Petras ( el, Πετράς) is the archaeological site of 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 on northeastern

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, ...

Geography

Petras is just east of the modern Cretan town,

Siteia Sitia ( el, Σητεία) is a port town and a municipality in Lasithi, Crete, Greece. The town has 9,912 inhabitants (2011) and the municipality has 18,318 (2011). It lies east of Agios Nikolaos and northeast of Ierapetra. Sitia port is on the ...

. The site is situated on top of a small plateau and overlooks the sea north of Crete.

Archaeology

Metaxia Tsipopoulou began excavations at Petras in 1985. The main building, which was two stories when it stood, is 2800 square meters. Petras has a drainage system, double staircases, dadoes, frescoes and cut slab pavements. Marks appear on the architecture of double axes, stars, branches, double triangles and

Linear A Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civi ...

signs. Petras has yielded 3

tablets from its archives, plus a few other short Linear A texts.Metaxia Tsipopoulou
The Minoan Palace at Petras, Siteia.
Athena Review, Vol.3, no.3. 2003

Hieroglyphic archive

A hieroglyphic archive inscribed in

Cretan hieroglyphs Cretan hieroglyphs are a hieroglyphic writing system used in early Bronze Age Crete, during the Minoan era. They predate Linear A by about a century, but the two writing systems continued to be used in parallel for most of their history. , the ...

was excavated starting in 1995. According to the excavator, Metaxia Tsipopoulou, the archive was still in use at the time of palace destruction. Definitive edition was published in 2010. The central building shares many of the features that are used to identify a

palace apart from a regular building: pier and door partitions, alternating columns and pillars, and ashlar masonry. Additions and building modifications were occurring as late as Late Minoan IB.

References

* Swindale, Ian http://www.minoancrete.com/petras.htm Retrieved 4 February 2006

Bibliography

*Metaxia Tsipopoulou & Erik Hallager, ''The Hieroglyphic Archive at Petras, Siteia'' (with contributions by Cesare D’Annibale & Dimitra Mylona). Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, volume 9. The Danish Institute at Athens. Athens, 2010 (final publication
Download PDF File 59.56 MBExternal bibliography at 'Petras Excavations'

External links

* http://www.minoancrete.com/petras.htm Lasithi Minoan sites in Crete Populated places in ancient Crete Former populated places in Greece {{AncientCrete-geo-stub