This comparatively small island, left on one
side today by all the main lines of Mediterranean
intercourse, was at once the starting
point and the earliest stage in the highway of
European civilization (Evans 1921: 24).
Introduction
Ever since their discovery early in the twentieth
century, the monumental building complexes
with courts, known as palaces and widely considered
to embody all that is sophisticated of
Bronze Age Cretan ‘civilization’, have dominated
and directed the development of the discipline of
Minoan archaeology. They are, to quote Warren
(1985: 94): ‘one of the best sources of information
about the social structure and culture of
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered: A Critical Assessment of the
Spatial Concentration of Political, Religious and Economic Power in Bronze
Age Crete
Ilse Schoep
Department of Archaeology, Catholic University of Leuven, PB 3313, 3000 Leuven Belgium
E-mail: Ilse.Schoep@arts.kuleuven.be
Abstract
Although aspects of Arthur Evans’ vision of Minoan society have undergone modification during the course
of the 20th century, his basic interpretation of the monumental building complex with courts at Knossos as a
Palace-Temple, or the residence of both a political and religious authority, remains the dominant paradigm
in Minoan archaeology. When set within the context of other contemporary Bronze Age societies in the eastern
Mediterranean, however, Evans’ model of a priest-king who resided in a Palace-Temple is actually highly
unusual and anomalous. Indeed, it will be argued that the Palace-Temple model was entirely invented by
Evans as a distinctive, formative and intermediate stage between the Oriental Temple, which was the model
then current in the Near East at the time of his writing, and what might be termed European kingship.
The perception that Cretan culture and society was essentially European (and thus different from the East)
formed a cornerstone of Evans’ vision and its enduring popularity goes some way to explaining why the intellectual
and empirical origins of Evans’ Palace-Temple model have not previously been critically reassessed.
Keywords: kingship, Minoan palace, political authority, social organization, temples
Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 23.2 (2010) 219-244
ISSN (Print) 0952-7648
ISSN (Online) 1743-1700
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010 doi: 10.1558/jmea.v23i2.219
Bronze Age Crete’. This generally accepted view
of the palaces, as barometers of social complexity
and as pars pro toto representations of Minoan
society, finds its origins in Evans’ view that the
palaces were the residence of the highest political
and religious authority within a hierarchically
structured society (Evans 1921: 3-4). Evans’
Palace-Temple model remains profoundly influential,
albeit with minor tweaks and shifts in
emphasis, most notably an increased emphasis
on the political and economic over the religious
and ceremonial (Renfrew 1972; Halstead 1981,
1988; Halstead and O’Shea 1982; Branigan
1987; 1988; Cherry 1986). This was triggered
by the decipherment of Linear B in 1952 and
the insights this brought into the economy
of the LM III Minoan and the Mycenaean
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©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
palaces (Finley 1957: 135) and is reflected in
the general convention now to omit mention
of the original ‘-Temple’ component and refer
solely to the court buildings and the institution
they housed as ‘palaces’. The dominance of the
Palace-Temple model can be measured in its central
position in didactic handbooks or syntheses
(Dickinson 1994a; Manning 2008; Treuil et al.
2008: 229) and other more popularizing treatments
of Minoan Archaeology (Warren 1975;
1985; Pelon 1997; Runnels and Murray 2001;
Betancourt 2007), which together, through the
dialectical relationship between specialist and
more popular media (Moser 2001), play a profound
role in the formation of public opinion. A
notable exception is a recent handbook by Preziosi
and Hitchcock (2000), which (refreshingly)
draws attention to the uncertainties surrounding
the Palace-Temple model, noting that: ‘There is
no solid evidence that these [the Palaces] were
the residences—permanent or temporary—of
queens, kings, or priests, or other political or
religious functionaries’ (Preziosi and Hitchcock
2000: 64); and ‘The fact of the matter is that
we do not know for certain just how the great
central building compounds were actually used’
(Preziosi and Hitchcock 2000: 89).
Critical assessments of the Minoan PalaceTemple
model and its conceptual and theoretical
basis have, however, significantly increased
in incidence over the last two decades (Bintliff
1984; Farnoux 1995; MacGillivray 2001; Hamilakis
2002b; Papadopoulos 2005; Darcque et al.
2006; Hamilakis and Momigliano 2006; Gere
2009). Doubts have been expressed about the
supposed palatial control over trade (Branigan
1989; Warren 1985: 101), the scope and redistributive
nature of the palace economy (Halstead
1992; 2004), the storage capacity of the
palaces (Strasser 1997), and the extent to which
they may have controlled the production of the
fineware ceramics that they consumed (Day and
Wilson 1998). Such work has played an important
role in drawing attention to the role played
by powerful agents outside the palace and in
dismantling the assumption of palatial economic
monopoly (Schoep 2002; 2004; 2006).
From this critical movement several alternative
power models for Minoan society have
emerged. Hamilakis (2002a) has suggested
replacing the traditional model of a hierarchical
class system with one based on factions and
factional competition, thus introducing social
tension and competition into a world previously
inhabited by well-natured and obedient palatial
followers. His location of the most important
faction in the palace (Hamilakis 2002a: 188)
actually makes this model far less drastic than
has been claimed by some (Knappett 2009).
Re-interrogation of the archaeological record
has revealed that a considerable amount of
social competition was taking place outside the
palaces in settlements and cemeteries (Hamilakis
2002a; Schoep 2002; Adams 2006) and
that political power, rather than being centralized
and permanent, may have been fluid and
shifting, and more fragmented, short-lived and
contested than previously assumed (Hamilakis
2002a: 193; Schoep 2002: 106-107).
What has not thus far been critically examined,
however, is the core assumption underscoring
Evans’ Palace-Temple model and its
subsequent reception, that sacred power and
political power might be spatially concentrated
within a single building. Thus, to quote Warren
(1985: 94): ‘Great power was concentrated
in these elaborate structures: both the secular
and the religious authorities of Minoan societies
lived in them... the Palace rulers probably
had considerable control over agriculture in the
region around the Palace and also over Crete’s
rich foreign trade’. Hood (1995) has described
the palaces as the residences of gods and men.
