Minoan pithoi located in the storerooms of the Palace of Knossos in Crete, Greece. The Minoan civilization, which flourished from about 2000 to 1400 BCE, relied on these large containers as an essential part of their palace economy for managing and distributing goods.
These pithoi are often as tall as a person and were typically made of clay using a coil or slab technique. Many were decorated with intricate patterns, such as the rope-like designs seen on the jar in the center, which were pressed into the wet clay. The storage rooms at Knossos once housed hundreds of these jars, with a total capacity of approximately 80,000 liters.
