Ariadne replaces Theseus’ sails: A review of an exhibition in Herakleio, Crete, and its approach to Classics today
Exhibition Review: ‘The Islands of the Winds: The sea-faring communities of the prehistoric Aegean’, Venetian Castle (Koules) — Heraklio, Crete
Running from 8 June — 31 December 2021, Tickets 2 EUR for students, 4 EUR full price; Wednesday-Monday 08.00–20.00, final admittance 19.30 (between 15/5–31/8). Organised by Region of Crete, University of Heidelberg, Heraklio Ephoreia of Antiquities, City of Heraklio, and Depanal A.E.. Entrance: 18 Agglon square/Venetian Harbour; Eastern wing of the Castle; Website: http://koules.efah.gr.
One of my favourite rituals to re-enact when in Herakleio is, during the sweltering heat of late July’s scorching afternoons, usually around 5.30pm after the workday, to run down to the city from Knossos and grab a quick bougatsa or slice of galaktoboureko from a Kritikos Fournos or (the local favourite) Kirkor; and thereupon wander down the groggy Venetian main avenue, slowly re-awakening for the evening, past the Morosini fountain, Basilica of St Mark, Loggia, Church of St. Titus, and of course the Hondos centre, on a gentle incline, before reaching the soaring Venetian shipsheds and south Aegean sea — and then drown into the honey of that ambrosial slice of dessert while sitting in front of perhaps the most impressive monument of Herakleio: the Venetian Fortress, ‘Koules’, or, originally, ‘Rocca a Mare’.
It’s quite an experience (experientially and syntactically), especially if you stay for sunset: a beloved ritual from the first time I arrived in Crete in 2019.
Rituals are nice and all — but why go to such extremes, with the heat and physical stamina? Meden agan — nothing in excess, the Pythia once advised. I also enjoy this sweltering run (beyond the love of good food, a view, and a fun challenge) because, in phenomenological terms, it may come close to replicating how the prehistoric Minoans from Knossos and its environs might have gone down to their port and travelled to Dia, an offshore island with four alcoves that also functioned as Knossos’ harbour, before setting out beyond. I can (try to) be a Minoan for a day. Now, this is not to say that my walk is the only experience of that past reality, nor the most common nor accurate — in fact, retrieving it at all is probably futile. But what I do like is that the possibility of tracing and re-enacting these pasts in Herakleio is there for you to try out. Doing so lets you think about the past. The many ancient sites you can walk between, whether it be around Knossos’ valley, up Mt Juktas, or down to the port, allow you to make the ancients become a bit more alive and to understand, if cautiously, certain aspects of their lives better.
And this interest isn’t only for the fun of it. What I found when doing these ‘re-enactments’, most importantly, was that less-expected practicalities and ideas often crop up and take a more central stage in my experience than we may have calculated at the outset — and put a different spin on our understanding of that past. What my run down to Herakleio opened my eyes to, at least, was that many of the buildings and landscapes in the city were constructed to draw the attention of an onlooker onto Herakleio’s many naval aspects and its links with the rest of the Mediterranean, from the Venetians’ architecture and symbols in their Loggia to the city’s visual layout and connections with the sea. This was something I never really appreciated when reading the word ‘maritime’ in a guidebook about Heraklio.
But why do I start with this anecdote? As we’ll see, this focus on the ‘aliveness’ of the past for us today — the chance to ‘re-live’ and understand it — and the use of Herakleio’s rich maritime history to achieve this, is also the focus that a certain exhibition in the city takes when presenting the prehistoric Aegean. By experimenting with this approach, the exhibition, alongside displaying the material, also encourages us to think about how we can present the ancient past for modern audiences, thereby giving an interesting spin on the ongoing debates about the utility and accessibility of ‘the Classics’ today. Herakleio seems to offer the perfect setting for such an exhibition.
