The Wall Paintings of Crete

But wall paintings have been found at many Bronze Age sites throughout Crete (Fig. 3).

Most remains of wall paintings from Cretan sites including Knossos are very fragmentary. In this respect they form a striking contrast to what has been found at Akrotiri. Because of their battered condition we largely depend on drawings or restorations for illustration of the Cretan material, which covers a period of some six hundred years or more from the time of the early palaces around 1900 BC to about 1300 BC or later.

What may be the oldest surviving fragments of decorative painting on plaster from Crete come from Phaistos and are assignable to the period of the early palace there (Immerwahr 1990, 183 Phs no. 2; Levi 1976, 85, pls. XXIV, LXXXVa). These are from a floor and not a wall. A simple design in red is inset in channels cut in the white background. This is the earliest example of an incavo technique which continues in Crete into the period of the later palaces, e.g. the white lilies inset into a red ground in the wall painting from Amnissos (Immerwahr 1990, 179f. Am no. 1). It was used, however, it seems especially for floors, as here at Phaistos (Immerwahr 1990, 207 n.12).

What Evans took to be the oldest surviving wall painting from Knossos was found at the north end of the palace beneath a later threshold (1 [1]).⁽¹⁾ Evans assigned it to the earlier part of the First Palace ending in MM IIA, but it may be somewhat later in date, although the dark background seems an early feature. He thought that the design was made using a sponge dipped in yellow paint and impressed on the dark background.

It may be an accident of discovery and survival that no wall paintings have been recognised before the time of the early palaces in Crete. Scenes with animals and human figures, as well as decorative designs, were being painted in caves, and later on the walls of buildings, in Europe and the Near East from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards. A running man holding a bow is among many wall paintings in the great Neolithic settlement of Çatal Hüyük in southern Turkey dating from the sixth and fifth millennia BC (Mellaart 1967). There were also painted reliefs at Çatal Hüyük reminiscent of the plaster reliefs which were to be such a feature of the palace at Knossos during the earlier part of its history. These include a figure, perhaps representing a goddess, covered with linear decoration in red and black. It would not be surprising if wall paintings and reliefs like this had existed in the Key to Plan, Cretan Neolithic, which lasted some three thousand years from ca. 6000 to 3000 BC, but no traces of them have yet been noted. Nor have any certain remains of decorative wall painting been recovered from Early Minoan contexts in Crete.

The earliest well dated wall paintings from Knossos itself come from a deposit (2 [29]) on the east side of the palace in the area of the Loomweight Basement. These are assignable to the last phase of the early palace which ended in MM IIB ca. 1700 BC. They are fragments of dados which had adorned the lower parts of plastered walls. The colours used were red, yellow and shades of grey against a white background. Some attractive scraps of wall decoration from the early palace at Phaistos may date from roughly the same period (Levi 1976, pl. LXXXVIb).

The later palace at Knossos, built after the destruction of MM IIB, was a magnificent structure, with a lavish use of veined white gypsum for walls and floors. The decoration of this later palace appears to have been as splendid as its architecture. The palace suffered considerable damage, accompanied by fire, in MM IIIA ca. 1650 BC. In a deposit of this period (3 [30]) in the area of the Loomweight Basement were found fragments of plaster with elaborate spiral decoration in blue and red and white against a black background. In the same deposit were remains of painted plaster reliefs of life-size bulls. These may have come from bull leaping scenes, like the later Taureador frescoes found not far away at Fig. 1 [33].

The fragment known as the Labyrinth fresco (7) may date from as early as this. It was found on the eastern edge of the palace at Fig. 1 [34]. Evans thought it was from a wall, but it may have been from a floor as Maria Shaw (1995, 108) has suggested. The lines of the geometric design were cut into the white plaster background and then filled with red plaster, using the incavo technique found in the early floor described above at Phaistos (Immerwahr 1990, 183 Phs no. 2). The design is interesting for comparison with that of a fresco from Tell el-Dab'a (Shaw 1995, 92 pl. 1, 107 pl. 10).

The fragmentary Saffron-gatherer fresco from the area of the Early Keep (5 [5]) seems to date from the MM IIIA period and not later. It has been restored by Nicolaos Platon as a pair of monkeys, wearing harnesses of red leather, in a field of crocus flowers, which they appear to be engaged in picking. Evans had made the fragments into a boy, but back in the 1930s a monkey's tail was recognised on one of them (Pendlebury 1939, 131-132). Blue or bluish green were the colours regularly used for monkeys in Aegean representations.

