Athena Review Image Archive ™
Earthquake damage at Anemospelia near Knossos, 17c BC
East room at Anemospelia, with fallen pithoi (photo I. and E. Sakellarakis).]
The Old Palace at Knossos would have grown during the Middle Bronze Age, perhaps covering much the same area as the later New Palace. Unlike the palace at Phaistos in the south, where a massive earthquake destroyed the Old Palace at the end of MMIIB, the Old Palace of Knossos may have suffered a milder shock and continued to function until Middle Minoan IIIA, around the beginning of the 17th century BC. Around this time, it was hit by a massive earthquake. This marked the architectural divide between the Old and New Palaces of Knossos. At this point the Palace of Minos was rebuilt with the layout essentially seen today.
The
earthquake is dramatically illustrated by the Houses of the Fallen
Blocks and Sacrificed Oxen outside the southern border of the Palace,
and by the tripartite bulding at Anemospelia a few km away on Mt.
Juktas, where large storage jars (pithoi) may even have fallen on the
line of the seismic shock.
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