Thera and Knossos: Relation of the Paintings to Their Architectural Space

1) Knossos was a palace site with more elaborate architecture using many columns, light wells, etc. in contrast to Akrotiri, a Cycladic town with simpler vernacular architecture, and 2) most of the well preserved paintings from Knossos belong to a later period than the volcanic destruction of Akrotiri. Nonetheless, comparisons can be made. Both sites used painted plaster to conceal the rubble and rough masonry of the walls, often reflecting in the divisions of dado, frieze and panel the underlying structure of the wooden framing. Both made a decorative appeal by use of framing borders, bright colours and sensitive depiction of nature, and in many cases the choice of pictorial subjects reflects the function of the room, sometimes for religious or cult purpose.

In comparing the paintings from Knossos and Akrotiri in their architectural space, one must remember that the two sites are very different, the first a palace, presumably the capital of Minoan Crete, from whence the impetus to such art flowed to the Cyclades. Akrotiri, on the other hand, was a flourishing Cycladic town with strong Minoan influence, perhaps even with an enclave of Minoans, but it nevertheless preserved much of its own culture especially in architecture (Palyvou 1988). The very scale of the two sites is vastly different, the Palace and its dependencies (Fig. 2), town houses, villas, administrative buildings, etc. covering an area of many acres (Evans 1928, 559ff. and plan facing 546), whereas the part of Akrotiri uncovered at present (Fig. 1) is between two and three acres (Palyvou 1986, 179).⁽¹⁾

Furthermore, Knossos has been excavated for almost a century and, while reinterpretations and some new excavations⁽²⁾ show that the site has not been exhausted in terms of its fresco material, basically Knossos is a closed entity. Akrotiri, however, has only begun to be explored, in concentrated excavations with plentiful resources from 1967 until S. Marinatos's death in 1974, and in a more limited and sober fashion since then by C.G. Doumas. No palace has been discovered, and it is doubtful that one existed, certainly not a palace on the scale of Knossos, if one accepts the general opinion of a Minoan thalassocracy emanating from Crete with the quasi-independence of her colonial outposts (Wiener 1990). What we have at Akrotiri is part of a town (comparable to Phylakopi or Palaikastro) with a complex of connected rooms or houses (Beta, Gamma, Delta) and several disconnected buildings which may be private houses or religious/administrative centres (the West House, House of the Ladies, Xeste 3). The not yet fully explored ashlar-fronted buildings, Xestes 2 and 4, give promise of something still grander, but probably not a palace.

When one examines the architecture at Akrotiri, as Clairy Palyvou has done in her dissertation (Palyvou 1988), one is perhaps more impressed by its local character than by its Minoan borrowings. Stone, especially the local igneous stone was abundantly used, gypsum, which had to be imported, almost never.⁽³⁾ Although the basic construction was rubble and clay reinforced with wooden tie-beams, as at Knossos, there must have been considerably less wood available. This should explain the almost complete absence of columns and the shorter spans roofed.⁽⁴⁾ While the architecture was clearly indebted to Crete for certain architectural features - the lustral basin (Xeste 3), the pier-and-door construction which was used to great advantage in Xeste 3 and probably elsewhere⁽⁵⁾ - the general impression of the architecture as hitherto uncovered is far simpler than in the Knossos palace or even some of its dependencies. Our best comparisons should be with the private houses, the South House, the Southeast House, the House of the Frescoes, etc., but these too show features lacking at Akrotiri.⁽⁶⁾ How then are we to explain the abundance and sophistication of the frescoes recovered from such relatively insignificant rooms? This is the crux of the problem.

In looking for comparative material from Knossos, we must observe certain cautions. At Akrotiri the paintings are basically of one period, the so-called VDL or Volcanic Destruction Level (Marthari 1984; and Palyvou 1984). Whatever absolute dates we assign to it - 1630 BC with the scientists using their triple methods of radioactive carbon, dendrochronology and ice core probing, or the second half of the sixteenth century with the archaeological traditionalists relying upon cross ties with Egypt - the cultural horizon is clearly with Late Minoan IA and the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt (Hardy 1990). At Knossos, on the other hand, we are looking at a much longer tradition for wall paintings, some of which must go back into the Middle Minoan period while others remained on the walls down to the final destruction of the Palace in the fourteenth century BC.⁽⁷⁾

At Akrotiri, paintings were found either on the walls of a room (exceptionally a whole room as in Delta 2 with the 'Spring fresco'), or fallen from the walls as in Rooms 4 and 5 of the West House where they could be rather safely assigned to specific locations, or fallen onto the floors of upper storey rooms that had collapsed, as in the House of the Ladies, Beta 1, etc..⁽⁸⁾ Only rarely are fresco fragments found detached from any architectural context, as in the fragments from the 'ravine' that flowed southward to east of Sectors Delta and Beta (e.g. the 'African' and the 'Monkey at the Shrine') (Doumas 1992, figs. 147 and 148).

