KydoniaKydonia or Cydonia (sɪˈdoʊniə; Κυδωνία; Cydonia) was an ancient city-state on the northwest coast of the island of Crete. It is at the site of the modern-day Greek city of Chania. In legend Cydonia was founded by King Cydon (Κύδων), a son of Hermes or Apollo and of Akakallis, the daughter of King Minos. According to Pausanias he was son of king Tegeates. Diodorus Siculus mentions that the city was founded by King Minos. The editors of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World suggest that the city also bore the name Apollonia (Ἀπολλωνία).
Cretan hieroglyphsCretan hieroglyphs are a hieroglyphic writing system used in early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. They predate Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history. , they are undeciphered. As of 1989, the corpus of Cretan hieroglyphic inscriptions included two parts: Seals and sealings, 150 documents with 307 sign-groups, using 832 signs in all. Other documents on clay, 120 documents with 274 sign-groups, using 723 signs.
Minoan religionMinoan religion was the religion of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization of Crete. In the absence of readable texts from most of the period, modern scholars have reconstructed it almost totally on the basis of archaeological evidence of such as Minoan paintings, statuettes, vessels for rituals and seals and rings. Minoan religion is considered to have been closely related to Near Eastern ancient religions, and its central deity is generally agreed to have been a goddess, although a number of deities are now generally thought to have been worshipped.
Kea (island)Kea (Κέα), also known as Tzia (Τζια) and in antiquity Keos (Κέως, Ceos), is a Greek island in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos regional unit. It is the island of the Cyclades complex that is closest to Attica (about 1 hour by ferry from Lavrio) and is also from Cape Sounio as well as SE of Athens. Its climate is arid, and its terrain is hilly. Kea is long from north to south and wide from west to east. The area is with the highest point being above sea level.
Clay tabletIn the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian 𒁾) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets.
Minoan potteryMinoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, on Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.
Votive offeringA votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally made in order to gain favor with supernatural forces. While some offerings were apparently made in anticipation of the achievement of a particular wish, in Western cultures from which documentary evidence survives it was more typical to wait until the wish has been fulfilled before making the offering, for which the more specific term ex-voto may be used.
Phaistos DiscThe Phaistos Disc (also spelled Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC). The disk is about in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and its original place of manufacture remain disputed. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion.
AnkhThe ankh or key of life is an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol used in Egyptian art and writing to represent the word for "life" and, by extension, as a symbol of life itself. The ankh has a cross shape, but with a teardrop-shaped loop in place of a vertical upper bar. The origins of the symbol are not known, although many hypotheses have been proposed. It was used in writing as a triliteral sign, representing a sequence of three consonants, Ꜥ-n-ḫ.
Aegean artAegean art (2800–1100 BC) is art that was created in the lands surrounding, and the islands within, the Aegean Sea during the Bronze Age, that is, until the 11th century BC, before Ancient Greek art. Because is it mostly found in the territory of modern Greece, it is sometimes called Greek Bronze Age art, though it includes not just the art of the Mycenaean Greeks, but also that of the non-Greek Cycladic and Minoan cultures, which converged over time.
