Crete by Barry Unsworth Page B

the Valsamonero Monastery, with its fifteenth-century frescoes, painted by Konstantinos Rikos and said to be among the finest in Crete. But the monastery gave us a great trip and one can’t ask more than that. As the Alexandrian Greek poet Kavafis says in his poem about Ithaka, the kingdom of Odysseus, who found his way back there from Troy after many adventures, it’s no use asking anything from the island when you finally arrive: It has already made you the supreme gift of the journey.
    There is one monument at Gortyn which has endured in much the same way that the olive trees have, strongly rooted like them. When the Odeon, or Covered Theater, was built here about A.D. 100, in the time of the Emperor Trajan, a much older wall was incorporated, as it had been incorporated in a succession of earlier buildings—a wall inscribed in Dorian Greek with a code of laws dating from the fifth century B.C. Over six hundred lines in length, the script reads one line from left to right, the next from right to left, so that the eye can follow the text continuously. It is the first codified system of laws known to Europe and one of the most amazing documents in existence anywhere.
    Not that it illustrates the principle of equality before the law, so dear to us today, and even today more common in the breach than the observance. These are the laws of a society that was still tribal, still governed by rigid distinctions of caste. For rape committed against a free person the fine was 1,200 obols, while for the rape of a household slave the fine went from one to 24 obols, “depending on circumstances.” What strikes us today is not the particular notion of justice contained in the statutes, but the reverence with which they have been treated over such a great span of time, the beauty of the lettering, the continuous incorporation into new buildings as the old ones crumbled away. An early example, however unequal the laws, of that striving for order, for shelter from violence and chaos common to every human society. The form of the Odeon can still be made out: the semicircle of the amphitheater, some remains of benches, but most of it now is little more than broken stones. The Gortyn Code, however, is still intact, an abiding monument to the principle of legality. It is housed now in its own brick shelter, protected from the weather. Protected from people too—you can only look at it from a distance, through bars.
    Having seen where the people we call Minoans lived, and formed some idea of their surroundings and the circumstances of their lives, the natural progression is to go on to see the things they made. Whatever reservations one has about the attractiveness of modern Iraklion, the city’s archaeological museum is one of the finest to be found anywhere, and its collection of Minoan artifacts quite unique. Here, beautifully displayed in room after room, are the objects that give physical expression to the spirit of that remote society, and trace the way that spirit developed and changed, from its beginnings in the Neolithic period ten thousand years ago to the high culture of the Palace period, between 2000 and 1450 B.C. , and on to the time of invasion from the mainland and subsequent decline.
    Among a huge variety of objects from all over Minoan Crete—Knossos, Malia, Festos, Tylissos, Zacros, Agia Triada, Gournia—are some that through the fame and mystery that surrounds them have become semi-legendary. Here is the Festos Disk, already mentioned, exquisite and baffling, printed on fresh clay three and a half thousand years ago, making it the first ever printed document. Here is the sarcophagus found in a tomb in the precincts of the palace at Agia Triada, its surface completely covered with painted plaster, depicting scenes of ritual worship and the cult of the dead. Once again we are in the toils of speculation. The jar the priestess is emptying, does it contain blood? What is the significance of the