Minoan culture

Sarcophagi in the museum.

The pyramids at Giza are only a few hundred years older than Knossos, and the Minoans are sometimes described as the first civilization in Europe. But we don't actually know very much about them. They used two forms of writing, a kind of hieroglyphics and later, Linear A, that we can't read. We don't even know what they called themselves. Referring to them as the Minoans—derived from the myth of King Minos—was popularized by Arthur Evans.