Deep in the rubble, the excavators of the Minoan palace at Knossos found this large and exquisite game board, made with bronze and ivory inlays, complete with four pawns.

This is another one-off. Nothing comparable has ever been found, nobody has a clue what game was played and what significance it has.

Prompted by a trivia question by swinging Anna I have posted a short note on the Minoan Snake Goddess in the Island Trivia thread.

In that post I mentioned some famous forgeries of Snake Goddesses. Interesting to see that one of those shows up at AW, in the form of maja Nestor's avatar.

At the end of March, I will have the pleasure to do a short trip to Artemis' enchanted island of Cythera Crete.

I will be looking for traces of the old Minoan colony palaces, and let the genius loci work on me. Hopefully I will also have the opportunity to make some pictures.

For now I would be glad about anyone who knows how to get there by ship from Athens. The ferry schedules are nowhere on the Web and seem to depend heavily on the weather. Not sure if March is such a good idea after all...

Postscript: elena was so kind to point me to the greece2go.net page from where - by clicking and trying - I was able to find out that there is no ferry from Athens to Cythera. Bad luck. I have to drive all through Peloponnesus to get there. More adventure.

Postscript 2: After more research I figure that it takes me one additional day to get there and one more to get back. Since all I have is one week, I have decided to adapt my plans and visit Crete instead. There are lots of places to discover for me. And at this time of the year, the famous tourist spots shouldn't be too crowded.

This figure found in Palaikastro is another one of those absolutely unique Minoan objects from LM I Crete. Today it is the main object in the local museum.

It is composed of stone and ivory, was partly covered with gold and may have had clothing.

The super-realistic details of muscles, veins and arteries on hands and feet have no parallel at the time of its creation around 1500BC.

(See here for more details)

Golden Bees of Chrysolakkos

The famous bee pendent from Chrysolakkos is a unique object in several ways: It is extremely old (1950 - 1700 BC), perfect in its filigree and granulation technique, and just beautiful. And it sheds a light on the use of honey in that time that we otherwise wouldn't have.

Just compare it to the loads of modern copies of the bee pendent that are offered in tourist shops in Crete today and you will apprechiate the masterly achievement by this ancient goldsmith.

A few days ago I received a response from Dr. Eva Panagiotakopulu. She has published an article in Antiquity '97 on silk production in Thera. One 5 cm moth cocoon found below the ash of the Thera eruption indicates that those people indeed produced silk in 1700BC. Eva confirmed that this is still a valid statement. (There is an interesting post here at AW mentioning this fact from Caileadair Etana)

Verena has almost completed her second novel, which will center around the diskos as well.

And - coincidence - a third author by the name of Torsten Timm has informed me today that he has published a book on the diskos. His thesis: The diskos letters are a beautified version of Linear-A (see here).

Filling a small hole in the tephra layer covering Akrotiri reveiled a beautiful small wooden table. Amazingly neither the style nor the technology resembles anything known up to this point.

All images ©2005/2006 by the author.