DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1117#0213
i68
'SNAKE-FRAMES' OF MINOAN SEAL-STONES
Philistine Geometrical decoration with rows of birds, also of Minoan deri-
vation. It is interesting" to recall that Saul's armour, taken from the field of
Gilboa, was hung up in this same ' House of Ashtaroth'.1 King- David who
seems to have driven the Philistines out of Beth-Shan about 1000 before
our era and to have been responsible for the partial demolition of the
Temple, may well have looked on these lasting records of the old domestic
religion of Crete. The Cherethites (Kpijre?) of David's Guard might still
have explained to him their significance.
Ritual
objects
on seal
types:
'Snake
frames'.
Goddess
with
'Snake-
frame '
between
guardian
Griffins.
Supplement to § 94: ' Snake Frames ' and ' Snake Knots '.
Seal Types with ' Snake Frames '.
In the course of an early visit to the Diktaean Cave at Psychro I
obtained from a villager—among other objects from the black, votive stratum
— an exceptionally large lentoid bead-seal, 33 millimetres in diameter, and
of Late Minoan fabric—on which, though it was fractured, through the
agency of fire, the essential parts of the intaglio had been preserved,
showing the Goddess between two Griffins (see Fig. 130). Above her
head, which, according to a contemporary convention, is reduced to a mere
knob, she supports with both hands a triple framework formed of three
sinuous members, suggestive of serpents, and with their upcurved ends
terminating in excrescences that might stand for snakes' heads. Each of
these objects is traversed by rings at the two points where they turn
upwards, and could well, therefore, represent three snakes with their bodies
bound together.
This curious object,2 in its shape suggestive of the ' Horns of Conse-
cration' of Minoan cult, gave me the impression of forming some kind of
' snake frame' of a similar religious import. ' As the skins of snakes in
Modern Greece and in Crete itself are still preserved as possessing certain
curative or apotropaic virtues, and are also hung up in spring as charms
on trees by young men of courting age,3 it seemed quite possible that some
ritual arrangement of this kind had been devised in honour of the Goddess,
herself so intimately connected with the early snake cult.
On another lentoid bead-seal, from the Rhodian cemetery of Ialysos,
where the Goddess again appears between two Griffins, Fig. 131, the bases
on which they stand are in the same way raised to a level well above the
feet of the central figure. In this case the Goddess holds up two of these
1 Cbron. x. 10; i Sam. xxxi. 10.
Now in the Ashmolean Museum.
See note 2, p. rS3.
Maiuri, Jalisos, p. 57, Fig
62 ; Tomb X.
'SNAKE-FRAMES' OF MINOAN SEAL-STONES
Philistine Geometrical decoration with rows of birds, also of Minoan deri-
vation. It is interesting" to recall that Saul's armour, taken from the field of
Gilboa, was hung up in this same ' House of Ashtaroth'.1 King- David who
seems to have driven the Philistines out of Beth-Shan about 1000 before
our era and to have been responsible for the partial demolition of the
Temple, may well have looked on these lasting records of the old domestic
religion of Crete. The Cherethites (Kpijre?) of David's Guard might still
have explained to him their significance.
Ritual
objects
on seal
types:
'Snake
frames'.
Goddess
with
'Snake-
frame '
between
guardian
Griffins.
Supplement to § 94: ' Snake Frames ' and ' Snake Knots '.
Seal Types with ' Snake Frames '.
In the course of an early visit to the Diktaean Cave at Psychro I
obtained from a villager—among other objects from the black, votive stratum
— an exceptionally large lentoid bead-seal, 33 millimetres in diameter, and
of Late Minoan fabric—on which, though it was fractured, through the
agency of fire, the essential parts of the intaglio had been preserved,
showing the Goddess between two Griffins (see Fig. 130). Above her
head, which, according to a contemporary convention, is reduced to a mere
knob, she supports with both hands a triple framework formed of three
sinuous members, suggestive of serpents, and with their upcurved ends
terminating in excrescences that might stand for snakes' heads. Each of
these objects is traversed by rings at the two points where they turn
upwards, and could well, therefore, represent three snakes with their bodies
bound together.
This curious object,2 in its shape suggestive of the ' Horns of Conse-
cration' of Minoan cult, gave me the impression of forming some kind of
' snake frame' of a similar religious import. ' As the skins of snakes in
Modern Greece and in Crete itself are still preserved as possessing certain
curative or apotropaic virtues, and are also hung up in spring as charms
on trees by young men of courting age,3 it seemed quite possible that some
ritual arrangement of this kind had been devised in honour of the Goddess,
herself so intimately connected with the early snake cult.
On another lentoid bead-seal, from the Rhodian cemetery of Ialysos,
where the Goddess again appears between two Griffins, Fig. 131, the bases
on which they stand are in the same way raised to a level well above the
feet of the central figure. In this case the Goddess holds up two of these
1 Cbron. x. 10; i Sam. xxxi. 10.
Now in the Ashmolean Museum.
See note 2, p. rS3.
Maiuri, Jalisos, p. 57, Fig
62 ; Tomb X.