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Knossos in Crete is one of the most frequented archaeological sites in the world. Visitors to the prehistoric Palace of Knossos are greeted by a bronze bust of the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans who excavated, restored and interpreted the monument in the early 20th century, thus leaving us with an everlasting legacy on the archaeology of Crete and the Aegean. A few months ago, a second bust was erected near the first one and it shows the little-known Cretan businessman and antiquarian Minos Kalokairinos (1843-1907). Kalokairinos was the first to excavate Knossos more than two decades before Evans, and the first to discover its palace in a brief and poorly documented campaign in 1878. Although his work attracted international attention at the time, it was quickly overshadowed by the much more extensive and well-documented research of Evans and it remained entirely overlooked for nearly a century. However, recent scholarship increasingly appreciates the pioneering investigations of the Cretan antiquarian.