At Knossos, on the other hand, the frescoes preserved on the walls belong to a later phase than the Akrotiri paintings (e.g. the Procession fresco and the Throne Room), although one must allow for the possibility that they may have been on the walls for a considerable period of time or may have replaced similar earlier compositions. However, the bulk of the Knossos frescoes that are stylistically and presumably chronologically comparable to the Thera paintings were found fallen from the walls and are very uncertainly connected with specific rooms of the Palace as uncovered by Evans (e.g. the Saffron-Gatherer and the Miniature frescoes), or had actually been stripped from the walls and removed to fresco heaps where we can only guess at which location they should be placed (the 'Ladies in Blue', the 'Jewel fresco', etc.).⁽⁹⁾

On the other hand, there are similarities that should make a comparison possible and lead us to hope that Akrotiri may help in filling out the picture at Knossos. Both sets of paintings are a mural art done in fresco on lime plaster covering rubble masonry reinforced by wooden tie-beams. They were not separate panel paintings, even though their shape may suggest separate panel compositions (for example, the Fishermen and the Priestess from the West House)⁽¹⁰⁾, or the decorative framing of certain compositions from Knossos (for example, the Taureador frescoes) may have reflected the wooden horizontal structure of the wall on which they were placed. Here we do not know for sure, since they were found fallen into basement rooms (Immerwahr 1990, 90-92 and 175, Kn no. 23).

The architecture at both sites provided flat ceilings, and wall surfaces interrupted by windows, doors and cupboards. Originally there must have been a stone dado at the bottom of the wall, which was soon replaced by the 'imitation cut-stone' dado. At both sites we find such imitation dados (House of the Frescoes at Knossos and the West House at Akrotiri), but I believe only at Knossos do we have the true gypsum dado that must have been its predecessor, as seen in the earlier stage of the Corridor of the Procession (Evans 1928, 668ff., fig. 425).

Mark Cameron (1976), when discussing problems in the restoration of Aegean paintings, dealt with their mural character and more briefly with their architectural setting. His fig. 1 (here reproduced as Fig. 3) showed five alternative ways in which the wall surface might be divided horizontally, ranging from the all-over picture which conceals the underlying structure (A, the Procession fresco at Knossos (Immerwahr 1990, 170ff. Kn no. 22), to which we might add the 'Lilies fresco' from Akrotiri) to the rigidly architectural where the beam above the doorway marks off an area to be decorated (e.g. E, the Caravanserai at Knossos (Immerwahr 1990, Kn no. 20) or, additionally, the miniature 'Ship fresco' from Akrotiri). He offers in-between schemes where the picture, while below the lintel level, could be delimited further by stone benches or dado as in the Throne Room at Knossos (B; Immerwahr 1990, Kn no. 28), or where there were two pictures, one above the other, separated by a horizontal beam or stripes (C, the relief griffins at Knossos; Immerwahr 1990, Kn no. 8e), or set at eye level on the wall between a high dado and the wooden beam at lintel level (D, the Camp-stool fresco; Immerwahr 1990, Kn no. 26), a scheme to which the exotic garden scene from the House of the Frescoes would belong. At Akrotiri the preserved, or securely reconstructed, schemes show a preference for an all over decoration of the wall surface without marked architectural divisions, the decoration of the West House being perhaps exceptional.

These were the alternative schemes for dividing the wall horizontally into dado area, main frieze (picture or pictures) and area above the lintel with horizontal bands or miniature pictorial frieze. But we should also think of the room as a whole with its four walls, window and door openings, and consider how the paintings were adapted to an overall scheme of wall decoration with its vertical divisions. Here Akrotiri adds greatly to the evidence from Knossos, for we have whole rooms preserved with intact or reasonably restored decoration. To mention the most important, we have Delta 2 with the 'Lilies' or 'Spring' fresco, Beta 1 with the Antelopes and Boxing Boys, Rooms 4 and 5 in the West House (5 with the Ship fresco and Fishermen, 4 with the frieze of portable cabins or ikria, and the Priestess as well as the window with its representation of potted lilies), Room 1 of the House of the Ladies with its scene of robing women and giant papyrus, and of course Xeste 3 with its adyton paintings of Saffron Gatherers and presentation to a goddess in a mountaintop sanctuary. In addition to these well published examples (Marinatos 1971; 1972; 1974; 1976; Doumas 1992), there are a number of other paintings less securely assigned, or at present less completely restored. Costly restoration, such as was done in the 1970s, plus the means to display paintings other than those currently in the National Museum in Athens, are undoubtedly the biggest impediments to realising the richness of mural decoration at Akrotiri.

From Knossos, on the other hand, we have the well known compositions in the Herakleion Museum (the 'Saffron-Gatherer', the monkeys and flora from the House of the Frescoes, the 'Ladies in Blue', the 'Cupbearer', the 'Grandstand' and 'Sacred Grove', 'La Parisienne', etc.), but these are all detached from their architectural settings and are viewed as separate panel paintings. Cameron has done much to rectify this by his paper reconstructions,⁽¹¹⁾ but even these leave us somewhat in the dark as to how the paintings functioned in their architectural setting. At the Palace itself we have on the walls certain Gilliéron reproductions, some of which are clearly inaccurate (the 'Priest King') or do not belong where they are displayed (the 'Dolphin fresco' in the Queen's Megaron). On the other hand, they give an idea, even if false, of the paintings as a mural art (Immerwahr 1990, Kn nos. 6 and 7).

In my opinion there are only five or six places in the Palace where we can be reasonably certain of the location of the paintings in their architectural setting: the bull reliefs from the North Entrance, the Procession (including the Cupbearer), the Griffin frieze from the Throne Room, the Shield fresco from the area of the Grand Staircase, and a couple of life-sized bulls still clinging to the walls of the West Porch and the Anteroom of the Throne Room when they were excavated (Immerwahr 1990, Kn nos. 21, 22, 28-30). These, of course, all belong to a later stage of the decoration of the Palace, that is after the volcanic destruction of Akrotiri.

