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The Civilisation of Ancient Crete

Introduction

The Minoan civilisation on the Isle of Crete, the historical predecessor of Greek Mycenean, was the apogee of Goddess based culture that lasted over two thousand years from 3100 BC to 1050 BC. Cretan civilisation was focussed around massive palaces at Knossos, Phaestos and Gortys which were centres of government trade, science, religion and the arts. Greatest among all the palaces was that of Knossos the legendary home of King Minos, son of Zeus and founder of the Minoan culture. Very little was known about Minoan Crete before the great excavations of Greek and foreign archaeologists, particularly the Englishman Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated the Palace of Knossos and coined the term "Minoan" after Minos, legendary King of Crete from 1894 to 1924. Its history had passed into the realm of legend and remained a distant memory in Greek tradition and mythology. The ancients wrote of Minos, the King who had his capital at Knossos and was a wise law giver, a fair judge and a great sea dominator. Homer calls him "Companion of Mighty Zeus" and Thucydides informs us that he was the first man to hold sway over the Aegean Fleet capturing the Cyclades, and driving out the Carians thus freeing the seas from piracy. Plato speaks of the heavy tribute that Attica was compelled to pay to Minos - the historical basis of the myth of Theseus - and Aristotle attributes his Thalassocracy to the geographical position of Crete.

This position was very favourable for the Minoan domination of the sea and the growth and development of their civilisation. It was the crossroads linking three continents, Europe, Africa and Asia, and here they mingled to produce a sophisticated, Goddess based way of life and philosophy with art that still strikes one today with its freshness of charm, variety and nobility.

The People.

In general terms the Minoans form part of the "Mediterranean type" of medium height and black curly hair and brown eyes. The Cretan hieroglyphics script of the early palatial period (2000-1660BC) is not deciphered, nor is linear A of the higher palatial age (1660-1405BC). The general view is that the language of linear A, as well as the earlier hieroglyphic script, is probably derived either from the Hittite Arian sphere of Anatolia or Assyrian/Phoenician vocabulary. The language of linear B, on the other hand (1405-1100BC), is an early form of Greek and represents a period of invasion from the north, the Myceneans in particular. However the early Minoan language was still spoken alongside it by the true Cretans (Eteocretans). The inhabitants of Crete were divided into a number of tribes and Homer mentions the names of five; The Pelasgians, The Eteocretans, The Kydonians, The Acherons and the Dorians; adding that each spoke its own language. Crete was densely populated with 90 cities, according to Homer, and excavation has demonstrated the truth of his comments revealing a host of Minoan sites.

History.

Evans divided the Minoan age chronologically on the basis of poetry into Early Minoan, Middle Minoan and Late Minoan. Nowadays a different system of chronology, proposed by Professor Platon, has won general acceptance and is based upon the great destructions and the life of the Minoan palaces.

Neolithic period 6000 - 2600 BC

Crete was first inhabited during the Neolithic period from Asia Minor. The culture was primarily Agrarian and they knew how to make fine burnished pottery, frequently decorated with incised geometric motives. They were capable of building stone houses, although they still made use of caves for habitation and religious ceremonies, probably including human sacrifice as young teenagers have been found in sacrificial positions, (perhaps the truth behind the legends of the tributes of youths and maidens from Athens to Crete that Theseus was sent to put a stop to). Metals were as yet unknown and the tools and weapons they needed were of a range of hard stones and obsidian from the Cycladic island of Milos. The simple, relatively primitive figurines suggest they worshipped a female fertility Goddess.

