minoan religion academia

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Michele Dale 1 SYNOPSIS What light do artistic representations and symbols throw on Minoan religious beliefs and practices? As the Minoan writing script has yet to be deciphered, it falls to Minoan art and artefacts to tell the story that is Minoan religion. Largely concentrating on the artistic creations of the Palatial period and avoiding non-Cretan or works that can be dated to the early Mycenaean period, the paper will discuss several well known Minoan artistic creations. The ‘horns of consecration’—despite continued debate as to their origins and meaning—appear to be sacral place markers associated with sacrifice, and the double axe has a votive, goddess, warrior connection. The work and influence of Sir Arthur Evans and his artificially constructed Great Minoan Goddess and penchant for highly speculative restorations is considered in detail. Finally, the Isopata ring and bull leaping fresco are analysed to reveal the nature-centered, sensory world of Minoan religious thought that celebrates a lack of monumentality and boastfulness, and is equally reticent about the exact form of their divinities.

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  • Michele Dale 1

    SYNOPSIS

    What light do artistic representations and symbols throw on Minoan religious beliefs and practices?

    As the Minoan writing script has yet to be deciphered, it falls to Minoan art

    and artefacts to tell the story that is Minoan religion. Largely concentrating on

    the artistic creations of the Palatial period and avoiding non-Cretan or works

    that can be dated to the early Mycenaean period, the paper will discuss several

    well known Minoan artistic creations. The horns of consecrationdespite

    continued debate as to their origins and meaningappear to be sacral place

    markers associated with sacrifice, and the double axe has a votive, goddess,

    warrior connection. The work and influence of Sir Arthur Evans and his

    artificially constructed Great Minoan Goddess and penchant for highly

    speculative restorations is considered in detail. Finally, the Isopata ring and

    bull leaping fresco are analysed to reveal the nature-centered, sensory world of

    Minoan religious thought that celebrates a lack of monumentality and

    boastfulness, and is equally reticent about the exact form of their divinities.

  • Michele Dale 2

    What light do artistic representations and symbols throw on Minoan

    religious beliefs and practices?

    One of the fundamental aims of art history has been described as making the

    visible legible1; Minoan art and artefacts are the sole story tellers for the mute

    and enigmatic religious world of these early inhabitants of Crete. Their world

    is mute to us as to date their writing scriptLinear Ahas yet to be

    deciphered, and enigmatic largely as a consequence of such silence. It falls to

    their artistic creations to be the words that form the story; that make it legible.

    Yet this renders the Minoan religious realm multivalent; due caution must be

    exercised when attempting to interpret the light, as any light also creates shade

    and this needs to be kept in mind. However it is possible to make some broad

    statements about the main characteristics of Minoan religion as indicated by

    their artwork, although in all likelihood it changed diachronically and was

    subject to regional variation: the natural environment was central; monumental

    temples are absent; women appear to have played a significant role; symbols

    such as the double axe (labrys) and horns of consecration are consistently

    represented, as are bulls and bucrania. Finally, Minoan anthropomorphic

    divinities are elusive, to the extent where if you assume that religion is

    primarily about gods, then you are forced to go looking for them.2

    A modern day tourist to Crete can take a tour of the Knossos palace, where an

    expert local guide will speak of legends and folklore such as the tale of

    Theseus and the Minotaur as Greek mythology was ingrained in Minoan

    culture.3 This is the legacy of Sir Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist who

    excavated the site from 1900.4 Evanss four volume work The Palace of

    1 Donald Preziosi, Art History: Making the Visible Legible, The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi, New York, 2009, p. 7. 2 Alan Peatfield, Divinity and Performance on Minoan Peak Sanctuaries, Potnia. Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, eds. R. Laffineur & R. Hgg, Lige & Austin, 2001, p. 54. 3 Ancient Palace of Knossos Tour, from: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/greece/crete/knossos/activities/sightseeing-tours/ancient-palace-knossos-tour/item-v-2462KNOM-id?ctv=control, accessed 27 November 2014. 4 Sir Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustrated by the discoveries at Knossos, 4 vols, London, 1921-1935, I, p. v.

