Gnosis Project was on the ground at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion (AMH) on Crete!
This museum is one of the largest in Greece and the best in the world for Minoan art, as it holds the most important and complete collection of artifacts from key sites that include the nearby palace complex at Knossos.
AMH was founded in 1883 as a simple collection of antiquities during the era when Minoan civilization was starting to be rediscovered and shortly before proper scientific methods were applied to excavating its sites. Crete was a nearly autonomous part of the Ottoman Empire during this critical period of discovery, and soon after became an independent Cretan State (1898-1913), factors which helped ensure that local finds remained on the island.
A dedicated building for the collection was completed in 1912, but was nearly destroyed by powerful earthquakes between 1926 and 1935. This prompted museum director Spyridon Marinatos to obtain funding and support for the current reinforced structure, which has successfully protected the collection from both natural disasters and bombing during the German invasion of Crete in 1941. After being closed to the public during World War II and in the years following it, AMH reopened in 1952, and was expanded in 1964.
* Many travel guides recommend visiting this museum ahead of local Minoan sites like Knossos, Malia, Hagia Triada, Zakros, and Phaistos to see key finds retrieved from them. Before visiting those locations, however, is not necessarily obvious which artifacts associated with them are the most important, so we suggest visiting the museum afterwards so that you will know what to look for.
* Regardless of when you visit the museum, important items from Minoan sites you should make a point of seeing include the Bees of Malia (Room III), Phaistos Disc (Room IV), Bull Dancing Fresco and Bull Leaper ivory figurine (Room VI), Harvester Vase (Room VII), Bull’s Head Rhyton and Snake Goddesses (Room VIII), and Hagia Triada Sarcophagus (Room XII).
* If you are going to visit post-Minoan and Roman sites on Crete (e.g., Gortyn), be sure to also visit the galleries devoted to sculptures retrieved from them (Rooms XXVI and XXVII).
* Exhibit placards throughout the museum are detailed, well-written, and in two languages, Greek and English. Translations into the latter language are very good but not perfect and fall just short of full fluency and are probably about 95-99% accurate overall.
* Our team also caught minor inaccuracies in the descriptions of a few artifacts. In the placard for a Roman marble sarcophagus from the 3rd century A.D. (Room XXVI), for example, two carved faces are incorrectly identified as being that of “Medusa” (a figure not generally associated with funerary art). These relief images, however, actually clearly depict Hermes Psychopompos, a figure charged with escorting souls to the underworld that is associated specifically with artifacts of this sort.
This fresco depicting a bull-leaping scene is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete.
One of the two Minoan snake goddess figurines excavated in 1903 in the Minoan palace at Knossos in the Greek island of Crete,
This circular piece of fired clay, known as the Phaistos Disk, probably dates to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age of the second millennium B.C., and is inscribed with text in an unknown script and language. It is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion and, while it was discovered near the town of Phaistos on Crete, its purpose and original place of manufacture remain disputed.
Some miniature Minoan pottery.
"The Bees of Malia" is a gold pendant found in a Minoan tomb in 1930 at Chrysolakkos, Malia, on the northeastern shore of Crete. It dates to c. 1800-1650 B.C. and is currently on display at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.
One side of the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus, a 54-inch-long late Minoan limestone sarcophagus dated to around 1400 B.C. or later. It was excavated from a chamber tomb at Hagia Triada, Crete, in 1903 and is now on display at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.