The later palace at Knossos suffered another major destruction in MM IIIB ca. 1600 BC. Evans thought that this was caused by an earthquake. This MM IIIB destruction in Crete may have been roughly contemporary with the first early destruction of the settlement at Akrotiri in Marisa Marthari's Phase A. Many remains of frescoes from the palace at Knossos come from deposits assignable to MM IIIB. After this destruction there was much new building in the palace in fine ashlar masonry. It included the imposing East and West Bastions which flanked the North Entrance Passage into the palace. Evans thought that a gigantic relief of a charging bull, perhaps part of a bull leaping scene, had adorned a portico above the West Bastion here (8). The well preserved head of a bull was recovered high in debris filling the North Entrance Passage at Fig. 1 [2b]. But fragments of the same scene, including olive trees in relief, were found in a fill [2a] which appears to have been in place before the construction of the Bastion.

Fragments of scenes of bull leaping in similar high relief (9) were recovered on the east side of the palace at Fig. 1 [28], and these may also have been originally buried in fill after the destruction of MM IIIB. These scenes included life-sized figures of women as well as men. One man was in the act of seizing a bull's horn (Evans 1930, 504f., fig. 350A). Other scenes in this series of high reliefs, as Evans called them, included large griffins attached by cords to pillars (Evans 1930, 510-517, figs. 355-359). The pillars here are clearly sacred. Most of the paintings and plaster reliefs from the palace at Knossos throughout its long history appear to have been religious in character. Relatively few wall paintings in Bronze Age Crete seem to have been purely secular and decorative in intention.

The scrap of relief fresco (10 [10]) known as the Jewel fresco may also be assignable to MM IIIB. It came from a scene with life-sized figures, and appears to show a man fastening a necklace with gold beads around the neck of a woman. The beads are in the shape of heads of men wearing large ear-rings. Evans reasonably suggested that the scene might have depicted the ritual of a sacred marriage. A scrap of wall painting which shows a flowering spray of olive (11 [11]) comes from the same part of the palace and may also date from MM IIIB.

An important group of fresco fragments assignable to MM IIIB was recovered from the lower cists in West Magazine XIII (14 [9]). These seem to come from a scene of bull leaping (Evans 1921, 527-529, figs. 384-385). But in this case the bull and other figures were quite small in size. A group of men on one fragment may have been spectators. The figures are small, but not true miniatures; if standing upright they would be some 10 to 12 cm. tall, nearly twice the size of the figures in miniature frescoes like those from the West House at Akrotiri. Architectural facades found with the other fragments of fresco in West Magazine XIII may have been part of a sacred complex forming the background for the bull leaping scene. These show tall elegant horns of consecration set between columns which have double axes painted white stuck into them and their wooden capitals (Evans 1921, 443-446, figs. 319, 321).

The fragments of the Ladies in Blue (13 [32]) may also come from a deposit of the MM IIIB period. These fragments have been much discoloured by fire. Mark Cameron (1971) demonstrated that the restorer, Gilliéron, used the fragment of another fresco showing a Lady in Red, of which the find spot is not recorded, as a guide for his restoration of the Ladies in Blue; but the Lady in Red may be considerably later, LM II in date.

The best preserved wall paintings at Knossos from the period before the Mycenaean conquest of Crete at the end of LM I ca. 1450 BC are those recovered in the early 1920s from the building west of the palace named after them the House of the Frescoes (Immerwahr 1990, 13-14, 42-46, figs. 16, 170 Kn nos. 1 and 2; Evans 1928, 431-467, 479 fig. 286, 501 fig. 305; Cameron 1968). The house itself was destroyed in LM IA, about the time of the great eruption of Thera; but the frescoes appear to be older, and to have been stripped from the walls and stacked where the excavators found them in the space marked on the plan (Fig. 4) after some earlier destruction which may have been that of MM IIIB. The scenes included landscapes with plants and flowers, and blue birds, apparently meant for doves or, as Evans thought, rollers. There were also monkeys, some of which Mark Cameron thought were raiding the nests of the birds for their eggs (Cameron 1968, 20f., fig. 10). Cameron (1968, 25 fig. 12) restored some of the fragments found in the stack as showing a pair of goats flanking what it is tempting to think might have been intended for a sacred tree. Litsa Kontorli-Papadopoulou (1996, 48f. no. 31) includes the paintings from the stack in her list of Aegean frescoes of a religious character. Perhaps the room which they had adorned was used as a shrine. This would explain the preservation of the fragments and their deliberate stacking after the building had been damaged by earthquake.

