Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries, Brian Haughton [books you need to read .TXT] 📗

area around the monument, although these could be natural features. In 1995, workers renovating a nearby parking lot uncovered a series of tunnels and pathways, two of which plunge further underground close to the Sphinx. Bauval believes these are contemporaneous with the Sphinx itself. Between 1991 and 1993, while examining evidence for erosion at the monument using a seismograph, Anthony West's team found evidence of anomalies in the form of hollow, regularly shaped spaces or chambers, a few meters below the ground, between the paws and at either side of the Sphinx. No further examination has been allowed. Could there have been a grain of truth in Edgar Cayce's library of records prophecy after all?

Today, the great statue is crumbling because of wind, humidity, and the smog from Cairo. A huge and costly restoration and preservation project has been underway since 1950, but in the early days of this project, cement was used for repairs, which was incompatible with the limestone, and so caused additional damage to the

structure. Over a period of 6 years, more than 2,000 limestone blocks were added to the structure, and chemicals were injected into it, but the treatment failed. By 1988, the sphinx's left shoulder was in such a state of deterioration that blocks were falling off. At present, restoration is still an ongoing project under the control of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which is making repairs to the damaged shoulder and attempting to drain away some of the subsoil. Consequently, today the focus is on preservation rather than further explorations or excavations, so we will have to wait a long time before the Great Sphinx gives up its secrets.

the Knossos Labyrinth and the Myth of the Minotaur

© Thanassis Vembos.

Ruins of the palace at Knossos, showing some of Arthur Evans's reconstruction.

The archaeological site of Knossos is situated on a hill 3.1 miles southeast of the city of Heraklion, the modern capital of the Aegean island of Crete. Knossos was constructed by the Bronze Age Minoan civilization, named for the legendary King Minos of Crete. The Minoan culture existed on the island for around 1500 years, from 2600 to 1100 B.C., and was at its height from the 18th to 16th centuries B.C. The main feature of the extraordinary site at Knossos is the Great Palace, a huge complex of rooms, halls, and courtyards covering approximately

205,278 square feet. The Palace of Knossos is closely associated in Greek myth with Theseus, Ariadne, and the dreaded Minotaur. In fact, the legend of the labyrinth constructed by Daedalus to conceal the dreaded manbeast has been understood by some to originate with the complex layout of the palace itself. There are even dark hints in archaeological findings at Knossos (and elsewhere on Crete) of the practice of human sacrifice, as is suggested by the myth of Athens sending 14 girls and boys every seven years to be devoured by the Minotaur.

The site of Knossos was first discovered in 1878 by Cretan merchant and antiquarian Minos Kalokairinos, who excavated a few sections of the west wing of the palace. But systematic excavations at the site did not begin until 1900, with Sir Arthur Evans, director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, who purchased the whole area of the site and continued his investigations there until 1931. The work of Evans and his team at Knossos revealed (among other things) the main palace, a large area of the Minoan city, and various cemeteries. Evans carried out much restoration work at the Palace of Minos, as he called it, much of it controversial, and the palace in its present form has been said by some archaeologists to be as much due to Evans's imagination and preconceptions as to the ancient Minoans. Since Evans's time, further excavations at Knossos have been undertaken by the British School of Archaeology at Athens and the Archaeological Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The hilltop on which Knossos is situated has an extremely long history of human habitation. People were living there from Neolithic times (7000 B.c.-3000 B.C.) continually up until the Roman period. The name Knossos derives from the Linear B word for the city: ko-no-so. Linear B is the oldest surviving example of the Greek language, and was in use on Crete and the Greek mainland from the 14th to the 13th centuries B.C. Examples of Linear B script were found at Knossos in the form of clay tablets, which were used by palace scribes to record details of the workings and administration of their main industries, such as the production of perfumed oil, gold and

bronze vessels, chariots and textiles, and the distribution of goods such as wool, sheep, and grain. Clay tablets inscibed with the earlier undeciphered Cretan Linear A script were also found by Evans at Knossos.

The first Minoan Palace was built on the Knossos site around 2000 B.C. and lasted until 1700 B.C., when it was destroyed by a huge earthquake, thus bringing to an end what is referred to by archaeologists as the Old Palace Period. A new, more complex palace was erected on the ruins of the old; this structure heralded the Golden Age of Minoan culture, or the New Palace Period. This Great Palace, or Palace of Minos, was the crowning achievement of Minoan culture and the center of the most powerful city state on Crete. The timber- and stone-built multi-storied complex acted as an administrative and religious center, with perhaps as many as 1,400 rooms. The plan of the Knossos Palace was similar to other palaces of this period on Crete, such as that at Phaistos in the south-central part of the island, though Knossos seems to have been the capital. Minoan palaces generally consisted of four wings arranged around a rectangular, central court, which acted as the heart of the whole complex. Each section of the Knossos Palace had a separate function; the western part contained the shrines, suites of ceremonial rooms, and narrow storerooms, which were full of huge storage