We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2013
This group of tombs lies about 50 metres south-west of the main Knossos–Herakleion road, immediately opposite the new Sanatorium. Here in the autumn of 1953 Mr. David Smollett, then engaged in making the map for the Knossos Survey, noticed some large sherds which had been thrown into a rubbish pit on the edge of a small patch of ground newly ploughed for a vineyard (Plan, Fig. 1, a). The vineyard lay on the top of a slight knoll behind the café on the west side of the road. The knoll had until this time been occupied by a threshing floor, and was pointed out by the local inhabitants as the site of the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’. But the great Roman concrete-built tomb traditionally known as the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’, was really, it appears, on the main road some metres away to the north-west (Knossos Survey 23): it was destroyed about 1880 when the road was built.
The sherds recovered by Mr. Smollett, some of them large and freshly broken from fine Geometric vases, made it seem likely that there was a disturbed tomb of that period in the area. Permission was therefore sought, and readily granted by Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, to explore the field before it was planted with vines. Trials led to the discovery of three small collapsed chamber tombs, all apparently Iron Age in date, cut in the soft kouskouras rock. The tombs clearly belong to the same complex as tombs L, Π, and TFT which have been published by Brock in Fortetsa (1957). They stood in a row with their entrances facing south towards Knossos. Two isolated burials (Plan, Fig. 1, b, c), extended on their backs with their heads to the west and feet to the east immediately below the surface of the field, may be Roman or later; there was a bent iron nail by the left hand of burial c. The knoll with the tombs lies near the western edge of the big Roman cemetery which covered the region now occupied by the new Sanatorium (Knossos Survey 35).
2 Xanthoudides, , Athena xiii (1901) 305 f.Google Scholar
3 Cf. Brock, , Fortetsa 2.Google Scholar
4 Ibid. 60 f., pls. 2 (c) and 152 (Plan).
5 Ibid. 3, 31.
6 BSA 55 (1960) 128 ff.
7 North of Knossos Survey 7; Archaeological Reports for 1958 21.
8 Cf. Fortetsa 189–91; the fragments and vases cited below in note 13; BSA xlix (1954) pl. 25. 55; Vrokastro pl. 26. Later Cycladic imports may be the sherds from Eleutherna, , BSA xxxi (1930–1931) 109 f., figs. 34. 3–4, 35Google Scholar; the fabric sounds ‘Naxian’ and for the pattern on the larger fragment cf. the Naxian, vase EADélos xvii, pl. 1 BalGoogle Scholar, JdI lii (1937) 177, fig. 12 (Aphrodite's dress), and BSA xliv (1949) pl. 7. There was a notable return traffic to the islands: to Delos, Thera, Melos, and Naxos; cf. Boardman, , Cretan Collection in Oxford 131, 153, 155 f.Google Scholar
9 On Euboeo-Cycladic Geometric pottery see Boardman, , BSA lii (1957) 2–10.Google Scholar Only one skyphos with pendent semicircles has been found in Crete so far, at Knossos, (BSA xxix (1927–1928) 261, no. 147 pl. 6. 12).Google Scholar There are several Cretan imports in the Euboean western colonies, Cumae and Pithekoussai.
10 Fortetsa pl. 43. 652, 673, 680–1, and p. 62.
11 Cf. Payne, H. G., BSA xxix (1927–1928) 289 f.Google Scholar; in Euboea, , BSA xlvii (1952) pl. 3.Google Scholar A11; PAE 1955, pl. 43 a. 1. It was a detail learned also in the west from the Euboeo-Cycladic school, Ibid. 10 n. 59.
12 From the drawing of the sherds in Vrokastro 98, fig. 53 I would judge them to be Cycladic imports rather than Cretan imitations.