Halstead (1998) memorably described them as a
combination of Buckingham Palace, Whitehall,
Westminster Abbey and Wembley Stadium.
Platon (1983: 276) emphasised the theocratic
nature of society and assumed that the royal
family belonged to the priesthood. MacGillivray
(1994: 55) suggested that the first ‘palace’ served
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not only as ‘a place of worship and as storehouse
for wealth—rather like an early temple’, but also
‘as the dwelling of the ruling family—like the
contemporary palaces in the Near East’.
In the first part of this paper, the origins and
efficacy of Evans’ Palace-Temple model will be
briefly explored with specific reference to what
was then and is now known about contemporary
Bronze Age political cultures in Anatolia, the
Near East and Egypt. This comparison not only
has the value of clarifying and contextualizing
the strands of Evans’ thinking that were woven
into his Palace-Temple model, but also provides
the basis for a reassessment of the Cretan evidence.
Drawing on the wealth of data now available
for Crete, the second part of this paper will
explore the efficacy of an alternative model of
power, more specifically based on other Bronze
Age societies in the eastern Mediterranean,
where Evans’ hybridized elements of Palace and
Temple are split and where different, spatially
separated domains of power are understood to
exist.
Evans, the Priest-King and the Palace-Temple
There are several reasons why Evans chose to
interpret the large court building at Knossos as
a Palace-Temple and the residence of a PriestKing.
First and foremost was his specific reading
of the evidence as it emerged from the soil
of the Kephala Hill at Knossos. From the first
season of excavation in 1900, the highlight of
which was the discovery of the ‘earliest throne
in Europe’, Evans interpreted the large and
predominantly Late Bronze Age building complex
at Knossos as a palace—that is, as the seat
of power and residence of a dynasty of kings
(Evans 1921; Farnoux 1995; Hamilakis 2002b).
An interpretation of these buildings simply as
palaces, however, would have left Evans with a
problem as this would have left Minoan Crete
curiously lacking the sorts of temples that were
already known from Egypt and the Near East.
The solution was to define the court building
at Knossos as both a palace and a temple.
Justifying the religious character of this building
and of the ruler inhabiting it presented no great
difficulties for Evans, as the evidence for cult was
overwhelming. The discovery of the Grandstand
Fresco with its tripartite shrine (MacGillivray
2001: 192, 207), the location of which Evans
identified with the east façade of the west wing,
was seen as confirmation of the identification of
the court building as a ‘Palace-Temple’ (MacGillivray
2001: 192). Having thus established the
sacred character of the building, Evans then
sought evidence to support the idea that the
building functioned also as the residence of a
priest-king in a series of fresco fragments from
a male figure with naked torso and a feathered
crown with lilies (MacGillivray 2001: 204).
The fragments were reconstructed as the best
known and perhaps most iconic of modern
Minoan frescoes, ‘the Prince of the Lilies’ or ‘the
Priest-King’. Although Gilliéron’s reconstruction
has been criticized by some scholars (Coulomb
1979; Niemeier 1987), others have jumped to
its rescue. Recently, Shaw, after studying the
actual fresco remains in the Heraklion Museum,
concluded that there were traces of long hair
to the right of the head and that the figure
was facing left and not right as had been suggested
by Coulomb and Niemeier (Shaw 2004;
Marinatos 2007). Nonetheless, the position of
the hair neither justifies the interpretation of
this figure as the Priest-King, nor proves that
the feather crown belongs to the male figure.
Recently, a couple of hitherto unknown sketches
by Evans from the Ashmolean Museum demonstrate
the degree to which Evans was involved in
the creation of the Priest-King (Sherratt 2000;
2005). The reason for his special interest in this
regard is not hard to divine. As Farnoux (1995:
330) notes, the Priest-King was critical to the
acceptance of Evans’ theories as it explained the
otherwise puzzling absence of any convincing
evidence for a monarch:
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D’une certaine manière, le roi minoen ne
peut exister que sous la forme d’un prêtre
parce qu’il n’y a pas d’autres évidences de
la royauté. Evans a besoin de l’équipement
cultuel découvert dans le palais de Cnossos
pour affirmer l’existence d’une royauté dans
la Crète minoenne.
In this way, as MacGillivray (2001: 204) notes,
the Priest-King was ‘born of separated limbs
united to satisfy Evans’ need for an earthly
authority at Knossos’.
But where did the idea for a Minoan PriestKing
come from? Evans’ cultural and intellectual
background undoubtedly influenced his interpretations,
not just contemporary Victorian and
Edwardian society and its political structures
(‘British monarchy’), but also the intellectual
milieu within which he was educated and
employed (MacGillivray 2001: 11-27). In the
case of the Priest-King he was drawing on
ideas expressed by Frazer, who considered the
Priest-King as a stage in political development
between the Priest-Magician and the Priest-God
(Farnoux 1995: 327). Although Evans seems to
have been less interested than some of his contemporaries
in explicitly detailing his vision and
credo regarding human socio-political development
and the emergence of modern European
society, it would seem that he saw the Minoan
Priest-King and Palace-Temple as an intermediate
stage between the Oriental Temple-State,
which was the then dominant model for Near
Eastern political organization (see Robertson
1995: 450-51 for discussion and references),
and what might be termed European monarchy
(see also Farnoux 1995: 328).
Creto-centrism and Cretan Otherness
It is surely rather the positive anomaly of
Crete which requires explanation (Lewthwaite
1983: 179).
In order to achieve this objective, Evans needed
to establish Minoan civilization as a true rival to
the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations
(Papadopoulos 2005), and one where elements
of Oriental civilizations were transformed into
something recognizably different, dynamic and,
crucially, European in character (Hamilakis
2002b; Papadopoulos 2005: 109; Hamilakis
and Momigliano 2006). Evans drew on a variety
of sources for inspiration and, as first pointed
out by Bennett (1961–62), this borrowing was
eclectic, resulting in a interpretative framework
that, although not always as coherent or consistent
as it might at first appear (McEnroe 1995;
Papadopoulos 2005; Gere 2009: 5), produced
an end-product that was reassuringly familiar
to Europeans and quickly became universally
accepted (Farnoux 1995; Sherratt 2005).