Pre-Palace Period 2600 - 1900 BC

With the arrival of new racial elements in Crete, bronze was used for the first time in the fabrication of tools and weapons. There were strongly built houses of stone and brick which had large numbers of rooms, paved courtyards and red plaster on the walls. The tombs of the period are very well known; there are large vaulted tombs in the Plain of Messara and tombs cut into rock, chamber tombs (Agia Photia), and grave compounds. The wealth of finds in these tombs supplies us with information about the art and evolution of the Pre-Palace civilisation. Particularly fine examples are the Vassiliki style pots with their striking mottled decoration and their sophisticated shapes like the teapot and tall beaked pitchers. Early examples of seals made of ivory and steatite come from this era. The main forms of Deity and the most important cult symbols made their appearance in the sphere of religion with figurines of the Mother Goddess being typical.

First Palace Period (1900 - 1700 BC)

At the beginning power began to be centred in the hands of Kings and the first Palace Centres, which had wide cultural influence in the surrounding areas, came into being. There were four large Palaces at Knossos, Phaestos, Malia and Zakros, but there may have been others. It is clear that they possessed all the features of the fully developed Minoan architecture, i.e. an arrangement of buildings around a central court, fine facades of closely fitted blocks of porous stone, sacred rooms, different levels and stories connected by staircases, monumental entrances. The finest example is that uncovered in the West Palace Section at Phaestos where the most decorative style of pottery in the world was created in the Palace Workshops e.g. Kamares Ware - named after the Cave of Kamares where it was first discovered. Its motives are polychrome and full of movement, they are mainly rosettes, spirals and hatching painted on a shiny black background and are found in a variety of vase shapes, made with astonishing technical perfection. The specialist workshops of these Palaces also produced very fine vases or vessels of stone and faience and seal tones of precious or semi-precious stones with hieroglyphics and dynamic scenes that are often naturistic, solid elegant weapons and tools, vessels of bronze or silver and jewellery of marble technique, e.g. the famous pendant of bees from Malea. Protopalatial terracottas are also well known from dedications in the Peak Sanctuaries (cult areas on the peaks of hills or mountains) which were typical of this period.

The Minoan Pantheon always had the Mother Goddess as its main element and the use of sacred symbols, the Sacred Horns and the Double Axe became general. Society was organised hierarchically with specialisation of labour and contacts with the outside world which became more frequent. In the Palace Archives use was made of hieroglyphic script which quickly developed into a Linear one (Linear A). It appears that most of these revolve around accounts but we are still unable to decipher them.

A terrible disaster, perhaps caused by earthquakes reduced the first Palace Centres in the settlements of Crete to ruins around 1700 BC.

Second Palace Period (1700 - 1380 BC).

During this period Minoan Civilisation reached its zenith. The new Palaces that were built on the ruins of the old ones were much more magnificent, the cities around them expanded and hummed with life and large numbers of rural villas, the residents of local Governors, controlled great areas in the same way as the Feudal Towers of the Middle Ages. Swift ships carried the products of farming and of Cretan art to the whole of the civilised world where they were exchanged for raw materials. The new Palaces were mullet-storied and invariably complex. They had great courtyards, imposing or picturesque porticoes, broad, easy staircases, processional paths and monumental entrances. The Royal living quarters had tiers of doors, thrones and benches as well as bathrooms, interior light wells, flushing toilets, sewerage. There were rows of Sacred Quarters, crypts and halls for audiences, banquets and sacred ceremonies, ancillary areas of all kinds, including workshops, water supply, drainage system. It is not surprising that buildings as large and complicated as this led the Greek imagination to create the Myth, the Labyrinth. All the Palaces had one feature in common with even the smaller ones, the wonderful Fresco Painting decorating the walls with fresh, lively scenes in an array of colours, or the dazzling white and veined blocks of gypsum that were used to cover the walls and the floors.

The Social System was probably feudal and theocratic and the King of each Palace Centre was also the Supreme Religious Leader. There may have been a hierarchy of these Priest Kings headed by the Ruler of Knossos. Thanks to this system, continuous peace prevailed throughout the island which facilitated great cultural development, the charming, refined way of life in the Cretan Thallisocracy.

