Qualla: Modern History of Knossos

Modern History of Knossos: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Storeye, Public domain. The man who first put a spade into Knossos was not Arthur Evans. His name was Minos Kalokairinos, and he was a Cretan merchant with a Greek name that turned out to be eerily appropriate. In 1878, with Crete still under Ottoman rule, Kalokairinos dug into a low hill called Kefala just south of Heraklion and pulled out enormous storage jars and tablets covered in an unreadable script. The Ottoman authorities ordered him to stop, jailed him briefly, and forbade further digging. Twenty-two years later, with Crete autonomous and Ottoman power finally lifted from the island, the wealthy English archaeologist Arthur Evans bought the hill outright. He had read about Kalokairinos's tablets in a German journal. He was looking for the source of an early script he had seen on seal stones in an Athens market. He found a labyrinth.

Image: Storeye | Public domain

Modern History of Knossos: Waiting for the march of history

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Evans began digging in March 1900 and within weeks knew he had something extraordinary. The walls came up faster than the workmen could clear them, frescoes still bright on plaster that had been buried for three thousand five hundred years, storerooms with their pithoi still in p...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Modern History of Knossos: Crete changes hands

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The political ground beneath the dig kept shifting. Crete had been Ottoman since 1669, autonomous under a Christian high commissioner from 1898, and fully part of Greece from 1913. Each transition left bureaucratic residue Evans had to navigate. He poured his own fortune into the...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Modern History of Knossos: Knossos in two world wars

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. When the First World War came, Evans was in his sixties and the site went quiet, with only caretakers and small probes by the British School at Athens. The Second World War was harder. After the Battle of Crete in May 1941, German forces occupied the island and Villa Ariadne brie...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Modern History of Knossos: After Evans

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Evans died in 1941, before the war ended. Curatorship of Knossos passed first to John Pendlebury, who was killed by German paratroopers in the Battle of Crete; then to R.W. Hutchinson; then in 1947 to Piet de Jong, the Dutch artist who had drawn so many of the great frescoes; and...

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0