|
Eastern
Apartments
Grand
Staircase
The
ground slopes away rather quickly on the eastern side
of the site and the builders had to cut away part of
the side of the hill to to accommodate the buildings.
Most of what survives is actually one or two floors
below the level of the Central Court. How high the buildings
rose above the the court is unknown but it is clear
from Evans excavations that there must have been at
least one storey.
Grand
Staircase and Light Well
The
Grand Staircase is located at about the middle
of the east side of the Central Court and presumably
was entered from it (although no trace of an opening
has survived). There were at least five flights
of broad, gypsum stairs, the lowest two resting
on solid earth and the others on wooden beams
supported by wooden columns. There was a light-well
immediately adjacent on the east, which opened
onto a lobby, the Hall of the Colonnades, on each
of the lower floors. The walls were decorated
with painted murals including bands of running
spirals—superimposed by full-sized replicas
of the characteristic Minoan ‘figure eight’
shields in the case of the upper hall. As well
as practical weapons of war, such shields were
evidently powerful religious symbols representing
the Young God. |
Grand
Staircase showing the settings for the columns |
|
|
From
the lower landing, the Lower East-West Corridor
leads to what Evans believed were the Domestic
Apartments of the palace. These consisted of two
suites, the Hall of the Double Axes and the Queen's
Hall, spread over at least two storeys and linked
by a series of corridors and stairways. They were
equipped with light-wells
and polythyra
to open up or close down the rooms.
Left:
Light Well and Grand Staircase
|
The
Hall of the Double Axes
| The
Hall of the Double Axes got its
name from the crude axe symbols (labrys)
carved on the walls of the
light-well at the west end. The rest of
the suite consists of a large rectangular room,
sub-divided by a polythyron
with four doors, and a portico which overlooked
the valley of the Kairatos to the east. The layout
is quite distinctive and occurs at the other palace
sites as well. Evans suggested that this arrangement
suited the residential needs of the king and queen,
since there was normally a very similar but smaller
suite nearby. However, his interpretation is largely
based on the fact that he could find no alternatives
elsewhere in the palace. Clearly the rulers had
to sleep somewhere but would they really want quarters
that were so open to the elements and lacking in
privacy. So contemporary opinion has it that they
were used for ritual purposes, something that involved
moving between |
|
total
darkness and the light through the use of the multiple
doors. Rites of passage such as these are a common part
of initiation ceremonies in many cultures and sensory
deprivation is a common technique.
Hall
of the Double Axes showing the remains of a wooden throne
against the north wall
In
the western part of the main room, or Audience Chamber
as Evans called it, he found a mass of lime heaped against
the north wall. Preserved in lime was the cast of a
large wooden object along with those of a pair of fluted
columns, one on each side. Presumably they represented
the remains of a wooden throne— the outline of
the lower part of the seat survives— and a canopy.
The room was divided into two, roughly equal, halves
by a quadruple polythyron.
Evans believed that there may well have been transom
windows above each door and that is how he restored
them but there is no clear evidence to support this
assumption.
| The
walls were decorated with a band of rosettes and
running spirals, similar to that found in the Hall
of the Colonnades but without the shields. In Evans’
opinion that was because actual shields were hung
in their place. To the south and east were other
polythyra
that opened onto and L-shaped portico and a small
courtyard (below), also
L-shaped. The courtyard was enclosed by walls on
the southern and eastern sides with a doorway in
the southwest corner connecting it to the Queen’s
Megaron and another near the northwest corner giving
access to a stairway that descends to the Eastern
Terraces. |
|
Hall
of the Double Axes: Portico
|