The art of the Second Palaces is naturalistic for the most part and demonstrates the love of the Minoans for eternal, all powerful and constantly renewed nature as well as its internal, spiritual counterpart. A variety of pottery styles developed, the Marine Style, with its lively motives derived from the very striking world of the deep (octopuses, tritons, star fishes, sea snails, rocks, seaweed etc); the Floral Style with its fresh plants and open flowers; the Decorated Style with a spiral in a variety of complicated arrangements and the Palace Style with tectonic forms and decoration arranged in bands. Landscapes were depicted on the great Frescos with exotic animals such as monkeys, thickets of dense vegetation, birds, wild cats and deers, and scenes from cult and social life, festival occasions in the Palaces and Sanctuaries, contests of bull leaping held in honour of the Deity and of rituals such as Holy Communion. The relief fresco was used to portray majestic figures of Princes and High Priests and sacred or imaginary animals such as bulls, sphinxes and griffins.

The main Deity still remained the Mother Goddess but now portrayed in different forms; the Goddess of Snakes; the Mistress of Animals with lions and deer; the Goddess of Heavens with birds and stars. The powerful God of Fertility was worshipped together with her, apparently in the form of a bull as were the young couple, boy and girl, who died or were lost in the Autumn and came back to light and life in the Spring, thus representing the Cycle of Nature. Alongside them there existed a whole exotic world of fabulous, semi-divine monsters to serve them and facilitate communications between man and the divinity. These Deities were worshipped in sanctuaries in the Palaces, houses and countryside, in the Peak Sanctuaries and in Sacred Caves. Many of the features of Minoan religion passed into the cycle of Greek mystery religion.

Most of the tombs were cut into the soft rock and had a square burial chamber and a sloping dromos, Some were still vaulted tombs with a circular of rectangular chamber.

Around 1450 all the centres of the Second Palace period were destroyed by the terrible volcanic eruption of Santorini. This led to massive tidal waves and destruction throughout the whole of the Mediterranean and may, in fact, have given rise to the legends of flood and cataclysm and destruction. It nearly certainly was the basis for the Legend of Atlantis with the sinking of the Cretan colony of Santorini. Life was resumed only in the Palace at Knossos which was reconstructed and served as the residence of a new Achaean Dynasty. Many changes were made in the arrangement of Palaces and it is likely that the Achaeans took advantage of the natural disaster to overthrow the trade and perhaps military domination by the Minoans of their lands to reverse the situation.

Post Palace Period 1380 - 1100 BC.

After the final destruction in 1380 none of the Minoan Palaces was reinhabited. The Achaeans built simple, Mycenean megara on other sites as yet unknown. Not even the Palace of Idomeneus, the King of Knossos, who took part in the Trojan War has been discovered. The basis of this new civilisation was Minoan, but its spirit archaic Greek. It showed a tendency towards an architectural structure and uniformity. The labyrinthine buildings were now replaced by the austere megara, the predominant pottery style the so called Mycenean Quoin in which the same shapes were continually repeated with simple decorations, the frescos lost their former freedom and vigour. There is no substantial change in religion or cult however; the tombs were still mainly chamber tombs with long dromus as before but the grave foods were poorer and most of the jewels accompanying the dead were made of coloured glass paste.

The last phase of this period was a time of decline and disorder caused by the movement of the sea peoples in the East Mediterranean; the forerunners of the Dorians had arrived in Crete, for a number of new cultural features now made their appearance in sporadic fashion such as cremation of the dead, iron weapons and tools and brooches for the testing of a new style of dress and geometric, decorative motives.

Sub Minoan Period 1100 - 1000 BC.

Crete now entered upon the purely Greek period of its history with the arrival of massive waves of Dorian. The earlier Cretan cultural tradition continued to offer resistance in certain areas, particularly the mountain centres of the Eteo Cretans in central and Eastern Crete at Lassithi and Praessos and exercised some influence on the uncouth conquerors. The use of iron in cremation of the dead became general and the urns for ashes are among the most characteristic vessels of this period.