Plants with ivy leaves resembling some of those incorporated into the scene with the monkey from the House of the Frescoes (Evans 1928, 447, col. pl. X) appear on one of the paintings which adorned the walls of a small shrine in the palatial villa at Ayia Triada near Phaistos (Immerwahr 1990, 49f., 186 A.T no. 1, pl. 17). The villa was destroyed at the time of the Mycenaean invasion of Crete in LM IB. A sunk 'lustral basin' has come to light in the Bronze Age city at Khania in western Crete (Andreadaki-Vlazaki 1988). This was adorned with interesting decorative frescoes, which included imitations of veined stone dados as found at Knossos and elsewhere in Crete and also at Akrotiri (e.g. Doumas 1992, 90-91 figs. 55-56).

Knossos again suffered from a major earthquake in LM IA, about the time of the great eruption of Thera; but relatively little fresco material has been published from deposits of this period at Knossos or elsewhere in Crete. Three scraps of fresco, however, from the South House (17 [17]) by the palace at Knossos appear to have fallen from the walls and been buried after damage to the building in LM IA. These fragments came from a 'lustral basin' which had been filled after the earthquake in LM IA, but one of them, with part of a bird, was found in the north-east corner of the room adjoining it on the west. The feet, tail and most of the head of the bird are missing; but it was apparently represented at rest, with head turned back and wings folded; the wings being painted blue and black, all the rest of the body yellow, against a white background. Evans took the bird to be a swallow, but Mackenzie thought it more likely to be another migratory species found in Crete (DM/DB 1924 vol. 1, p. 43).

Fragments of miniature frescoes are attested from deposits of MM IIIB date at Knossos (e.g. 15, 16); but the miniatures from the area of the Early Keep in the palace (19 [6a to 6e]) appear to be assignable to LM I, although they may be somewhat later than the comparable miniatures from the West House at Akrotiri. These fragments seem to have come from a room used as a shrine on an upper floor in the area. Two scenes which have been reconstructed are known as the 'Temple fresco' and the 'Sacred Grove and Dance'. Both show religious ceremonies, with crowds of spectators rendered in a kind of shorthand, the figures sketched in black outline against a red background for men, white for women. This shorthand convention does not appear to be attested so far at Akrotiri. The half-rosettes below the central part of the shrine facade associated with the Temple fresco are matched by a comparable motif from Tell el Dab'a (Bietak 1994, 51, pl. 18B). With these miniature frescoes at Knossos were found pieces of a design of interlocking spirals in high relief (Fig. 1 [6a, 6b]). Evans restored this as a ceiling (Evans 1930, 30, col. pl. XV); but in the palace at Zakro, destroyed in LM IB, Nicolaos Platon found comparable relief spirals which had been part of a cornice round the top of a wall (Platon 1974, 158-159, fig. 96).

The charming frieze of the Partridge fresco from the Caravanserai building south of the palace at Knossos is not well dated by context, but may have been painted in LM I rather than later (Immerwahr 1990, 78-79, 174 Kn no. 20). The fresco has been heavily restored, but one pair of partridges is largely original. This scene may have been entirely decorative and secular in character, as Immerwahr has stressed.

Returning to the palace at Knossos, the life-sized figure (18) in painted relief, which Evans restored as a Priest King, may also date from LM I as he believed. But the figure may represent a god, as Niemeier (1987) has suggested, rather than a king, and the feather crown might have adorned the head of a sphinx. The fragments came from a deep, but not well dated, fill (Fig. 1 [18]) at the south end of the palace. The necklace on the fragment of chest has beads shaped like lilies, as found in jewellery of the LM I period (Kaiser 1976, 292). Somewhat comparable lilies appear in one of the wreaths of the Garland fresco recovered by Warren from a LM IB deposit in his excavations behind the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos (Immerwahr 1990, 178 Kn no. 44; Warren 1985, 198).

Relief frescoes were still in place on the walls of buildings at Knossos and elsewhere in Crete at the time of the Mycenaean conquest in LM IB. These included the pair of goddesses in the town shrine on the island of Pseira destroyed at that time (Immerwahr 1990, 62, 184 Ps no. 1). It seems doubtful, however, if any of these plaster reliefs survived the Mycenaean conquest, and Evans may have been right in his final belief that no such reliefs were made in Crete after the end of LM I, the Priest King being the last example (Evans and Evans 1936, 146).

The Mycenaean conquest in LM IB ca. 1450 BC makes a sharp break in the history of Bronze Age Crete. Many Cretan towns and settlements were destroyed by fire then. Some houses in the city round the palace at Knossos were also destroyed at this time, but the Mycenaeans seem to have spared the palace and adapted it to their own use. They built new walls in some places, and changed the character of rooms, especially it seems in the Domestic Quarter in the south-eastern part of the palace.

