Qualla: Heraklion Archaeological Museum

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gleb Simonov, Public domain. The Phaistos Disc sits in a glass case in Room III, smaller than you expect. About sixteen centimeters across, fired clay, both sides stamped with 241 spiraling symbols - little heads with feathered crowns, fish, ships, eight-petaled flowers, a gauntleted arm. No one has ever read it. The signs do not match any known script. They were pressed into the wet clay with hand-cut stamps, which would make this the earliest known example of movable type, predating Gutenberg by three thousand years - if we knew what it said. Some scholars think it is a hymn. Some think it is a forgery. Most think it is genuine and unreadable. It has been sitting here since 1908, and every year someone announces a new decipherment, and every year the disc keeps its secrets.

Image: Gleb Simonov | Public domain

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: A Building Made to Survive

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zde, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum holds the largest collection of Minoan art in the world, but the building itself is also a story. Three earthquakes in the 1920s and 1930s nearly destroyed the original 1912 home, and the director Spyridon Marinatos - who would later become famous for excavating the bu...

Image: Zde | CC BY-SA 4.0

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: The Bull Leapers

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gleb Simonov, Public domain. Hung in the Hall of Frescoes upstairs is the image that has come to define Minoan civilization for the modern world: three slender figures and a charging bull, painted on plaster around 1500 BC and pieced back together from fragments scraped off the floor of Knossos. A girl grasp...

Image: Gleb Simonov | Public domain

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: Goddesses and Serpents

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gsimonov, CC0. In Room IV, two faience figurines stand under spotlights - the Minoan snake goddesses, found in a stone-lined pit beneath the floor of a temple repository at Knossos. Each holds writhing snakes. Each wears the elaborate flounced skirt and exposed bodice that Minoan women - or at ...

Image: Gsimonov | CC0

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: Linear A, Linear B

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gsimonov, CC0. Two scripts dominate the museum's tablets and inscribed cups. Linear B, deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952, turned out to be an early form of Greek used by the Mycenaean rulers who took over Knossos around 1450 BC. Most of it is bookkeeping - inventories of sheep, jars of oil,...

Image: Gsimonov | CC0

Heraklion Archaeological Museum: From Neolithic to Roman

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jerzystrzelecki, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum spans 5,500 years of Cretan history - from a Neolithic fertility figurine in Room I, through the Kamares-ware pottery of the first palaces, through the Mycenaean takeover, through the Dorian iron age, to Greco-Roman sculptures in Room XX. The Hagia Triada sarcophagus, ...

Image: Jerzystrzelecki | CC BY-SA 4.0