13 Fortetsa pl. 44. 671 (import, and see p. 63 for comparisons); pl. 109, 1481 (? import); no. 490 (? import); BSA xlix (1954) pls. 21. 20, 25. 19, from Khaniale Tekke near Knossos, the second probably an import; Vrokastro 173, fig. 106 (? import); ADelt xiv. 5, fig. 5 right, from Anavlochos, a Cycladic import; KChron xi (1957) 330, Arkhanes; and cf. Weinberg, S., Corinth vii. 1 25 f.Google Scholar, Johansen, F., Exochi (Acta Arch. xxviii. 1958) 106 ff.Google Scholar; BSA xxix (1927–8) pl. 6. 8, is much affected also by the Knossian Protogeometric bell-crater and the Protogeometric style of decoration still current in Crete.
14 Fortetsa no. 45, pls. 4, 135. Yet earlier may be the birds on a fragment from the Spring Chamber at Knossos, , P of M ii. 137, A1.Google Scholar
15 Other atticizing drawing may be Fortetsa pl. 107. 1414; ships on a vase from one of the Khaniale Tekke tombs which I will publish; the birds on a fragment from Ambelakia near Knossos, , KChron iv (1950) pl. 16Google Scholar second row 4th from right (? an import). The geometric birds have Euboeo-Cycladic peculiarities, as we have seen, and the later ones may be influenced by Near Eastern fashions (cf. Payne, , BSA xxix (1927–1928) 288 ff.Google Scholar). There are some Geometric Cretan figures which in a way recall Middle Minoan exercises in figure-drawing: BSA xii (1905–6) 47, fig. 24 (Adromyloi), Fortetsa pl. 144. 339; compare the MM fragments from Phaistos, , Boll. d'Arte 1956, 254, fig. 33Google Scholar; 1955, 145, fig. 7.
16 Fortetsa pl. 21, 312 (? LPG) and p. 34 for Cypriot parallels. Heraklion 2371 is an example from one of Hogarth's tombs near Knossos.
17 BSA xii (1905–6) 45, fig. 22 bottom row, 54 f.
18 Cf. Desborough, , Protogeometric Pottery 118 f.Google Scholar, for some one-handled lentoid vases: Ibid. pl. 14 (Kerameikos iv, pl. 26. 2034) and PAE 1939, 32, fig. 5a (AA 1940, 179 f., fig. 36). There is a pilgrim flask from Crete, Vrokastro 126, fig. 75, and an Attic Protogeometric example, Kerameikos i, pl. 62. 536. For one-handled lentoids in Rhodes see Clara Rhodos iii. 149, fig. 142 below, and Ithaca, , BSA xxxiii (1932–1933) 48, figs. 24–25.Google Scholar Athens NM 18499 and 18505 are Attic Geometric, and NM 18036 apparently Corinthian lentoid flasks.
19 Fortetsa 190 f. Group F; Gjerstad, E., SCE iv. 2, 269.Google Scholar
20 It might be wise to reserve judgement on whether the Black-on-Red vases imported to Crete are Cypriot or from the Syria–Palestine area, with which Crete can be shown to have many connexions in the Geometric period and which was the inspiring source of these vases in Cyprus (cf. Tufnell, O., Lachish iii. 296 ff.Google Scholar).
21 Cf. BSA xxix (1927–8) 276 f.; Ann x–xii. 532 f.; Fortetsa 187; Ann xvii–xviii. 230, fig. 23a.
22 Various individual vases and groups may be compared. Thus, the shaky, all-over decoration of the aryballos Fortetsa pl. 100, 1279; the group formed by Fortetsa pl. 99. 1534, Payne, , Necrocorinthia 270Google Scholar, fig. 44b (BSA xxix (1927–8) 257, no. 127, 279, fig. 34. 37), and perhaps the Oxford owls vase (CVA ii, pl. 3. 1–4); the aryballoi Fortetsa pl. 99. 1275–6, 1238, and AE 1945–7, 67, fig. 15. 96, which seem related to a number of imitations of Protocorinthian kotylai: as Fortetsa nos. 1203, 1232, 1287, 1340, 1346, 1541, BSA xxix (1927–8) pl. 11. 5, and AE 1945–7, 63, fig. 13, 82–83, 85–86. In an equally accomplished but bolder style are the aryballoi Fortetsa pl. 72. 933, 961; the two fragments Fortetsa pl. 108. 1540, and BSA xxix (1927–8) 255, no. 108, pl. 10. 6, with which might be compared Fortetsa pl. 98. 1268, 1280; the interesting bottle Fortetsa pl. 100. 1374 with its dotting like that on some Cretan animal-vases, and with it the fragment of a bowl BSA xxxi (1930–1) pl. 17. 2 (not Protocorinthian as stated Ibid. 85, 88). A few of these small vases can be related to the grave pithoi of the same period.
