Crete – the ‘big island’: 9,000+ Years of History

Crete is a remarkable island! 260km west to east, 60km north to south at its broadest point and only 12km at its narrowest, it is the largest Greek island and is often called simply ‘the big island’, το μεγάλο νησί. It can also boast over 9,000 years of human history, to which various adjectives have been attached: Minoan, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Venetian, Ottoman. Part of the Greek state only since 1913, it was home to the earliest attested written form of the Greek language, in the Linear B script, one of at least five writing systems used on the island to record an even larger number of languages.

In this illustrated talk, Professor John Bennet (Sidney Sussex 1976) will attempt to bring some order to this dizzying complexity and offer an outline ‘history’ of the island.