Crete

An island of southeast Greece in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its Minoan civilization, centered at the city of Knossos on the northern coast, was one of the earliest in the world and reached the height of its wealth and power c. 1600 B.C. Crete subsequently fell to the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians, and Ottoman Turks. The islanders proclaimed their union with modern Greece in 1908.

A section of the southern Aegean Sea between Crete and the Cyclades Islands.