It looks as if the Mycenaeans may have stripped the palace walls of some or all of the frescoes which they found on them, and replaced them with ones of their own choice. Two remarkable dumps of frescoes recorded by Evans and Mackenzie on the edges of the palace area may reflect this stripping of walls after the Mycenaean occupation of Knossos. One of these (21 [21] and [22]) was on the eastern side of the Queen's Megaron complex in the Domestic Quarter. The other consisted of a pair of dumps, known as the North-West Fresco Heaps, on the northern edge of the Mycenaean palace (20 [3a] and [3b]). These dumps may have consisted of the remains of frescoes which the Mycenaeans stripped from the palace walls. None of the paintings from them seems necessarily later than LM IB in date, although some may have been painted earlier, in LM IA or even MM IIIB.

The fragments from the North-West Heaps (20) included bits of miniature frescoes, like the scene of naked boys, engaged perhaps in playing some game as Evans thought (Evans 1930, 396, col. pl. XXV). There were also fragments with designs in miniature from the richly decorated robes of life-sized figures of women, goddesses perhaps or their priestesses or worshippers (Evans 1930, 37-42). These dress designs include miniature figures of sphinxes and griffins (Evans 1930, 41 fig. 25d-f; Cameron and Hood 1967, pl. E fig. 3a,h,k; pl. IV figs. 16, 17). A curious bull's head is represented with extra horns (Evans 1930, 41 fig. 25a,d; Cameron and Hood 1967, pl. E fig. 3a; pl. IV fig. 11).

The fragment, known as the Dancing Lady, came from the other fresco dump (21) on the edge of the Queen's Megaron (Fig. 1 [22]). She is about a quarter life size. The zigzag design in red on the blue border of her dress resembles that on one of the large figures of women from Akrotiri (Doumas 1991, 154-155 figs. 118-119) (Pl. 20); but the Knossos Dancing Lady may have been painted a bit later, in LM IB perhaps, after the time of the Thera eruption. In the same dump (21) as the Dancing Lady were found the fragments of the Dolphin fresco (Fig. 1 [21]) which may have come from a floor and not a wall (Hood 1978, 71).

No deposits in the palace at Knossos are certainly assignable to LM IB. But many of the houses in the town around it were destroyed or damaged at the time of the Mycenaean conquest then. A double spiral frieze from a building north of the Royal Road at Knossos, destroyed in LM IB, seen here in a drawing by Piet de Jong (Fig. 5), is reminiscent of a fine example from Akrotiri (Doumas 1992, 132-133 figs. 93-94), but may be later, LM IB rather than LM IA, in date. The white spirals are defined by red beads, and set against a dark, grey-black background.

Some of the frescoes still on walls of the palace at Knossos at the time of its final destruction in LM III are fairly well preserved. In many cases their relatively fine style suggests that they were painted soon after the Mycenaean conquest, at the beginning of LM II rather than later. Most, if not all, the artists who painted them may have been native Cretans working for the new Mycenaean rulers.

In several parts of the Domestic Quarter in the south-east region of the palace Evans found remains of spiral friezes still in position above the high dados of polished gypsum slabs (32 [23A, B and C]). A rather extravagant restoration made for Evans (1930, col. pl. XXIV) shows the spiral frieze above the gypsum dado slabs in the Hall of the Double Axes [23C]. Evans suggested that the figure-of-eight body shields made of cow hide of the warriors of the time were hung on the walls here when not in use.

Pictures of such shields were apparently painted against the corresponding spiral frieze in the adjacent Hall of the Colonnades. Fragments of these (30) were recovered from debris of the final palace destruction by fire which filled the stairway at Fig. 1 [26]. Similar shields were depicted on the walls of contemporary palaces on the Greek mainland, like Mycenae and Tiryns (Immerwahr 1990, 139-140, 193 My no. 14, 203 Ti no. 10, pl. XIX).

There may not have been any paintings on the walls above the spiral friezes in the Hall of the Double Axes or the Queen's Megaron area during the period of Mycenaean domination at Knossos in LM II and III. But fragments of a design, which Gilliéron restored for Evans as part of a giant argonaut, were found in the Lower East-West Corridor on the north side of the Hall of the Double Axes (3 [25]).

Scenes with relatively small figures of bulls and leapers (24) from debris filling the Court of the Stone Spout at Fig. 1 [33] from their style appear to date from early in the Mycenaean period at Knossos in LM II. Several of the leapers are painted white, which suggests that they were meant for women, although they are dressed exactly like the men (Evans 1930, 227-232).