Evans was among the first to give Europe a
prehistoric identity (Papadopoulos 2005: 107)
and went to great lengths to emphasize the European
character of Cretan Bronze Age society,
both through extensive use of Greek mythology
(MacGillivray 2001; Momigliano 2006) and
through emotive reconstructions of the architecture
of the palace (Hitchcock and Koudounaris
2002; Papadopoulos 2005; Gere 2009) and
Minoan material culture. The transformation of
the court building on the Kephala hill into the
‘Palace of Minos’ enhanced this sense of familiarity
(Papadopoulos 2005: 110-22). Some areas
of the palace were restored in the architectural
fashion of the day: the Throne Room and the
North-West Lustral Basin forming some of the
finest examples of Art Nouveau and Art Deco
architecture in modern Greece (Papadopoulos
2005: 119). The resemblances between Art
Nouveau and Minoan material culture are the
result of a dialectic interaction between modernist
artists, archaeologists and the restorers (and
fakers) of Minoan material culture (Farnoux
1993; Blakholmer 2006).
The attractive colours and naturalism used
in Minoan material culture have also played
a major role in the perpetuation of Minoan
myth and have delighted generations of Minoan
archaeologists and art historians. The former is
universally deemed worthy of the designation
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 223
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
‘art’ (Hutchinson 1962: 123; Higgins 1967;
Hood 1978) and its European character has
been consistently emphasized (Charbonneaux
1929: 5; Hutchinson 1962: 123; Higgins 1967:
17; Warren 1975: 41-42). This is important
because in European modernity, ‘art’ was considered
a palpable measure and mark of cognitive
advancement (or decline) on the scale of the
individual or of an entire race (Preziosi 2002:
36). Through the material culture of a society,
the character, ‘spirit’, ‘mentality’ or ‘soul’, and
even ethnic identity and cognitive capacity,
of a nation or people could be (re)discovered
(Preziosi 2002: 32). Similarities between many
aspects, from art to plumbing, played a role
in perpetuating a sense of familiarity with the
‘Minoans’.
Evans’s views should be seen in the context
of both the general obsession of western
Europe with ancient Greece, and Evans’ personal
involvement in the eastern question and his colonial
politics (McEnroe 2002: 63; Papadopoulos
2005: 91). Underscoring the views of Evans and
his contemporaries was a strongly anti-oriental
and even, according to some, racist undertone
emphasising Western superiority (McEnroe
2002: 64, 69; Papadopoulos 2005: 126; Gere
2009: 112; Evans 2008 [1877]). Essentially
he saw Minoan society as a mirror image of
European colonial and imperial capitalism in
the 19th and the 20th centuries (Hamilakis and
Momigliano 2006). As Crete was the cradle of
European civilization, so England was, or would
be, the culmination of European civilization
(McEnroe 2002: 69). By proclaiming Crete as
the ‘cradle of European civilisation’ (Evans 1921:
24), he substituted the ‘Greeks’ for the ‘Minoans’
(Momigliano 2006: 77). This Creto-centric view
also underpins his views of the Mycenaeans, who
were characterized in opposition to the Minoans
(Preziosi and Hitchcock 2000: 9)—and sometimes
still are (Warren 1975: 41-42; Runnels
and Murray 2001). In this way, Minoan Crete
became one of the touchstones by which Westerners
fixed the boundary between the static East
and the progressive West, a boundary which in
the view of many Europeans excluded modern
Crete (McEnroe 2002: 64).
The natural corollary of Evans’ desire to
familiarize and connect his European audience
with Minoan Crete, or what might be termed
‘Creto-centrism’, was the need to emphasise
Crete’s uniqueness from other contemporary
Bronze Age societies in the eastern Mediterranean
(MacGillivray 2001; Papadopoulos 2005).
Thus, for example, when comparing the Cretan
linear script with the tablets from Babylon, Evans
asserts that in Crete ‘the letters themselves…
are of a free, upright European character’ (in
contrast with the Arabs’ cursive script and the
Assyrians’ cuneiform letters [MacGillivray 2001:
195-96]). The undeniable links between Crete
and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean,
however, could not be completely suppressed
(Evans 1921: 14-21). Evans, however, recast
them as part of a process by which ex oriente lux
was transformed by the entrepreneurial Minoans
into the free European spirit of capital, commerce
and trade (Hamilakis and Momigliano
2006: 27). Thus:
Insular, but not isolated, it was thus able to
develop a civilization of its own on native
lines and to accept suggestions from the
Egyptian or the Asiatic side without itself
being dominated by foreign conventionalism
(Evans 1921: 25).
Its enterprising inhabitants continually
absorbed and assimilated Egyptian forms and
ideas, developing them on independent lines.
They took what they wanted, nothing more,
and were neither artistically nor politically
enslaved (Evans 1921: 19).
A similar view of the inventiveness of the
Cretans, perceived in terms of their capacity
to transform foreign influences into something
that was essentially different from Egypt and
Mesopotamia (and thus European), is also to
be found in other publications (Charbonneaux
1929: 5; Hutchinson 1962: 123; Higgins 1967:
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17; Warren 1975: 41-42), some of them quite
recent:
The art found in the Palaces reflects a vitality
and humanism that distinguishes Crete from
contemporaneous societies such as Egypt and
Assyria. The origin of the European tradition
of humanism and individualism is generally
attributed to the Greeks, but there is a sense
in which Minoan culture can be considered
the first example of a distinctively European
tradition (Warren 1985: 94).
