Quick questions on Geographical and historical context of Minoan Crete: HSC Ancient History

Crete is the largest Greek island, about 260 km long east to west but narrow, between roughly 12 and 60 km north to south, and dominated by a mountainous spine: the Lefka Ori (White Mountains) in the west, Mt Ida (Psiloritis), the island's highest peak at c. 2,456 m, in the centre, and the Dikti range in the east. Fertile lowlands, above all the Messara Plain in the south, supported agriculture, while narrow coastal plains around Knossos and Malia supported settlement on the north coast.

Knossos, the largest Minoan palace at over a hectare in its excavated core, dominated north-central Crete and is traditionally linked to the legendary King Minos. Phaistos, the second-largest palace, overlooked Crete's most fertile lowland, the Messara Plain; its excavators, Federico Halbherr and Luigi Pernier, found the Phaistos Disc, a fired clay disc stamped in a spiral with 241 still-unidentified hieroglyphic-style signs, in a Protopalatial-to-early-Neopalatial context. Malia, smaller than Knossos or Phaistos, sits on the north coast and preserves, in its nearby Chrysolakkos cemetery, elite Prepalatial and Protopalatial gold jewellery, including the well-known bee pendant. Zakros, on the exposed but strategically placed far eastern coast facing the Levant and Egypt, is archaeologically the most valuable of the four precisely because it was NOT reoccupied after its c.

Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941), keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, first travelled to Crete in the 1890s to investigate small carved sealstones bearing an unfamiliar script, sold as curios ("milk stones") in Athens antique markets from 1894. Recognising Knossos, at the site known as Kephala, as a promising location, he purchased it and began excavating on 23 March 1900. Within weeks his team, which included Duncan Mackenzie as site supervisor, had uncovered a vast, multi-storey complex of rooms, storerooms and courtyards.