Remains of paintings of life-sized bulls were found by Evans in position on walls in different parts of the Mycenaean palace at Knossos: in the West Entrance Porch (27 [14a]), in the Anteroom to the Throne Room (26 [7]), and on an upper floor in the Domestic Quarter (28 [24]). All of these may have formed part of bull leaping scenes, painted in LM II or LM III. It is interesting to note that none of these late bulls was in relief, in contrast to the earlier representations of large bulls from the palace (e.g. (3), (6), (8)).

Impressive life-sized figures, mostly of men but with some women, taking part in a religious procession (23) adorned the walls of the corridor, which Evans named after them the Corridor of the Procession, leading southwards from the West Entrance Porch of the Palace. Among the figures at Fig. 1 [15] was a bare-footed woman, a goddess perhaps or priestess, who may have been the focal point of the whole procession; but only the feet and lower legs of the figures here survive. At Fig. 1 [16], however, the so-called Cupbearer was found more or less intact, holding a large conical rhyton, painted blue to represent silver, with a gold rim and mountings indicated in red. It is noteworthy that the Cupbearer's is the only life-sized painted head of a man or woman so far recovered at Knossos.

The griffins in the Throne Room (25 [8]) are the best preserved of the paintings which were on the walls of the palace at the time of its final destruction in LM III. The restorations of the frescoes on view in the Throne Room today are wrong in some details: the throne, for instance, was flanked by palm trees as well as the flowering plants of the restoration (Cameron 1970, 163; Immerwahr 1990, 96-98, 176 Kn no. 28, pl. 48; Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1996, pls. 31, 32).

Most of the frescoes on walls at the time of the final destruction of the palace seem from their style to have been painted in LM II, soon after Mycenaean rule was established at Knossos. One group of paintings, however, apparently dating from LM II, had been removed from the walls earlier and buried in an LM II deposit below a later floor (22 [19]). This group included what Evans called the Palanquin fresco, which he restored as a scene with a figure being carried in a kind of sedan chair by four bearers (Evans 1928, 770-772, figs. 502-503). The figures are all quite small, but about double the size of true miniatures like those from the West House at Akrotiri.

In the course of repair work in the 1950s fragments of another scene were found in this area belonging to the same group. This showed a chariot driven by a long-robed charioteer (Alexiou 1964). A fragment of fresco, which Evans had noted as from another part of the palace, has what may be the back of the same chariot with the head of a bull apparently following behind it (Cameron 1967; Immerwahr 1990, 92-95, fig. 27, 175f. Kn no. 25).

The latest surviving wall painting recovered from the palace, the Camp-Stool fresco (34 [4a, 4b]), consists of fragments of a scene with men and women sitting in pairs on folding stools and engaged in some kind of religious symposium in the presence of two goddesses. A cup, painted blue for silver, on one fragment was evidently a long-stemmed kylix of a type not found in Crete before LM IIIA and continuing in use into LM IIIB. A long stem, painted yellow for gold, appears to be all that survives of another cup of similar type. The figures, like those of the LM II Palanquin and Chariot frescoes, are small but not true miniatures. The two goddesses, however, were slightly larger in size. The best preserved of these is the striking figure, with a sacral knot as Evans called it on her shoulder, known as La Parisienne. With this figure, lively and attractive as she is, we have come a long way down the line, in style as well as date, from the elegant goddesses and their priestesses and acolytes of Akrotiri.

As late, or even later in date than the Camp-Stool fresco, is the remarkable fragment known as the Captain of the Blacks, found in the House of the Frescoes at Knossos (Fig. 4) and probably part of the decoration of the Mycenaean building which replaced it (Immerwahr 1990, 96, 176 Kn no. 27; Evans 1928, 756-757, col. pl. XIII). This came from a high level in the area where a Roman cist grave had been discovered just to the east or south-east of the compartment with the fresco stack, as Mackenzie makes clear (DM/DB 1923 vol. 3, p. 8 left, and plan p. 5). It appears to show a troop of negro soldiers with a native officer at their head. The style of it is comparable with that of the later series of wall paintings found on the Greek mainland, as seen, for instance, in the Palace of Nestor at Pylos (Lang 1969). Whenever the Captain of the Blacks was painted, the military character of the scene suggests that it was before the final destruction of the palace at Knossos, variously assigned to an early phase of LM IIIA2, later in LM IIIA2 or the beginning of LM IIIB, or even towards the end of LM IIIB.

(1.) The arabic numbers between round brackets refer to the list of frescoes from the palace at Knossos presented elsewhere in this volume (Hood this volume); the figures in bold between square brackets give the find places of these on the plan (here Fig. 1).

Abbreviation:

DM/DB: Daybooks kept by Dr. Duncan Mackenzie (archive of the excavations at Knossos in the Ashmolean Museu,. Oxford).

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