By introducing the Minoan Palace-Temple
model, Evans made Crete different from Egypt
where ‘the royal and priestly were kept somewhat
apart’ (Evans 1921: 3). Instead, Evans
draws heavily on analogies with Anatolia (also
from later periods), not only in arguing for the
existence of a Minoan priest-king with a divine
element, but also numerous Anatolian influences
in Minoan religion (Evans 1921: 3-7):
The most ancient features in the Cretan
religion find, in fact, their closest analogies
on the Anatolian side, where was another Ida
and another Diktê. There we recognise under
manifold appellations the same Great Mother
with a male satellite who may stand to her in
various relationships (Evans 1921: 6).
Running as an undercurrent through his discussion
is the belief that, although there were
connexions with Anatolia (Evans 1921: 14) and
Egypt, perhaps even in the form of an exodus of
an older race (Evans 1921: 16-17), there is little
evidence for direct relations with the easternmost
Mediterranean shores before the close of
the Middle Minoan Age (Evans 1921: 15). This
becomes especially clear in his discussion of the
origins of Minoan iconography in the fourth
volume of Palace of Minos, where he argues
that there was no direct Semitic influence, but
instead traces influences (e.g. dove cult) to
Cyprus and/or Anatolia from where they spread
east and west, thus dispensing with what he calls
the ‘Mirage orientale’ (Evans 1935:406). Despite
his pursuit of analogies with an Anatolian divine
ruler, Evans nevertheless was keen also to stress
differences, such as his conclusion that in the
Minoan model the kingly aspect was more to
the fore than in Anatolia (Evans 1921: 5). In
this way Evans created a very specific type of
kingship for Crete, with its own particular regalia
and insignia (Farnoux 1995: 329). Overall,
Evans’ wider aim seems to have been to establish
the Minoan Priest-King and Palace-Temple as
an intermediate stage between the Temple-State,
which was the dominant social and political
model for the Oriental civilization in Evans’ day
(Robertson 1995: 450-51), and a more recognizably
European form of monarchy.
Evans’ vision of Minoan religion serves as a
further illustration of his belief in Crete’s otherness
from other Oriental civilizations and
its European credentials. Initially, he believed
Minoan religion to be based on the cult of pillars
and trees, and thus aniconic (Evans 1901;
MacGillivray 2001: 152, 236); but after the
start of his excavations at Knossos, he proposed
a universal Mother Goddess, attended by a dying
and rising male god (Gere 2009: 123-24), who
symbolized the agricultural cycle and provided
a divine basis for primitive kingship. Evidence
for the Mother Goddess cult was sought in the
‘Mother of the Mountain sealing’ and the faience
Snake Goddess in the Temple Repositories
(MacGillivray 2001: 223-24; Lapatin 2002).
Although a comparison between the latter and
the Egyptian goddess Hathor would have been
more straightforward (because of the associated
group of cow and calf (MacGillivray 2001:
223-24), Evans opted for an interpretation as
Mother Goddess and for close parallels with
the Anatolian Mother Goddess (Evans 1921:
6). Evans’ claim of a monotheistic belief system
is so unusual in the context of the Bronze
Age that it needs some explanation. Dickinson
(1994b), and recently also Morris (2006) and
Gere (2009), evoked Evans’ socio-cultural and
personal background to explain his vision of
Minoan religion as based upon a single female
fertility-goddess. Today, although a case can be
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made for a polytheistic pantheon with male
and female deities, some of which survive in the
Linear B tablets (Marinatos 1993), a monotheistic
belief system still finds acceptance in some
quarters (Gesell 1983; Driessen 2001).
Following the publication of The Emergence
of Civilisation (Renfrew 1972), Creto-centrism
and a general belief in Cretan ‘otherness’ found
itself reinforced by a paradigm shift in the
explanation of the origins of Cretan ‘civilization’
away from external influences and towards
indigenous processes (Renfrew 1972; Warren
1987; Branigan 1988; for an exception, see
Watrous 1987). According to Renfrew (1972:
xxv), although important contacts clearly existed
between the early Aegean and the Orient, these
do not in themselves provide a satisfactory
explanation for the emergence of the first
civilization in Europe. Rather, the origins of the
Minoan palaces should be sought in the Early
Minoan period and should be understood as the
outcome of an indigenous development that set
Crete apart from the rest of the Mediterranean.
In Crete, even during the third millennium
B.C., and thus before the emergence of the
palace civilisation, the finds are all instantly
recognisable as ‘Minoan’ (Renfrew 1972: 47).
This approach not only stressed the indigenous
character of developments on the island, but also
provided the western nation-state with European
origins (Hamilakis 2002b). The identification of
the Minoan palaces as centres of states (Cherry
1984; 1986) gave a new twist to Crete’s otherness,
in that it appeared to be the only place in
the Aegean to reach this level of ‘complexity’ as
early as the Middle Bronze Age (Cherry 1984;
Warren 1985; Knappett 1999: 620; Manning
2008: 105-106; Broodbank 2000). The perception
of Crete’s position as unique consequently
inspired numerous studies to try to account
for this uniqueness and, more specifically, the
emergence of the Minoan palaces (Halstead
1981; Halstead and O’Shea 1983; Lewthwaite
1983; Warren 1987; Manning 1994: 179, 242;
Branigan 1989). Lewthwaite (1983: 179) noted
that, rather than the absence of a palace in other
geographical areas, ‘it is surely rather the positive
anomaly of Crete which requires explanation’.
In this way, all such explanations have, following
Evans, accepted Cretan otherness as an
ancient reality. But was Crete really a unique
outcome, a product perhaps of its insular position,
and hence fundamentally different from
contemporary Bronze Age societies? Or is this
reading of the data a more recent construct,
which might be termed ‘Creto-centrism’, where
the pivotal role of Crete in grand narratives
for the origins of European modernity have
granted it special status and unique treatment
within wider Mediterranean prehistory? In the
following section, an alternative proposition
is explored—namely, that the uniqueness of
Crete, enshrined in the Palace-Temple model, is
essentially a modern construct, originating with
Evans, and that a very different picture emerges
once power dynamics on Crete are situated back
within the broader context of the eastern Medi-
terranean.