  • Michele Dale 3

    Minos is an essential starting point for any scholarly study on Minoan

    civilisation, however his conclusions have been described as evidently

    deriving partly from wish-fulfilling use of the imagination5, and that he

    succeeded brilliantly in conjuring up both a physical and imaginative world of

    the lost civilization that dominates our vision of the Minoans even today.6

    Critical scrutiny must be applied to any interpretive analysis on the nature of

    Minoan religion; their frescoes, statuettes, seals, symbols such as the horns of

    consecration and the double axe, will be examined. However the material

    presents several large difficulties: frescoes and reliefs survive in a highly

    fragmented state and much reconstruction work has been speculative, even

    unsound.7 Secondly, some of the artefacts acquired and used by Evans and

    later scholars to interpret Minoan religious beliefs are unable to be verified

    with a solid provenance.8 Finally, there remains what will probably be an

    unsolvable dilemma in determining the exact relationship between Minoan and

    Mycenaean works of art. As such, the magnificent frescoes that have been

    preserved from the town of Akrotiri on Thera, and the famous Agia Triada

    sarcophagus will not be referenced. The island of Thera is not Crete; and the

    Agia Triada sarcophaguswhich is a Cretan artefactis dated to the earliest

    time of Mycenaean presence and expresses that new ideology.9

    The artistic representations and symbols produced by the Bronze Age Minoan

    civilisation on Crete can be broadly divided into three periods: Prepalatial,

    Palatial and Postpalatial. These groupings straddle the widely used Three

    Age-based stratigraphy-typology sequence developed by Thomsen which has

    since become standard in most European and near Eastern prehistory.10 Sir

    Arthur Evans adopted this method, dividing Minoan civilisation into Early,

    Middle, and Late, each with three periods of their own, and aligned this to

    5 Oliver Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age, New York, 1994, p. 3. 6 John L. Bintliff, Structuralism and myth in Minoan studies, Antiquity, Vol. LVIII, 1984, p. 35. 7 H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East, London, 1951, p. 189. 8 Ibid. More detailed analysis and references will be provided below. 9 Brendan Burke, Materialization of Mycenaean Ideology and the Ayia Triada Sarcophagus, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 109, No. 3, 2005, p. 403. 10 Sturt W. Manning, Chronology and Terminology, The Oxford Handbook of The Bronze Age Aegean, ed. Eric H. Cline, New York, 2010, p. 11.

  • Michele Dale 4

    the system and chronology used by Egyptologists.11 Although subsequent

    archaeological findings and developments in technology have meant the issues

    of absolute and relative chronology are hotly debated, for the purposes of this

    paper the simplified phase system mentioned above will be used. The

    Prepalatial period incorporates the Early Minoan and first century of Middle

    Minoan (c. 3200-1900 B.C.), the Palatial period is characterised by the

    development of major centres of administration termed palaces during the

    Middle and Late Minoan ages (c. 1900-1350 B.C.) and the Postpalatial

    encompasses the dissolution of the palace centric social structure of the Late

    Minoan era, nearing the end of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1350-1050 B.C.).12

    Early Minoan religion appears to have centered around cult worship at caves

    and peak sanctuaries on mountains across Crete. Terracotta figurineshuman

    and animal in formwere left as offerings both there and at communal

    graves.13 As the first palaces started to be constructed the archaeological

    evidence indicates that there were small shrines associated with the palaces

    and symbols such as the horns of consecration appear, either carved from

    stone or as decorative paintwork.14 Evans coined the term horns of

    consecration to refer to what he called ritual furniture; a cult object of a

    portable nature.15 It appears frequently throughout Crete, on altars, shrines

    and at the base of trees.16 The horns are also connected with the labrys,

    sanctuaries and sacred pillars.17 Evans found the object suggestive of the

    Hebrew horns of the altar, especially the stele of the God Salm from Teima,

    declaring that no parallel could be more complete.18 This interpretation

    11 Evans, The Palace of Minos, I, p. 25. 12 Sen Hemingway, Art of the Aegean Bronze Age, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol LXIX, No. 4, New York, Spring 2012, p. 25. 13 John G. Younger & Paul Rehak, Minoan Culture: Religion, Burial Customs, and Administration, The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, New York, 2008, p. 165. 14 John G. Younger & Paul Rehak, The Material Culture of Neopalatial Crete, The Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age, p. 148. 15 Arthur J. Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult and Its Mediterranean Relations, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 21, 1901, p. 135. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., p. 136. 18 Ibid., p. 137.

  • Michele Dale 5

    however has been rejected by Nilsson.19 Nilsson states they are the place of

    consecration where objects of the cult are laid, and in later times merely

    indicated the building had a sacred function.20 Since then, numerous

    interpretations as to the purpose and symbolism of the horns have been

    written, none of which have garnered universal acceptance, and each with

    varying degrees of meritfrom originally functioning as Anatolian pot-

    supports or andirons21 to resembling the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic sign

    that indicates the horizon22in an adaptation from either of those cultures.