But returning to our galaktoboureko in front of the Venetian fortress. From my many dessert-eating sessions there across July, it seems that few people who pass the stunning monument today realise that you can go inside it — myself included. The entrance is somewhat hidden behind a wall; moreover, there is already certainly enough to be impressed by beside the fort, with the 2km-long pier, its fascinating graffiti, small beach, views of the Venetian cityscape and Mt Juktas — circling around the iconic relief of the lion of St Mark.
But there’s much to see inside, too — and I seemed to have struck gold this time. There happened to be an exhibition running inside the Venetian fortress this summer, advertised (the only place I saw it being done so, unfortunately) on a big banner above the somewhat hidden entrance: ‘TΑ ΝΗΣΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΑΝΕΜΩΝ: Ο ναυτικός πολιτισμός του Προϊστορικού Αιγαίου’ — ‘The islands of the winds: the naval communities of the prehistoric Aegean’. Seafaring, the Aegean, and islands — connecting so well with my own ‘naval’ experience in Heraklio. I had to go, if only for my love of exhibitions on the ancient world (and its similarity to another excellent one I had gone to in Thessaloniki, on Cycladic colonies in the Northern Aegean). So, after spending the workday volunteering at the Stratigraphical Museum in the BSA Knossos, I ran over to Herakleio at 5.30pm and visited the exhibition — with wondrous results.
Below I offer a summary of the exhibition, focusing on its aims and outlining its contents, before drawing out its unique feature — and discussing why we should visit and learn from such exhibitions today. From its greater appreciation of modern Greek scholarship and use of comparative studies with other cultures, to its use of tangible 3D representations and modern technology in presenting the material, the exhibition offers a chance to engage with important discussions we are having about the utility of Classics in today’s world — from a Greek, museological perspective that engages with the general public. Just as my little run did, this exhibition put into clearer relief not only how connected the prehistoric Minoans were in the maritime Aegean world, but also offered various solutions as to how we can present and study the ancient world and ‘Classics’, so as to be more inclusive, relevant, and valuable for non-specialist audiences today.
The exhibition explored these ideas by sailing through the prehistoric Aegean. So let’s get started on our little porthmeutike as well.
The product of various years of planning and realised in June 2021, the exhibition was organised as an international project between Herakleio’s Ephorate of Antiquities and the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. This collaborative pooling of resources and shared perspective between local Greek and foreign scholars had fruitful outcomes. Perhaps most clearly, one can see the potential of this collaboration in tackling difficult academic questions and doing so accessibly for a general audience in the approach of the exhibition. The exhibition aimed to re-consider the society of the ‘Aegean Bronze Age’ — that is, of the three broad peoples who dominated the Aegean sea at different times over two millennia: the Cycladic people (ca.3200–2100BCE), Minoans (ca.2100–1600BCE), and Mycenaeans (ca.1600–1200BCE). They are often called ‘prehistoric’ because they do not appear to have written explicitly about their history.
The problem is that our knowledge of these people is often patchy, ‘fragmentary’ (all quotations from the sign panels). This makes establishing many basic ‘facts’ about them challenging. But our exhibition aimed big and tackled this obstacle by adopting one particular lens: it re-examined their society through the theme of seafaring, so pertinent to modern-day Herakleio as we saw earlier, and tried to understand how the networks and practicalities surrounding this ‘maritime culture’ can provide a different angle on these prehistoric peoples. This involved a wide gamut of evidence ranging from physical vessels and geographical sailing networks to harbours and varying technology — revealing insights about each society in its own right and about their broader, shared ‘culture’. While the exhibition largely took a diachronic approach in mapping the developments across these three peoples, it also dug into three case studies in Crete, which made this history real and engaging for visitors of Crete today. In other words, this collaboration’s outlook tried to re-address broad academic topics in a new and approachable light.