The Traditional Minoan Palace Model in its
Wider Geographical Context
While phenomena such as palaces, Priest-Kings,
palatial crafts and palatial administration find
obvious parallels in the contemporary societies
of the East, it is Evans’ interpretation of
the court buildings as Palace-Temples—that
is, as residences for a political and religious
authority—that most clearly sets Crete apart in
the wider eastern Mediterranean region (Evans
1935: 960) (Figure 1). In casting around for
parallels, Evans claimed to find analogies in
the great religious centres of Anatolia, where
‘the royal and sacerdotal abode was one and the
same, and the Palace was also a Sanctuary’ (Evans
1921: 3-4). It is clear now, however, that in this
he was mistaken, as later excavations have shown
that the Lower Palace (Garstang 1929: 88) was
actually the Great Temple and that the palace
226 Schoep
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Figure1.MapoftheeasternMediterranean(adaptedfromFeldman2006:3,map1).
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 227
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
was situated elsewhere (Neve 1995). Rather, as
the following brief overview will make clear,
it is common practice in Bronze Age eastern
Mediterranean societies for the main political
and religious venues of power, usually referred
to as the palace and the temple, to be located in
different places in the urban landscape.
In the Near East, where until the 1950s it
was thought that the temple was the only seat
of authority (for the temple-state paradigm,
see Robertson 1995: 450-51), it is now clear
that the power of the temple was counterpoised
by the power of the palace (Van De Mieroop
1997: 16; Robertson 1995: 450). As Postgate
(1992: 109) points out: ‘We cannot any longer
maintain that because the temple collected commodities
and distributed them to its dependants
the entire economy operated through “redistribution”,
or that the priests controlled all agricultural
production and commercial activity’.
Near Eastern palaces generally consist of storage
rooms, kitchens, production areas and living
quarters and a main room that served for giving
audiences, usually in association with some sort
of court (Postgate 1992; Margueron 1995). The
main focus of the temple complex is the temple
itself, but, just like the palace, it contained magazines
and extensive archives. Temples, regarded
as the god’s house or estate, and palaces were run
separately along the lines of a large elite household
and thus both could hold property in more
than one place and could engage in a variety of
productive and commercial activities (Postgate
1992: 114, 137; Robertson 1995: 444). Thus,
despite the spatial separation between palace and
temple, it is important to stress that the temple
was more than a religious institution and that
the palace was also an important ceremonial
centre (Sallaberger 2007: 270).
Mesopotamian kingship had a military and
religious dimension, and an ideology of secular
power cannot be separated from religion. At
times, however, there was conflict between secular
and religious leaders (Van De Mieroop 1997:
33) and the relationship between the secular palace
and the religious temples shifted throughout
Mesopotamian history (Van de Mieroop 1997:
16, 120).
A similar spatial separation can be found in
early third-millennium bc Canaan, where, in a
political landscape divided into competing citystates
(De Miroschedji 1999: 5), palace and temple
were also spatially separated (Ahlström 1995).
This also seems to have been the case at Ebla
in Syria (Pinnock 2001: 27), where palace and
temple seem to have been distinct institutions
(Milano 1995: 1223). Contrary to Mesopotamia,
the Eblaite king had a low profile and a major
role was played by tribal institutions such as the
group of ‘elders’ (ÁBBA-ÁBBA) and the members
of leading families with state responsibilities
(LUGAL-LUGAL) (Milano 1995: 1221).
The Egyptian pharaoh was a dual personality,
both the embodiment of sacred power and
a head-of-state fulfilling a terrestrial function
within a human world (Traunecker 2002: 145).
The cult of divine kingship was given monumental
expression in the form of great religious
complexes that were in the first place temples for
the royal statues with a royal tomb attached to
each temple (Trigger et al. 1983: 85). The Egyptian
palaces were places of stately representation
where the power of kingship was demonstrated
both to Egypt’s people and to foreign envoys.
It was in the palace, however, that the pharaoh
assembled his advisors and officials and decided
on matters of state and religion. Since the
pharaoh’s role was to a large degree a religious
one, ancient Egyptian palaces also provided the
stage for ritual performances connected with
the office of kingship (Arnold 2002: 271). It is
very important to stress that even in the case of
a theocracy, where sacred and political power are
combined in a single person, different aspects of
this power are associated with different spatial
locales (Baines 1995). In Egypt, not only does
political and religious power manifest itself in
the construction of palaces and temples, but
even the religious and the secular had different
capitals, which shifted throughout Egypt’s
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©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
history (e.g. Thebes and Memphis, Thebes and
Karnak). Much of Egyptian political history was
driven by tension and strife between the pharaoh
and the priests but ultimately the Egyptian
temples remained dependent upon the pharaoh
(O’Connor 1995: 321-23).
Evans (1921: 3-4) was of the opinion that ‘in
the Anatolian centres the royal and the sacerdotal
abode was one and the same and the Palace
was also a Sanctuary. It is these last conditions
that seem to have most nearly corresponded
with those of Minoan Crete’, but this statement
seems to be informed by the blurred relationship
between Hittite kingship and state religion (as
obvious from the texts), or by one of the more
speculative theories existing at a time when Hittite
was still undeciphered and a lot of rather
exotic ideas were in circulation (Ulf-Dietrich
Schoop, pers. comm.). At the time Evans was
writing, the palace at Hattusas (Büyükkale)
(Figure 2) had not been discovered and the main
temple complex in the lower city was mistakenly
known as the ‘Lower Palace’ (Garstang 1929:
89-90). The palace, which was constructed on
a rocky elevation (Büyükkale), was discovered
later (Neve 1995). Although Hittite temples
were administered by their priesthoods, they
were under the ultimate control of the king so
there was no state-temple dichotomy (Beckman
1995: 540). The Hittite king was, in addition
to being a secular ruler, also the chief priest
who was appointed by the divine owner of the
Land of Khatti; it is impossible to separate the
concerns of temples from other state business
recorded in records of the royal archives. Interestingly,
the archives refer to the palace as ‘House
of the king’ and to the temple as ‘house of the
god’ (Beckman1995: 530).