Minoan Art.

General characteristics of Minoan mural painting have emerged, specific skin colour conventions exist for the both sexes, red for male and white for female. Scenes from nature are realistic in terms of movements of animal or human participants, likewise flowers and birds are also portrayed naturistically, whereas the backgrounds appear "obviously fantastic". There is no attempt to indicate depths by mean of perspective or diminution of figure scale with distance. However the range of colours is remarkably varied and there is a comparatively wide variety of scenes and individual motives in Minoan painting as a whole. There is a general absence of hunting scenes and scenes of warfare, both of which were extremely popular in Mycenean art. Some commentators note that in the choices of the specific time within an action, Minoan pictorial art tends to focus on the moment immediately preceding violent action. Within the Palace of Knossos the following subjects are most common: bull leaping, boxing and wrestling scenes, heraldic griffin compositions and processional scenes in architectural settings.

Minoan Religion.

The conspicuous absence of the pronounced militaristic tendencies in Minoan Society raises the obvious question of how an emerging Minoan Elite established or maintained its authority. It is probable that the manipulation of religious ideology was at the very heart of the Minoan Rulership's power. We know very little of Minoan religious practices during the early Minoan Period and not much more in the middle Minoan Period.

Minoan religion remains a hotly contested subject. It inspires numerous interpretation linked to the study of images and identification of sanctuaries. Caves, grottoes and mountains were cult sites where numerous offerings related to Minoan worship have been found: bronze and terracotta figurines, vases, double headed axes, pairs of horns. Some rooms in palaces and houses were apparently used as cult areas and were found to contain incense burner, rhytons, benches and small domed altars. One particular type of room, a sort of semi-basement, surrounded by a balustrade, and reached by a staircase is considered by many to have been a lustral or ceremonial bath in which the faithful performed a preparatory rite.

It is believed that the Minoan Pantheons composed of the remnants of a former aniconic cult (the cult of the pillar), together with the central female divinity (the mother Goddess) whose attributes were snakes or beasts. The Minoan king may have been the presiding priest of the cult. The Minoans seem to have practised blood sacrifice as is depicted in a fresco on the sarcophagus found at Hagiatriada. The bull seems to have been the favoured victim and its horns were a common religious symbol. Bull leaping, possibly as part of a religious rite or festival, consisted of acrobatic exercises with the animal and ended, no doubt, in his sacrifice. Boxing, portrayed in numerous Minoan images, must also have taken place in the context of public feasts. The dove and a lion headed spirit were also featured in Minoan religious symbolism.

Unlike many surrounding cultures the Island of Crete was not invaded in the fifteen hundred years from 3000 to 1500CE and therefore offers a unique insight into how a Neolithic society evolved without disruption into a Bronze Age one while still retaining its belief in the unity of life. Crete was the direct inheritor of the Neolithic culture of Old Europe. Immigrants from south western Anatolia arrived on the shores of Crete and from an early time the Minoans were trading with Egypt, a few hundred miles away to the south. While Crete had many towns it did not have enormous cities as Sumeria and Egypt had. Minoan religion was far more intimately involved with natural life than that of those other cultures. The Goddess, flanked by lions and the griffins painted on the walls of the throne room in Knossos, the pillared shrines, the bulls horns and the serpents proclaim the signature of the old Neolithic Mother Goddess. The griffin is a composite image of bird, lion and snake embodying the three dimensions of sky, earth and waters beneath the earth which in Neolithic Old Europe were three aspects of the Great Goddess. Crete was the meeting place for many cultures and many mythic images from earlier cultures reappeared in Crete, showing the persistence of these symbolic forms - for example, bulls horns of consecration from seventh Millenium Catal Huyuk in Anatolia; fifth Millenium Vinca in Old Europe and second Millenium Knossos in Crete are almost indistinguishable. The bee and butterfly belong together as images of the Great Goddess of Regeneration. There is an ancient belief that bees arose out of the dead carcass of a bull. In Crete the bee signified the life that came back from death as the scarab did in Egypt; we see in a number of seals and rings in Crete the Bee Goddess; honey was used to embalm and preserve the bodies of the dead and the importance of bee-keeping is documented in the Linear A hieroglyphics with drawings of actual bee hives; an onyx gem from Knossos shows the Bee Goddess bearing upon her head the bulls horns with a double axe inside their curve; honey played a central part in the New Year rituals of the Minoans, the Cretan New Year began at the Summer Solstice when the heat was at its greatest and the 20th July was the day when the great Star Sirius rose in conjunction with the sun. The Minoan temple palaces in Crete were oriented to this star. The rising of Sirius ended a 40 day ritual during which honey was gathered from the hives of the bees in the darkness of the caves and the woods; the honey was then fermented into mead and drunk as an intoxicating liquor, accompanying the ecstatic rites that may have celebrated the return of the daughter of the Goddess at the beginning of the New Year. All these rites are present as well in the classical Greek myths of Dionysus, himself originating in Crete and called the Bull God. The bull was sacrificed with the rising of the star Sirius and bees were seen as the resurrection form of the dead bull and as the souls of the dead.

