Sub-Minoan

Duncan Forbes

The most beautiful
piece in the Archaeological
Museum is not
the bull’s head
libation cup
in black steatite
nor the ivory acrobat,
the snake goddess,
octopus ceramics,
nor gold bee pendant,
though they are miracles
of creation, craftsmanship,
loss and retrieval,
but the young attendant
in Gallery XII,
poised on her chair
between pithoi
and sarcophagi.

The Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete is one of the greatest in Greece. It contains the greatest collection in the world of relics from the magnificent Minoan civilization which flourished on Crete from around 2500 to 1500 BC.

Gallery XII contained exhibits up to 650 BC. Unfortunately the museum has been closed for renovation since 2006. Much of the collection is currently on view in a temporary exhibition.

Duncan Forbes's revelling in the fleeting human beauty of the attendant rather than the cold, enduring attraction of precious relics, apears to be the polar opposite of Yeats's worship of the permanent, as in..

The Selected Poems of Duncan Forbes are available on Amazon:

Main Location:

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Xanthoudidou Street 1, Iraklio 712 02, Greece

Other locations:

Gallery XII, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete

Head of a Minoan Bull in the Heraklion Museum, Crete