Evans, Arthur: The ‘Tomb of the Double Axes’ and associated group, and the pillar rooms and ritual vessels of the ‘Little Palace’ at Knossos’ (London, 1914)

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THE TOMB OF THE DOUBLE AXES

Curiously enough, the best commentary on the orgiastic dances seen in these
designs is supplied by the accounts of a religious performance carried out by
orders of a prince of the Philistine Tsakaras, and belonging therefore to a colonial
stock largely of Cretan extraction. The Golenischeff Papyrus, containing the
account of the travels of the Egyptian official Wen Amon in the eleventh century
b.c, is the source of this information.1 Badira, Prince of Dor, anxious to secure
a vessel wherein to speed his Egyptian guest, makes offering to his God, who takes

Fig. 17. Fragments of painted pottery from Tomb 1.

possession of his principal page and sets him off into an ecstatic frenzy, indicated
by the determinative of dancing. In this state he voiced the divine commands,
and that evening a ship arrived.

In this case it is a youth who is thus possessed by the divinity, while the
orgiastic dancers in the Minoan scenes arc of the female sex.

The inner diameter of the gold ring from Tomb 1 was 1-4 cm. x 1-2, dimensions
too small for any adult wearer, but which agree, however, very closely with a gold
ring found in Tomb 6 of this group, the inner diameter of the hoop of which was
1.5 cm. The hoop of an otherwise massive gold signet-ring found at Knossos in

1 Golenischeff, Rccueil des Travaux, xxi, 74 seqq., and cf. W. Max Miiller, MUth.d. vorderasia-
Hschen Gesellschaft, 1900, pp. T4 seqq.