Crete 12: Gortyn

 

 

The area of Gortyn has been inhabited for 7,000 years. Homer (800 B.C.E) refers to it as a large fortified city. It is famous for three things:

1. Gortyn is supposedly the place where Zeus, disguised as a bull, brought Europa and impregnated her with three kings of Cretan cities.

 

2. In the many conflicts that Crete was involved in before the Common Era, Gortyn had a record of always  allying with the sides that eventually won. A good thing if you can do it.

Mill

3. See the tall building?  That is an old mill and in 1884 archaeologists poking around in it found reused stones carved with ancient texts.  Eventually they dug up  a building nearby called the Odeon, built by the Emperor Trajan around 100 C.E.  One wall of the Odeon contains the rest of the text, which was older than the Odeon.  It is in fact the oldest and best preserved law code from ancient Greece.  It seems to cover only civil law, which is to say offenses that can be dealt with by fines rather than imprisonment or physical punishments.  Disturbingly, that includes rape.

The Odeon.

One panel of the law code.  Notice that the letters go left to right in one row and right to left in the next.  This is known as boustrophedon, or writing as the ox plows.  Scientists say it is slightly more efficient for reading than our usual way.

Next stop: Eleutherna