The raised wings of the bird Goddesses are a gesture of epiphany for the Goddess, particularly in Crete. This tradition of the symbolic gesture of the raised arms(??) originated in the Paleolithic and continued into the Bronze Age. Often the Goddess is seen holding the seed pod of a poppy which was grown in great quantities in Crete and undoubtedly used in the shrines and the temples of the Goddess to elicit visionary experience, later re-emerging in the cult of Demeter which was taken from Crete to Eleusis. The importance of the bull and its horns, symbolic of the creative life force of the Goddess, was already present in the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe and Catal Huyuk and associated with the Goddess and her Lunar Crescent as far back as the Paleolithic era. In Catal Huyuk the Goddess gave birth the bull as a child, in Crete the bull was also known as the son of the Goddess and the visible image of her regenerative power on earth. Sacred horns of consecration are found in great numbers and generally have a central hole to receive some object. In Crete the Horned Altar is far more ancient than Minoan civilization and the double axe is often found between the horns. Fresh vegetation often sprouts from between the horns as well as from the double axes just as it grows out from the backs of bulls. Compare this to Egypt where we find corn growing from the body of the God Osiris, once known as the Bull God.

The Goddesses of Crete

In Minoan culture the chief Pre-Hellenic Divinity was undoubtedly a Goddess whose fostering care embraced all living creatures and followed them into the underworld. A survey of the art which illustrates Minoan religious activities clearly indicates that those figures identified as divinities are overwhelmingly female. The representations of her vary all the way from the rude, rough figures of the Neolithic Period to the distinct Cretan style with a large bell skirt and prominent exposure of the breasts in later Minoan Shrines at Knossos and other places. With her are associated doves and snakes, signifying her connection with air and earth. Although her character was generally benign, as Lady of the Wild Creatures she developed a more fearful aspect, one that was depicted on carved gems where lions were her companions. Actual scenes of worship are often represented and they indicate a kinship with nature and outdoor life. There are frescos of pillared shrines surmounted by Sacred Horns with groups of men and women seated before it and a wild dance is often suggested on some rings. There is a famous seal impression showing a female figure holding a staff and standing on the top of a rocky hill, flanked by lions, beyond which is a shrine on one side and a saluting male on the other. On a well known signet, recovered from Mycenae, a Priestess presents flowers, lilies and irises to a seated Goddess who wears a stylised iris in her hair.