    However clay objects have been unearthed that date to the Middle or Late

    Neolithic period from Knossos with incised horns of consecration that pre-

    date such interpretations:23

    Figure 1: Clay object, Knossos, Crete. Middle to Late Neolithic Period. From: Brada, The Transfer of Symbols and Meanings, p. 194.

    Regrettably, even thoughby virtue of the number of representationsthe

    horns were seemingly significant to the Minoan people it is difficult to argue

    with certainty what light they can direct on Minoan religious beliefs. However

    given the connection with the double axe the most logical inference is that

    they reference a sacral place associated with animal sacrifice.24

    Plutarchwriting in the second century A.D.provides an interesting account

    of the mythological origin of the double axe, declaring the axe to be part of the

    sacred regalia of Lydian kings and that they called the axe labrys.25 Just as

    19 Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion, 2nd ed., New York, 1950, p. 186, footnote 78. 20 Ibid., pp. 184-185. Chapter 5 enumerates the majority of the specimens of horns found in detail. 21 Steven Diamant & Jeremy Rutter, Horned Objects in Anatolia and the Near East and Possible Connexions with the Minoan Horns of Consecration, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 19, 1969, p. 147. 22 Barry B. Powell, The Significance of the so-called Horns of Consecration, Kadmos, Vol. 16, 1977, p. 72. 23 Marina Milievi Brada, The Transfer of Symbols and Meanings: The Case of the Horns of Consecration, Documenta Praehistorica, Vol. XXXII, 2005, p. 193. 24 Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age, p. 278. 25 Plutarch, Moralia, Volume IV: Roman Questions. Greek Questions. Greek and Roman Parallel Stories. On the Fortune of the Romans. On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander. Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom?, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 305, Cambridge, MA, 1936, The Greek Questions, 45, pp. 233-235.

  • Michele Dale 6

    there continues to be philological debate over possible labrys-labyrinth

    connections, speculation as to the meaning, function and origin of the double

    axe also persists. It seems reasonably clear that the axe could be employed in

    military, carpentry, and religious guises; presumably a religious significance

    being a later use.26 On Minoan Crete the labrysboth as a symbol and

    objectoccurs frequently. It can be found in masons marks, crafts persons

    kits, shrine and sanctuary deposits, patterns on ceramic ware and seal motifs.27

    That it has regularly been found in association with cult activities and religious

    spaces must attest to its sacral significance.28 Nilsson even declared that it was

    the symbol of Minoan religion: just as characteristic and omnipresent as the

    Christian Cross or Mohammedan Crescent.29 However he does caution that

    just as with a cross, not every double axe has cultic significance;30 this bears

    remembering.

    Finds of the axe in burials, peak sanctuaries and caves have been dated to the

    Prepalatial and early Palatial period. These locations imply funerary, celestial

    and chthonic uses of the double axe.31 From the middle Palatial period (MM

    III to LM I) the symbol is found in conjunction with others such as stars,

    bows, knots, vegetation and the bucranium.32 A Middle Minoan vase from

    Palaikastro shows a frontal bulls head with a double axe suspended above its

    horns. That there are holes incorporated into the floral motif decoration

    indicate the vase probably did not have a practical use.33 Later still, the labrys

    is found with the horns of consecration and birds to form elaborate

    iconography.34

    26 Alfred Trevor Hodge, The Labrys: Why was the Double axe double?, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 89, 1985, p. 307. 27 Lucia Alberti, Rethinking the Tomb of the Double Axes at Isopata, Knossos, Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 42, Essays on Ritual and Cult in Crete in Honor of Geraldine C. Gesell, 2009, p. 104. 28 Colin Renfrew, The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi, London, 1985, p. 25. 29 Martin P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, trans. F. J. Fielden, Oxford, 1949, pp. 14-15. 30 Ibid., p. 15. 31 J. Alexander MacGillivray, The Minoan Double-Axe Goddess and her Astral Realm, Athanasia: The Earthly, the Celestial and the Underworld in the Mediterranean from the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Age, eds. Nicholas Chr. Stampolidis, Athanasia Kanta & Angeliki Giannikouri, Herakleion, 2012, p. 118. 32 Ibid. 33 R. C. Bosanquet & R. M. Dawkins, The Unpublished Objects from the Palaikastro Excavations: 1902-1906, The British School at Athens Supplementary Papers, No. 1, 1923, p. 20 & Plate XII. 34 MacGillivray, The Minoan Double-Axe Goddess and her Astral Realm, p. 118.

