Several
shrines and altars provided for the religious needs of the community.
Rooms of state were set apart for public audiences and for council
meetings. In fact, the building was not only a King's dwelling-place,
but the administrative centre of a whole empire, and within its
walls there was room for the offices of the various departments
and for the housing of their records.
The domestic quarter of the palace still reveals in some of its
rooms the environment of luxury and beauty in which the Minoan
royalties lived. The Queen's Megaron may be taken as typical. A
row of pillars rising from a low, continuous base divides the room
into two parts. The upper surface of the base on either side of
the pillars is of stucco moulded so as to form a long couch, which
was doubtless covered with cushions when the room was in use. Light
was furnished in the day-time, according to Cretan Palace practice,
not by windows, but by light-wells, of which there are two, one on
the south and one on the east side. In one of these light-shafts
the brilliant white stucco surface which reflected the light into
the room is decorated with a modelled and painted relief, of which
a fragment has survived, representing a bird of gorgeous plumage,
with long curving wing, and feathers of red, blue, yellow, white,
and black.
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