LEGEND, LANGUAGE, ARCHAEOLOGY

The excavations of Troy and Mycenae initiated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s opened the great era of archaeological reconstruction of Aegean prehistory. In 1900, the highly developed Minoan civilisation of Crete began to be uncovered by Sir Arthur Evans and others. Especially significant was the discovery of the Aegean scripts - Linear A, Linear B and Cretan Hieroglyphic - which accompanied Evans' excavation. In the years following these discoveries the Minoan was firmly believed to have been the dominant civilisation of the Bronze Age Aegean. It was not until 1939, when the Pylos Linear B archives were discovered by Carl Blegen and the Cincinnati expedition, that the majority of archaeologists realised what had been clear to only a few, namely, that we should speak of two Aegean civilisations rather than one: the Minoan civilisation of Crete and the Mycenaean civilisation of mainland Greece. Although Mycenaean Greece developed later and under considerable Minoan influence, it eventually prevailed, and in the Late Bronze Age Crete turned into a Mycenaean province. The former Minoan colonies became Mycenaean, and after ca. 1450 bc Mycenaean influence replaced Minoan not only in the Aegean but also in western Anatolia. In 1953, when the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris was made public, it was demonstrated beyond doubt that the language of the Mycenaean civilisation was Greek. As a result, an entirely new period, that of Mycenaean Greece, was added to Greek history.