Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete rests about 160 km (99 mi) south of the Greek mainland, and about 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of 8,450 km2 (3,260 sq mi) and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete to the north and the Libyan Sea to the south. Crete covers 260 km from west to east but is narrow from north to south, spanning three longitudes but only half a latitude.
The history of Crete goes back to the 7th millennium BC, preceding the ancient Minoan civilization by more than four millennia. The Minoan civilization was the first civilization in Europe.
Phaistos ), also transliterated as Phaestos, Festos and Latin Phaestus, is a Bronze Age archaeological site at modern Faistos, a municipality in south central Crete. It is notable for the remains of a Minoan palace and the surrounding town.
Eteocretan is the pre-Greek language attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions of ancient Crete.
The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD.
Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from c. 800 BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. In the archaic period, Greeks settled across the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, as far as Marseille in the west and Trapezus (Trebizond) in the east; and by the end of the archaic period, they were part of a trade network that spanned the entire Mediterranean.
Gortyn, Gortys or Gortyna is a municipality, and an archaeological site, on the Mediterranean island of Crete 45 km (28 mi) away from the island's capital, Heraklion. The seat of the municipality is the village Agioi Deka. Gortyn was the Roman capital of Creta et Cyrenaica. The area was first inhabited around 7000 BC.
Ancient Greek laws consist of the laws and legal institutions of ancient Greece.
Gortyna was a town of ancient Crete which appears in the Homeric poems under the form of Γορτύν; but afterwards became usually Gortyna (Γόρτυνα). According to Stephanus of Byzantium it was originally called Larissa (Λάρισσα) and Cremnia or Kremnia (Κρήμνια).
Dreros, also Driros, near Neapoli in the regional unit of Lasithi, Crete, is a post-Minoan archaeological site, 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Agios Nikolaos. Known only by a chance remark of the 9th-century Byzantine grammarian Theognostus, archaeology of the site shows Dreros to have been initially colonised by mainland Greeks in the early Archaic Period about the same time as Lato and Prinias.
The Gortyn code was a legal code that was the codification of the civil law of the ancient Greek city-state of Gortyn in southern Crete.
Margherita Guarducci, also spelled Guarduci, was an Italian archaeologist, classical scholar, and epigrapher. She was a major figure in several crucial moments of the 20th-century academic community. A student of Federico Halbherr, she edited his works after his death. She was the first woman to lead archaeological excavations at the Vatican, succeeding Ludwig Kaas, and completed the excavations on Saint Peter's tomb, identifying finds as relics of Saint Peter. She has also engaged in discussions on the authenticity of the Praeneste fibula, arguing that its inscription is a forgery.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ancient Greece:
Itanus or Itanos was a Greek city and port on the northeast coast of ancient Crete, on the promontory which the Romans called Itanum, the neuter form of Itanus, Latin for Greek Itanos. The base of the tripartite northeast promontory, today called Cape Sideros, is still called Itanos or Itano in modern Greek.
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel. The local, so-called epichoric, alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols Χ, Φ and Ψ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters, in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function ; in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ; and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Anatolia. It was officially adopted in Athens in 403 BC and in most of the rest of the Greek world by the middle of the 4th century BC.
Azoria is an archaeological site on a double-peaked hill overlooking the Gulf of Mirabello in eastern Crete in the Greek Aegean. "Azoria" is a local toponym, not apparently an ancient place name or epigraphically-attested Greek city.
Lilian Hamilton "Anne" Jeffery was a British archaeologist, classical philologist and epigraphist best remembered for her 1961 work The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece. Building on the work of Adolf Kirchhoff and Antony E. Raubitschek, Jeffery surveyed the development of the Greek alphabet from its adoption down to the fifth century BC and in so doing established the chronology of archaic inscriptions.
Arcades or Arkades, also Arcadia or Arkadia (Ἀρκαδία), was a town and polis (city-state) of ancient Crete. It disputed the claims of Mount Ida to be the birthplace of Zeus.
Axus or Axos, also Oaxus or Oaxos (Ὄαξος) and Waxus or Waxos (Ϝάξος), was a city and polis (city-state) of ancient Crete. According to Virgil, it was situated on a river; which, according to Vibius Sequester, gave its name to Axus. According to the Cyrenaean traditions, the Theraean Battus, their founder, was the son of a damsel named Phronimne, the daughter of Etearchus, king of this city. The town must be quite ancient as its name appears in Mycenaean Linear B tablets in the form e-ko-so. It was an inland town and its harbour was at Astale.
Priansus or Priansos, also Pransus or Pransos (Πράνσος), was a town and polis (city-state) in ancient Crete. It is mentioned in a list of Cretan cities cited in a decree of Knossos of about 259–233 BCE, as well as in the list of Cretan cities that signed an alliance with Eumenes II of Pergamon in 183 BCE. An honorary decree of Priansus dated to 170–140 BCE that includes the dispatch of two ambassadors of Teos in which one of them is specially praised for singing poems from the mythic Cretan cycle. Priansus minted coins dated from approximately 330–270 BCE bearing the inscription «ΠΡΙΑΝΣΙΕΩΝ» or «ΠΡΙ». Priansos made several treatises with other Cretan poleis, including a treaty of isopoliteia with the polis of Hierapytna.
