Description

Wine amphora with a narrow neck and curved handles from the upper part of the neck to the shoulder. It has a long cylindrical body that ends with a rounded base and a small basal wart. The paste is buff beige and it contains many mica particles. This type of amphorae has been assigned to several centers in Athens, Corinth, and Crete. In Crete, this type was produced in Knossos, Kastelli, and Keratokambos, and was widely distributed across the Eastern Mediterranean, Italy, North Africa, and Greece.

Crete

Crete is an island; a self-contained world marooned in a desert of salt water in the southern Aegean. In about the seventh millennium BCE, Crete had seen its earliest settlers and its forms of agriculture arrived from Asia Minor. However, the island was occupied by the Minoan civilization—named after its founder, King Minos, according to Greek mythology—in the Middle Bronze Age, from 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE. During the second half of the second millennium, Minoans were actively trading with Egypt, Thera, Rhodes, Cyprus, and the Cyclades, amongst others, exchanging cloth, timber, gold, silver, foodstuff, olive oil, and wine. Cretan amphorae were extensively used for the exported wine, mostly during the first to the third centuries CE.

According to Greek Mythology, Zeus was born by the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Cronus was notorious for being a very jealous and greedy deity. Out of fear that one of his children could take his throne, he decided to swallow all of them. Hence, Rhea hid the young Zeus in a cave on Crete.

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