REPRESENTATIONS OF KNOSSOS AND MINOAN CRETEIN THE BRITISH, AMERICAN AND CONTINENTAL PRESS 1900 - c.1930

Abstract

The Arthur Evans archive in the Department of Antiquities of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford contains 11 volumes of newspaper and journal cuttings which cover the years from roughly 1900 to 1930. Many of them refer to Evans’ work at Knossos or to other aspects of the Minoan civilization. It seems probable that Evans himself amassed most of these cuttings, which number well over a thousand, and kept them in a largely unsystematised state. Despite the number and range of these cuttings, they cannot be regarded as comprehensive. Nevertheless, there is enough to give us a good idea of the press coverage that Evans and Knossos received in those thirty years, both in Britain and abroad. This paper aims to give some idea of the variety of press approaches and reactions, and a preliminary glimpse into how Evans’ strategy for presenting Knossos to as wide a public as possible actually worked in practice.