Chryssolakkos means the "pit of gold". This is where the ancient

necropolis A necropolis (plural necropolises, necropoles, necropoleis, necropoli) is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek ''nekropolis'', literally meaning "city of the dead". The term usually im ...

(royal burial enclosure or cemetery, 1700 BCE) in Malia, an ancient

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

town in

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

is located. As well as the famous

Malia Pendant The Malia Pendant is a gold pendant found in a tomb in 1930 at Chryssolakkos, Chrysolakkos, Malia, Crete, Malia, Crete. It dates to the Minoan civilization, 1800-1650 BC. The pendant was excavated by the French and first described by Pierre Demargn ...

, it is commonly thought that the so-called

Aegina Treasure The Aegina Treasure or Aigina Treasure is an important Minoan gold hoard said to have been found on the island of Aegina, Greece. Since 1892, it has been part of the British Museum's collection. It is one of the most important groups of Minoan j ...

Minoan jewellery Minoan art is the art produced by the Bronze Age Aegean Minoan civilization from about 3000 to 1100 BC, though the most extensive and finest survivals come from approximately 2300 to 1400 BC. It forms part of the wider grouping of Aegean art, ...

in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

was excavated here by local people in the 19th century. The

, on display at the

Heraklion Archaeological Museum The Heraklion Archaeological Museum is a museum located in Heraklion on Crete. It is one of the greatest museums in Greece and the best in the world for Minoan art, as it contains by far the most important and complete collection of artefacts o ...

, was found here and is of high quality goldsmithery of the Minoan times. The jewel takes the form of two insects, which are identical (mirror images) joined head-to-head with the tips of their abdomens almost touching in a symmetrical or heraldic arrangement. The insects’ wings spread backwards. From the lower edges of the wings and a point close to the tip of the abdomen dangle three discs. With their legs, the insects are "grasping" a centrally placed circular disc and there is a second, smaller, smooth globule placed above this and between the insects' heads as if they were eating it. ''

Megascolia maculata The mammoth wasp (''Megascolia maculata'') is a very large wasp (the largest in Europe), with the female reaching up to , whereas the male is smaller. The species can be seen in warm weather, from May to September. Description The mammoth wasp r ...

'', a

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

, was proposed as the model for the insects, and the fruits of a native Cretan herb '' Tordylium apulum'' as a model for the three discs that are suspended from the pendant, though most scholars are happy to regard them as bees, perhaps over a

honeycomb A honeycomb is a mass of Triangular prismatic honeycomb#Hexagonal prismatic honeycomb, hexagonal prismatic Beeswax, wax cells built by honey bees in their beehive, nests to contain their larvae and stores of honey and pollen. beekeeping, Beekee ...

.Hood, 194-195

References

*Castleden, Rodney, ''Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete'', 2002, Taylor & Francis,
google books
* Hood, Sinclair, ''The Arts in Prehistoric Greece'', 1978, Penguin (Penguin/Yale History of Art), Minoan sites in Crete {{Crete-geo-stub