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The palace also includes the Minoan column, a structure notably different from Greek columns. Unlike the stone columns that are characteristic of Greek architecture, the Minoan column was constructed from the trunk of a cypress tree, which is common to the Mediterranean.
Minoan art is often described as having a fantastical or ecstatic quality, with figures rendered in a manner suggesting motion. Little is known about the structure of Minoan society. Minoan art contains no unambiguous depiction of a monarch, and textual evidence suggests they may have had some other form of governance.
A Minoan graffito found at Tel Haror on a vessel fragment is either Linear A or Cretan hieroglyphs. [72] Several tablets inscribed in signs similar to Linear A were found at Troy in northwestern Anatolia. While their status is disputed, they may be imports, as there is no evidence of Minoan presence in the Troad.
Minoan art is the art produced by the Bronze Age Aegean Minoan civilization from about 3000 to 1100 BC, though the most extensive and finest survivals come from approximately 2300 to 1400 BC. It forms part of the wider grouping of Aegean art , and in later periods came for a time to have a dominant influence over Cycladic art .
The pillar, specifically, is a Minoan-type column that is located on top of an altar-like platform upon which the lionesses rest their front feet. [9] Early image found at Knossos depicting a goddess flanked by two lionesses (showing the tufts on their tails)
The Minoan architecture of Crete was of the trabeated form like that of ancient Greece. It employed wooden columns with capitals, but the wooden columns were of a very different form to Doric columns, being narrow at the base and splaying upward. [10] The earliest forms of columns in Greece seem to have developed independently.
The central building shares many of the features that are used to identify a Minoan palace apart from a regular building: pier and door partitions, alternating columns and pillars, and ashlar masonry. Additions and building modifications were occurring as late as Late Minoan IB.
Architecturally, it was a rectangular hall that was supported by four columns, fronted by an open, two-columned portico, and had a central, open hearth that vented though an oculus in the roof. [2] The megaron also contained the throne-room of the wanax, or Mycenaean ruler, whose throne was located in the main room with the central hearth. [3]