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Located in west-central Crete, the ancient city of Eleutherna attracted considerable scholarly interest at the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Drawing on largely unpublished archival information, this paper sheds light on the first archaeological explorations of the site, describing their aims, scope, vicissitudes, and results. Emphasis is given on the plans that the Italian School of Archaeology at Athens developed for Eleutherna and the excavations conducted there, first by the local ephor, E. Petrulakis, and then by the British School at Athens. The ‘discovery of Eleutherna’ is assessed with reference to the shifting scholarly agenda of Cretan archaeology in that period and its relation to major developments in the island's political history.Η Ελεύθερνα, μια αρχαία πόλη ευρισκόμενη στο κεντρικό προς δυτικό τμήμα της Κρήτης, προσήλκυσε το έντονο ενδιαφέρον των αρχαιολόγων κατά τα τέλη του 19ου και τον πρώιμο 20ο αιώνα. Αντλώντας πληροφορίες από αδημοσίευτο κυρίως, αρχειακό υλικό, η παρούσα μελέτη επιχειρεί μια ανασύνθεση των πρώτων αρχαιολογικών ερευνών στην αρχαία πόλη, εξετάζοντας τα κίνητρα και τους στόχους τους αλλά και τις δυσκολίες και τα αποτελέσματά τους. Έμφαση δίδεται στα σχέδια της Ιταλικής Αρχαιολογικής Σχολής Αθηνών για την Ελεύθερνα, αλλά και στις ανασκαφές που διενέργησαν στη θέση πρώτα ο τοπικός έφορος αρχαιοτήτων, Ε. Πετρουλάκις, και αργότερα η Βρετανική Σχολή Αθηνών. Η «ανακάλυψη ιης Ηλεύθερνας» εξετάζεται σε σχέση με τις μεταβαλλόμενες ερευνητικές προτεραιότητες της κρητικής αρχαιολογίας της περιόδου αλλά κοα σημαντικές αλλαγές σιην πολιτική ιστορία του νησιού.

Minos Kalokairinos is renowned for his discovery of the Minoan palace of Knossos. However, his pioneering investigations of the topography and monuments of Greek and Roman Knossos, as laid out especially in his Cretan Archaeological Journal, have largely been overlooked. In the Journal, Kalokairinos offers invaluable information on the changing archaeological landscape of Knossos in the second half of the nineteenth century. This enables the identification of several unknown or lost monuments, including major structures, inscriptions and sculptures, and allows the location of the context of discovery to be assigned to specific parts of the ancient city. Additionally, the Journal offers glimpses into the collection of Knossian antiquities and their export beyond the island. Antiquities from the site ended up in Athens, and as far afield as Egypt and western Europe, and have hitherto been considered as unprovenanced. They are here identified as Knossian and are traced to their specific context of discovery, with considerable implications for our understanding of the topography, the monuments and the epigraphic record of the ancient city.

Homeric archaeology long dominated the study of early Greece, but new approaches have recently revolutionized the field. Drawing from these approaches, I offer a regional and diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by the island's inhabitants throughout antiquity and an account of their impact on medieval to modern literature and art. I find that Cretan interest in Homer peaks in the Hellenistic period, but also argue for the much earlier familiarity of some Cretans with stories that underlie the Homeric epics. This argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th century BC, which includes a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the Homeric epics. In the epics, this equipment is carried by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose poetic persona can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age on philological and linguistic grounds. Based on this, and on current understandings of performance at death, I argue that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early stories that eventually filtered into the Homeric epics.

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