But what really garnished the cherry on the cake was the way the exhibition presented this material, the museology. Rather than solely exhibiting ancient artefacts faced by text-heavy information panels (which it did have at times), this exhibition also used virtual reconstructions, technology, and links to Crete today — making good use of its lack of ancient artefacts. The judicious use of the latest physical and virtual 3D models of ships and reconstructions of harbours, interactive screens, and photographs comparing the archaeology with reconstructions, not only incorporated the latest research and technology, but also made the displays fun and recognisable. It also made the process and method that the researchers were taking clearer — showing how theses of prehistorical Aegean archaeology, like the peaceful ‘imperial naval empires’, were formed and being debated. Finally, the exhibition’s thematic focus on the ‘practical aspects of maritime matters’, makes it recognisable as well — and compels us to think logically about the past and find links to our own worlds. In doing so, these outlooks made these somewhat nebulous academic categories a bit more ‘tangible’ and ‘understandable’ for the modern visitor. These helped to make Classics a more inclusive platform for all – alongside advocating for modern Greek scholars, more collaboration, and applying topical approaches to old questions. That’s a lot to digest, so let us summarise the exhibition’s course before getting onto how it answered these big issues.
The exhibition started off by contextualising the geography of the Aegean Sea and the Bronze Age culture of seafaring in it, both to clarify the evidence for non-specialists and search for new data using geographical studies. Still important today are the strong tidal currents and winds that blow during the summer sailings months, such as the famous Etesian winds from the north, but also the ‘Sirocco’ winds from the Southwest and coast of North Africa, and the ‘Khamsin’ winds from the Southeast and Levant. Consequently, the Aegean is an ecosystem ‘constantly in flux’, ‘a sea within a sea’. And within this sea, thanks to the grinding tension of various tectonic plates, we get at least 2,000 Aegean islands, which invited communication and seafaring from an early age.
I found particularly insightful and valuable the exhibition’s focus on the Cyclades’ inter-island visibility, thanks to various geographical factors including mountains, proximity, winds, and insular arrangement. This is something that one of my favourite monographs in Classics, Constantakopoulou’s The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World, emphasises extremely well throughout (would highly recommend!). The Aegean islands are — when you look at them — all actually quite close together, and part of the allure and invitation of travelling between them (e.g. on ancient porthmeutikai) is the facility of completing the short distances between them and by the security offered by the fact that you can actually see them from your own. It’s hard to appreciate just how important and extensive this inviting visibility is in the Cyclades by looking at a map — and it was only recently, when I was on an epigraphy course on the island of Paros just before this exhibition and climbed up to the Delion with my friend Boskolion, that I realised just how true this was. From up there, you can see remarkably well, so we counted at sunset, a total of 18 islands at least (along with their own peaks, as we shall touch on below), seemingly all circling around Paros: (in order) Despotiko, Antiparos, Diplo, Agios Spiridon, Vouves, Kimolos, Milos, Sifnos, Serifos, Kynthos (slightly blinded by the sun), Kea, Syros, Tinos, Delos, Mykonos, and Naxos. The beautiful view and proximity just make them all the more inviting to travel to — let alone trading or cultural reasons. Could this count as the centre of the Cyclades? Perhaps — move aside Delos! (Indeed, the religious centre of Despotiko on nearby Antiparos seems to have been an important pan-Cycladic site for a time).
