Throne Room Research Articles

In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods by Galen Rowell

In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods by Galen Rowell

The Date of the Last Palace at Knossos

The article aims to establish within approximate limits the date of the last rebuilding of the Minoan palace at Knossos; it is in the form of a rebuttal to the argument of Leonard Palmer's The Penultimate Palace of Knossos. Certain limited areas of the palace (the Throne Room system, the West Magazines and adjacent structures, and the Residential Area) are selected for investigation and a date for each area is arrived at separately after detailed consideration of the evidence from stratigraphical tests. The chief sources of information are the original excavation notebooks of Evans and Mackenzie, and Pendlebury's publication of the stratigraphical museum. In each instance the results indicate no thorough rebuilding later than the LM I period. The conclusion, therefore, is that Palmer is wrong in asserting that the palace was entirely rebuilt within the LM III period.

From Bell Stand to Throne Room: A Remarkable Autobiographical Interview with the Eminently Successful American Negro Composer

From Bell Stand to Throne Room: A Remarkable Autobiographical Interview with the Eminently Successful American Negro Composer

The Red Peasant International in America

THE Third or Communist International was born in 1919, and it bore numerous progeny in turn. The 1920s were the heyday of worldwide organizations with headquarters in Moscow. Leaders of the Red Trade Union International rubbed shoulders with those of the Red Youth International, the International of Communist Women, the International Red Relief, and various other organizations.' For a period of time one of the more promising of all these in the eyes of some Soviet leaders was the Red Peasant International, often known by the contraction of its Russian title as the Krestintern or, in the United States-bowing to rural sensibilities-as the Farmers International. Probably very few North Dakotans remember that their capital city, Bismarck, was the home of the American section of the organization from 1926 until 1930. The founding congress of the Red Peasant International had met in the great throne room of the czars from October 10 to 15, 1923, with 158 delegates representing over forty nationalities.2 The date of the conference was significant for a number of reasons. The Soviet government was in the midst of its New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in 1921, making widespread concessions to the Russian peasantry in return for their support. Postwar revolutions had failed in Hungary and Germany, and the French had thwarted a Red Army march on Warsaw. As a result, Russian leaders talked more and more of a period of stabilization in the capitalist world during which Communist parties would be forced to operate within that framework in order to recruit, educate, and discipline new members.3 Lowell K. Dyson is a assistant professor of history in Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Some Unpublished Knossos Sealings and Sealstones

While engaged in the study of pottery in the apothekai of the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos in 1962, M. R. Popham discovered two boxes containing eighty-one fragments of clay sealings and five worn and damaged sealstones.The sealstones and sixty-seven of the sealings, those bearing distinguishable impressions, are published in this catalogue. The other fourteen fragments have been omitted; and of those published no photographs are provided here because the material will, it is hoped, appear fully in the volumes of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel devoted to the Herakleion Museum collection. The present catalogue is intended as an interim publication and, in particular, as a subscript to M. A. V. Gill's account of the Knossos sealings and their provenience.Of the two boxes in which this material was rediscovered the first came from an apotheke which housed pottery from the Domestic Quarter of the Palace. It contained the sealstones and forty-two of the sealing fragments (nos. I to V and 1 to 42 below). The second containing twenty-five of the sealing fragments (nos. 43 to 67 below) came from an apotheke just north of the Throne Room with pottery originating from the West Quarter of the Palace. Unfortunately the pottery in the apothekai is not an infallible guide to the original provenience of these sealstones and sealings. A few of the latter are duplicated by sealings in the Herakleion Museum of known provenience at Knossos or may be identified as from a particular deposit because a sketch of them appears in Evans's notebooks and/or because they are listed in The Palace of Minos. In fact the evidence tends to suggest that these sealings came from widely scattered proveniences both inside and outside the Palace (cf. BSA lx (1965) 60, and in particular comments on 1, 12, 17, 20, 28, 33, 51, and 52 below).

Two Palatial Stone Vases from Knossos

At the invitation of Dr. St. Alexiou, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete and Director of Herakleion Museum, two magnificent large stone vases from the original Knossos excavations are published here. The vases (A. Her. Mus. 21; B. Her. Mus. 23) were found in 1900 in the passage adjoining the ‘Room of the Stone Vases’ on the south, and were reported by Evans. They are the vases of which more details about the find-spot have been given by John Boardman. The fact that vases were found in this passage, well above the floor level (Boardman op. cit.), confirms Evans's view that the whole series had fallen from the upper floor, the majority into the basement room north of the passage.Each of these vases is unique but they may be taken as part of a series of large stone vessels in use in the Palace at the time of its destruction. This series includes the giant amphora and the smaller one from the Sculptor's Workshop, the dark maroon limestone basin from the passage north of the Throne Room, and two other large basins from the North-west Insula, a fine reddish limestone amphora, the Throne Room alabastra and various large vessels from the Central Treasury deposit. The two lids have L.M. IB parallels whilst that of the reddish limestone amphora is similar.

Are There Any Remains of the Fātimid Palaces of Cairo?

Yes, I think there are still remains of these Palaces, as I shall now proceed to show. These great palaces were an extraordinary conglomeration of buildings, including everything necessary to the life of a great Oriental court, mosques, and a burial ground. They were of a shoddy brick construction and were plastered and whitewashed. There are fascinating descriptions of them in such books as MaqrizI1 and Nassiri Khusrau.2 The latter has a description by the Crusaders of how they were received by the Khalif. The Palaces contained great basins of water presumably as protection in case of fire and partly also for pleasure, and ramps by which the Khalifs ascended to the upper floors without dismounting from their mules. They contained very great riches and we have wonderful accounts of the throne room, of the silk hangings, of the golden trees with jewelled birds and of the beautiful vessels of crystal, flower vases, cups etc., and the fine metal work. These palaces were vast congeries of people and at the time of the fall of the Fatimids in 1171 the Khalif was living in complete seclusion amongst his women. He was so removed from the outside world that he did not even know of his deposition. He had 152 relatives in the palace, mostly women, but about a score of males and they were then all completely secluded so that the dynasty might die out. At one time the inhabitants of the palace were estimated at no less than eighteen to thirty thousand souls. He was surrounded by eunuchs and slaves and guards. The Fatimid burial grou d was within the palace precincts, and the bodies were removed in baskets on the backs of

A Review of the Throne Room at Cnossos

A Review of the Throne Room at Cnossos

The King on Education in India

DURING his visit to Calcutta the King-Emperor and Queen-Empress received in the Throne Room an address from the University of Calcutta. The address was read by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Sir Asutosh Mukharji, and Lord Hardinge, the Governor-General, was present in his capacity of Chancellor of the University. In his reply to the address the King-Emperor said:—

Book Review: I. Homiletical: An Efficient Church

Book Review: I. Homiletical: An Efficient Church

The Palace of Knossos

The work of excavation on the Palace site at Knossos was re-opened on February 27, 1901, and continued till June 17. Various supplementary operations connected with the shoring up and underpinning of the walls of large halls brought to light on the south-east of the site, the completion of the roofing-in of the Throne Room, and similar works of conservation entailed the continued employment of a large number of workmen till the beginning of July. Throughout the excavations I again secured the valuable services of Dr. Duncan Mackenzie as my assistant in directing the works, and of Mr. D. T. Fyfe, formerly architect of the British School, in preparing architectural plans and drawings.