Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 3): The great transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of the Palace (London, 1930)

4S0 APOLLO OF AMYKLAE EQUATED WITH RESHEPH

Apollo
of Amy-
klae

identified
with

Resheph
in Cy-
prus.

'Resheph
Mikal'
assimi-
lated to
Arch-
angel
Michael.
Hya-
kinthos
earlier
related to
Mother
Goddess.

The approximation of the Late Minoan bronze images illustrated above
to the figure of the Syrian God Resheph finds, it may be observed, a curious
sequel in later Cypriote cult. The first Greek colonists took over from his
Arcadian shrine at Amyklae the worship of the local Apollo, in whom we
must recognize the reduplicated form of the earlier Hyakinthos, whose tomb-
stone there indeed represents his baetylic image. At Kition, to which the cult
of the Amyklaean Apollo was transferred, the Phoenician king (Fdvag), Baal-
ram, dedicated a statue to the God, with the bilingual inscription—t£ 'AnoWwvi
t<2 'AjivkXo'l—in Cypriote letters J and, in the Phoenician version, to Resheph
Mikal.2 It remained for Mikal's. Alexandrian temple, the foundation of
Cleopatra, to be re-consecrated by the Patriarch Alexander, about the time
of the First Council of Nicaea, as a church of the Archangel Michael.3

When the evidence of the cult of the Great Minoan Mother in the
actual vault of the dead is borne in mind, it is reasonable to suppose that
that at Amyklae Apollo himself may have later on replaced the Goddess,
and the younger divine associate Hyakinthos would represent her son. In
the assimilation of Apollo here with Resheph we may perhaps see the reflex
influence of the Minoan connexion with Cyprus, which, as has been shown
above,4 begins early in the Late Minoan Age. Cyprus may well have
played a part in diffusing these small images of the Syrian Lightning-God
through the Minoan and Mycenaean world. But, considering the late
date of some of them, we may well believe that the rising Phoenician com-
merce also contributed in the dissemination of this Syrian type. Bronze
figurines of the same characteristic form and attitude in fact reached the
Coast of Spain.5 Even the prototypes of these figures—which are Syrian
and not Hittite—hardly go back beyond the Fifteenth Century before our
era, and both in Crete and Mainland Greece they may be taken to belong
to the very latest Age that can be called Minoan or Mycenaean.6

4 See A. E., The Tomb of the Double Axes,
ew., Archaeologia, and cf. P. of M., ii, Pt. II,
pp. 279 and 285, Fig. 169.

5 A specimen is in the Madrid Museum.

6 Tsountas, indeed ('E<f>. 'Apx-< 1891, p. 22\
compares the very similar figure from Tiryns
and Mycenae (op. cit., PL II, 1 and 4a, 4b)
with the warriors, with spears and small round
shields, on a large fragment of a very early
geometrical vase (Schliemann, Tiryns, PI.
XIV), but the comparison is wholly un-
warranted. The one thing certain about these
warriors is that they wear skins with long tails.

1 To' a' fo ' lo' ni' I to' a' mu • ko' lo' i'\

2 C.I.S., i, 86, A. 1. 13. The Semitic
dedication ?20 sjbh recurs in C. I. S., i, 90, 91,
93, 94 at Idalion (see R. Hamilton Lang,
Narrative of Excavations in a Temple at Dali
(Idalhim), &c. : T. R. S. Lit., second series,
vol. xi, Pt. I, pp. 33, 37 ; cf. Deecke-Collitz,
Sammlung der Gr. Dialektinschriften, i, No.

597)- .

3 Eutychius, Annals (ed. Selden, Oxford,
1658, i, p. 435). See on this curious history
Alex. Enmann, Kypros tind der Ursprnng des
Aphroditekultus, p. 37 and n. 3.