The best known image of the Goddess is the Little Faience, the snake Goddess found in the palace of Knossos, with a cat perched on her head, two snakes writhing in her outstretched hands, large eyes staring at the view, this nameless Goddess exerts a powerful fascination. Two other statues, but not identical, have also been found. One left only the bell of her skirt and separate severed limbs seems lost to us for ever, the other, taller, reveals less youthful breasts behind a frontless bolero jacket, sometimes dubbed 'the Mother', while the narrower waisted, smaller figure is called 'the Daughter'. Some associate the two with Demeter and Persephone, forgetting the third shattered divinity. If they are not Goddesses themselves, they may represent priestesses of an unrevealed deity to whom snakes and other animals were sacred. Another is a nameless poppy crowned Goddess, safely encased in glass. This figure, too, seems caught between the human and divine, does she worship or is she called for worship or both? The clay opium poppy flowers adorning her head speak of divine intoxication and oracle dreams. Surrounded by similar figures the observer seems to be illicitly watching a ritual, trapped in clay.

Britomartis

One of the favourite Goddesses of Crete is a swift mermaid maiden called Britomartis or Vritomartis, Minoan for sweet virgin. In eastern Crete one of her havens was the bay at Elounda which, until recently, was a leper colony. In ancient times the merchant city of Olous dominated this bay and Britomartis shared her sight with Isis. Coins show the head of Britomartis or an eight pointed star which may have been a symbol of Britomartis. Later Greek legends describe how Britomartis fled the embrace of Minos, ultimately travelling to the island of Aegena. Here a beautiful temple was built to her high among the pines overlooking the Aegean far below. On Aegina Britomartis was called Aphaia, the hidden or invisible one, since she was believed to have arrived on the island and immediately concealed herself in a cave among the pines around her temple site.

Diclynna

Diclynna was the Goddess of the mountains. Appropriate for Crete which is a rough land with high mountains, difficult trails, hidden caves and sharp shore lines. Diclynna decided which hunter would be granted success. In later times she was often called Diana Diclynna, recognising her similarity with the Greek Goddess of the Hunt. Western Crete was her territory and her name came from Mount Dikte, the highest peak. Like Britomartis she could take a sea-going form and some believed the Goddesses to be identical, one receiving worship in the east of Crete, the other in the west.

Eileithyia

Eileithyia is another Cretan Goddess who attained prominence in later times. Her worship was centred on caves and she eventually served the Olympian deities as divine midwife. On Crete she tended to the needs of purely human women. Her caves were filled with votive objects and were probably used as havens for women about to give birth. Her rough form is carved into rocks, and pillar-like stalagmites bearing her image may have been clutched by women for support as they gave birth within her sacred enclosure. At least two of her birth caves still exist, one near Heraklion. She is only reached at the end of a maze of initiation.

The double act (labrys) is the most common of all Minoan religious symbols and not only large bronze examples, clearly used as tools, have been found, but also miniature specimens in precious materials which are obviously symbolic in function. The earliest examples date from the early Minoan period and continue throughout to the late and post Minoan period. The Double Axe is never held by a male Divinity in Crete and it is likely to have been a sacrificial instrument. The word for the Double Axe was Labrys, a word likely to be connected with the mythological name for Minos' Palace and the famous Spiral Maze at Knossos, later called The Place of the Double Axe or the Labyrinthos. Note that this is hardly a maze in which you could get lost as there is only one way in and one way out. The labyrinth also appears on Cretan coins but this design has appeared throughout the whole of Europe, even as far West as Ireland and North America (Hopi), pre-dating the Minoan use of it and so the mystery of the labyrinth still remains.

So the labyrinth is the house of the double axe, the temple of the Goddess, where her mysteries were celebrated and the place of re-birth. The Goddess was probably the lady of the labyrinth to whom a jar of honey, the divine nectar, was humbly offered.

