| According to a widely disseminated folk legend, Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who played a decisive role in the conviction of Christ, died and was buried on Crete. The first information to this effect appears in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. The existence of Caiaphas’ tomb at Knossos is attested by Cristoforo Buondelmonti, the Florentine archbishop who travelled to Crete in 1415-16, and by Richard Pococke and Robert Pashley, English travellers who visited the island in 1739 and 1834 respectively. Traces of the tomb were obliterated in 1882, when work on the Heraklion-Archanes road began. The village of Caiaphas, which is attested in Greek, Venetian and Ottoman sources dating from the 13th to the 17th century, also lay in the same area. |