We can guess at some of the earlier decoration: a small sanctuary on the upper floor near the North Entrance decorated with miniature scenes of sacred gatherings, probably to witness bull games and an epiphany of the goddess, the so-called 'Grandstand' or 'Temple' fresco and the 'Sacred Grove' (Immerwahr 1990, Kn nos. 15 and 16). These were probably friezes on more than one wall (because of their differences in height) and were likely to have been displayed at eye level for the elaborate detail to have been appreciated. However, the Ship fresco from Akrotiri should caution one against making such judgments, for it was equally detailed and was placed considerably above eye level.

Let us now look at some specific examples. It seems fitting to begin with the best preserved whole room, Delta 2 with the 'Lilies' or 'Spring' fresco (Marinatos 1971, 20-22; Doumas 1992, 99-101) (Fig. 4). A small room (2.30 x 2.50 m.) on the ground floor, with three frescoed walls, it faced east with a door and a double window opening onto a court or large public area. It was unusual in several respects, for it had double walls, a cupboard at the south corner of the east wall crammed with pottery, a shelf along the south and west walls, and a niche near the north-west corner of the north wall. Except for the east wall, the frescoes covered the entire surface without a dado (as if the towering rocks sprang from the ground), and they disregarded the architecture (i.e. the corners of the room and the niche) but terminated with a black band below the shelf and the plain red area above. Although a bed was found in the room, it is unlikely that this small room served as a bedroom giving the illusion of the outdoors to its occupant, as has been suggested on the analogy of the Boscoreale frescoes (Morris 1989, 512-513), for the bed was clearly brought in after the pumice had begun to fall, and it is far more likely that the room had a religious or cult purpose. Horns of consecration were found in front of the east facade of the Delta complex (Doumas 1992, 100).

The paintings, which are our most complete examples of nature paintings characteristic of one type of LM I/LC I painting, have naturally evoked much comment and differing interpretations. Are they a celebration of the coming of spring with courting swallows as S. Marinatos thought, or the feeding of fledgelings in mid-air (Hollinshead 1989), or do they show a more aggressive aspect of swallow behaviour as the birds seek for territorial advantage before building their nests (Hollinshead 1989, 339-341; Polinger Foster 1995)? Polinger Foster has made a good case for the sacred character of the room and for the paintings as background for a ritual performance celebrating the coming of spring (see also N. Marinatos 1984, 93-94).

Stylistically, the Spring fresco belongs with a number of ill-preserved paintings from Knossos, not from the Palace but from private houses. However, they are too fragmentary to place in their architectural setting, although it seems likely that they came from second storey rooms. Here I am thinking of the swallow(?) and grass and foliage fragments from the South House, the white Madonna lilies and grass fragments from the Southeast House, and the floral fresco from the 'Unexplored Mansion' (Immerwahr 1990, Kn nos. 4 and 5; Cameron 1984, pl. 50).⁽¹²⁾ All must be roughly contemporary with the Thera paintings and have come from private houses clustered near the Palace. Perhaps when these are more fully published, as was the intent of Mark Cameron and Maria Shaw, we will be able to assign them to specific rooms and guess at their overall composition. At present there is no indication that human figures were represented, nor any reason to believe that there was a religious intent other than the celebration of nature and the immanent presence of the goddess. Of the more impressive buildings that surrounded the Palace, such as the Little Palace, the Royal Villa, the House of the Chancel Screen, etc., there is no mention of frescoes in the published material, although it seems unlikely that there were none.

There are, however, two small buildings at Knossos with significant frescoes that must be contemporary with the Theran paintings: the House of the Frescoes south of the Theatral Area and the Royal Road, and the Caravanserai south of the Palace and the viaduct across the Kairetos stream (Fig. 2). Both were published rather fully by Evans in The Palace of Minos (Evans 1928, 103-116 and 431-467), and had been favourites among visitors to the Herakleion Museum for decades, but both were in serious need of restudy. Cameron has dealt with the first in a series of articles (Cameron 1967; 1968a; 1968b), and has shown that the panels of blue monkeys among papyrus and other floral settings as restored by Gilliéron were part of a continuous frieze about 0.85 m. in height that decorated the back (or east) wall of the upper main room in this house, with shorter returns on the north and south walls where the paintings terminated at the doorways to adjoining rooms (Fig. 5). The width of this main room was somewhat less than three metres, and Cameron estimated the total length of the frieze as about 5.5 m., which would make it somewhat shorter than the frieze from Delta 2 (approximately 7.0 m.). However, its architectural placement was quite different. Instead of covering the whole wall surface with abandon, here the frieze of less than a metre in height was placed at eye level between the beam that continued the lintel of the doorways (we know this from impressions on the back of some fragments) and a dado of about one metre in height (Fig. 6). Furthermore, it respected the architectural limits marked by the doorways. What the dado was like we do not know, but it probably simulated stone like that in the architectural treatment of the wall preserved on the south-west corner of Room H, the basement room in which EvansJound his 'stacks' of fresco fragments which he believed had been intentionally removed. From the evidence at Akrotiri, we can surmise that they had been precipitated from above during a severe earthquake perhaps connected with the eruption of the Santorini volcano.⁽¹³⁾

I see no reason to believe that the paintings from the House of the Frescoes, which represented monkeys pillaging the nests of rock doves, conferred the status of shrine to this upper room, although the paintings found in the adjoining room, which Cameron restored as two agrimia heraldically placed on either side of an olive tree atop a series of undulating bands with crocus clumps in the field, is suggestive of a mountaintop sanctuary (Cameron 1968a, 25-26, figs. 4a-b). Are these paintings merely decorative or something more? While they evoke the Minoan reverence for nature, I would hesitate to call these rooms 'shrines' as some have done.⁽¹⁴⁾ Surely people lived in this house, and the presumed 'religious' iconography may have been no more than a reminder of the goddess, as religious paintings in some of our Christian homes are today.

