a British protectorate in 1898 before being joined to independent Greece in 1913.
The fortress shown in the last picture and the other fortifications we see today were built during the Venetian occupation, mostly in the 16th century to defend the city, then called Candia, from the growing threat of Turkish invasion.
Here is St George's Gate near the Archaeological museum on Plateia Eleftherias.
When the Turks did invade the island, they quickly overran the Venetian forts at Hania and Rethimno but it took them 21 years to overcome Candia's formidable defences in 1669.
The Venetian left these armouries where they used to outfit their boats near the port.
Plateia Venizelou, graced by the Morosini fountain shown here, can be called the centre of the tourist scene and night life in Iraklion.
Everybody was ready to serve the horde of tourists, sometimes with a smile. These were the biggest gyros I had ever seen. Worth a shot!
St Titos church on 25 Avgoustou street that goes down to the old harbour.
Iraklion is the main gateway to Crete but there is not much to see there except for the Archaeological museum on Plateia Eleftherias.
You cannot however avoid to see what is left of the famous Knossos palace only 5 km away.
Cults of fertility involving feminine figures were common from Turkey to Malta around 3000 BC but the cult to the snake goddess shown below left, was specific to the early Minoan civilisation.
As for the Minoan cult of the bull, according to the legend, Pasiphae, the wife of king Minos, let herself become impregnated by a bull and gave birth to a monster called the Minotaur who had a human body and the head of a bull. Minos had a labyrinth built to keep him in because the Minautaur ate human flesh instead of grass like ordinary bulls.. Skipping some of the details, Theseus was sent to Knossos as one of the sacrificial youths Athens had to provide Minos for the Minotaur as tribute. The king's daughter Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him the ball of twine that enabled him to find his way out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. Theseus and the other youths fled with Ariadne but they parted ways in Naxos where she married Dionysos.
Below right, the replica of the fresco called the "Priest King" shows a wealth of details that do not exist in the original kept in the Iraklion museum. The lilies around the king and the details of his headdress are very nice but they are only the product of the restorer's imagination. In other words, they are phoney like much of what is displayed here.
This plan can give you an idea of the size of the great Knossos Palace.
Unfortunately, it has been so extensively restored that much of what we see has been created by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans who spent 53 years indulging his imagination after uncovering the ruins in 1900.
Cleaning up, restoration and even sometimes, a small degree of reconstruction, is required to make archaeological sites accessible and interesting for the general public. I think that's quite acceptable as long as such enhancement uses the same materials and respects the authenticity of the original.
Past a certain limit however, excessive reconstruction becomes equivalent to outright destruction of the original.
The Knossos Palace is such a case. Everybody knows that the reinforced concrete pillars and beams seen in the last picture did not exist in 1500 BC. Nor did the concrete beam and slab roof of the south propylae shown here.
We would have been better off had mister Evans built a completely new Knossos Palace according to his dreams a few km down the road. It probably would have cost him less and it would not have irremediably destroyed the original
Even these sunken magazines have been "improved" by casting concrete borders over their masonry divisions.
The tourists happily queue up to visit the throne room or rather Evan's rendition of what he thought was a throne room in the late Mycenaean period of the palace.
They could just as well have gone to Disneyland to see this reconstructed interior!
Here is a view of the northwest corner of the "customs house" as seen from the throne room area. Evans called it the custom house because it was the first large hall that visitors ariving from the port would enter.
The western side of the so called "customs house" is one of the most frequently photographed elements of the palace.
This obviously modern structure erected over a sunken pit had been given the name of northern "lustral" area and the function of covering a sacred basin used for purification rituals. With just a little more effort of imagination, Evans could have given us the name of the uncle of the last high priest to direct the holy ritual here.
I left with a feeling of having been abused by too much reinforced concrete!
My disappointment with what was done to the ruins of the Knossos Palace does not in the least diminish my interest and admiration for the brilliant realisations of the Minoans.
Here is an example of Linear A on a disk found in Phaestos and kept in the Iraklion museum. The message has not yet been conclusively decyphered. Various interpretors claim it is a prayer, a curse, a geometric theorem or a call to arms.