And that’s not all. On a more practical (and down-to-earth) level, some islands had convenient harbours, like the four at Dia by Herakleio. But the small jump-off points on rocky coves (porthmai) on various islands, some of which are still visible today, were enough for the Cycladic longboats — thus aiding this small-scale but intensive inter-island travel. The Aegean is remarkably suited (in the right conditions) for this sort of travel. The clarity of views often offered by the winds also helps. But perhaps most interestingly, and this is what the exhibition picks up well on, this invitation for movement is facilitated by the mountains and high points of these islands. Far from being flat tropical islands, the Cyclades are renowned for having some high peaks on them — these nurtured communication too, as for example we hear about at the very beginning of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon when the Night-Watch sees the fire beacons from the mountains signalling the news about the Trojan war and arrival of Agamemnon. In the Cyclades, perhaps we have an experiential, archaeological, anthropological use of this. And our exhibition displays this phenomenon in an incredibly helpful visual way: on a 3D-printed map, it shows the many different peaks of the islands, recording their heights both in numbers and proportionally on the map, and upon this shone ‘visibility radii’ between the islands. The many intersections between these visibility circles, stretching between consecutive islands right across the Cyclades from Crete to Thrace and from Rhodes to the Peloponnese, demonstrate just how productive this visibility and interconnectivity was, and could have been exploited, in the Cyclades. It is the exhibition’s visual display and practical, experimental research which imprinted the connectivity of the Aegean onto me on a much larger scale than the Delion — and it is thanks to the exhibition’s new experimental and geographical research that we can appreciate this. And the exhibition demonstrated that research also has the potential of changing previous interpretations as well — including our own from Paros. Its other recent research, co-organised with the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, revealed that the West route around the Cyclades, from Crete via Melos to Attica, and the East route to the Dodecanese, were the most navigable. In other words, this new research might help to challenge and finetune the routes that inter-island travel took, in conjunction with other material evidence. Maybe Paros, in the grand scheme of travel, wasn’t as important after all?
So, by using these different geographical, scientific methodologies, and which are also practical and sensical to us, we can begin to appreciate from a new perspective the nature of the connectivity in the Bronze Age Aegean. The exhibition also emphasised trade (necessary for the largely agriculturally-dependent Cyclades) and natural resources as forces that shaped trade routes, but I shall pass over them for time’s sake.
The exhibition then went on to map the earliest forms of vessels that sailed the Aegean. Particularly insightful was its choice to start by defining the terminology used for these vessels in Bronze Age studies, partly to explain their designs for non-specialists and partly to dispel the normative misconceptions in research that often arise from loose applications of definitions. Vessels carry things, and a ‘boat’ in its simplest form is a vessel if it is made of any material for sailing. (Don’t start thinking ahead to the philosophical Ship of Theseus just yet!). The addition of a deck turns it into a ‘ship’, while a ‘pirogue’ arises from the addition of planks to the sides of a vessel. But its earliest form, from which the pirogue derives, is the ‘canoe’, and this is where the exhibition becomes interesting. Formed in the most basic sense from a dug-out tree log, the canoe is often the earliest form of vessel across different cultures ‘all over the world’. In terms of evidence, the exhibition discusses the visual representation of these early ships (often oared vessels with a raised stern) in Early Cycladic ‘frying pan’ pottery, rock slabs from Naxos, and clay models from Minoan Crete, alongside the bronze tools used to make them. These early ships carried precious metals like obsidian from Melos, tin, and copper for bronze.
But it is this final clause, ‘all over the world’, which the exhibition takes further and which makes it unique a second time. In this section, the exhibition tries to reconstruct these Bronze Age Aegean vessels by cross-culturally comparing these visual representations with the ships of other early seafaring people, especially the Maori and Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Pacific coast. The process of constructing Maori and Early Cycladic vessels, and the characteristic long piece of fabric hanging from both of their sterns in particular, are remarkably similar — which the visual aids in the exhibition nicely make clear. This similarity helped the exhibition to approximate a hypothetical size (circa 23 m long) and number of oarsmen (20–50) on these early Cycladic oared pirogues. The exhibition also takes this comparison further, taking the similarity of designs to posit a similar function as well: given that these two peoples often travelled long distances across the Pacific (‘800 to 2400 kms’ — relatively similar to the range of these Bronze Age finds around the Aegean) for either ‘friendly transactions’ (trade) or raiding for loot, perhaps the Early Cycladic ships also facilitated similar activities.
