DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.809#0316
ITS SEISMIC CHARACTER 289
utensils and store-jars, and even the furniture of their shrines. Much labour
and solicitude, indeed, had been afterwards expended in hunting out metal
objects from the debris, but the contents of store-rooms and even artistic
objects that did not possess an intrinsic value due to their material were not
considered worth the trouble of excavation. These spaces were in many
cases completely filled in, and the store vessels were left in position, so that
a platform was formed for new constructions on a higher level.
Of what kind then was this devastating agency that at this epoch
overwhelmed a large part of the Palace fabric, leaving these earlier relics in
the store-rooms and cellars, earthed under by its debris ?
Already in a Section of this work dealing with the close of the last indica-
Middle Minoan Period at Knossos, which had reached the proof stage in G°eat°
191 S, I had drawn the almost unavoidable conclusion that, 'however much Eanh-
1 . • quake.
the results of the catastrophe may have been intensified by fire or subsequent
pillage, the overthrow itself was primarily the result of an earthquake, such
as that of Nero's time, which seems, from a curious record preserved by Dictys
Cretensis, not only to have wrought great havoc in the later Knossos, but to
have led to the first discovery on the site of documents in an unknown script'.
But the conclusion thus suggested by the cumulative results of earlier
discoveries received decisive confirmation in the course of supplementary
excavations of the site undertaken on an extensive scale in 1922.
Among the moot points that these fresh investigations were designed Subsi-
to clear up was the question as to what lay beneath the South-East angle of s^e
the Palace. The appearance of a curious depression marked by the progressive Pa,ace
sinking of the great base-blocks of its Central and Southern walls, and the
traces of a curving edge of the red ' kouskouras' rock that here crops up,
had led to the conclusion that some kind of vault analogous to that brought
out beneath the South Porch had existed at this point.1
Underground Vault beneath S.E. Palace Angle.
From the first, however, a very definite distinction was observable
between the two cases. In the case of the South Porch the builders built
with their eyes open. The upper part of the great hypogaeum that under-
lay this area had already been removed and the vault below packed with
filling earth intermingled with M. M. I a pottery and apparently supplied by
the levelling operations rendered necessary for the formation of the Central
1 The existence of such had been even tentatively marked by a circular outline on
the Diagrammatic Plan, vol. i, facing p. 203.
H. U
utensils and store-jars, and even the furniture of their shrines. Much labour
and solicitude, indeed, had been afterwards expended in hunting out metal
objects from the debris, but the contents of store-rooms and even artistic
objects that did not possess an intrinsic value due to their material were not
considered worth the trouble of excavation. These spaces were in many
cases completely filled in, and the store vessels were left in position, so that
a platform was formed for new constructions on a higher level.
Of what kind then was this devastating agency that at this epoch
overwhelmed a large part of the Palace fabric, leaving these earlier relics in
the store-rooms and cellars, earthed under by its debris ?
Already in a Section of this work dealing with the close of the last indica-
Middle Minoan Period at Knossos, which had reached the proof stage in G°eat°
191 S, I had drawn the almost unavoidable conclusion that, 'however much Eanh-
1 . • quake.
the results of the catastrophe may have been intensified by fire or subsequent
pillage, the overthrow itself was primarily the result of an earthquake, such
as that of Nero's time, which seems, from a curious record preserved by Dictys
Cretensis, not only to have wrought great havoc in the later Knossos, but to
have led to the first discovery on the site of documents in an unknown script'.
But the conclusion thus suggested by the cumulative results of earlier
discoveries received decisive confirmation in the course of supplementary
excavations of the site undertaken on an extensive scale in 1922.
Among the moot points that these fresh investigations were designed Subsi-
to clear up was the question as to what lay beneath the South-East angle of s^e
the Palace. The appearance of a curious depression marked by the progressive Pa,ace
sinking of the great base-blocks of its Central and Southern walls, and the
traces of a curving edge of the red ' kouskouras' rock that here crops up,
had led to the conclusion that some kind of vault analogous to that brought
out beneath the South Porch had existed at this point.1
Underground Vault beneath S.E. Palace Angle.
From the first, however, a very definite distinction was observable
between the two cases. In the case of the South Porch the builders built
with their eyes open. The upper part of the great hypogaeum that under-
lay this area had already been removed and the vault below packed with
filling earth intermingled with M. M. I a pottery and apparently supplied by
the levelling operations rendered necessary for the formation of the Central
1 The existence of such had been even tentatively marked by a circular outline on
the Diagrammatic Plan, vol. i, facing p. 203.
H. U