Ships with a mast and square sail in addition to oars or paddles were used in the Aegean from the Early Bronze Age. On land, goods were no doubt transported by pack animals or on poles slung between bearers; this principle was also adopted for passenger chairs, of which there are clay models. A model of a four-wheeled cart from Crete is datable to about 2000 or earlier. The wheels of such carts were evidently solid, and the carts were no doubt drawn by oxen. Horses may have been ridden in Crete by then, as they seem to be depicted on early Cretan seals. These horses could have come from the east, but a different breed was introduced into the mainland from the north at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age, about 2000. The light spoke-wheeled chariot drawn by horses appears to have developed in Syria or northern Mesopotamia early in the 2nd millennium, but it spread rapidly throughout the Middle East because of its usefulness in war. Chariots are depicted on tombstones of the Mycenae Shaft Graves and on Cretan seals before the time of the mainland conquest, about 1450. Apart from warfare, they were used in the Aegean for hunting and probably for travel. During the latter part of the Bronze Age, terraces were built to support roads wide enough for wheeled vehicles both in Crete and on the mainland. Such roads were carried across streams on bridges, examples of which have survived in the region of Mycenae. Warfare
Short daggers of types derived from Syria were in use in the Aegean during the Bronze Age. Long rapiers, evolved from those in Crete, are found on the mainland by the time of the Mycenae Shaft Graves in the 16th century bc.
The traditional armour of the Shaft Grave Period—a shield shaped in the figure eight or a tower shield, a helmet often reinforced with boars’ tusks, a thrusting spear, and a sword on a baldric in a tasseled scabbard—appears also in the Thera naval fresco and in the epics behind Homer’s Iliad. Charioteers apparently wore a bronze tunic of thonged plates, sketched on the Knossos tablets and found in a chamber tomb at Dendra in the Argolid. Linen greaves appear in frescoes, and bronze greaves in graves. There were bronze wrist guards for archers. Many soldiers may have preferred quilted, padded protection in the summer because of the heat.
Warrior armed with a figure-of-eight shield and boar's-tusk helmet, ivory relief, c. 1400–1200 bce, from Delos; in the Archaeological Museum, Delos, Greece.Cliche, Ecole Francaise d'Archeologie, Athenes
Short swords adapted for cutting as well as thrusting began to appear in the following century and may have been developed in connection with chariot warfare. Bronze armour and small, round shields more serviceable in chariots replaced the old Cretan body shields at approximately the same time. Bows and slings were probably used everywhere in the Aegean area, but, whereas arrowheads of flint and obsidian are found on the mainland, they are virtually unknown in Crete, where arrows may have been tipped with bone or wood until the appearance of bronze arrowheads in the 15th century. Settlements on the mainland and in the Cyclades were defended by walls from the Early Bronze Age onward, and the town at Mallia in Crete appears to have been protected by a wall during the period of the Early Palaces; but, by the time of the Late Palaces, Cretan towns may have been unwalled. Faience inlays of the 17th century from Knossos, however, seem to show an attack on a walled town such as that depicted on a silver-relief vase from the Mycenae Shaft Graves. The attraction of the theme of the city by the sea, with vignettes of war and peace, landscape and water, is also apparent in the Thera naval fresco and the Master Sealing of Chania in western Crete, which shows a youth lording it over the rooftops of a town. Methods of warfare had become highly developed by the end of the Bronze Age, with improved weapons, complex and well-designed fortifications, extensive use of chariots, and warships with rams. Religion
Little is known about religion in the Cyclades and on the mainland before the period when they came under strong Cretan influence. An open-air sanctuary filled with marble figurines on the island of Kéros (Káros) is assignable to the Early Bronze Age. In Crete during the Early Palace Period, there were many open-air sanctuaries on the tops of hills and mountains. Some of these had small shrines in them, and shrines with one or more rooms and benches for offerings and cult statues are found in the countryside and in the towns in Crete. Parts of the palaces and of large houses there were also set apart for cult. Shrines not unlike Cretan ones existed in settlements in the Cyclades and on the mainland in the Late Bronze Age; however, hilltop sanctuaries are not well attested there, and most of those in Crete appear to have gone out of use after the mainland conquest, about 1450. Caves also were used as sanctuaries in Crete, and cults in some of these persisted until the end of the Bronze Age and later.
The chief deity everywhere in the Aegean during the Bronze Age was evidently a goddess. Perhaps there were several goddesses with different names and attributes. The extant texts refer to a Potnia (“Lady” or “Mistress”), to whom they give several epithets like “horse” or “grain.” Most mainland palaces have paintings of processions in which people bring gifts to a goddess. On Thera, frescoes show girls picking saffron crocus and offering it in baskets to a seated goddess. Clay statues of goddesses, often with upraised arms and attributes such as horns of consecration, doves, snakes, or poppies have been found in Crete; these range in date from the 14th to the early 12th century, providing evidence of a strong tradition. A shrine with large clay goddesses, which once were stuccoed and painted, existed at Ayía Iríni on the island of Ceos, and a smaller, later one at Phylakopi on Melos, with both male and female figurines. The shrine at Mycenae seems to have been devoted to powers of grain and the sword. A later shrine at Tiryns had small clay goddesses with upraised arms. Many cult statues may have been made of wood, and mythic traditions of simple wooden logs or planks (xoana) dropping from heaven or being found in thickets have become attached to several later sanctuaries.
The texts show a more elaborate set of divinities than do the surviving idols, with many later Greek divinities already in place, including Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, and Dionysus. The Cretan birth goddess Eleuthia and war goddess Eyno were transmitted to the mainland Greeks, and natural forces, like the winds, were occasionally worshiped. There can be no doubt about the continuity of religions and cult from the Late Bronze Age into later Greek times, as well as of the language itself. Some divinities, like the female Zeus and the female Poseidon figures known at Pylos, do not reappear in later times, however. The culture was reshaping itself as it passed from generation to generation.
The normal gifts to divinities were scented oils, textiles, and, in Greece at least, animal sacrifice of cattle, sheep, and pigs. The burial of a horse or a dog may either signify a sacrifice or simply express the attachment between the animal and its master. Two ideas about the realm of death existed, a rarer one of an overseas Elysian paradise where the dead were restored to a new life of bodily blessed ease and a more common one, transmitted in the epic tradition, of a dark underground realm (Hades) inhabited by weak shades with poor memories. These two ideas, representing the Cretan and the Mycenaean tradition, were not fused but survived in separate sets of songs and tales. M. Sinclair F. Hood Emily D. Townsend Vermeule