This brief overview allows two important
points to be made. First, the term ‘palace’ is used
in a much looser way in eastern Mediterranean
archaeology than in Minoan archaeology. In the
Levant and the Near East, ‘palace’ is not only
used for the residence of a monarch (Margueron
1995: 898), but also for other large residences
associated with officials or the family of the
monarch (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003: 316).
In contrast, in New World archaeology the term
‘palace’ has a more strict meaning: to be a palace,
a structure has to be both a residence and
a seat of political power, in that it serves some
kind of wider public role (Galaty 2008: 428).
It would seem that what is called the palace
in Minoan scholarship is best compared to the
temple in Anatolia, Egypt and Mesopotamia,
and that some of the high-profile buildings in
the Minoan urban landscape would be termed
palaces in the Near East and the New World.
A second point to be made is that even in
theocratic societies, such as those of Bronze Age
Egypt and Anatolia, there is a spatial separation
between palace and temple or the main secular
and sacred venues of power. Despite the prominent
role played by the Egyptian pharaohs and
the Hittite kings in the religious ceremonies
that took place in the temples, the palaces were
places of stately representation where the power
of kingship was demonstrated and where matters
of state and religion were decided.
An Alternative Spatial Model of Power for
Crete
The above observations are worth exploring
for the Cretan evidence, not just because they
represent a set of contemporary and contiguous
analogies for Bronze Age power structures, nor
simply because Cretan elites interacted with and
clearly at times drew inspiration from the elite
cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, but more
fundamentally because a spatial separation of
the main sacred and the secular venues fits the
present Minoan dataset better than Evans’ highly
unusual and now seemingly artificial hybrid
palace-temple model. Significantly, the recognition
that the main secular and religious venues
of power may have been spatially separated
does not rule out the existence of a ruler with
religious power, but does suggest that, if such a
person existed, he/she would most probably not
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 229
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
Figure 2. Plan of Hattusas (adapted from P. Neve, Die Ausgrabungen in Bögazköy-Hattusa 1993, Archäologischer
Anzeiger 1994: fig. 1).
230 Schoep
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
have resided in the principal religious building.
In this way, this alternative model has the potential
to clarify and explain the existence and role
of the prominent elite structures known from
Minoan towns, as well as the conspicuous presence
of elite culture outside the court buildings
(Hamilakis 2002; Schoep 2006; 2010).
It should be stressed, however, that—just as
in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia—such
spatial separation does not imply a strict conceptual
separation between secular and religious
power. In addition to palaces containing shrines
in the East Mediterranean (see above), there
can be no doubt that performances taking place
in the Minoan court buildings may have been
informed by, had an impact on, or even directed
the exercise of political power; and, vice versa,
that performance in the more overtly political
venues, such as high-profile elite residences, had
a religious and ceremonial component to them.
In addition, it should be kept in mind that the
sacred landscapes of Crete comprised not just
court buildings, but also a host of other places
and shrines, such as caves and peak sanctuaries,
which lie outside the focus of this paper (Cherry
1986; Peatfield 1987; Watrous 1996; Tomkins
2009; 2011; Haggis 1999).
Identifying the Main Sacred Venue
The suggestion that the court buildings were
primarily religious buildings and not palaces
sensu stricto is certainly not a new one (Faure
1973; Melas 1995; Schoep 2002; Driessen
2002; Day and Wilson 2002; Pilali-Papasteriou
2004), but its incorporation into a broader
spatial model for Minoan power relations represents
a new departure. I argue here that the
court buildings were the main religious venues
in society from the Early Bronze Age (Hue and
Pelon 1992; Pelon 2005; Tomkins and Schoep
2010; Tomkins 2011).
Beneath the floors of the EM III/MM IA court
building at Malia were found the remains of an
EM IIB building, similarly designed around a
large open space broadly congruent with the
central court of the later building (Pelon 2005).
Although it has been claimed that the remains
belong to ‘scattered houses’ (Watrous 1994), the
common orientation of the walls is more indicative
of a single building, an interpretation only
strengthened by the fact that they share precisely
the same orientation as the later court building
and that, like the latter, the building comprised
a large central court delimited by rooms to the
north, west, and probably also east (see Schoep
2004a for references), and had an EM IIB portico
on its west side in much the same way as its
Middle Bronze Age successor (Pelon 1999).
At Knossos, a more complex and deep history
of major terracing, levelling and construction
episodes, stretching back to Final Neolithic
(FN) IV, is beginning to emerge, within which
long-known, but seemingly isolated early architectural
units, such as the EM III Northwest
Platform and the Early Keep now find greater
context and meaning (Tomkins 2011). This
work suggests that in the beginning (FN IV)
ceremonial activity was focused on a large rectangular
court below the present Central Court,
and that the first of a series of court buildings or
‘insulae’ may have been in place as early as EM
IIA (Tomkins 2011).
Recent work at Phaistos has established that
the location of the later lower West Court was
used as a venue for group feasting from the late
FN, as suggested by deposits of tableware and
animal bone (Todaro 2005; 2011; Di Tonto and
Todaro 2008). The hill was reorganized in the
course of two building projects that took place
at the beginning of EM IIA, and again and more
decisively at the beginning of EM III, leading to
the creation of the terraces upon which the MM
IB–II palace was later built (Todaro 2011). This
coincides with a shift in the locus of habitation
to the northernmost and southernmost slopes of
the hill, which has been interpreted as a result of
the establishment of the hilltop as a specialized
place of ceremony.
From their inception, the court buildings
appear to have served as venues for the ritualised
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©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
consumption of food and drink by groups of
differing size and composition, and this practice
can be attested throughout their period of usage
(Todaro 2011; Militello 2011; Tomkins 2011).
In addition to broad continuities in practice, the
early court buildings also exhibit continuity in
form and orientation (Shaw 1977; Cherry 1986).
Particularly notable is the way their location
and orientation remained immutable, despite
the fact that each of them saw modification
and rebuilding on many occasions during the
lifetime of their use, from EM II until LM IB
(ca. 2700–1490/1470 bc), in the case of Malia
and perhaps Phaistos, or, in the case of Knossos,
until LM IIIA2 (ca. 1375 bc). Outside Crete the
extraordinary longevity of this spatial continuity
only finds parallels in the context of buildings of
a sacred, ceremonial character (Postgate 1992:
137).