The God

The male Deity is rarely represented and usually on a smaller scale than female figures; either as a male with a spear descending through the air in front of a large pillar; or as a youthful, beardless male, standing between horns of consecration or posing as master of animals; or as a tiny figure standing behind a figure of eight shield in the air above a series of much larger female figures. The Cretan Zeus and Zeus of the Double Axe are familiar titles but Minoan archaeology offers little evidence for the existence of this God. The truth is that the Achaeans introduced Zeus into Crete at the close of the Bronze Age, had him born by the Earth Goddess in her own Cave Sanctuary and gave him the Cretan symbol of sovereignty, the Double Axe with which she had been honoured. This compulsory marriage of Zeus and Hera is reflecting the subjugation of a native race to Achaean invaders. From this idea comes the ritual marriage commemorating reconciliation of two religious systems, one having a God, the other a Goddess, as Chief Divinities.

The male aspect of divinity as symbolised in Neolithic Crete by the crescent horns of the bull or by a male animal the bull, ram or stag. In the Minoan Age of Crete however the male had separated from the female but was not yet independent of her so the relation of masculine to feminine principals is rendered in the image of a great Goddess and a young male God seen as a diminutive male figure in relationship to the Goddess, often standing bent backwards in adoration before her. It is likely that the masculine principal is still tied to the rhythms of the agricultural year and involved with the annual death and re-birth of vegetation. It was not isolated and elevated in the need for self defence as with other countries in the near east. Cretan towns were not enclosed with a defensive wall and nowhere in their art is war or violence separated or even depicted with the exception of an occasional helmet and some swords. It was only when the Dorians invaded in the twelfth century that the Cretan sense of sovereignty was finally lost for even the Myceneans were in the end culturally assimilated by the Minoans. The only calamity in their fifteen hundred years of civilisation that was suffered was the earth quake - at least three per century - and this was experienced as belonging to the province of the Great Goddess.

Excavations at Palaikastro have produced evidence that suggest the Minoans worshipped a youthful male divinity whose cult could be the basis of the later Greek cult - the Zeus Kourous, or Zeus as a youth. A large fine Minoan ivory sculpture of a youthful male rendered in gold and ivory was unearthed in 1987. It is of exceptional anatomical accuracy and the details are astonishing with veins, tendons and even finger nails carefully carved. Such naturalistic treatment is not found again in Greek art until the high classical period more than a thousand years later. The pose, with both fists clenched in front of the chest, is well known to be that of the youthful God, known from rare representations on Minoan seals. This statuette could very well be the earliest known cult statue of Zeus.

Bull Worship.

The bull was offered as a prime object of sacrifice in honour of the Goddess, like the elephant of Siam he was both royal and sacred, the most useful of animals and chief object of the hunt. His horns, both the real trophies and copies in clay were set up on altars, shrines and Palaces and libations of his blood were poured through rhytons made of various materials in the shape of his head. Typically horns stand on a narrow ledge as architectural crowning members on altars and roofs. The horns are either stylised bulls horns or a symbol of the moon's crescent.

Bull grappling was a difficult and challenging sport performed by pairs of young men and women. A team of one boy and one girl would first surprise a bull, grab it by the horns and then flip onto or over the back of the bull. This act was performed by amateurs and they were not specifically trained for bull leaping. It is thought that bull leaping was a ceremonial ritual of Minoan religion to signify the role of the bull in Minoan life. It could involve the Minoan myth that the world rested on the back of the bull. The art of bull leaping is a poorly understood phenomenon and there is, as yet, little archaeological evidence to explain this practice.

It is likely that the ritual game of the Cretan bull ring must have served the function for the young God kings of Crete as did the bull of Osiris serve the Pharaohs. The sacred Apis which was ceremonially slain every twenty five years relieved the Pharaoh himself of the obligation of a ritual regicide. The Cretan Kings always show a youth of about twenty, there is none of an old man, so there may have been a regicide at the close of each Venus cycle, although the prominence of the bull ring and the ritual art of Crete suggests that a ritual substitution is likely to have been made.