  • Michele Dale 7

    Figure 2: Gold votive double axe. Hollow shaft with thin sheet gold. Left blade has four signs in Linear A inscribed; two pierced holes on the upper right blade. 9cm long by 8.3cm wide, c. 1550-1500 B.C, Crete. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Accession Number 58.1009. From: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/votive-double-ax-150472.

    Given the dimensions and the compositional material of the axe it would

    appear that the axe was a simulacrum, used for religious purposes.35 The

    expert workmanship is delicate, with five parallel grooves along the edges and

    running obliquely through each half. The provenience has been taken to be

    that the axe was from a sacred cave at Arkalochori, part of a hoard of more

    than twenty-five gold double axes, six or seven silver and hundreds of

    bronze.36 Decorated swords and knives were also found, most ex-voto,

    however some appeared to be genuine battle swords given one had a length of

    1.55m.37 It is possible to infer from these finds that the deity associated with

    the cave had a warrior connection of some form, and further that the deity was

    female: the double axe was always symbolically linked with a goddess, rather

    than a god.38

    35 Emily Townsend Vermeule, A Gold Minoan Double Axe, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Art, Vol. 57, No. 307, 1959, p. 5. 36 Elizabeth Pierce Blegen, News Items from Athens, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 39, No. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1935, pp. 134-135. 37 Ibid., p. 136. 38 Vermeule, A Gold Minoan Double Axe, p. 6; MacGillivray, The Minoan Double-Axe Goddess and her Astral Realm, p. 118.

  • Michele Dale 8

    The Linear A inscription on the axe is , without word dividers.

    Vermeule suggests two possible renderings from the transliteration of the signs

    into i-da-ma-te: (dedicatory prefix) Demeter, or Ida Mater, the mother

    (goddess of (Mount)) Ida.39 However as Vermeule then argues, whilst both

    renderings are an attractive fit for what is known with respect to Minoan

    religion, the renderings are Greek, which is not Linear A.40 Yet a reasonably

    convincing case is then presented by Vermeule that the goddess named by this

    script is some form of a proto-Demeter. Irrespective of the goddesss actual

    name, it seems reasonably clear that the double axe is one of her symbols,

    which continued through to Mycenaean and Classical times.

    Archaeological findspots from all over Crete have revealed numerous female

    figurines, statuettes and images; generally these have been characterised as

    representing a Minoan goddess of nature and fertility.41 Evanss excavations at

    Knossos provided the majority of these finds and from these he formulated a

    viewespoused in The Palace of Minosthat Minoan religion centered

    around a Mother Goddess and her Boy God son.42 However Evanss report

    from his first season of excavation in 1900 clearly indicated that at that stage

    he regarded the Cretan Zeus as the chief indigenous divinity of Knossos, as

    shown by multiple representations of the labrys, or double-axe.43 In 1903

    Evanss team unearthed three faience figurinesremarkable Bronze Age

    findsthat have collectively become the Snake Goddess. The largestand

    most completeof the figures Evans took to be the Snake Goddess; her arms

    were held palms down with entwined snake(s), wearing a high tiara with a

    (restored) snake atop, full skirt and snug-fitting jacket bodice that cut away,

    39 Vermeule, A Gold Minoan Double Axe, p. 7. See also Maurice Pope, Cretan Axe-Heads with Linear A Inscriptions, The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 51, 1956, p. 134. 40 Ibid. 41 Geraldine C. Gesell, The Popularizing of the Minoan Palace Goddess, Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 33, : Essays in Honor of Sara A. Immerwahr, 2004, p. 131. Gesell also provides a chronological summary of the major works written on the Minoan goddess and a catalogue of shrines of the goddess with upraised hands in the article. 42 Evans, The Palace of Minos, III, p. 455ff. 43 Arthur J. Evans, Knossos. Summary Report of the Excavations in 1900: I. The Palace., The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 6, 1899/1900, pp. 32-34; 64-65.

  • Michele Dale 9

    leaving the breasts exposed.44 The other two figureswith upraised arms

    were regarded by Evans as attendants or votaries.45 Evans concludes that the

    Snake Goddess was a chthonic version of the same matronly divinity

    otherwise so well represented on this and other Minoan sites.46

    Figure 3: The figure on the left is the Snake Goddess as identified by Evans in his 1903 paper; on the right is the votary or attendant from the same paper. From: Evans, The Palace of Knossos: Provisional Report for the Year 1903, p. 75 and p. 77.