In the Near East, only the temple remained
in the same position through time because its
location was sacrosanct, while specific rulers
usually built a palace for themselves in a location
of their choosing (Postgate 1992: 137). The
construction of court buildings may now, thanks
to recent work at Knossos and Phaistos, be properly
understood (Todaro 2011; Schoep 2011;
Tomkins 2011) as implying the appropriation
of a locale previously imbued with significant
meaning and thereby ‘the timeless values which
seemingly governed order in the world were
increasingly mediated and therefore controlled
by a certain group’ (Barrett 1998: 255-56). Day
and Wilson (2002: 148; see also Evans 1928:
2-3) have argued that the special status and
even sanctity of the Kephala hill at Knossos may
be due to its being perceived as the ‘ancestral
home of the original settlers of Crete’. While it
no longer seems so likely that Knossos actually
played such a prominent role in the peopling of
Crete (Tomkins 2008), there can be little doubt
that the creation and manipulation of traditions
of place, identity and belonging during the late
FN and Early Bronze Age played a major role in
the legitimation of elite power strategies within
and beyond Knossos (Tomkins 2011). A similar
suggestion has been made for Phaistos, which
perhaps came to be viewed as the place of origin
for several settlements in the Mesara (Todaro
2003). Thus, as religious centres, the court
buildings were more than just feasting arenas or
communal centres; they were cult centres, tied
in with specific belief systems and cosmologies
(Schoep 2011). An example of the sort of cult
paraphernalia that might be associated with
these buildings is provided by the MM IA-B Vat
Room Deposit at Knossos (MacGillivray 1997;
Panagiotaki 1999: 275).
As religious centres, the court buildings should
be expected to have had an important economic
aspect (Militello 2011), without however
implying that they were controlling the entire
economy (Schoep 2010). Besides the storage
of agricultural goods, there is evidence for the
specialized production of goods such as textiles
(Schoep 2010; Militello 2011) that may in the
first place have been intended for consumption
in these buildings. This is perhaps also suggested
by the production debris from the Vat Room
(Panagiotaki 1999: 275). It is equally clear,
however, that not all material culture consumed
in the court buildings was produced there. The
pottery consumed in these buildings in the Middle
Bronze Age was acquired from local and nonlocal
workshops and reflects conscious choices on
the part of the consumer (Day and Wilson 1998;
Rethemniotakis and Christakis 2004).
The court buildings may have functioned in
a similar way to the ‘temples’ of the Near East,
in which case they may similarly have owned
land and cultivated cereals, vegetables, and tree
crops and practised animal husbandry (Postgate
1992: 114). It is interesting to note that the MM
III Cretan Hieroglyphic tablets from Knossos
document large numbers of livestock (Schoep
2004b: 288) and perhaps also the delivery of livestock
and agricultural products (Karnava 2006:
64-66). Some form of redistribution may very
well have formed part of the economy of these
buildings (e.g. remuneration of staff, dispensing
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©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
of foodstuffs to priests, gods, etc.) without implying
that the economic system of the whole of
Minoan society was organized on a redistributive
basis (Halstead 1992; 2004; Cherry 1999).
There can be no doubt that the court buildings
could not have been run without a central
authority. The question is rather what form this
authority took and where it resided. Elsewhere
in the eastern Mediterranean, such authority
can be situated along a political-sacred continuum
that encompasses a variety of scenarios,
from the combination of both in a single person
(theocracy) to a distinction between a secular
and a religious leader (Van De Mieroop 1997:
33). In addition, there were different degrees
of interdependence between palace and temple.
It is not clear at present where along this
continuum the Cretan evidence fits—whether
political and religious authority resided in one
individual (as would be the case in a theocratic
society), or in different individuals.
Identifying the Seat(s) of Political Authority
According to the alternative spatial model of
power under exploration here the main seat of
political authority is unlikely to have been the
court building and should be sought elsewhere
in the settlement or perhaps even the wider
region. Unfortunately, this exercise is complicated
by the fact that few settlements have been
extensively excavated, and by the waxing and
waning of high-profile buildings outside the
court buildings.
I have argued elsewhere in the context of MM
II Malia (Schoep 2002a; 2004; 2006; Figure 3)
that several high-profile complexes (Quartier
Mu, Crypte Hypostyle, Magasins Dessenne,
etc.) distinguish themselves from ordinary residences
not only through their elaborate architecture
or sheer size, but also by the practices
that they hosted (i.e. innovative architecture,
attached craft specialists, large-scale storage,
expansion of the premises, use of writing and
sealing, ceremonial practices, etc.). Moreover,
the co-existence of these high-profile complexes
would seem to suggest that political and economic
power was not concentrated in the court
building. The presence of innovative architectural
features and elite practices in these highprofile
buildings contrasts markedly with their
comparative absence from the court building at
this time, which has been noted as displaying
‘archaic’ features (Pelon 2005). The court building
at Malia does not seem to participate in this
urban landscape of intensive social, political,
economic and even religious competition, a
situation that fails to accord with the traditional
Palace-Temple model, where such power
is centralized in the court building (Schoep
2002; 2004). I have labelled this spatial pattern
‘heterarchical’ (Schoep 2002: 107), in order to
highlight the horizontal diversity that is part of
hierarchy and without the intention of implying
that hierarchical relations were entirely lacking.
