DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7518#0018
A SURVEY OF MINOAN CIVILIZATION
This survey was designed and partly written by the late
Sir John Myres and completed by Sir John Forsdyke.
As the ship draws into the roadstead of Candia, there opens
out between the Venetian sea-front and the sky-line of the
'Dead Zeus', on Mount Juktas, a pleasant landscape of lime-
stone hills beset with ohves and intersected by well-defined
valleys draining into the open bays east and west of the town.
Beyond there rise the higher foothills of Ida, snow-capped, to
the west, and Lasithi to the east. This is the home district of
Knossos.
Leaving the narrow bazaar-streets of the port, past the
Museum, and through a wide breach in the eastern wall, the
southward road sidles through the vast moat, and climbs
slowly through mean suburbs, keeping clear of the eastern
Kairatos valley, but crossing some small tributary gorges. A
little beyond the inn, where a road rises to Fortetsa, a low ridge
divides this broken country from an open basin of the main
valley, the home district of Knossos, and the road descends
towards the junction of two deep streams. Close to this junc-
tion, a low spur from the west slope below the road is
'Kephala', the 'headland', the site of the Palace itself. All this
open basin is littered with the massive concrete ruins of the
Roman city; the Villa Dionysus with its fine mosaics is in the
high bank of the road; and the (modern) Villa Ariadne in its
shady grove, a little lower, with the British School's depot,
the Taverna, at its drive-gate. It was here that, lunching on the
bare hillside, during an early visit, Arthur Evans suddenly
exclaimed, 'When I come to dig here, this is where I shall
build my house.' He had had a similar premonition, as an
undergraduate, about his beautiful home near Oxford.
The slopes of Kephala are now clothed with cypresses and
olives, and the saddle towards the high road is deeply filled
with debris. From the south and from the eastern valley its
13
This survey was designed and partly written by the late
Sir John Myres and completed by Sir John Forsdyke.
As the ship draws into the roadstead of Candia, there opens
out between the Venetian sea-front and the sky-line of the
'Dead Zeus', on Mount Juktas, a pleasant landscape of lime-
stone hills beset with ohves and intersected by well-defined
valleys draining into the open bays east and west of the town.
Beyond there rise the higher foothills of Ida, snow-capped, to
the west, and Lasithi to the east. This is the home district of
Knossos.
Leaving the narrow bazaar-streets of the port, past the
Museum, and through a wide breach in the eastern wall, the
southward road sidles through the vast moat, and climbs
slowly through mean suburbs, keeping clear of the eastern
Kairatos valley, but crossing some small tributary gorges. A
little beyond the inn, where a road rises to Fortetsa, a low ridge
divides this broken country from an open basin of the main
valley, the home district of Knossos, and the road descends
towards the junction of two deep streams. Close to this junc-
tion, a low spur from the west slope below the road is
'Kephala', the 'headland', the site of the Palace itself. All this
open basin is littered with the massive concrete ruins of the
Roman city; the Villa Dionysus with its fine mosaics is in the
high bank of the road; and the (modern) Villa Ariadne in its
shady grove, a little lower, with the British School's depot,
the Taverna, at its drive-gate. It was here that, lunching on the
bare hillside, during an early visit, Arthur Evans suddenly
exclaimed, 'When I come to dig here, this is where I shall
build my house.' He had had a similar premonition, as an
undergraduate, about his beautiful home near Oxford.
The slopes of Kephala are now clothed with cypresses and
olives, and the saddle towards the high road is deeply filled
with debris. From the south and from the eastern valley its
13