The Cyclades and some parts of the mainland may by this time have become tributary to Crete, as suggested by legends about sons of Minos ruling the islands and by the legend of THESEUS and the tribute of young men and women imposed on Athens. The 16th-century BC shaft graves at Mycenae, with their lavish funerary articles, also date from this period. Many of the finest treasures found in the graves--magnificent swords, inlaid daggers, and gold signet rings engraved with scenes of warfare and hunting--may have been made by Cretan artists.

EMERGENCE OF MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION

Until recently archaeologists believed that the settlements at Thera were buried by volcanic eruption about 1500 BC. Evidence from improved dating techniques, however, places the eruption at about 1628 BC. The cause of the demise of the settlements remain unresolved. At a later time, about 1450 BC, Crete was overrun by invaders from the Greek mainland. People from the mainland also occupied the Cyclades. They built a palace on the site of an earlier one at Phylakopi on Melos, and surrounded the town with defensive walls.

Mainland palaces like that at Phylakopi differed from those of Minoan Crete. They centered around a great hall with a large central hearth and an entrance porch, developed from the long house standard in the Middle Bronze Age on the mainland. This hall is called the megaron in Homer's Odyssey, in which comparable palaces are described. In front of its porch was a courtyard, with various rooms and offices clustered around it. In contrast to this, a Minoan palace was built around a spacious rectangular court, which was given a north-south orientation, perhaps for ritual reasons. The Mycenaean invaders of Crete destroyed the palaces at Phaistos, Mallia, and Zakros, but spared and adapted that at Knossos. At Hagia Triada (Ayia Triadha) near Phaistos, they appear to have constructed a palace of the mainland type on the ruins of a small Minoan one.

New burial customs and changes in pottery reflect the presence of mainland conquerors after about 1450 BC at centers like Knossos. A different system of writing, called LINEAR B to distinguish it from the Linear A script used in Crete before the conquest, appeared at Knossos, where many clay tablets with inscriptions have been recovered. In 1952 the language of the tablets was deciphered by Michael VENTRIS as Greek. His decipherment, if accepted, implies that the Mycenaean conquerors of Crete spoke Greek and were ancestors of the non-Dorian Greeks of later times.

The Aegean, under Mycenaean domination from about 1450 BC onward, became the scene of a uniform civilization, although local differences can be distinguished, especially in the style of pottery decoration. Palaces at centers like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and Thebes on the mainland, or Knossos in Crete, indicate the existence of several relatively large independent states. Some of these states were probably absorbed by others before the end of the Bronze Age. The palace at Knossos in particular may have been destroyed for the last time in the 14th century BC.

In the 13th century BC, Mycenae, with the largest of the circular vaulted tholoi for royal burials (including the so-called Treasury of Atreus) may have been the capital of a miniature empire controlling most of the Aegean. Ahhiyava, which occurs in contemporary texts of the Hittite empire of Anatolia, appears to be the same word as Achaioi, Homer's name for the Greeks besieging Troy, and may refer to such a Mycenaean empire or to some lesser state. Mycenaeans were now in control of places on the western coast of Anatolia such as MILETUS, which Minoans had colonized before them.

DECLINE OF AEGEAN CIVILIZATION

Warfare between the Mycenaean states may have led to the dissipation of wealth and military resources. In the years around 1200 BC the palaces on the mainland were destroyed and never rebuilt. But sites such as Mycenae and Tiryns, or Knossos in Crete, continued to be occupied, although in much reduced fashion.

Scholars have proposed several theories concerning the destruction of the palaces and the eventual disappearance of the Mycenaean civilization. In one view, the Mycenaens were overwhelmed by the first wave of Greeks to invade from the north and settle in their lands; but this is incompatible with a belief that the language of the Linear B script is Greek. Other possible agents of destruction were the DORIANS, the last wave of Greeks to enter the Peloponnesus; but they seem to have come later. Alternatively, raiders such as the SEA PEOPLES, who attacked Egypt during this period, might, with concomitant drought and consequent famine, have created a vacuum that the Dorians afterward filled. Wars between the Mycenaean states have also been suggested as a reason for the destructions.

In the wake of the destructions, Mycenaean refugees from the Peloponnesus migrated to the Cyclades and to Crete, and even as far afield as Cyprus. Evidence indicates that at the same time barbarous peoples from beyond the northern frontiers of the Mycenaean world began to settle in the southern parts of Greece after about 1200 BC, introducing new burial customs and fashions in dress. These newcomers evidently mixed with remnants of the indigenous population and adopted some of the Mycenaean civilization, which continued in an adulterated form with many local variations until the end of the Bronze Age. Then, about the middle of the 11th century BC, this hybrid evolved in some areas, notably ATTICA, into what is recognizably the ancestor of the civilization of classical Greece.

What brought about the downfall of the Mycenaean world is the most obscure and difficult question confronting scholars of the Aegean civilization. Much also remains to be learned about the beginnings of the Bronze Age in Crete and other parts of the Aegean. Meanwhile, excavations continue in Greek lands with spectacular results, notably at Akrotiri on Thera and at such long-established centers as Mycenae, Tiryns, and Knossos.

SINCLAIR HOOD

Bibliography: Betancourt, Philip, The History of Minoan Pottery (1985); Branigan, Keith, The Foundations of Palatial Crete (1970); Chadwick, John, The Mycenaean World (1976); Hood, Sinclair, The Minoans: The Story of Bronze Age Crete (1971); Sandars, N. K., The Sea Peoples (1978); Simpson, Richard, Mycenaean Greece (1982); Vermeule, Emily, Greece in the Bronze Age (1964); Warren, Peter, The Aegean Civilization (1975) and Aegean Civilizations (1989).