Foster-child of silence and slow time *

At 7pm one night, the car illuminated a Xmas tree of flashing lights - at least eleven of them in three colours across the dashboard. "The cars fine", said the AA man, "but the computer's f-..., er not". So we took it to the garage in Kidlington that delivers its 'care plan'. "Would you like us too wash it?", they said

So we got the excuse for a day in Oxford, where we discovered...

In one of those historical ironies you would not dare to make up, the man who first discovered the palace at Knossos, the heart of the Minoan civilisation on Crete, was called 'Minos'. Mr Kalokairinos was forbidden by the authorities from excavating the site he found, and eventually elbowed out of the way by Arthur Evans, director of the Ashmolean

Evans's work was pretty destructive, even by the standards of the time (1900-05), including a lot of speculative and fanciful reconstruction of the site, some of it with reinforced concrete. His interpretation of his finds was equally reflective of his scientific and cultural prejudices, particularly the desire to find the mythical labyrinth in which the mythical Theseus slayed the mythical Minotaur - so he did, of course

However, he appears not to have upset the Greek or Cretan authorities in the same way that Elgin did with his marbles - possibly because his popularising and story-telling has turned Knossos into a tourist hot-spot from which they turn a tidy profit. A lot of the exhibits in the current Asmolean exhibition about Knossos are on loan from Heraklion, and some of them paired with artefacts that Evans brought home

There are way too many lovely things there to blip about. One thought-provoking insight was the way that Minoan art started out highly naturalistic and figurative (detailed, sympathetic artworks of octapuses from an underwater perspective, for example) but became more and more stylised and abstract as time went on - eventually an octopus was a set of wavy lines! Evans thought this was symbolic of the decline and decay of the civilisation. I think that's post hoc twaddle

The site more recently yielded 8500 year-old (neolithic) grains of wheat - preserved because they had been carbonised in a fire, but still identifiable as varieties grown today - such as einkorn and emmer. The botanist who identified the grains refused to publish their conclusions because they feared ridicule for suggesting cultivation on Crete that long ago. More circumspect than Arthur Evans

A painting shows a frieze, depicting the audience for a public event, that had detailed images a row of women wearing the elaborate dyed woollen fabrics for which Crete was famous, surrounded by hastily sketched, generalised male faces. The description did not suggest a female artist, but my mind did

There are many other beautiful and elaborate things. The artistic and technical skills of people living there 3-4000 years ago are astonishing. I recommend it if you have any opportunity

In its way, this piece was just as moving. The shunned Minos Kalokairinos turned his attention to a bare patch of ground that others had ignored. He found a buried store room packed with these decorated jars: 'Pithoi' (singular Pithos), probably used for storage of harvested grain or olive oil. This one is 3500 years old

So he too has his place in history and his exhibits in Heraklion museum. In fact, his jar may have been one of the most problematic to transport to Oxford. This picture gives little idea of the scale - I estimate that it is 100-125cm high! It's a pity the was no estimate of its capacity - my guess would be 300-500 litres. That's an impressive piece of pottery to make, and to endure for three and a half millenia that have included earthquakes, volcanoes and many human battles over this strategic island. Well done Minos

(* John Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn)