Evans, Arthur J.: Scripta minoa: the written documents of minoan Crete with special reference to the archives of Knossos (Band 1): The hieroglyphic and primitive linear classes (Oxford, 1909)

SUCCESSIVE TYPES OF MINOAN WRITING 13

together with clay human figures of a type that characterizes the votive deposits, like
Petsofa, of the earliest part of the Middle Minoan Age.

But the most remarkable example of a developed linear script that rewarded these Discovery
earlier explorations belonged to an altogether different class of object. Libation

On the steep of Mt. Lasethi, the culminating mass of the ancient Dicta, above Table in
the village of Psychro, and about four hours' mule journey from the site of the ancient Cav'e'sanc-
Lyttos, opens a great cave, which, from the abundant remains of votive and sacrificial tuary.
objects discovered within it, had been evidently a principal sanctuary of the prehistoric
cult of the island.1 There can indeed be little doubt that this was the Diktaion Antron The
of the Lyttian traditions, whither, according to the legend preserved by Hesiod,2 Rhea Mmo*"
took refuge to give birth to the Cretan Zeus. Rhea, as we now know, represents the Goddess
great Nature-Goddess of Minoan Crete, part of whose mythic being was also lnd Infant
perpetuated under later titles as Artemis Dictynna, the 'Sweet Virgin' Britomartis,
the mysterious Aphaia, and Aphrodite Ariadne. With this great Minoan Goddess seems
to have been associated a youthful male divinity, later identified by the Greeks with the
Cretan Zeus. The aniconic or fetish forms of these, which could, through due ritual Sacred
incantation, be charged, as it were, with the divinity, were the sacred Double Axes, of b^ityaos
which numerous bronze examples were found in the Dictaean Cave, and the holy pillars of the cult,
of stone. A garbled reminiscence of such a stone, attaching to this very sanctuary,
may be found, indeed, in the legend of the /JamAo? swallowed by Kronos in place
of his infant son.

Numerous representations of this ancient Stone and Pillar-Worship have been
preserved for us in the subjects of the signets and wall-paintings both of Minoan Crete
and of the Mycenaean mainland,8 but a special interest attaches to the discovery of
a material trace of this ' baetylic' cult in the Dictaean Cave itself.

In April, 1896, I obtained, from beneath a prehistoric sacrificial stratum, covering Table
the vast 'Atrium' of the Cave, part of the black steatite slab of a table that had been *ound.'!l1

' r sacrificial

provided with three shallow cup-like cavities for libations.4 It had possessed four stratum:
corner supports, and a larger central prominence below proved that it had been placed SalSon
upon the top of a sacred cone or pillar in the manner shown in Fig. 7.* Its great baityao2.
antiquity is attested both by the position in which it was found and the resemblance
of the cup-like cavities with their raised rims to libation cups of the same black
steatite subsequently found among the fittings of a small early shrine of the Cretan
Goddess in the Palace at Knossos. This latter piece of evidence as well as other
comparisons of an epigraphic nature, to be referred to below, carry back its date at

1 Preliminary investigations of this cave, resulting in the Mr. D. G. Hogarth (B. S. A., vi. pp. 94 seqq.).
discovery of various votive objects, were made by Prof. * Theogonia, v. 477 seqq.

F. Halbherr and Dr. Joseph Hazzidakis in 1886 {Antichita s See my Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cull. London,

deir Anlro di Zeus Idea, pp. 216 seqq.). For my own Hacmillans, 1901, and J. H. S., xxi (1901), pp. 99 seqq.
researches there from 1895 onwards, resulting in the dis- * Further Discoveries, &c, pp. 350 seqq., and Figs. S5 a,

covery of the inscribed Libation Table, see Further Dis- 25 ft. An additional fragment, not adding, however, to

coveries of Cretan Script, pp. 350 seqq., and Mye. Tree and the inscription, was subsequently discovered by M. De

Pillar Cult,pp.I3seqq. (J.H.S.,xxi. 111 seqq.). Inicco Margne.
the interior of the cave was methodically excavated by 6 See my Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cull, pp. 14 seqq.