Minos and Daidalos in Sicily

Abstract

My subject in this paper is the familiar one of the impact of civilised on uncivilised in the widest extension of Minoan and Mycenaean civilisation. In dealing with the earliest relations between the Aegean and Italy, I do not propose to discuss the parallels which have been drawn between the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age pottery of the two sides of the Adriatic. The unquestioned likenesses may be due to sharing a common heritage, and do not prove direct contact between the two areas.Probably as early as the Middle Minoan I period, at the end of the third millennium, Minoan navigators occasionally reached Sicily. The earliest Cretan objects in the West are sporadic, and may have passed from hand to hand. But from the close of the Early Minoan period liparite is found regularly in Crete, and it is natural to suppose that the Cretans, went to the Lipari Islands to get it. It is suggested also that tin, which from the same period was increasingly used in alloying copper, was brought from the Western Mediterranean. On the other side, there are many Sicilian II swords and daggers which imitate L.M.I. types. Most of these cannot be so old as their prototypes. Though there are no weapons in Sicily which are certainly Minoan, it is clear that Minoan swords must have been imported, and served as models for a Siculan type which had a long currency.