Returning to Akrotiri, we might next consider the paintings from Beta 6, which in subject matter are closely allied to those from the House of the Frescoes (Marinatos 1971, 45-46, pls. 113-115; 1972, 38, pls. D, 92-93; Doumas 1992, figs. 85-91). Here we have basically the same subject matter - a lively scene of blue monkeys cavorting over rocks (without the floral elements that make the frieze from the House of the Frescoes so beautiful), and a less clearly associated fragment showing two young animals in antithetic position.⁽¹⁵⁾ Is this again a reference to a mountaintop sanctuary? Unfortunately, we know little about the room from which the paintings came, for only the north-west corner escaped the ravages of the ravine (Fig. 7). Once again, as in the Spring fresco, the paintings covered the whole wall surface of two adjacent walls, but more clearly expressed the underlying structure by defining an upper decorative frieze, a running spiral band that very likely reflects the area above the lintel. However, the lower dado is incorporated into the decorative zone, the variegated wavy bands suggesting a winding river.

The other composition from the Beta complex is better preserved. From the upper storey of Beta 1, the decoration of a whole room can be restored, and here we can see how the artist arranged his frescoes to incorporate the architectural features of the room (Marinatos 1971, 28-33, fig. 2, pls. D-F, 117-120; Doumas 1992, figs. 78-84). It was a fair sized, somewhat irregular room (ca. five metres in each direction), but further subdivided by a mudbrick partition running north-south, and a series of cupboards or compartments made of mudbrick along its south wall, so that the actual area decorated by frescoes was only ca. 3.0 x 2.5 m. (Fig. 8). There was a broad window in the north wall, as well as two doorways (or a doorway and a window) in the east wall and two doorways in the south, one leading into compartment Beta 1a and the second via a passage to the large room Beta 2 (about 5.0 m. in each direction). This room preserved one of the few column bases so far found at Akrotiri, neatly centred. Could it have been a gathering place for occupants of this complex to celebrate rites, perhaps dining, as suggested by the pottery stored in the compartments of Beta 1a (Marinatos 1972, pls. 53-55)?⁽¹⁶⁾

The paintings are cleverly arranged in this somewhat cut-up small room - six antelopes, a well preserved pair running to right on the west mudbrick partition, another pair facing each other on either side of the window on the north, and the remnants of another pair on the east wall. The seemingly unconnected subject of the youthful boxing boys, preserved almost intact, occupied the narrow space to the right of the entrance to the annex Beta 1a.

It has been argued that the paintings, decorative as they seem, have a deeper meaning - the young antelopes being matched by the ritual contest of the youthful boxing boys (Marinatos 1984, 106-112). At any rate, the artist connected them decoratively by using the same black band for the dado course, the red 'silent wave' above the heads of the boys and the antelopes, and crowning the whole by a running ivy band above the lintel level, making a neat architectural unit of the whole room, part of which we see set up in the National Museum in Athens (Fig. 9).

Unfortunately, we have no such whole little room from Knossos to compare with Beta 1. But I would like now to return to Knossos and consider another scheme of decoration, where the main emphasis is placed on the area above the lintel level, a scheme that was used very effectively in the Caravanserai with its Partridge frieze from the 'dining room'. This room (approximately 4 x 4 m.) was part of a complex situated south of the viaduct leading to the Stepped Portico and south entrance to the Palace (Fig. 2). Evans's suggestion that it was an inn or caravanserai for travellers coming from the south seems a valid one, as the footbath, watering trough and spring chamber would suggest (Evans 1928, 103ff.) (Fig. 10). The frescoes come from a room that was open to the north, with a single column (or pier?) and approached by four steps with a postulated bench in an alcove by the east wall (Fig. 11). Surprisingly, the overall scheme of wall decoration was preserved, although there was evidence for some later repairs. Evans gave a good description of the frescoes in The Palace of Minos, but further study by Maria Shaw may alter some details.⁽¹⁷⁾ Clearly the main scheme was architectural, with yellow pilasters against a white ground - three on the right and left walls, and only one on the back - supporting a yellow architrave at the level of the spanning beam above the doorway (a simulation of the real architecture), and above that the ornamental frieze of partridges and hoopoes in a nature setting that featured myrtle shoots and dittany(?) against a background that perhaps reflected the actual terrain of Crete with its eroded cavities (Chapin 1995, 165-207, pls. XLI-XLIII). This frieze of 0.28 m. in height was crowned by a band (0.08 m.) consisting of horizontal stripes of red, yellow, white and black. Stylistically the paintings belong to the era of the House of the Frescoes and the Thera paintings, i.e. LM IA, yet they seem to have remained intact for a long time. Remarkable is the lavish attention to detail and the varied poses of the birds in a fresco set well above eye level, directly under the ceiling. The open entrance to the room, as well as its northern orientation, may have afforded good lighting for a painting that I would consider purely decorative in a room whose purpose was public and secular.

