Prof John Bennet, "Never the twain shall meet: reflections on text and image in Minoan Crete"

The world of Neopalatial Crete was visually rich; it was also a literate world. Yet these two categories, as we define them, never combine in the same field. In this talk, I explore this apparent anomaly and suggest how we might explain it. Any interpretation needs to take account of the specific historical context and so might challenge our modern conceptions of the role of writing and its relation to visual imagery.