Minoan astronomy

Abstract

Of the three great cultures of the ancient eastern Mediterranean — the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Minoan — we have considerable knowledge of the astronomy of the first two through their documents (see relevant sections of this Handbook). Very little written material, however, has survived from Minoan Crete, but the evidence of other impressive archaeological discoveries implies that the inhabitants were on a par with their neighbors and had made similar advances in astronomy. In lieu of written sources, we have used the methods of archaeoastronomy to recover as much as possible about Minoan astronomy. In short, these are measuring the orientations of walls and their opposite horizons at a representative selection of monuments, analyzing the measurements statistically, and comparing the results with digital reconstruction of the positions of significant celestial bodies for the time when the walls were built.