Indeed, this appreciation of a cross-cultural approach was part of a broader trend in the exhibition, right from the terms used: ‘pirogue’ and ‘canoe’ both come from indigenous languages from the Caribbean. By engaging with these ‘modern ethnological parallels’, the exhibition not only fruitfully reconceptualises our patchy evidence and interpretations through cross-cultural studies to build better models, but also gives voices to native actors who have sometimes been overlooked by research, and studies them through their own terms. This broader, anthropological appreciation can shed useful new light on our own interpretations. This is a step in the right direction for Classics today not only methodologically, but also as a subject, since we are constantly trying to include different and less-appreciated voices in our attempts to decolonise the subject. For a good summary on this, see Kennedy’s and Planudes’ blogpost, as well as Johanna Haninck’s in The Chronicle. We’ll touch more on this debate below, which has ranged from seeing Classics as no longer useful to fully burning it to the ground, when we discuss the importance of appreciating Greek scholarship more.
After setting out these origins, the exhibition moved on to cataloguing the temporal development of ships’ designs across the three naval peoples of the prehistoric Bronze Age. This formed the second to last, and indeed longest, section, before it zoomed into three case studies of harbours in Crete. Our temporal transition stretched from the first Cycladic peoples to the Minoans and finally Mycenaeans — but how can one trace their factors of change across almost 1.5 millennia? To tackle this challenge, the exhibition again turned to a cross-cultural/anthropological and practical approach. Once the timber supply began to diminish during the Cycladic period, a new type of vessel was needed, which could also provide more space for the cargo that the Minoans were accruing through extensive trade (whose diversity we see best in the Uluburun wreck). So, from the Cycladic ‘pirogue’ longboats, upon which many crewmen were strapped for short-term raids, came the Minoan ‘sailing ship’, designed to sail longer distances to trading partners with smaller crews and greater cargo. A particularly characteristic, but relatively novel, element of these Minoan ships is their ‘beak’ or ‘ram-like extension’ at the prow (seen in clay models and metal seals). By comparing these beaks to those on boats from the river Gambia (running through West Africa), the exhibition interestingly suggested that this technological development also arose to accommodate the increasing coastal sailing in the late Minoan period, and how it developed from the cultures these Minoans were trading with, like ancient Egypt. Moreover, the exhibition’s consideration of the practicalities of sailing which we would recognise today made deciphering these reasons more possible and inviting for all audiences, not just specialists. Any audience member could have a shot at thinking, in economic terms, about how the optimisation between a small crew and heavy cargo affected these ships’ designs, or estimating the ships’ dimensions from the inter-oar space in frescos (and debating the accuracy of this method). This refreshing openness to using accessible argumentation made me feel more at home with understanding these ancient people, and is key to opening Classics to all today.
In the final section, the exhibition focused on three case studies of ‘port cities’ and ‘satellite ports’ of other cities in Crete, to examine what a study of the practicalities of seafaring and modern reconstructions can tell us about the culture of these Bronze Age Aegean peoples. The segue to this final section was provided by the previous section’s concluding focus on harbours and ports, which touched on how the cargo from ships was transported (probably by donkeys, since no rut-marks from wagons have been found on roads leading inland) to and organised (in magazines) before reaching the palaces, and how this changed between the Minoan and Mycenaean Ages. From here, the exhibition zoomed into the archaeological remains of Kommos, Zakros, and the Uluburun shipwreck. By providing new 3D reconstructions and animations of their harbours, the exhibition studied the overall operation of these ancient harbours and created a typology of the topographic ‘prerequisites’ they needed to furnish inland cities. After studying 13 ‘harbour installations’, the exhibition noted two such ‘prerequisites’: ‘small headlands and small beaches’ or ‘fortified bay[s], with some form of pier’. These clarifications helped the exhibition in its important portrayal of the broader life and effect of these harbours. The exhibition first examined Kommos, the ‘satellite’ port of Phaistos. From recent core-drilling, the exhibition determined that the sea used to extend much closer to Phaistos in the Early Minoan period. Once the sea receded due to alluvial deposits around 2000BCE, the ports of Kommos and Agia Triada were constructed as Phaistos’ harbours. Finds from Kommos range from large magazines to courtyards, perhaps for religious rituals connected to the sea. No administrative tablets were found in Kommos, however, suggesting the city it serves was inland. The exhibition made an impressive 3D model of this harbour.
