Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Zeus and Zagreus

D45

early cult-objects in Crete1. Conspicuous among these is a bronze
shield of the ninth2, or possibly of the eighth3, century B.C. found
in the Idaean Cave (pi. xxxv)4. Round its rim are lotos-buds and
a debased ' tree-of-life.' In the centre stands an athletic god who,
like Ramman5, rests one foot upon a bull and, like Gilgames0, lifts
a lion high above his head. To either side is a winged attendant.
All this is frankly Assyrian ; and the youthful god with his curled
hair and false beard might well be mistaken for Gilgames portrayed
as triumphing over the divine bull Alu7 and the lion8. But the
fact that his attendants are each beating a pair of drums undeceives
us. This is none other than the youthful Zeus of Mount Ide
flanked by the Kouretes. And we observe two things : first, that
we have here the earliest certain representation of Zeus; and
second, that despite his Kouretes he is conceived not as an infant
but as a young man in the prime of life, the ' greatest Lad of
Kronos' line9.'

Now the Cretans, as Dr Rendel Harris discovered10, held that
Zeus was a prince ripped up by a wild boar and buried in their
midst. The manner of his death gives us good reason to suspect
that he was related to the great mother-goddess of Crete as was
Adonis to Aphrodite or Tammuz to Istar. The manner of his
burial confirms our suspicion; for his tomb on Mount Juktas was
in the temenos of a primitive sanctuary11, apparently a sanctuary of
the mountain-mother12, where in ' Middle Minoan ' times votive

1 F. Poulsen Der Orient und die friihgriechische Kimst Leipzig—Berlin 1912 p. 77 ff.

2 A. L. Frothingham in the Am. Jottrn. Arch. 1888 iv. 434 ff. ('the period between
850 and 725 B.C.'), cp. R. Dussaud Les civilisations prehelleniques dans le bassin de la
mer £gee Paris 1910p. 196 ('neremonte pas au-dela du neuvieme siecle avant notre ere').

3 F. Poulsen op. cit. p. 80, cp. Perrot—Chipiez Hist, de VArt vii. 131 ('que Ton
attribue a la fin du viiie ou au commencement du viie siecle').

4 F. Halbherr—P. Orsi Antichita dell' Antro di Zeus Ideo in Creta (= Museo Italiano
di Antichita Classica ii) pi. 1, A. L. Frothingham loc. cit. p. 437 ff. pi. 16, Milani Stud,
e mat. di arch, e num. 1899—1901 i. 1 ff. pi. 1, 1.

5 Supra p. 576.

6 A. L. Frothingham loc. cit. p. 438 fig. 13, Milani Stud, e mat. di arch, e num. 1899
—1901 i. 4 n. 11 fig. 3.

7 M. Jastrow The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Boston etc. 1898 p. 483 ff.,
W. H. Ward in M. Jastrow Bildermappe zur Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens Giessen
1912 p. 96 pi. 45, nos. 146—150, A. Jeremias in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 791 f.

8 M. Jastrow The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Boston etc. 1898 p. 488,
A. Jeremias in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 786, 793, 822.

9 Supra p. 15 n. 5. 10 Supi'a p. 157 n. 3.

11 Supra p. 161 f.

12 Sir Arthur Evans in the Jourri. Hell. Stud. 1912 xxxii. 279 f. : ' Some of the most
characteristic religious scenes on Minoan signets are most intelligible in the light supplied
by cults that survived to historic times in the lands East of the Aegean. Throughout
these regions we are confronted by a perpetually recurrent figure of a Goddess and her