sic Greece, around 430 were bound together in a trading network BC. Herodotus conextending thousands signs King Minos to of mile s, from th e the attic of pre-history, Indus river in India to saying in Book III of the Nile in Egypt. In his History that Polybetween, and initi all y crates of Samos was more advanced than "the first to plan the either of these other dominion of the sea, civilizations, was the unless we count Minos Mesopotamian civiliof Knossos and any zation , whi c h was other who may possiclearly linked to the bly have ruled the sea other two by seaborne With sails lowered, paddlers drive Minoan ships in ceremonial parade to Akrotiri, at a still earlier date." trade . In a co untry 3500 years ago, as sportive dophinsfrisk about. The reconstructed detail (below )from He goes on to say without tin or copper, this wall painting in a house in Akrotiri shows a keel-less, long-ended craft about 80 Polycrates was cerfeet overall, of basic Egyptian design. But Minoans, not Egyptians, carried the the Sumerians, first of deepwater commerce of the Eastern Mediterranean in this era, picking up Egyptian tainly the first in "ordithe great Mesopota- cargoes f rom entrepots like Byblos. nary human hi story," mian civili zations, destrongly suggesting the veloped an advanced Bronze Minoan navy was mythical. Age culture, based in seaport Thucydides, a less goscities on the Euphrates. sipy historian than Herodotus, The obscure pre-Indic civifoc used on the history of his lization on the Indus has now own times in classic Greece. been lost to us through deSuprisingly, he accepted the structive floods and alien conreality of Minoan sea power, sayin g: "The first person quest, but the Egyptians went on to ever-growing power and known to us by tradition as glory expressed in monumenhaving established a navy is tal pyramidsandin a richrecord Minos." He observes: "He of the dynasties, their wars and trading Semitic people who conquered the Sum- made himself master of what is now called expeditions. Their trading network ex- erian s, adopted thi s legend as their the Hellenic sea . . . ." tended down the Red Sea to Arabia for own . In the fullness of time it was picked He goes on to describe how capital gums and spices, and into the Mediterra- up by Abraham, leaving the Assyri an accumul ated among seaports and island nean for the invaluable Lebanese cedar, city of Ur for Isreal, and the mythical towns as Minos cleared away piracy and needed for shipbuilding in their treeless kingdom of Dilmu n has been brought opened up trade routes, providing recountry. down to us in the Jewi sh Old Testament sources enough to build walls aro und the The ancient name of a small port in as the Garden of Eden. emerging Mediterranean citi es. Lebanon, Byblos, survives today in the Thi s legend may have grown from an Curi ously enough , preci sely the opmodern root word for "book," fo und in actual civilization, a proto-civilization posite process took place-we know toEnglish in the words "Bible" and "bibli- preceding those in Mesopotamia, or on day that the Minoan sea imperium was ography." Byblos was the exchange port, the Nile or Indus. The history and logic so stro ng that Minoan cities did not have or entrepot, where paper for written of myth development would seem to walls aro und them ! It was the Mycenean records, made from the Egypti an papy- indicate that this was so. Thi s question of Greeks who built walls around their citrus reed, was distributed to the trading questions may be answered relatively ies, and who seized the Minoan empire peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. soon by further archaeological discov- about 1500 BC, probably through a split People have wondered that these three ery , lingui stics and probability theory. in the royal household, as suggested in civilizations, the Sumerian, Egyptian and Out of these streams of development, the legend of Theseus. Theseus, a young Indu s River, seem to have hit the ground at any rate, a remarkable maritime civili- prince of the Greek mainland, was deli vmore or less together in the centuries zation began to take shape on the island of ered fo r contracted service in Knossos, leading up to 3000 BC. It also seems Crete toward 2000 BC, a literate civiliza- capital of Crete, and overthrew King remarkable that they were linked to each tion evidently deriving fro m Mesopota- Minos in what seems to have been a other by sea trade. mian and Eygptian strains and dependent palace revolt, aided by the king' s daughThe Sumerians, in their legend of the for its very existence on seaborne trade. ter, Ariadne. hero Gilgamesh, looked back to an earOf Theseus it is said he taught the li er, ideal civilization in a land called The First Sea Empire Greeks to plow the land and plow the sea Dilmun, which has been identified with This Cretan civili zati on, called Minoan (or as we would say, advanced agriculthe present-day island of Bahrein in the after its King Minos (undoubtedly the ture and navigation). But he could not Persian Gulf. Gilgamesh left thi s land of name of a dynasty as well as one hi stori c teach the Myceneans how to govern innocence and immortali ty to adventure king), was remote even when Herodotus, themselves or the sea empire they' d taken in thi s world and seek out a friend in the whom the Romans called "the Father of over. The Mycenean Greeks, much like kingdom of death. The Assyrians, a History," was writing his History in clas- the Vikings of 2,000 years later, traded 14
SEA HISTORY 72, WINTER 1994- 95