We see on one design the man bull (Minotaur) attacked by a man lion. The lion is the animal of the blazing solar heat which slays both the moon and parches vegetation; while the bull is an animal of the moon, the waning and waxing God, by the magick of whose night dew the vegetation is restored, the Lord of Tides and the productive powers of the earth, the Lord of Women, Lord of the rhythm of the womb. There is also the figure where the priestly matador deals the coup de grace slaying the bull.

Conclusion

A prospect of Cretan thought emerges that sets it within a well known bronze age context but with such a particular accent on the role of the female that it is set apart from the great priestly civilisations of the Nile and Tigris Euphrates as well as the later patriarchal Greeks. The preponderance of Goddesses and the female cult priestesses and the scarcity of masculine deities and masculine cult images is striking. The most recognisable cults are those of the household Serpent Goddess and the nature cult in its two aspects, that of the Lady and Lord of the beasts and that of trees. All references to sexual life and all phallic symbols, which are so abundant and aggressive in numerous religions are virtually completely missing in Minoan art. The culture was definitely matriarchal. The grace and elegance of the ladies in their beautifully flounced skirts, generous decollete, pretty coiffures and gay bandeaux, mixing freely with the men in the courts and in the bull ring; lovely, vivid and vivacious, gesticulating and chatting, even donning masculine athletic belts to go somersaulting dangerously over the horns and backs of bulls; represent a civilised refinement that has not often equalled since and is a way of a challenge to the high claims of those proudly phallic moral orders, where the circumcised were superior to the uncircumcised, that were to follow.

Another contrast sets the Cretan world apart from the kingly states of Sumer and the Nile. Its mythology and culture represent an earlier stage than theirs of bronze age civilisation, a milder, gentler day. There were no walled cities in Crete, before the coming of the Greeks, with little evidence of weapons. Battle scenes of kingly conquest play no role in the setting of the style. The tone is of general luxury and delight, a broad participation by all classes in a genial atmosphere of wellbeing, in the vast development of a profitable commerce by sea to every port of the archaic world and even boldly to regions far beyond.

The Mycenean seal ring can stand as a final shrine to the Goddess the Early Garden of Innocence. At the top is the sun and waning crescent moon of a device that resembles that of the lunar bull. It marks the dividing line between the earthly and the celestial, the two presences above, the moon declining and the killing sun. Behind the moon is a little figure bearing a staff in the left hand in the manner of a lion Goddess, which is covered by a large Mycenean shield - suggesting the warrior aspect of the Goddess. As the Greek Goddess Athene is characterised by a shield and the name Atana Potinija (the Lady of Athens) appears among the tablets of linear B. It is at least possible that an early counterpart of the classical Athene is represented here in the negative killing aspect of the Goddess. Her right hand points to a series of six sacrificial charnel heads strewn along the right margin of the composition, while across the way in counterpoise stands the bountifully flourishing Tree of Life with a little female figure rising in the air to cull its root. The centre of the field is dominated by the Cretan double axe which points two ways, on the one hand towards the sacrifice and on the other towards its boon, the tree. Here the Goddess of the Double Axe sits benignly beneath her tree and is approached by two devotees. In the outstretched hand of the first she offers a triad of poppy seed pods while with her left she elevates her breasts. The little figure at her knees, without legs, emerging from the earth holds in her left hand a tiny double axe and in her right a blossoming branch, summarising thus the entire theme, representing the mid-point of balance between the small descending figure with the Mycenean shield and the small ascending one culling fruit. This same Goddess, in whom death and life reside, was herself the mythic garden where death and life, the two queens, were one and to her faithful child, the Minotaur, whose image of destiny is the lunar cycle, she was paradise itself.

References:
1. Cretan Goddesses by De Traci Regula from Llewellyns Magickal Almanac 1988.
2. Knossos: Unearthing a Legend by Alexandre Farnoux published Thames and Hudson 1990.
3. Joseph Campbell - The Mask Of The God: Occidental Mythology.
4. The Cretan Civilisation

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