The exhibition then moved to bigger ports, and in doing so, was able to delve deeper into the broader political and cultural experiences of these harbours, after but still involving seafaring. For the harbour city of Zakros (which had its own palace), the stand-out find has been its extensive road network (with 3m-wide roads) connecting it with the interior and other ports. Here, we can ascertain better how broader seafaring mobility occurred at Zakros, after the sailing. Incised seals, figurines, and guardhouses found nearby suggest that ‘running’ messengers operated along these roads, alongside or instead of donkeys, in conveying goods and messages. Humans start to come back into the equation. The exhibition dived into this lived experience further, this time with the politics of mobility. Through core drillings, the exhibition was able to reconstruct the topography of Zakros, and showed that the harbour first comprised of a larger and then a smaller ‘inlet’ of water. While this allowed Zakros to accommodate different-sized ships in an economic sense, it might also serve to keep a strict administrative and political control upon their movement. Indeed, by this reconstruction, the palace and a watchtower were located right next to the harbour — perhaps visually imposing Zakros’ control over incoming ships, linking the political palace to trade. With this reconstructed topographical organisation of the harbour, we can begin to understand what the experience and visuals of control must have felt like. It breathes life into these ancient sites.
Finally, the exhibition concluded with a section dedicated to the Uluburun shipwreck, found off the coast of southern Turkey and containing the most extensive assemblage of Bronze Age trading goods. It gives us a good idea about the sort of things being traded, and the extent of trade. By concluding this way, the exhibition highlighted how much more future work could be done in learning about these ancient cultures, specifically through prioritising ethical and sustainable archaeology.
Thus, the exhibition highlighted not only the exciting directions Bronze Age studies can take, but also how the ancient material can be presented in ways to engage non-specialists. This is a big step in the right direction for Classics as a subject, by making it more accessible and relevant to multiple audiences today. To conclude, there were three other elements that made this exhibition stand out in contributing to this trend. First was the exhibition’s use of modern Greek as the main language of the information, accompanied by English summaries. While this partly has to do with the fact that the audience was expected to be primarily Greek, this choice, in the context of the recent debates of ‘decolonising’ the Classics, also puts into action a step in giving a voice back to these underappreciated but valuable scholars. As scholars like Haninck and students like Apokatanidis (and others) have highlighted, modern Greek scholarship has historically been and is still often overlooked by many Anglophone Classical scholars in our studies (I have discussed this more at length in another Ostraka article; I summarise the discussion here). There is an understandable (but not justifiable in itself) reason why this is the case: Anglophone scholars often cannot read modern Greek well enough to read the scholarship, simply because of a lack of time and resources. Yet this language barrier should not be an excuse to ignore modern Greek scholarship.
There are, however, more detrimental reasons for this neglect of modern Greek views, which stem from earlier British colonial (romantic, and other) cultural misrepresentations of the Greeks as being backwards, lazy, and still ‘orientalised’ from their Ottoman past, and therefore not capable of portraying their cultural academically. This is a gross and ahistorical generalisation and stereotype deprived of any observation of the situation on the ground today: the Greeks need to be taken on their own terms. Yet these misconceptions permeate scholarship and our views of the Greeks, and they detrimentally affect multiple parties. It is harmful to modern Greek scholars, since their research is neglected and their worth is undermined; their self-ascriptive connections to the past are severed, their identities are taken away from them. And contrary to those who propagate these stereotypes to advance the validity of their own scholarly views or identities, the quality of our shared research is diminished by this as well, since we are deprived of insights by Greek scholars, who often have the most frequent access to the ancient material. This extends to the very real claims of ownership about who today ‘owns’ ancient Greece or should study it or be given a voice in constructing its future.
