Minoan (disambiguation)

Last updated April 14, 2019

Minoan may refer to the following:

Minoan, having to do with King Minos
Minoan civilization
- Minoan, the script known as Linear A
  - the (undeciphered) Minoan language written in that script
    - the Eteocretan language, probably a descendant thereof
- Minoan pottery
- Minoan eruption
- Minoan chronology
- Minoan seal-stones
- Minoan religion
- Minoan Modi, a peak sanctuary in eastern Crete
- Minoan Bull-leaper, a bronze in the British Museum
The Minoan language is the language of the ancient Minoan civilization of Crete written in the Cretan hieroglyphs and later in the Linear A syllabary. As the Cretan hieroglyphs are undeciphered and Linear A only partly deciphered, the Minoan language is unknown and unclassified: indeed, with the existing evidence, it seems impossible to be certain that the two scripts record the same language, or even that a single language is recorded in each. The Eteocretan language, attested in a few alphabetic inscriptions from Crete 1,000 years later, is possibly a descendant of Minoan, but it is itself unclassified.
Eteocretan is the non-Greek language of a few alphabetic inscriptions of ancient Crete.
Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quickly maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, on Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.
Cypro-Minoan syllabary, a script used on Cyprus
Minoan, an old name for the Mycenean language before it was deciphered and discovered to be a form of Greek
Minoan frescoes from Tell el-Daba, ancient Egyptian frescos in Minoan style
Minoa, name of several bronze-age settlements in the Aegean.
Minoan Group plc, a Glasgow-based travel and leisure company
Minoan Lines, a Greek ferry company
Minoan Air, a Greek airline

In Greek mythology, Minos was the first King of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every nine years, he made King Aegeus pick seven young boys and seven young girls to be sent to Daedalus's creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by the Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in the underworld.

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands which flourished from c. 2700 to c. 1450 BC, before a late period of decline, finally ending around 1100 BC. It represents the first advanced civilization in Europe, left behind massive building complexes, tools, stunning artwork, writing systems, and a massive network of trade. The civilization was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. The name "Minoan" derives from the mythical King Minos and was coined by Evans, who identified the site at Knossos with the labyrinth and the Minotaur. The Minoan civilization has been described as the earliest of its kind in Europe, and historian Will Durant called the Minoans "the first link in the European chain".

Linear A is a writing system used by the Minoans (Cretans) from 1800 to 1450 BC. Along with Cretan hieroglyphic, it is one of two undeciphered writing systems used by ancient Minoan and peripheral peoples. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. It is related to the Linear B script, which succeeded the Linear A and was used by the Mycenaean civilization.

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Minoan.
If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Related Research Articles

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 undeciphered earlier script used for writing the Minoan language, as is the later Cypriot syllabary, which also recorded Greek. Linear B, found mainly in the palace archives at Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae, disappeared with the fall of Mycenaean civilization during the Late Bronze Age collapse. The succeeding period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, provides no evidence of the use of writing. It is also the only one of the Bronze Age Aegean scripts to have been deciphered, by English architect and self-taught linguist Michael Ventris.

In Greek mythology, the Cercopes were mischievous forest creatures who lived in Thermopylae or on Euboea but roamed the world and might turn up anywhere mischief was afoot. They were two brothers, but their names are given variously:

Knossos is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city.

The Cypriot or Cypriote syllabary is a syllabic script used in Iron Age Cyprus, from about the 11th to the 4th centuries BCE, when it was replaced by the Greek alphabet. A pioneer of that change was king Evagoras of Salamis. It is descended from the Cypro-Minoan syllabary, in turn a variant or derivative of Linear A. Most texts using the script are in the Arcadocypriot dialect of Greek, but also one bilingual inscription was found in Amathus.

Eteocypriot was a pre-Indo-European language spoken in Iron Age Cyprus. The name means "true" or "original Cyprian" parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholarship to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places. Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a syllabic script derived from Linear A. The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot Greek from about the 10th century BC and finally became extinct in about the 4th century BC.

