How Did Sarcophagus Influence The Minoan Civilization

Many civilizations have kept detailed and well-documented accounts of their histories, allowing historians to learn about their cultures, practices, and rulers. And while the Minoan civilization must have documented their history, researchers have been unable to decipher their written language. It is inconclusive who ruled the Minoan throne, so it is through the surviving art that one must look at to try to discover who those Minoan rulers were.
Up until well into the 19th century, the study of classics was merely the study of Greek and Roman languages and writings, until a German man named Heinrich Schliemann came up with the genius, though at the time considered to be preposterous, idea of following Homer’s description in The Iliad to find …show more content…
It is a large sarcophagus made from limestone and painted both long sides as well as both short sides and bordered with colorful rosettes and floral spirals. The long back side shows a funerary procession of three dark-skinned men wearing long skirts and carrying animals to what appears to be an altar or perhaps the tomb itself, and behind the three men are two light-skinned women in long, perhaps ceremonial, dresses and carrying buckets for liquid offerings to be poured into a larger vessel, followed by a dark-skinned man wearing the same long dress as one of the women and playing the lyre. On the long front side is a procession of three light-skinned women in dresses, with the leading woman wearing an elaborate headdress and brandishing what might be a knife preparing to sacrifice a bull that is strapped down to a table in the center with two other animals underneath the table and a dark-skinned man wearing a robe and playing the double flute behind the table. To the right is a light-skinned woman performing some activity on an altar or perhaps in a basin on the altar, and to the far right is perhaps another altar with a small plant with large sprouting fronds and small horns of consecration. The long sides are both very descriptive and seem to have a narrative, however the short sides, while beautifully detailed, show only a small snippet of what feels like a larger scene: both short sides show two light-skinned women in long dresses are wearing elaborate headdresses and sitting in a chariot, on one side the chariot is being pulled by a horse, but on the other, the chariot is being pulled by a griffin, clearly another instance of griffins relating to power in Minoan