Quite a different treatment of a continuous frieze in the same architectural position (i.e. directly under the ceiling) is the Ship fresco from Room 5 of the West House at Akrotiri (Marinatos 1974, 38-57, pls. 91ff., col. pls. 7-9; Doumas 1992, figs. 26-48; Morgan 1988; Televantou 1990) (Fig. 12; Pls. 1-3). Here the frieze, which ran around four walls above lintel level, was of two different heights: ca. 0.20 m. on the east (the Nilotic landscape) and the mostly missing west, and double that width on the north and south with the Shipwreck and the Return of the Fleet. This was not a matter of iconography to allow for more detail, but, as Televantou has shown, it was the result of the construction of the ceiling, with the spanning beams running from east to west and thus restricting the area to be decorated (Televantou 1990, 314, figs. 5-6).

This remarkable frieze, almost sixteen metres in length, was so full of intricate detail in the miniature style that it has revolutionised our ideas about Aegean ships and life in a Cycladic town in the Late Bronze Age. But we look at it at eye level in the National Museum in Athens or better yet in excellent detailed photographs. How well could the details be seen in its original location? To be sure, the room was well lit with quadruple windows on the north and west, but these would primarily have focused light on the interior east and south walls, leaving those sections above the windows, the west with the start of the 'voyage' and the north with its shipwreck and other adventures, seen rather dimly against the light. Perhaps it was because of this that the painter, or rather designer of the whole composition, placed the culminating episode, the 'return of the fleet', where it would have optimum lighting.⁽¹⁸⁾

The significance of this frieze has been much discussed, whether a ritual opening of the sailing season (Morgan 1978; 1988), or the successful conclusion of an actual voyage (Marinatos 1974, 44-57), or something in between, for example the formulaic depiction of typical voyages comparable to the literary epic (Morris 1989; Hiller 1990).⁽¹⁹⁾ Here, however, we are not so much concerned with its specific iconographic meaning as with its function in the architecture of the room. Clearly it was more than mere decoration, and therefore the other paintings from this and the adjoining Room 4 should be considered together.

In Room 5 these consisted of the two youthful Fishermen, cleverly designed in a panel format to fit into the wall space remaining beside the windows at the north-east and south-west corners of the room. Indeed, the better preserved Fisherman was found almost intact against the clay slab on which he had been painted (Marinatos 1974, pls. 38b and 42b). These were placed below the level of the lintel and above a dado course that ran around the whole room beneath the level of the window sills (Televantou 1990, 312, fig. 4). This dado was a clever imitation of veined marble slabs and wooden uprights that continued the framing of the windows, thus tying in the architecture and wall decoration in a manner that, as far as I know, is unique to this house at Akrotiri (Doumas 1992, 46, figs. 14-17 and Televantou 1990, 312, fig. 4).

Furthermore, the decorative scheme and its iconography was carried over into the adjoining Room 4, where there was a continuation of the same dado course and, in the main zone, a frieze of ikria or portable cabins like those depicted on the ships in the miniature frieze. This room was smaller, having been partitioned off by a light clay wall, which closed off the entry, and a lavatory at the southwest corner. Furthermore, it had two windows, one of which was enhanced by frescoed decoration on its sill and jambs, the latter simulating the effect of additional windows by the painted marble vases with red lilies (Doumas 1992, 49, figs. 63-64). The arrangement of the ikria was in pairs on three walls, with only one beside the window and another half-ikrion on the west side of the entry wall, making seven and a half in all (Televantou 1990, 310-312, figs. 1-2).⁽²⁰⁾ Did they symbolise the captains of the eight ships represented in the returning flotilla of the adjacent room? Beside its doorway, on the eastern jamb, stood the Priestess with her incense burner as if blessing the whole enterprise (Doumas (1992, 47) doubts the sobriquet 'Priestess'). Was this the admiral's house, as Marinatos thought, or rather some communal centre for blessing navigation and the fruits of the sea as indicated by the Fishermen (S. Marinatos 1974, 54; N. Marinatos 1984, 31-51).

I am inclined to believe that it was a house rather than a shrine, for it has the characteristic features of an Akrotiri house plan with door and window entry, ground floor storerooms and main rooms above, as well as evidence of household activities (for example, the loomweights and other indications of weaving in Room 3 with its large window, a room which adjoined the so-called shrine in Rooms 4 and 5 (Tzachili 1990, 380-389)). However, I would not deny that some rites connected with sailing, for example the opening of the navigation season, may well have taken place in these rooms at the appropriate season, and that the captains may have gathered in Room 3.

With Xeste 3 (Fig. 13), there is no question that it had a public, if not primarily a religious, function. It is the largest building so far excavated and has the most Minoan-inspired architectural features, pier-and-door partitions that enabled connecting Rooms 2, 3, 4 and 7 to be thrown open into single large halls for public gatherings, and a lustral basin in Room 3. It also had the largest assemblage of wall paintings and no domestic vessels or utensils.⁽²¹⁾

Here I can deal only with the paintings from Room 3, which was subdivided by pier-and-door partitions into two smaller rooms: 3a on the north, 3b on the west, as well as the paved area at the south-east which could be thrown open onto the space occupied by Room 4 to the south and perhaps Room 2 to the east, creating a potential gathering and viewing area of close to 100 square metres.⁽²²⁾ The focal point of this area was undoubtedly the lustral basin or adyton (Room 3a), which has been rightly analysed as the location for initiation rites connected with female puberty and perhaps preparation for marriage (Marinatos 1984, 73-84; Davis 1986). The lowest level of the basin (which must have descended below ground level?) was lined with a dado of andesite slabs set between wooden uprights (at Knossos gypsum would have been used) (Fig. 14). At the middle level (slightly above the floor level of the adjacent room) were the scenes of three young maidens in a rocky crocus-strewn setting on the north wall, and on the shorter east wall the depiction of the entrance to a Minoan-type sanctuary crowned with horns of consecration dripping blood. The scenes above (on the level of the first floor) depicted two young saffron-gatherers on the shorter east wall, and the enthroned goddess receiving the saffron brought to her in baskets by two more maidens on the north wall. This scene is set apart from the ordinary, since the elaborately dressed woman receives the saffron from a blue monkey as intermediary and is guarded by a griffin on the right.⁽²³⁾

Apparently there was a floor separating the two levels, so that both sets of paintings, although interrelated iconographically, could not have been viewed simultaneously. There must have been some interior circulation, as yet undefined, that would have tied together the ground floor and first storey during initiation rites (see Gesell here, vol. II). One might note that there was a square window at both levels, not aligned with each other, that were incorporated into the paintings but did not really interrupt their compositions. Perhaps they were necessary to provide light to the adjoining rooms, but they could hardly have added to the ease of viewing the paintings against the light.

The paintings from the adjacent rooms (less fully published) seem auxiliary to those depicted above the adyton: the less carefully painted male figures, a kind of procession bearing objects, from the ground floor of Room 3b, and the procession of more mature women from the room above (Doumas 1992, figs. 109-115 and 131-134; Pl. 4). Are they viewing, or assisting in, the rites that took place in the lustral basin and that were dramatised in the paintings with their emphasis on blood and the gathering of saffron, perhaps for its medicinal properties?

While we do not have any exactly comparable series of rooms from Knossos, I would like to compare the Throne Room in the Palace (Fig. 15) with the Xeste 3 complex we have been discussing. Although Evans considered it a late intrusion into the north-west insula with its rounded corner (Evans 1935, 902), Sieglinde Mirié has demonstrated that architecturally the Throne Room goes back to a much earlier date, probably to the time of the First Palace (Mirié 1979). This is suggested by its mosaiko flooring and its level below the central court, as well as by the stratigraphy in some of its subsidiary rooms. What we have, then, is an anteroom with four doorways separated by piers opening onto the Central Court, an inner room with a throne centred on its north wall, a lustral basin with steps descending on the south, and a small shrine room on the west, the whole surrounded by kitchens and other preparatory rooms (Gesell 1985, 88-89 no. 34, fig. 22). The actual viewing, or participatory, area is a block of ca. 100 square metres with, of course, additional viewing from the loggia above the lustral basin and possible participation from the Central Court where rites could only have been glimpsed through the doorways. The stone benches in the anteroom and flanking the throne show that special seating was allotted to dignitaries.

What were the rites performed in the Throne Room? Here we are at somewhat of a loss, since what were preserved in the archaeological record were those that were taking place at the time of the destruction of the Palace. These probably consisted in the sprinkling of water from the purple marble font restored to the anteroom, in the use of oil from the great overturned pithos and unguents from the large stone alabastra with their Mycenaean parallels (Evans 1935, 935ff.).⁽²⁴⁾ And these rites seem to have taken place near the throne, which at that time may well have been the seat of a Mycenaean wanax. At an earlier time, contemporary with Xeste 3, the lustral basin may have played a more significant part, and the throne most likely was the seat of a Minoan priestess enacting the role of the Minoan goddess. She may well have entered the room from the small shrine on the west side. That doorway and the throne were flanked by couchant griffins against a red and white background with papyrus and palm trees, and with a simulated marble dado above the gypsum benches and horizontal bands at the top (Immerwahr 1990, 96-98 and 176, Kn no. 26) (Fig. 16).

Although there has been some discussion about the accuracy of the composition as restored in the room by Gilliéron, and certainly the frescoes as preserved belong to a later stage than the Thera paintings, points of comparison with the upper level painting in the adyton of Xeste 3 make it possible, even likely, that the Throne Room paintings at Knossos may have been a renewal of a similar earlier composition. Here the throne would have been occupied by a real woman as the emissary of the goddess, and she would have been guarded by the painted griffins. It has also been noted that the throne was flanked by incurved altars similar to those on the elevated platform of the Theran goddess.⁽²⁵⁾

What can we say about the probable Knossian decorative programme at the time of the Theran paintings? We know a fair amount about the architecture of the MM III/LM I palace, much less about its paintings. Mark Cameron has suggested processions of male votaries leading the way to cult rooms on the floor above, Evans's piano nobile, and he has introduced small fragments of male figures ascending a staircase which he thought could have been the Grand Staircase (Cameron 1978, 587, fig. 4; Evans 1928, 751, fig. 485). Were they going to the great East Hall which Evans conjectured, probably wrongly, was the location of a large cult image of the goddess? This room seems to have been decorated with two series of stucco reliefs, the earlier showing acrobatic bull scenes, the later agonistic scenes of boxers and other athletes, and it probably had a frieze of tethered griffins (Evans 1930, 495-518 and Immerwahr 1990, 171 Kn no. 8). Here parallels on Thera are less easily found, although we might note the occurrence of a male procession wearing Minoan loincloths, apparently stepping up on either side of a staircase, which was found in the partially excavated Xeste 4 (Doumas 1992, 176-179, figs. 138-141). And although there has been only one example of stucco relief found at Akrotiri, the frieze of lozenges and rosettes from Room 9 of Xeste 3 (Doumas 1992, 174-175, figs. 136-137) is of such sophistication that one may well expect to find other examples, perhaps human figures, in the more monumental buildings on the east side of the site.