Amnisos, also Amnissos and Amnisus, is a bronze-aged settlement on the north shore of Crete and was used as a port to the palace city of Knossos. It appears in Greek literature and mythology from the earliest times, but its origin is far earlier, in prehistory. The historic settlement belonged to a civilization now called Minoan. Excavation at Amnisos in 1932 uncovered a villa that included the "House of the Lilies", which was named for the lily theme that was depicted in a wall fresco.

The Heraklion Archaeological Museum is a museum located in Heraklion on Crete. It is one of the greatest museums in Greece and the best in the world for Minoan art, as it contains the most notable and complete collection of artefacts of the Minoan civilization of Crete.

Cypro-Minoan syllabary undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1050 BCE)

The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM) 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 visual similarity to Linear A on Minoan Crete, from which CM is thought to be derived. Approximately 250 objects—such as clay balls, cylinders, and tablets and votive stands—which bear Cypro-Minoan inscriptions, have been found. Discoveries have been made at various sites around Cyprus, as well as in the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast.

Aegean script or Cretan script refers to a group of scripts that originate from the island of Crete. It may also refer to:

The Pre-Greek substrate consists of the unknown language or languages spoken in prehistoric ancient Greece before the settlement of Proto-Hellenic speakers in the area. It is possible that Greek took over some thousand words and proper names from such a language, because some of its vocabulary cannot be satisfactorily explained as deriving from the Proto-Greek language.

Minoan religion was the religion of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization of Crete. Modern scholars have reconstructed it almost totally on the basis of archaeological remains rather than texts. Minoan religion is considered to have been closely related to Near Eastern prehistoric religions, and its central deity is generally agreed to have been a goddess. Prominent Minoan sacred symbols include the bull and its horns of consecration, the labrys, and the serpent.

Akrotiri is a Minoan Bronze Age settlement on the volcanic Greek island of Santorini (Thera). The name and the population are currently Greek. The civilization of the Bronze Age city, however, shows affinities to early Cretan civilization, which, going by its writing system, was undoubtedly not Greek. The Greeks arrived in Crete during the Mycenaean Period, later than Akrotiri. The date of their diffusion through the Cyclades remains a mystery, but there is nothing identifiably Greek at Akrotiri.

Minoan art is the art produced by the Minoan civilization from about 2600 to 1100 BC.

The Prince of the Lilies, or the Lily prince, is a celebrated Minoan fresco on the Greek island of Crete; the fresco is dated to circa 1550 BC.

La Parisienne also known as the Minoan Lady, is part of the Camp Stool Fresco, which was probably painted on the wall of the Sanctuary Hall on the Piano Nobile at the palace of Knossos. The sacral knot worn at the back of the neck seems to indicate that she is a priestess or even a goddess. The archaeological research in Minoan palaces, cemeteries and settlements has brought to light a multitude of objects related to beautification.

The Bull-Leaping Fresco, as it has come to be called, is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the palace at Knossos in Crete. Although they were frescos, they were painted on stucco relief scenes and therefore are classified as plastic art. They were difficult to produce. The artist had to manage not only the altitude of the panel but also the simultaneous molding and painting of fresh stucco. The panels, therefore, do not represent the formative stages of the technique. In Minoan chronology, their polychrome hues – white, pale red, dark red, blue, black – exclude them from the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM) Periods. They are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created no earlier than MM III. The flakes of the destroyed panels fell to the ground from the upper story during the destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late Minoan (LM) II. By that time the east stairwell, near which they fell, was disused, being partly ruinous.

Minoan seal-stones are carved gemstones produced in the Minoan civilization. They have been found in quantity at specific sites, for example in Knossos, Mallia and Phaistos.

The Minoan bull leaper is a bronze group of a bull and leaper in the British Museum. It is the only known largely complete three-dimensional sculpture depicting Minoan bull-leaping. Although bull leaping certainly took place in Crete at this time, the leap depicted is practically impossible and it has therefore been speculated that the sculpture may be an exaggerated depiction. This speculation has been backed up by the testaments of modern-day bull leapers from France and Spain.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.