    These figurines were subject to considerable restoration by the Danish artist

    commissioned by Evans, Halvor Bagge.47 The Snake Goddesss skirt is almost

    a complete restoration and the Snake Priestess was provided with a head,

    second arm and cat atop a beret (excavated from the same room).48 The

    faience figurines from Knossos remain the only known excavated examples of

    the Snake Goddess that date to the Palatial period, the image does not appear

    44 Arthur J. Evans, The Palace of Knossos: Provisional Report for the Year 1903, The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 9, 1902/1903, p. 76. 45 Ibid., p. 78. 46 Ibid., p. 87. 47 Cynthia Eller, Two Knights and a Goddess: Sir Arthur Evans, Sir James George Frazer, and the Invention of Minoan Religion, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, Vol. 25.1, 2012, p. 83. 48 Ibid.

  • Michele Dale 10

    in any Minoan frescoes, seals or engravings.49 The Boy-God does not appear

    until the early 1930s, revealed for the first time in the third volume of Evanss

    work. In this volume Evans combined an ivory boy-god with an ivory and

    gold snake goddess which Evans referred to as the Boston goddess and dated

    them both to the Middle Minoan III phase, when art was at its highest level.50

    Figure 4: Boy-god adoring the Boston Goddess. Drawing by mile Gilliron, fils. From: Evans, The Palace of Minos, Vol. 3, p. 456.

    Evans wrote that the relation of this youthful male to the mature female

    figure, the divinity of both which is here marked by the elaborate tiaras, brings

    us face to face with the most interesting and, in some respects, the most

    difficult problem in Minoan religion.51 Evans then stated that the problem

    was that whilst the male element governed at the height of Minoan

    civilisation, Minoan religion continued to reflect the older matriarchal stage

    of social development.52 The labrys that Evans had previously associated

    with the Cretan Zeus had now become the symbolic double axe of the

    Mother Goddess.53 The light that Evanss artistic representations shone on

    Minoan religious thought is still reflected in the works of others nearly a

    century later.54 Yet this picture partly is based on the use of items that are now

    generally regarded as forgeries, or at the very least of suspicious provenance.55

    The Boston museumwhich acquired the Boston goddess in 1914 has

    49 Kenneth Lapatin, Mysteries of the Snake Goddess, New York, 2002, p. 76. 50 Evans, The Palace of Minos, III, p. 455. 51 Ibid., pp. 456-457. 52 Ibid., p. 457. 53 Evans, The Palace of Minos, II.I, p. 277. 54 For example: Rodney Castleden, Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete, London & New York, 1993, p. 125. 55 Eller, Two Knights and a Goddess, p. 94; Lapatin, Mysteries of the Snake Goddess, p. 104.

  • Michele Dale 11

    withdrawn the object from display and dates the statuette as 1600-1500 B.C. or

    early 20th century.56 The Minoan Mother Goddess created by Evans is an

    example of wishful thinking at its finest.57 The archaeological records attest to

    the fact that the Minoans created abundant female images that imply a

    religious function, however it is extremely difficult to state with any certainty

    what role they have: goddess, priestess, or a member of the elite participating

    as a worshipper. The issue remains a salutary lesson in the perils attached to a

    complete reliance on artistic representations alone; a far brighter light needs to

    be shone on this area.

    Figure 5: Isopata Signet Ring. Isopata tomb near Knossos, Crete. Gold, 2.1 cm diameter, c. 1600-1400 B.C. Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Hall VI, Inventory AE 424. From: http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/4/eh430.jsp?obj_id=7892.

    The isopata ring has been frequently used to illustrate some form of religious

    narrative with respect to Minoan beliefs. The exquisitely rendered bezel

    depicts a landscape setting (as indicated by the flowering plants) in which four

    women in characteristic Minoan attire perform a series of rhythmic motions.

    At the top of the left half of the ring is a much smaller fifth figure. There is a

    dreamlike, or ecstatic quality to the scene, enhanced by items that appear to

    56 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Statuette of a snake goddess, accession number 14.863. From: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/statuette-of-a-snake-goddess-150499, accessed 2 December 2014. 57 O. T. P. K. Dickinson, 'Comments on a Popular Model of Minoan Religion', Oxford Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1994, p. 175. Eller, Two Knights and a Goddess, p. 95.

