Two peoples, one sea
The Minoans came first. From about 1900 BCE they built palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros, traded across the Aegean and as far as Egypt, and wrote in a script we still cannot read. The Mycenaeans rose on the Greek mainland from about 1600 BCE, at first as warrior chiefs buried with gold in the shaft graves of Mycenae, then as kings ruling from fortified palaces until about 1100 BCE.
For about two centuries the two cultures lived side by side, and the influence ran mostly one way. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, contact with Minoan Crete played a decisive role in shaping Mycenaean culture, especially its art. Ancient DNA tells a similar story of closeness: a study published in Nature in 2017 found that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically similar, with the Mycenaeans carrying an extra share of ancestry from the north-east, from the steppe or Armenia.
Palaces without walls, citadels with them
The most visible difference is architecture. A Minoan palace grew around a large central court, with wings of storerooms, workshops, shrines and halls rising on several floors, and as a rule it had no defensive walls. A Mycenaean palace sat on a hilltop behind walls of huge stones, and its centre was a single great hall, the megaron, with a throne beside a round hearth. In a Minoan palace you moved from court to court; in a Mycenaean citadel you climbed a ramp, passed a guarded gate and approached the throne through a porch and a vestibule.
From octopuses to soldiers
Minoan frescoes and vases are full of movement and nature: lilies and swallows, dolphins, octopuses whose arms spread over the whole jar, young athletes leaping over bulls. Mycenaean art took over these subjects and techniques, often through Cretan craftsmen. The two gold cups found in 1888 in a tomb at Vapheio, near Sparta, are a good example: they show the capture of wild bulls with a net and a decoy cow, and most scholars think they were made in Crete in the late sixteenth or early fifteenth century BCE, then buried with a mainland lord.
Over time, though, Mycenaean taste changed the repertoire. Painted pottery became more regular and symmetrical, with plants and sea creatures turned into tidy patterns, and new subjects appeared: chariots, hunts, warriors. The Warrior Krater, a large wine-mixing bowl that Schliemann collected in fragments at Mycenae in 1876, shows a line of soldiers with spears, round shields and horned helmets marching away, while a woman at the edge raises her arm to say goodbye. Its date, in the thirteenth or twelfth century BCE, is still debated, but its mood is unmistakably mainland: discipline, armour, departure.
Same signs, different language
Writing shows the relationship most clearly. The Minoans wrote their accounts in Linear A, which records an unknown language. The Mycenaeans borrowed the script, changed some signs and used it to write Greek: this is Linear B, deciphered in 1952. Comparing the two scripts is like seeing one alphabet used for two different languages, with the second readable and the first still silent.
The takeover of Knossos
Around 1450 BCE most of the palaces and towns of Crete were destroyed. Knossos survived, and Mycenaeans from the mainland settled there: from this point the palace archives are written in Linear B, in Greek. Minoan-style frescoes went on being painted at Knossos, but alongside new motifs. Crete became part of the Mycenaean world until the general collapse of the palaces around 1200 BCE, when Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos fell too.
Where to see it
The Heraklion Archaeological Museum on Crete shows Minoan frescoes, vases and the finds from the palaces. The National Archaeological Museum in Athens has the gold of the Mycenae shaft graves, the Vapheio cups and the Warrior Krater in its Mycenaean gallery. On site, compare Knossos, open around its central court, with the walled citadel of Mycenae. Check opening times with the Greek Ministry of Culture.
Sources
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “Mycenaean Civilization” (2003) and “Minoan Crete” (2002), Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- I. Lazaridis et al., “Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans”, Nature 548 (2017).
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Mycenaean collection; “Warrior Krater”.
- Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Odysseus portal, “Knossos”.
- O. Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age (1994).
