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 4,1): Emergence of outer western enceinte, with new illustrations, artistic and religious, of the Middle Minoan Phase (London, 1935)

SACRIFICED BULL IN FUNEREAL RITES

43

votary stands in front of the sacrificial table, clad below the girdle in the skin
of a victim, and with her hands lowered above what seems to be a small
bowl laid on an altar. A two-handled vessel or basket with fruit—a hint of
another kind of offering's—is seen above, as well as a high-spouted ewer,

•m info- \f!i: \fjiv:l%iv4te^k»fMi*jM:/MLr-.4f?y'Wm,

Fig. 27. Fresco Panel on Hagia Triada Sarcophagus with Design in Parts
completed.

while to the extreme right is a part of a small walled enclosure—here
doubtless a sepulchral ' temenos '—with ' horns of consecration ' above its
cornice and, within, a sacred olive-tree. In front of what we may suppose
to have been the entrance to the ' temenos ' there again rises the shaft of
a Double Axe, with reduplicated edges, upon which is perched the
symbolic bird.

We have here unquestionable evidence of the sacrifice of animals of Funereal
bovine species, probably young bulls, in a funereal ritual in honour of some ^"uf
Minoan prince, but, as the Double Axes show, under the higher sanction of
the great Minoan Goddess. We recognize here indeed the same religious
conception that recurs at Knossos in the Tomb of the Double Axes, within
which—together with a bull's head ' rhyton ' or libation vessel—the Double
Axe symbols of the Goddess and, originally we may believe, her actual
image, had been placed at the head of the rock-cut cavity where the departed
warrior was laid. In a glorified form this divine guardianship of the departed