From Athens to Crete and back

Abstract

In my posting for 2015.08.26, I spoke of a “Minoan­Mycenaean civilization,” not saying “Minoan” and “Mycenaean” separately. That is because, as we saw in the postings for both 2015.08.26 and 2015.09.03, some of the myths that we encounter about Minoan civilization as centered on the island of Crete are infused with elements that are distinctly Mycenaean as well as Minoan. And such an infusion has to do with the fact that Minoan civilization, which had evolved in the context of a “Minoan Empire,” as archaeologists know it, was eventually taken over by a “Mycenaean Empire.” This takeover, as I argued already in the postings for both 2015.08.26 and 2015.09.03, resulted in modifications of myths about the Minoan Empire by way of myths about the Mycenaean Empire. Now we will see that these modifications, taking place on the island of Crete, involved the city of Athens as it existed in the Mycenaean era. §0.2. I must stress here that the myths stemming from Minoan­Mycenaean civilization need be studied from a diachronic as well as a synchronic perspective. The terms synchronic and diachronic, as I use them here, come from linguistics.[1] When linguists use the word synchronic, they are thinking of a given structure as it exists in a given time and space; when they use diachronic, they are thinking of that structure as it evolves through time.