One of the most fascinating chapters of ancient history tells about the fabled island of Crete, whose rulers were thalassocrats (lords of the sea) and whose beautiful, bare-breasted priestesses romped in arenas with sacred bulls. Most history books state that the Cretan sea-kingdom, whose capital was Knossos, brought Egyptian and Asian civilization to the then-savage shores of Greece. This theory was largely the work of Oxford Professor Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos in 1900-05. Sir Arthur died in 1941 at the age of 90, a revered figure in archaeology, but last week he was the center of a furious controversy, accused of archaeological fraud to support Cretan glories.
Play-by-Play. Sir Arthur's accuser was Professor Leonard R. Palmer, 54, an Oxford philologist whose passion is "digging about and taking a language to pieces." While trying to take to pieces the undeciphered written language of ancient Crete, he became suspicious of Sir Arthur's belief that Knossos was "the most ancient center of civilized life in Greece and with it, of our whole continent." Palmer found what he considered evidence that the stream of culture ran from mainland Greece to Crete—not the other way around.
For years Palmer mulled over these matters, reading all available documents and even visiting Greece and Crete for first-hand looks. Early this year he went to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, of which Sir Arthur had been director, and asked to see his notes. The librarian took him to a basement cupboard where most of the Evans papers were stored. Digging deep, he came upon a ten-volume, richly illustrated daybook giving a meticulous play-by-play account of Sir Arthur's excavation of Knossos. It was written by Duncan Mackenzie, a redhaired Scotsman whom Sir Arthur had hired as his assistant.
On the Floor. Here was treasure indeed. Professor Palmer delved into the daybook, soon found an item that raised his academic hackles. According to Sir Arthur, the great palace at Knossos was destroyed about 1400 B.C. After that date it was occupied and partially rebuilt by "squatters" from the mainland, whose culture was far below the true Cretan level. The theory depended on Sir Arthur's claim that he found jars of squatter type in a room whose clay floor covered tablets written in Cretan script. This proved, he said, that early, literate Cretans had been superseded by comparatively crude invaders from mainland Greece. But according to Duncan Mackenzie's entry for Tuesday, May 8, 1900, the tablets were found on top of the floor on the same level as the squatter jars, and therefore they must date from the same period. It looked as if Sir Arthur, to support his theory that Cretan culture is older than Greek, had rejiggered his assistant's records.
In the academic world, such a charge could only cause a storm. Palmer searched his soul before he reported his findings last month in a lecture at the University of London's Institute of Classical Studies.
From there, the controversy spread to the mossy purlieus of British universities. Then London's Sunday Observer (circ. over 700,000) heard about it and asked Professor Palmer to state his iconoclastic views.