Word: minoans
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...They spell AUTOMAT, but in fact they defy reading. The signs have ceased to signify. They are fragments-not in the sense of being broken, but in the "historical" sense of archaic fragments: the illegible pictograph, the stone bearing a message in a dead language, the passage written in Minoan Linear B. The work is meant to suggest endurance-despite its dependence on paying the electricity bill...
...first find was reported by Greek archaeologists, who for the past six years have been excavating the remains of an important center of the highly advanced Minoan civilization: a city that was buried under a blanket of ash and dust when the volcanic island of Thera (Santorini) erupted in a great explosion about 1500 B.C. Until now, the most important treasures unearthed by the diggers on Thera were several exquisitely beautiful frescoes; they show such tranquil scenes as swallows frolicking amid spring blossoms, two boys playfully boxing, and a man apparently kneeling in worship (TIME, Feb. 28, 1972). But they...
...painting, which consists of a series of miniature scenes, none more than 16 inches high, portrays a battle between a fleet of Minoan ships and an enemy flotilla off a coastal city. Following their victory, the Minoans land, sack the city and make off with its valuables. The battle is vividly recreated; men can be seen falling from sinking ships and drowning, women jump in despair off towers, and soldiers lead away looted cattle and sheep. In other panels, the conquerors are welcomed by the inhabitants of two other cities. This activity takes place against a landscape populated by lions...
Among the many points cited in support of that contention are ones that Plato cannot have known, but that present-day archaeology confirms. For example, Plato puts sacred bulls at the center of the Atlantean religion; the so-called bull dances of the Minoans are familiar enough to all prehistory buffs. The golden "bull cups" of Minoan provenance at the Athens museum show bas-reliefs of young men capturing bulls with the help of only staves and nooses; Plato describes just such a ritual hunt as taking place on Atlantis. Again, he says that the Atlantean metropolis was built...
What about Plato's insistence that ancient Atlantis sank from sight "in a day and a night"? Minoan Crete did nothing of the kind, of course, but Santorini did sink. Moreover, its sudden destruction brought down Crete, and with Crete went the whole Minoan civilization...