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Bronze Age – Minoan Crete

ANC-MIN is worth about 25 marks out of 100 in recent HSC Ancient History papers. Practise 12 exam-style questions (multiple choice, short answer) with instant marking and a worked solution for every question.

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Topic notes

Bronze Age – Minoan Crete — geography and palace sites, the evidence and its problems, who ruled, social groups, the palace economy and trade, religion and burial, frescoes, pottery and scripts, with how to answer the Section II question.

  1. 1What you need to know
  2. 2The evidence and its problems
  3. 3Context and sites
  4. 4Social structure and political organisation
  5. 5The economy
  6. 6Religion, death and burial
  7. 7Cultural and everyday life
  8. 8Common mistakes
  9. 9Exam tips
  10. 10Links to other topics
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Example questions

Example 1 · 1 mark · multiple choice

Why can historians not read the records of the Minoan palaces before about 1450 BC?

  1. AAll Minoan writing was destroyed in the eruption of Thera
  2. BThe Minoans wrote only on papyrus, which has rotted away
  3. CThe texts are in Greek, which archaeologists cannot translate
  4. DTheir script, Linear A, is still undeciphered

Example 2 · 1 mark · multiple choice

Source A — Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.4, written in the late 5th century BC (adapted from the Greek)

‘Minos is the earliest of those known to us by tradition who possessed a navy. He became master of most of what is now the Greek sea, ruled the Cyclades and was the first to settle most of them, driving out the Carians and appointing his own sons as governors. And he cleared the sea of pirates as far as he could, so that his revenues might come in more readily.’

Why must historians use Source A with caution as evidence for Minoan Crete?

  1. AArchaeology has shown that the Minoans had no ships
  2. BIt reports a tradition written down over a thousand years later
  3. CThe source describes Mycenae, not Crete
  4. DThucydides was a Minoan writer who exaggerated his own king's power

Example 3 · 1 mark · multiple choice

Why do many archaeologists question Arthur Evans' reconstruction of the ‘Priest-King’ (or ‘Prince of the Lilies’) relief fresco at Knossos?

  1. ARadiocarbon dating shows the fresco is Roman
  2. BIts fragments may come from more than one figure
  3. CIt shows a Mycenaean warrior with Greek writing on it
  4. DThe fresco was painted by Evans' team as a complete copy

Answers and worked solutions appear when you practise these questions.

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