This volume presents the salvage excavation of a Minoan settlement at Bramiana in southeastern Crete that was destroyed during the creation of a new system of agriculture in the 1980s. Excavation of the site provides new evidence for a Bronze Age economy based on trade, agriculture, and craftwork. This publication is a test case for a highly successful new system of organizing all the pottery based on its petrography, sorting it by materials and workshop practices. The results show the existence of an unsuspected large trade network operating across hundreds of kilometers for the routine distribution of cooking pots and other clay vessels and their contents. The Minoan settlement used the lustrous and silky smooth fine ceramics invented presumably in the still undiscovered palace near modern Ierapetra; this technology would be used for the fine Mycenaean tableware of the Late Bronze Age.

In 1962, after a period of secret looting, the location of a shrine for the Greek Goddess Eileithyia was discovered by the police in south-central Crete at the modern town of Tsoutsouros, ancient Inatos. The cave dedicated to this ancient goddess of childbirth and motherhood was excavated that year by Nikolaos Platon and Costis Davaras on behalf of the Archaeological Museum in Herakleion. It was filled with remarkable votive gifts including over 100 items of gold along with Egyptian figurines and seal stones, bronze objects, and hundreds of clay figurines. The dates of the shrine's use extended from before 2000 B.C. to the Roman Imperial period. Many of the clay images are especially appropriate for this deity because they include pregnant women, embracing couples, figures in preparation for childbirth, mothers holding babies, and a young child in its crib. A Greek language book highlighting the shrine and its major discoveries is now translated into English. It provides images, catalog entries, and explanatory texts for the most important discoveries from this unique shrine.

This volume provides a catalogue of the ancient Egyptian imports and Egyptianising artifacts found in 1962 during the excavation of a cave near Tsoutsouros (ancient Inatos), Crete, Greece. The cave was a sanctuary dedicated to the Minoan and Greek goddess Eileithyia, the little known goddess of childbirth and motherhood whose offerings depict pregnant women, women in labour, and couples embracing, among other motifs. The Aegyptiaca of the Minoan and Mycenaean eras on Crete signify the political and economic relations between the Aegean rulers and the Egyptian royal court. Several of the objects are Egyptian scarabs, which certainly represent official Egyptian-Cretan affairs, especially those dating from the reign of Amenophis III to the end of the eighteenth Dynasty. Many of the objects catalogued come from the 10th to 7th centuries BC, linked to veneration of the goddess of childbirth and motherhood. The volume is illustrated with colour photographs depicting statuettes, seals, and vessels found at the site.