One very real distinction, however, which I think will hold even with more excavations, is the absence of bull reliefs and taureador scenes which were so much a part of the Palace decoration at Knossos: the low reliefs from the East Hall, the high reliefs from the North Entrance, the crystal plaque found in the lustral basin of the Throne Room, the Taureador panels from the East Wing, and several large charging bulls in flat painting (Shaw 1995). Some of these go back to the earlier stages of Knossian painting, whereas others were on the walls at the time of the destruction of the Palace. Clearly it was an omnipresent theme, and one that was confined to the Palace and did not occur in the outlying houses and villas. For this reason its occurrence at Tell el-Dab'a is most surprising.⁽²⁶⁾

Clairy Palyvou has now given us a most convincing and visual demonstration of how the paintings from Akrotiri looked in their architectural setting (Palyvou this volume, with some comparisons with wall decoration from Knossos, figs. 10-12, 15). I wish we could do the same for the paintings from Knossos of this period, but, as we have indicated, the fresco material of LM IA is very uncertainly assigned to specific rooms of the Palace. Furthermore, with abundant wood for columns and supports that made possible the Grand Staircase and greater spans⁽²⁷⁾ for rooms opening onto porticoes and light wells, as well as a ready source of gypsum for flooring and dados, the architectural setting for the paintings in the Palace must have been quite different from the simpler architecture of the houses at Akrotiri. Perhaps for that very reason the Therans favoured a certain lavishness and abandon in the use of frescoed wall surfaces, which often ignored the underlying structure of the wall or room openings (as in Delta 2). However, in other cases, especially the West House, we see a controlled scheme that may have been influenced by Knossos, but the painted window jambs in Room 4 seem to me a pure Theran fantasy.  

Granted that the primary function of the wall paintings was architectural - to conceal the rubble masonry and often reflecting in their compositional arrangement the underlying wooden framing they surely had more than this utilitarian purpose. Both at Knossos, in the House of the Frescoes, and in the houses at Akrotiri, they conferred a certain elegance and status to the rooms they decorated, and in many cases their iconography suggests that their purpose was religious. However, we cannot view the paintings in isolation, but must consider them as part of the rooms they decorated and see these rooms as part of an architectural complex. Thus I would categorise the frescoes we have considered as ranging from the decorative (Caravanserai, and very likely the House of the Frescoes and Beta 1) to the surely religious (Xeste 3 and the Throne Room at Knossos, to which I would add Delta 2).⁽²⁸⁾ The West House at Akrotiri stands somewhat apart as a residence where, however, a seasonal ritual may have taken place in the upper Rooms 4 and 5.

It is to be hoped that, with further excavation and adequate funding for restoration of the frescoes so far discovered at Akrotiri, we will know the answer to some of the questions we have posed.

(1). See the estimates given by Wiener (1990, 129-131).

(2). The Royal Road excavation (Hood 1978, 51, 84); Warren's excavations by the Stratigraphical Museum (Warren 1980-81, 80; Catling 1981-82, 52-53).

(3). There is no mention of gypsum as a building material, but some small vases of this material are referred to as alabaster and in one case as gypsum (Marinatos 1971, 40, pl. 97; 1972, pls. 72 and 73a; 1974, pl. 2). Some may have been made locally of imported material.

(4). The 1976 plan (Marinatos 1976, plan B facing 16) shows only two column bases, one in Delta 16 and another in Beta 2, both of which have spans of 5 m. or more. Another was postulated for Room 3 of the West House, which had a span of more than 6 m. (Doumas 1980, 290, fig. 1). Palyvou (1988, 7) mentions "6 dressed stone bases, 2 found in situ in ground floor level, while the others came from rooms of the upper storey level". This is a far cry from the lavish use of columns at Knossos and other sites in Crete.

(5). Only one lustral basin has so far been found at Akrotiri: Room 3a in Xeste 3 (Marinatos 1976, 24ff., figs. 3-4, pl. 38), the so-called adyton with its paintings. The pier-and-door arrangement, undoubtedly introduced from Crete, allowed the architect to open up spaces comparable to those of Minoan 'residential halls'. See the polythyron of Delta 1 (Marinatos 1971, 18ff., pls. 26-27), a room almost 8 m. square with a row of six doors dividing it almost in two; the pier-and-door arrangement in Xeste 3 connecting Rooms 3 and 4 created an even larger space, roughly 8 x 10 m. (Marinatos 1976, 24, plan B), and one perhaps still larger in Xeste 4 (Palyvou 1986, fig. 3). The Hall of the Double Axes at Knossos measured about 8 x 12 m. (Graham 1962, 86) but created a greater sense of light and space through its adjacent light wells and columned porticoes, features lacking at Akrotiri. Palyvou (1986, 184) comments on the dense plan at Akrotiri with no light wells or open courts, "the compact accumulation of space cells... with no open outdoor parts incorporated into their fabric".

