There were many contacts between Crete and the rest of the Levant during this period. Scarabs and stone vessels from Egypt reached Crete and were imitated there. Cretan Kamáres ware was exported to Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt, where it has been found in tombs and on town sites. Letters recovered from the ruins of the city of Mari on the Euphrates, destroyed by Hammurabi about 1760, refer to objects of Cretan workmanship. It seems that Cretan metalworkers were already preeminent in the civilized world of the time. The daggers they made were of types ultimately derived from Syria, but they were exported to Cyprus in exchange, perhaps, for copper, although supplies existed in Crete. Westward, they may have reached Italy, where native copper daggers are of Cretan shapes and flint imitations of them seem to have been made. It was during this period that tin-bronze began to come into more general use in the Aegean, replacing copper or bronze made by adding arsenic, a process which was effective but dangerous for the craftsman who undertook it. Tin may have reached the Aegean first from Iran through Syria, although Etruria on the western coast of Italy was another possible source.
Burial in Crete was still normally in communal tombs, and many of the Early Bronze Age ones continued in use, but cemeteries of burials in storage jars are also in evidence at this time. No royal tombs of this period have been identified, however, and kings and queens may have been laid to rest, like their subjects, in the tombs of their clans or possibly even buried ceremonially at sea. A large rectangular building with many rooms or compartments in the cemetery area just outside the city at Mallia might have been the tomb of the royal clan there. The local inhabitants plundered it during the 19th century, and its modern name—Chrysolakkos (“Gold Hole”)—suggests what they found. A gold cup and jewelry, including elaborate earrings and pendants, acquired by the British Museum in 1892 and allegedly from a Mycenaean tomb on the island of Aegina near Athens have been thought to be plunder from Chrysolakkos, although recent excavations on Aegina have indicated a wealthy and warlike community that could equally have produced these jewels. They are marked by an unusual style: one earring has a two-headed snake surrounding a pair of leashed hounds over squatting monkeys, with owls and discs hanging on soldered chains. The collection may have been made during the 17th century, after the destruction of the older palaces. French excavations there in the 1920s led to the recovery of similar jewelry, notably a gold dress-pin with flower head and a pendant in the form of a pair of bees (or wasps) facing each other over a disc, which may be meant for a honey cake. This pendant shows that the Cretan jewelers were masters of the art of hard soldering and could use it to fix wire (filigree) or minute globules of gold (granulation) to a background.
Life in the Cyclades seems to have continued much as it had in the Early Bronze Age. Yet, apart from signs scratched or painted on pottery from Phylakopi in Melos, there is little evidence of acquaintance with writing or the use of seals. Some time after the beginning of the period of the Early Palaces in Crete, Phylakopi was defended by a massive wall. Cretan Kamáres ware was exported to the islands of Melos, Ceos, and Aegina and to Lerna and a few other coastal sites on the mainland, and mainland Minyan ware found its way to the islands and to Crete. The trade may partly reflect the trade in Melian obsidian, which may still have been in demand for cheap knives and razors, although metal ones were already in use in the Aegean area from the Early Bronze Age onward. Chamber tombs cut in the rock at Phylakopi appear to go back to this period, but burial in slab-lined cists continued elsewhere in the islands. At some point the fortified settlement at Khalandrianí on Syrus was destroyed by fire and abandoned, but Aegina, Ceos, and other fortified island towns flourished. Period of the Late Palaces in Crete (c. 1700–1450)
Various disasters occurred in Crete about the turn of the 18th and 17th centuries bc. The palaces at Knossos and Mallia were damaged, while that at Phaistos and a building that may have been the residence of a local ruler in a large settlement at Monastiráki west of Mount Ida were destroyed by fire. The palace at Phaistos had been so violently burned that an enormous layer of almost impenetrable vitrified mud brick formed an underpinning for the new palace built on top of it; it is a vivid testimony to massive destruction. What caused these destructions is uncertain. Accident, internal warfare, or foreign invasion are among possible agents. The damage at Knossos might have been caused by one of the many earthquakes that afflict the area. It has been suggested that Crete was first conquered by Greeks during this period or by people from Anatolia speaking another Indo-European language called Luwian and related to Hittite. There is, however, no strong evidence for an invasion of Crete at this time.
The two or three centuries following these disasters were indeed the most flourishing of the Aegean Bronze Age, during which Cretan civilization reached its zenith. The palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, and Mallia were restored with greater splendour than before.
From the dimensions of the new and entirely rebuilt palace at Phaistos, it has been possible to calculate the unit of length used by the Cretan architects: a foot only a fraction shorter than the standard English foot. In plan, the later palaces were basically the same as the earlier ones, with agglomerations of rooms clustering around long, rectangular central courts oriented roughly from north to south either for ritual or for catching the best of the winter sun. Many parts of these palaces were two or three stories high. A section on the eastern side of that at Knossos, built into a cutting in a steep slope below the level of the central court and housing the royal living quarters, may have had five stories. Large areas of the palaces, especially at Knossos, were possibly reserved for cult. It is difficult to explain otherwise the beautiful ceremonial steps at Phaistos leading up to a blank wall; although there is no entrance, a personage could make a sudden appearance from the side and speak or show something to an assembly in the open space in front. The palaces often had a conjunction of grand facades and storage quarters, perhaps for the first fruits of the harvest to be blessed in passing.
Wide, paved squares flanked the palaces, and around them spread extensive towns, which by this time if not earlier seem to have been unwalled. Unfortunately, a complete town around a palace has never yet been excavated, and the comparative wealth or population is not known. Cobbled streets with raised central paths of smooth squared blocks for the convenience of pedestrians ran through the towns. Surface water was carried away by covered drains, and skillfully jointed clay water pipes were found in the palace at Knossos.
The only settlement of this period that has been entirely excavated is a small town at Gourniá in eastern Crete. This was built on the slopes of a ridge overlooking the sea, on top of which stood a little “palace” with a small open court in the centre and a public square beside it on the sheltered landward side. Down the ridge from the palace toward the sea was a small shrine facing the end of a path that led to it from the main street. Even in a small town such as that at Gourniá, many of the houses were evidently two stories high, and houses with three stories are depicted on faience inlays from the palace at Knossos assignable to the 17th century bc.
Palaikastro in eastern Crete is another important town with blocks of houses marked by coloured stone foundations, narrow streets with drains, and pottery of exceptional quality. Another town of great potential interest is Arkhanes near Knossos, where palace facades, early tholos tombs and later shaft-grave burials, and shrines have been discovered scattered through the countryside. Pyrgos, a controlling villa, and Kommos, a commercial town with fine architecture, roads, and ship sheds, also are indicative of power and wealth; the road and watchtower system is beginning to be better known.