Positive steps in the movement to decolonise Classics, and specifically to appreciate those voices in scholarship that have often been overlooked like Greek scholars, have helped to remedy this issue. But there is much more we need to do, and this exhibition is just one example of how this can be done, from a Greek perspective itself. By presenting the exhibition information in Greek, it not only compels us to read and appreciate the Greek scholarship and ideas in their own language, but it also acts as a statement about the sort of voices in scholarship that we want to hear. For me, at least, I was glad that it forced me to put into practice my modern Greek lessons this past year, and it was great to read about this in Greek that was relatively accessible. But also important was that this exhibition did not repeat the same discriminatory superiorisation of its own language (Greek) at the expense of other languages and scholars. The exhibition also helpfully chose to provide English translations, which were very useful summaries of the Greek text. Far from turning these into long texts shadowing the signs, which many visitors do not have the time to read, this exhibition’s pithy, concise, and to-the-point English explanations were welcoming and engaging. This choice was a thoughtful way of reaching an audience of both non-specialists and scholars alike, of presenting their new research in an easily-understandable and exciting way. Finally, and most broadly, this exhibition was the product of collaboration: it was the joint efforts of Greek and German scholars from various disciplines. The cross-disciplinary and institutional ideas nurtured from this were readily visible in the unique aforementioned approaches. Therefore, this greater foregrounding of Greek scholarship and collaborating institutionally, coupled with the accessible use of English and welcoming presentation of information, really conveyed the information well and put into action the valorisation of other scholars that we need in Classics.
Continuing with the accessibility to tourists, the exhibition put on a marvellously effective display of visual images and displays, from 3D-virtual and physical models to clear images and artefacts. We have discussed this throughout, but I just want to pick up one final element which, on its own may not seem much, but from the perspective of experiencing an actual museum (museology), worked wonders. The layout of the information on very real sail-like sheets, held together by wooden poles and given a windy appearance, made it feel like we were quite literally sailing through the Aegean as we learnt this information. Setting is important to make the audience become invested in the subject material, and this exhibition successfully created the experience of sailing the Aegean for the visitor (compensating well for the paucity of archaeological material they had on display). Also great was that they had contextualising sections before getting into the specifics of each naval people. It oriented the reader and did not assume any previous knowledge; it was also a good refresher for myself.
So the exhibition ended, allowing us to make some final remarks. The moment I finished, I had a cathartic feeling that I had not felt recently when thinking about Classics: hope. This hope took various forms, not just on the immediate academic level, but also on a broader one regarding the future and relevance of our subject of Classics today. I am not a specialist in Bronze Age archaeology (yet), so the feeling of reward that I felt after having understood the ancient material so clearly, and more importantly how interpretations about the material had been made and defended, made me excited, full of optimism. Equipped with this maritime lens, I wanted to learn more about the Bronze Age Aegean from other perspectives academically — and I was lucky enough to actually do this, since I was volunteering at the time at the BSA’s Stratigraphical Museum in Knossos, in cataloguing its Bronze Age remains. And I wasn’t the only one excited. As I slowly trudged my way through the exhibition making notes, I often heard fellow exhibition-watchers murmur a similar sentiment: French, German, and an occasional Italian were all saying how interesting this, was even though they knew little beforehand, and how this exhibition was helping to bring these cultures alive. This triggered my second sense of hope. For the first time in a while, after having been discouraged by and seen the serious problems and criticisms about Classics as a subject, and some calls to burn it down, intensify this January, amplified partly by the misuses of Classical imagery to promote racism and white supremacy in the US Capitol riots and more broadly by the BLM movement and the pandemic, I felt hope about the future of Classics and the change it can take to ameliorate these wrongs. We need to continue working on implementing the values that the move to decolonise the Classics aims to do: make Classics more inclusive, applicable, accessible, and open to all, and to free Classics from its harmful weaponization against various people, often minorities. What I find most hopeful about this exhibition is that it showed that there is something in Classics for everyone to take away, in responsible ways. It is exhibitions like these, that are deliberately catered to a general audience and that present the Classics in this way, that can help in this process.
Here, before my eyes, I saw that people can feel engaged about our subject — they were genuinely interested in the archaeological material, in this period they knew little about, even though the exhibition had few original archaeological artefacts that traditionally fill exhibitions. Perhaps the greatest testament to the exhibition’s success in this regard was, ironically, the breaking of a fundamental rule. The fact that the exhibition guards had a busy job telling people off for touching the models is testimony to how engaging they were, how much people wanted to experience the ancient Aegean world closer and learn more about it.
