Praissos (Πραῖσος) / Praisos / Pressos / Praesos / Prasus

 Yes indeed, this is the town of a 1000 names.  Even Wikipedia lists three. However, the official Greek tourism sign says it is "Ancient Praissos", so that's what we'll use:

Ancient Praissos's only street sign

We came here after visiting the Minoan palace of Zakros, which was an incredible (if distant) site - 3 hour drive from Heraklion, but well worth it.  Praissos was an entire town and only 60 minutes (but 32km) distant according to those lying-sons-of-sheep at Waze, so we figured this was a can't miss. Turns out the story is a bit more complex, starting with the word 'turns'.  As this map shows, Zakros to Praissos is a reasonably straight shot, by the standards of Crete/Greece:

The Zakros to Praissos commute

But let's zoom in someplace.  Fairly randomly, we'll take the last few km.  Here's what Google maps shows:

Switchbacks from hell

Don't be fooled by the clear blue lines on the Google map.  These roads may or may not be paved, are almost certainly about 1.5 car widths wide, and frequently the switchbacks and curves have no guardrails.  Fortunately, the last time Praissos had a serious problem with traffic jams the relevant vehicle was the passenger donkey (seats 2!).  So you're not likely to run into anyone - which is good because passing someone in a situation like this is a true terror. 

In any event, we made it to Praissos and then discovered that the site is basically completely overgrown. It was a huge town, but only the very top of the hill has been cleared away even slightly; there were signs of other structures lower on the hill but nothing easily visible (and certainly not accessible).  On the plus side, it's open 24/7 and there's no entrance fee...

What we only discovered later was that there had been lots of cool stuff at Praissos - it really was a huge city that controlled a lot of land - but it's all been carted off to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.  Here's a tablet found there carved using Eteocretan - a untranslated language written using Greek but isn't Greek.  Pretty cool, huh?

From the label: "Two inscriptions written using the Greek Ionic alphabet in an unknown language, the so-called Eteocretan. They exemplify a singular category of inscriptions, dating from the 6th to the 2nd century BC... The "Eteocretan" inscriptions are possibly transliterating the ancient language of the Minoans. (Praisos, 4th cent BC)"