It is of course difficult to reconstruct the exact
power relations between the groups inhabiting
the high-profile complexes, but it seems likely
in the case of Malia that there was a primus
inter pares. Was this the household/s residing in
Quartier Mu (Figure 4), as Poursat (2011) argues
on the basis of their involvement in metalworking
and overseas contacts? If so, its position may
have been short-lived, perhaps restricted to MM
II, when Quartier Mu greatly expanded (Poursat
2011), or even MM IIB only. Perhaps it is in
the prominent position of Quartier Mu at the
end of MM II that we should seek reason for
its wholesale destruction and the subsequent
abandonment of this area of the settlement for
many future generations? In LM I Malia, House
Epsilon seems to have been superior to other
houses in the settlement, not only in terms of
its size (3000 sq. m), but also with regard to
its architectural elaboration, incorporating an
impressive façade, a small court and a circular
stone structure (kouloura) that is interpreted as
a silo for grain (Bradfer-Burdet 2005). In this
case, it would seem that between MM IIB and
LM I the main venue of political authority, what
would in the Near East be glossed as the ‘palace’,
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 233
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
might have shifted in location at least once, from
Quartier Mu to Quartier Epsilon.
The model proposed here of spatial separation
between the political and religious institutions
is also applicable to other urban centres
and periods other than the Middle Bronze
Age. However, it seems likely that the balance
of power will have varied within and between
settlements and over time. Unlike Malia, which
operated as the single pre-eminent centre in its
region, other regions that are characterized by
the co-existence of multiple centres, such as
the western Mesara, north-central Crete and
perhaps the Mirabello Bay, may reveal a more
complicated picture. A detailed analysis of the
function and biographies of the high-profile
buildings in these regions, which exceeds the
scope of the present paper, is needed to shed
light on the matter.
Interestingly, spatial separation of the main
venues of power has already been suggested for
Neopalatial Knossos:
The grandest example [of the late independent
houses outside the palace], called the
Figure 3. Plan of Malia (from Schoep 2002: 108, fig. 1).
234 Schoep
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
Little Palace, together with the Unexplored
Mansion, both incorporated architectural features
and religious elements best known from
the New Palace itself. The Little Palace may
have been exactly that, namely a small palatial
building for the ruling family to live in, either
on the grounds of greater privacy or for reasons
of Palace sanctity (Macdonald 2005: 91).
Was the Little Palace and Unexplored Mansion
complex (Figure 5) truly exceptional in LM
I Knossos (Figure 6) or should other potential
seats of political authority, such as the building
at Archanes, be considered? If the Little Palace
is considered as the seat of a political authority, it
is clear that the latter contained a very high component
of cult rooms (Hatzaki 2005; Macdonald
2005), emphasising the potential ideological
intertwinement of the sacred and the political.
In the western Mesara, multiple centres existed
and the waxing and waning of high-profile
buildings within them hints at a shifting, fluid
landscape of power. The court building at Phaistos
would appear to have been the main religious
centre in EM and MM (Todaro 2011; Militello
Figure 4. Plan of Quartier Mu, Malia (from Schoep 2002: 109, fig. 3).
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 235
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
2011), while the main venue associated with
political authority may have been either an
(unexplored) building complex at Phaistos or
elsewhere, such as Ayia Triada. Alternatively,
there may have been multiple such venues of
political authority at this time in the main
population centres of the western Mesara. In the
Neopalatial period, however, the fact that the
court building at Phaistos was under construction
for most of LM I may suggest that the main
religious venue had shifted, perhaps to Ayia
Triada. It is interesting to note that the cultic
character of the ‘villa’ at Ayia Triada has recently
been stressed (Puglisi 2003) over its economic
and political function. If the ‘villa’ was the main
religious institution, could the Casa Est be
regarded as the place of political representation?
Conclusion
The traditional Palace-Temple model, which
combines the political and the religious under
one roof, owes more to Evans’ particular views of
Minoan society and his cultural and intellectual
background than it does to the archaeological
evidence that has accrued during the century
since it was first formulated. It has been argued
here that the Palace-Temple model is anomalous
in the context of the wider east Mediterranean
because in none of the major Bronze Age
societies in the east Mediterranean is political
and sacred authority ever concentrated in
a single building. Even in theocratic societies,
where a single person has religious and political
power, the main political and sacred venues are
Figure 5. Plan of the Unexplored Mansion and the Little Palace (from Macdonald 2005).
236 Schoep
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
Figure6.PlanofthesettlementofKnossos(fromMacdonald2005).
The Minoan ‘Palace-Temple’ Reconsidered 237
©The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2010
geographically separated. I have argued that one
of the reasons why Evans’ Palace-Temple model
has enjoyed such longevity is a general underlying
belief that Crete was different from other
societies in the eastern Mediterranean. This
belief in Cretan otherness can be traced back to
Evans’ own Creto-centrism, which artificially
alienated Bronze Age Crete from its Asiatic
neighbours and familiarized it for modern Europeans,
in order to fit it more easily into a particular
favoured narrative of the Cretan origins
of European modernity.
The second point made in this paper is that
a model in which the main political and sacred
venues of power are located in different venues
may actually more faithfully describe the Cretan
Bronze Age data. There is sufficient evidence to
suggest that court buildings functioned as the
main religious centres (or ‘temples’, without
implying that court buildings were identical
to Near Eastern temples), at least within the
island’s principal urban centres; while there are
sufficient indications from the admittedly still
under-explored urban landscapes to suggest that
the main seat of political power (or ‘palaces’, in
the Near Eastern sense) were actually located
outside the court buildings.
While this alternative model offers new and
exciting avenues, however, there are important
aspects that could not be examined in the
present paper. The present paper has discussed
the validity of the model for the Middle and
Late Bronze Age, but the situation in the Early
Bronze Age would repay further examination.
An evolution seems to take place from a situation
in the Early Bronze Age where the court
buildings functioned as the main venues for
cult and social reproduction, to one in MM
I–II (and MM III–LM I), where aspects of this
function came to be increasingly appropriated
by high-profile elite structures within their
surrounding urban settlements (Schoep 2011).
This may represent a significant development,
comparable to the rise of a secular authority
in the Near East in the mid-third millennium,
at which point the temples, which had been
politically and economically dominant, now coexisted
in the urban landscape with the palace
(Van de Mieroop 1997: 16).
About the Author
The author is a lecturer at the University of Leuven
(Belgium) and co-director of the Belgian
excavations at Sissi (Crete). Her research interests
include the Minoan palaces and their role
in society, administration and writing, funerary
practices and social and political organization.
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