The sun begins to grow hazier around 7.00pm in summer — it’s the sun’s turn to become sleepy, and for Heraklio’s main avenue to wake back up and shine forth, in a new light.
There’s much more inside the Venetian Castle than just the exhibition. You also see the castle’s Venetian sculptural elements and Ottoman prison, where the Cretan rebel Daskalogiannis might have been imprisoned in 1770. At the end of it, you end up on the roof of the fortress, and you gaze at Heraklio, Dia, the sea, and the Ida range — peppered between the warm fading light, a yawning Greek flag, and the shadows on the parapets of the wall.
Sometimes I used to do my ritual walk daily, at least for one week of the three that I was in Crete. Other times, I used to stay a bit longer and sit above the sea with my bougatsa and watch the sunset melt over the Mt Ida range. It was beautiful. But my mind was often elsewhere. I spent much of this time thinking about these big debates about Classics, because they do make it difficult sometimes to justify the study of Classics. Disillusionment sets in — and it’s not just ethical, with various departments closing down due to financial reasons. But as I sat there gazing around Crete, and thinking about the Minoans and planning my next trips to follow in their footsteps and visit their sites, I realised that there was still hope for change, and it was in front of me. It is by going to exhibitions like these, by seeing what we can do with Classics, that we can raise awareness about Classics’ problems, confront them, and begin to move Classics in new directions. Beyond the exhibition, I thought of my volunteering work with the BSA of cataloguing the finds of the BSA excavations around Crete and making them available online on a database. Material is slowly becoming more open and accessible.
Moving outside of academia, there are other ways that we can make Classics more alive for scholars and tourists alike, especially with Crete’s incredible archaeological sites. Just by Herakleio, there are many ancient sites that you can (try to) experience as a Minoan might have and take your own meaning from. 15 kilometres away is the Minoan peak sanctuary of Mt Juktas, which you can climb up along the ancient Minoan path (ancient Minoan pottery and hand-worked objects were found there). You can also walk around Malia, and see the wonderful Minoan palace structure there, rivalling Knossos in importance but with far fewer tourists; you can also walk by more unexpected places, like the outdoor sanctuary of Apollo and Artemis which you can find as you walk down the Samaria Gorge. Closer to home, and in a less physically taxing sphere, you can always try out the delicious food of ‘Pasiphae’, taking its remit from Minoan recipes, just above the Knossos Archaeological site (another beloved place for the fellow volunteers after work). Perhaps what we need, then, is more funding for future students to have the opportunity to study these sites, go to other countries and see how Classics is being taught there, volunteer at different institutions, and explore modern Greece to appreciate its culture and scholarship as well. Combining these educated students and this access to similar great exhibitions and sites would hopefully continue producing thought-provoking exhibitions and Classicists more useful in today’s world.
Thus I planned out these big ideas, as the sun melted over the mountain at precisely 20:20. Tomorrow I would try to visit the Lasithi Plateau. I had always wanted to see the Cave of Zeus, and the unique culture up there compared to the rest of Crete, in its seclusion. But perhaps it might also have more ideas from which I could continue learning about new ways of approaching Classics and empowering others to enjoy it, too.
For now, though, as I looked past Dia and over the southern Aegean with my waning bougatsa, I would be happy to go back to university, full of hope, and continue crafting my views on what I learnt, and share this story about ways forwards for Classics. Time to board that porthemeutike, then, with an ikrion full of ideas, to the distant waters beyond the Aegean and Heraklio — maybe just like a Minoan.
Thank you to the entire BSA Team for making my experience so special over July. It was wonderful to work with you and learn all the new techniques and the BSA’s work, along with always looking after Pierre too, of course. I hope that your future work goes well, and that I will have the opportunity to volunteer again. This is dedicated to you.
