DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0321
TABLETS FOUND AT KNOSSOS IN NERO'S TIME 673
version by John Lydgate, has been shown from the Tebtunis papyri to have in Nero's
been in fact, as its author stated, an adaptation of a Greek original, the 'chronicle
recently discovered fragment of which dates from early in the third century.1 ^„.0]an
Further evidence supplied by later references to an independent Byzantine
version throws back the date of the Greek archetype still further,2 and make
the more natural the bringing of it into connexion with an actual historic
event that took place in the clays of the Emperor Nero.
This was the great earthquake that occurred in the thirteenth year
of his reign, a.d. 66—at the time when the Emperor was making his mad
progress through Greece—and which actually ravaged Crete. It may be
further concluded that Knossos, in the most earthquake-stricken region of
the Island,3 was specially affected, and that one of the many repositories of
the inscribed clay tablets should have been laid bare on the Palace site by
this convulsion would in itself have been a very natural result. The recent
discoveries in fact invest the origin of the Diktys story with an entirely new
appearance of probability.
At Knossos, we are told in the prologue to the work, an earthquake
that had caused a great overthrow exposed the interior of the Tomb of
Diktys, bringing to light a ' tin chest'. Some passing shepherds who,seeing
this, had opened it in search for treasure, found instead documents of ' lime-
bark ', inscribed with ' unintelligible letters'. These were taken to Nero, then
in Greece, who, supposing them to be Phoenician, called in Semitic experts
to interpret them. When Nero commanded something must be clone, and
the doctors forthwith proceeded to interpret them as the journal of one of
the ancients—the Knossian Diktys, companion of Idomeneus, who had been
present at the Trojan War.
The brown, half-burnt tablets of the Palace themselves bear a distinct
resemblance to old or rotten wood, and it is clearly possible that the earth-
quake shocks had revealed one or more of the 'kaselles' with their lining
1 Grenfell and Hunt, The Tedium's Papyri, Century) that these Byzantine references were
Pt. II, 1907. The conclusion of the editors based on a late Greek version parallel with the
was that 'apart from unnecessary verbiage and Latin, but independent of it. Both versions in
occasional minor distortions the Latin version fact went back to a Greek archetype of much
follows the original faithfully enough'. earlier date. On the general question see, too,
2 See Ferdinand Noack, Philologies, 61er W. Ramsay Smith's Diet, of Biography, Sec.
Suppl. Band, 1893, pp. 40T-500. He showed (1902), Art. Diclys.
(as against those who regarded the work as ' See P. of M., ii, Pt. I, p. 313 seqq.; and
wholly a fabrication of Septimius) that the cf. V. Raulin, Description physique tie la Crete,
reference to it by Malalas (Sixth Century) in his i, p. 429.
EicXoy^ loTopuor, and Cedrenus (Eleventh
version by John Lydgate, has been shown from the Tebtunis papyri to have in Nero's
been in fact, as its author stated, an adaptation of a Greek original, the 'chronicle
recently discovered fragment of which dates from early in the third century.1 ^„.0]an
Further evidence supplied by later references to an independent Byzantine
version throws back the date of the Greek archetype still further,2 and make
the more natural the bringing of it into connexion with an actual historic
event that took place in the clays of the Emperor Nero.
This was the great earthquake that occurred in the thirteenth year
of his reign, a.d. 66—at the time when the Emperor was making his mad
progress through Greece—and which actually ravaged Crete. It may be
further concluded that Knossos, in the most earthquake-stricken region of
the Island,3 was specially affected, and that one of the many repositories of
the inscribed clay tablets should have been laid bare on the Palace site by
this convulsion would in itself have been a very natural result. The recent
discoveries in fact invest the origin of the Diktys story with an entirely new
appearance of probability.
At Knossos, we are told in the prologue to the work, an earthquake
that had caused a great overthrow exposed the interior of the Tomb of
Diktys, bringing to light a ' tin chest'. Some passing shepherds who,seeing
this, had opened it in search for treasure, found instead documents of ' lime-
bark ', inscribed with ' unintelligible letters'. These were taken to Nero, then
in Greece, who, supposing them to be Phoenician, called in Semitic experts
to interpret them. When Nero commanded something must be clone, and
the doctors forthwith proceeded to interpret them as the journal of one of
the ancients—the Knossian Diktys, companion of Idomeneus, who had been
present at the Trojan War.
The brown, half-burnt tablets of the Palace themselves bear a distinct
resemblance to old or rotten wood, and it is clearly possible that the earth-
quake shocks had revealed one or more of the 'kaselles' with their lining
1 Grenfell and Hunt, The Tedium's Papyri, Century) that these Byzantine references were
Pt. II, 1907. The conclusion of the editors based on a late Greek version parallel with the
was that 'apart from unnecessary verbiage and Latin, but independent of it. Both versions in
occasional minor distortions the Latin version fact went back to a Greek archetype of much
follows the original faithfully enough'. earlier date. On the general question see, too,
2 See Ferdinand Noack, Philologies, 61er W. Ramsay Smith's Diet, of Biography, Sec.
Suppl. Band, 1893, pp. 40T-500. He showed (1902), Art. Diclys.
(as against those who regarded the work as ' See P. of M., ii, Pt. I, p. 313 seqq.; and
wholly a fabrication of Septimius) that the cf. V. Raulin, Description physique tie la Crete,
reference to it by Malalas (Sixth Century) in his i, p. 429.
EicXoy^ loTopuor, and Cedrenus (Eleventh