23 The kotyle Fortetsa pls. 104–5 and 161, no. 1346, may be by an imitator; and note the imitation of a bird-bowl, BSA xxix (1927–8) 262, no. 157 bis; pl. 11. 4 (cf. pl. 11. 6).
24 Platon relates the ring aryballoi to spherical flasks (AE 1945–7, 83 f.), but see Johansen, F., Vases Sicyoniens 83 f.Google Scholar, pls. 7. 4 (with foot) and 8. 4 for the rectangular section to the ring in Protocorinthian; and Ure, P. N., Hesperia xv (1946) 49.Google Scholar Compare too the East Greek example in Kinch, K. F., Vroulia 45, fig. 20Google Scholar, BSA xliii (1948) pl. 40. 547 (Ithaka), and Argive Heraeum ii. 143, fig. 83. Thera ii. 314, fig. 501, from Schiff's grave, might be another Cretan example. The later, circular section (Ure, op. cit. 39 ff.; Schauenburg, K., Jb. Röm.-Germ. Zentralmuseums Mainz iv (1957) 63Google Scholar) is imitated at Afrati: Ann x–xii. 362, fig. 474, 494, fig. 593. The pyxis is more like those in Johansen, op. cit. pl. 12 than the Afrati vases (Ann x–xii. 481, fig. 592A for the shape).
25 Payne, , Necrocorinthia pl. 8. 1–6Google Scholar; BSA xxix (1927–8) 266 ff., no. 179, pl. 25.
26 Helmeted sphinxes regularly appear on early Cretan bronzes, but the helmets are pointed and oriental in appearance, not Hellenic as here. And note that what may be the earliest Greek helmeted sphinx appears on an Attic gold band, Ohly, D., Griechische Goldbleche 34–36Google Scholar, fig. 18 (A 17). For the Cretan sphinxes with helmets see Kunze, E., Kretische Bronzereliefs 179 f.Google Scholar, pl. 2 (Idaean Cave), 252, fig. 31 and pl. 56e (Kavousi), BCH lxxiv (1950) pl. 38 (Delphi), Fortetsa pl. 169. 1569. Cf. Syria xxxiv (1957) 245, pl. 17 and 248, fig. 1 for Near Eastern examples; and FD v, pl. 19 (KiB i. 106, 3; Kunze, op. cit. 36) for one imported to Delphi. The white crown of Lower Egypt worn by sphinxes was misunderstood in the Levant, squashed sometimes (e.g. Barnett, R. D., The Nimrud Ivories pl. 19Google Scholar) or translated into the similar and more familiar conical helmet. Thus it passed to Cyprus (e.g. H. Bossert, Altsyrien figs. 69, 70) and Greece, where the helmet type was brought up to date, as on the Fortetsa Painter's vase and on a Melian hydria (Kunze, op. cit. pl. 55c), and perhaps on the gold band cited above in this note.
27 Thus on Cretan bronze and gold reliefs and some vases; again an oriental feature. See Kunze, op. cit. 252, fig. 31, pl. 56e (Kavousi; sphinxes and griffins); Fortetsa pl. 169. 1569 (sphinxes); BSA xii (1905–6) 65, fig. 1 (Reichel, W., Griechisches Goldrelief 58, no. 48Google Scholar; Praisos, gold; ? sphinx); Ann x–xii. 323–5, fig. 420a–d (vase; griffin birds).
28 Payne, , Necrocorinthia pl. 8. 1Google Scholar and cf. pl. 1. 5 (the blazon and the frieze below); Johansen, op. cit. pls. 31–33.
29 Payne, op. cit. pl. 3.