  • Michele Dale 12

    float such as eyes, wavy lines and fronds of vegetation.58 There seems to be

    scholarly consensus that it is a dynamic representation of a religious event;59

    a divine entity has been summoned via the epiphany-conjuring activities of

    the participants.60 This locates Minoan art in a more sensory realm, one that

    the eminent German scholar Professor Rodenwaldt admitted held for him the

    enchantment of a fairy world.61 Minoan art shows no boasting, no

    conquering; nothing monumental. Viewed in this light, a popular subject of

    Cretan artistsacrobatic bull leapingmay also have held ritualistic, or

    religious, significance.

    Figure 6: Bull-leaping; from the Knossos palace, Crete. Fresco, .70m high (excluding the border), c. 1500-1400 B.C. Herakleion Archaeological Museum, Hall XIV. From: Kleiner, Gardners Art Through the Ages, p. 86.

    58 C. D. Cain, Dancing in the Dark: Deconstructing a Narrative of Epiphany on the Isopata Ring, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 105, No. 1, 2001, pp. 33-34. 59 Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, p. 214. 60 Cain, Dancing in the Dark, p. 45. 61 As quoted in Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, p. 185.

  • Michele Dale 13

    Pictured above, the famous bull-leapers fresco has been fully restored from

    partially preserved original fragments (the darker blue patches). Both tension

    and grace are captured by the artist; the bull is elongated, and the sweeping

    lines suggest the sense of energy contained in the charge. The human figures

    are also stylised; the extremely narrow waist is typically Minoan.62 Following

    a common ancient convention the male is coloured dark-brown and the women

    a paler cream.63 The overall fluidity expressed within the scene is a hallmark

    of Minoan art, the gracefulness of the leap over a powerful bull transcends the

    requirement of a sacrifice.64

    Minoan art is elusive and enigmatic, consequently the light it shines on that

    cultures religious beliefs and practices is refracted. The clarity of vision is

    also blurred as a result of over-enthusiastic restorations and unauthenticated

    artefacts used to create an anachronistic, fanciful view of Minoan civilisation.

    Their frescoes, statuettes, seals and symbols need to be comprehensively re-

    assessed in a fresh light; the Minoan voice allowed out of the shade.

    62 Fred S. Kleiner, Gardners Art Through the Ages: A Global History, 13th ed., Boston, 2009, p. 86. 63 Mary Ann Eaverly, Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, Michigan, 2013, p. 2. 64 Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, p. 210.

  • Michele Dale 14

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Alberti, Lucia Rethinking the Tomb of the Double Axes at Isopata, Knossos, Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 42, Essays on Ritual and Cult in Crete in Honor of Geraldine C. Gesell, 2009, pp. 99-106.

    Ancient Palace of Knossos Tour, from:

    http://www.lonelyplanet.com/greece/crete/knossos/activities/sightseeing-tours/ancient-palace-knossos-tour/item-v-2462KNOM-id?ctv=control, accessed 27 November 2014.

    Bintliff, John L. Structuralism and myth in Minoan studies, Antiquity, Vol.

    LVIII, 1984, pp. 33-38. Blegen, Elizabeth Pierce News Items from Athens, American Journal of

    Archaeology, Vol. 39, No. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1935, pp. 131-136; Plates XXIII-XXIV.

    Bosanquet, R. C. & Dawkins, R. M. The Unpublished Objects from the

    Palaikastro Excavations: 1902-1906, The British School at Athens Supplementary Papers, No. 1, 1923, pp. i-xii, 1-160.

    Brada, Marina Milievi The Transfer of Symbols and Meanings: The Case of the Horns of Consecration, Documenta Praehistorica, Vol. XXXII, 2005, pp. 187-196.

    Burke, Brendan Materialization of Mycenaean Ideology and the Ayia Triada Sarcophagus, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 109, No. 3, 2005, pp. 403-422.

    Cain, C. D. Dancing in the Dark: Deconstructing a Narrative of Epiphany on the Isopata Ring, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 105, No. 1, 2001, pp. 27-49.

    Castleden, Rodney Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete, Routledge, London & New York, 1993.

    Diamant, Steven & Rutter, Jeremy Horned Objects in Anatolia and the Near East and Possible Connexions with the Minoan Horns of Consecration, Anatolian Studies, Vol. 19, 1969, pp. 147-177.

  • Michele Dale 15

    Dickinson, Oliver The Aegean Bronze Age, Cambridge University Press, New

    York, 1994. 'Comments on a Popular Model of Minoan Religion', Oxford

    Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1994, pp. 173-184. Eaverly, Mary Ann Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic

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