(6). The South House (Evans 1928, 373ff.), Southeast House (Evans 1921, 426, fig. 306), House of the Frescoes (Evans 1928, 431-467). For convenient plans see Graham 1962. These houses were of modest proportions, covering an area of approximately 200 to 250 square metres, but they were free-standing as opposed to the block incorporation of living units one finds at Akrotiri (see Palyvou 1986), where it is harder to estimate what constituted a living unit. The area of the West House was somewhat smaller, ca. 135 square metres on each of two floors, basement and flrst storey.

(7). I adhere to the more traditional view that the palace was destroyed early in the fourteenth century BC (see discussion in Immerwahr 1990, 71-72 and 162). See also the paper by Hood (this volume) which agrees fairly closely with my dates.

(8). For the find circumstances of the frescoes see discussion and photographs in Marinatos 1971, 20-25, pls. 33-44 (Delta 2), 28-33, pls. 58-61 (Beta 1); 1972, 11-15, pls. 8-12 (House of the Ladies); 1974, 22-26, pls. 38, 42 (West House).

(9). For discussion of the find spots of the Knossos paintings cf. Immerwahr 1990, especially the catalogue 170-179.

(10). Marinatos (1974, 35-36) believed that the Fisherman, since it was painted on a clay slab embedded in the wall, was a portable painting, this now corrected by Doumas (1992, 46). For both the Fisherman and the Priestess it was their architectural space that gave them their characteristic shape (the Fisherman at the north-west corner of Room 5 in the middle zone beside the window, and the Priestess on the east jamb of the doorway leading from Room 4 to Room 5).

(11). See the exhibition of Cameron's reconstructions of Knossos wall paintings held at the University of Western Ontario, March 10-April 3, 1977, with slides at the British School at Athens.

(12). Anne P. Chapin has now made a new reconstruction of this fresco in her dissertation (Chapin 1995, appendix II 313-329, pl. LXXXIII); see now Chapin 1997.

(13). This question of intentional removal and stacking, or precipitation from an upper room, was discussed at the current Symposium, with Sinclair Hood following Evans and Immerwahr appealing to the Akrotiri excavators for comparisons (see discussion following Hood, this volume).

(14). Marinatos 1984; Niemeier 1992: "landscaped rooms often but not always used for cult"; Walberg 1992: "rooms essentially secular, with poetic or religious references embedded in some landscapes". The last would be closest to my interpretation.

(15). See N. Marinatos 1984, 113-116 and pl. 6, showing the reconstruction of the Monkey fresco with a pair of goats, making the parallelism with the House of the Frescoes painting more striking.

(16). N. Marinatos (1984, 106) considers Beta 1 a shrine because of the chest-like repositories containing two tables of offering and other pottery.

(17). See her forthcoming article in the volume in memory of Mark Cameron, edited by Lyvia Morgan and to be published by Bristol Classical Press, where she points out that Evans's column was probably a pier like those on the frescoed walls (as the rectangular stone base suggests), which would have enhanced the illusionistic effect.

(18). Televantou (1990, 314) believes that the sequence of the narrative was dictated by the fact that the room was entered from the east, making the west section the first to be seen. Thus, proceeding from left to right, the south section would represent the culmination.

(19). See also the paper by Morris (this volume), in which she shows similarities in iconography between the paintings of the West House and those of a ship captain's house at Volos painted by the nineteenth century primitive Theophilos.

(20). Televantou postulates another ikrion on the eastern side of the entry wall, bringing the number up to eight.

(21). This, being the building Marinatos was excavating at the time of his death in 1974, has been less fully published in preliminary reports than the West House. See Doumas 1992, 126-175.

(22). This is my estimate based upon the plan and scale in Marinatos 1976, plan B facing 16.

(23). For the best illustrations see Doumas 1992, figs. 116-130 (cf. Pls. 8, 12), and for the entrance to the shrine (which has not been published in a photograph) see the drawing in Marinatos 1984, 75, fig. 53.

(24). The purple basin, now restored to the anteroom, was actually found in the corridor to the north of the complex. Five of the alabastra were found near the overturned pithos, a sixth in the storage well and a seventh in an unrecorded spot.

(25). See Davis 1990 for a comparison of the undulating red and white background of the Throne Room frescoes with the red undulating background of the Theran Boxing Boys. Maria Shaw first observed the similarity in iconography between the Xeste 3 painting and the Throne Room with its incurved altars flanking the throne, presumably occupied by a human representative of the goddess (Shaw 1986, especially 119 for the suggestion that there may have been an earlier version at Knossos).

(26). Here one should note the graffito of an acrobat from Xeste 4, restored by Televantou as the sketch of a bull leaper (Televantou here, vol. II, figs. 1-2). Is it a casual doodle by a Knossian painter, or perhaps an experiment for a projected composition which may yet come to light at Akrotiri?

(27). For a discussion of the use and type of wood at the Palace at Knossos see J.W Shaw 1971, 135-139. He notes that the timber framework of the Grand Staircase, which Evans thought was Cypressus sempervirens, may very well have been fir or spruce, and that there is no evidence that wood was imported into Crete from Lebanon, for "wood was not scarce in Crete and did not need to be imported".

(28). It should be noted that these rooms were all at ground level, which seems to have been true for other religious installations in the palaces and domestic architecture in Crete. See Gesell 1985, 32ff. for a survey of types of sanctuaries in neopalatial architecture, which she describes as the bench sanctuary, the lustral basin and the pillar crypt. Only the first could have existed on an upper floor, and she cites no examples.

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