DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1117#0233
THE GODDESS AS THE LOOSER OF EARTHQUAKES 187
could not have been without their effect". Like the earlier, the successive
overthrows of the Palace in its later forms were due to seismic causes.
A minor ruin that marks the end of the earlier phase of M. M. II Was
followed near its close by what must have been an overwhelming catastrophe.
The similar disaster that befell the building" about the end of the Third
Middle Minoan Period was the result of another severe earthquake.1
Can it be doubted that the Goddess who was Lady of that Underworld
from which this vast destruction issued was invested with direr attributes ?
Beneath the gloomy vault of her sunken ' Lustral Area', to the North-
West of the Palace—now cleared of its seismic debris—the unheeded
prayer of some more ancient litany may still be thought to echo—apericulo
terrae motus libera nos Domina !2
The evidence above cited shows that, at least from the Third Middle
Minoan Period onwards, serpents of the most deadly-kind had become the
attributes of the Goddess in her Palace Shrines. It matters little whether
the sacral mark was taken from an actual adder, or, as suggested from very
similar markings of the cat snake, its Cretan equivalent, whose poison fangs
were farther back in the jaw.
The common name of both snakes among the Modern Greek country-
men is, as already noted, ox^rpa or adder, a name connected with that of
the fearsome "Ex^a of Greek mythology—the Mother of the Sphinx,
which itself betokens the ' strangler ' or ' constrictor \ *-Exif anc^ *X^''a are> m
fact, the ancient Greek terms for the adder or viper.
Thus the token is distinctly viperine—the ' adder mark' of the Goddess
as the incarnation of her dread chthonic power as the ' Earth Shaker'.
Snakes
of God-
dess in
raal ure
cult
viperine.
The
1 adder
mark'
of che
Goddess.
Etruscan Parallel. Adder Mark of Demon of Underworld.
In this connexion a remarkable parallel presents itself. On the
volcanic soil of Italy, where subterranean forces of another kind continually
threaten to break forth, Etruscan imagination called into being furies and
demons of terrific aspect, in the same way wielding- deadly serpents.
Who can forget the awe inspired by these active agents of Hades on
a first visit to the Tarquinian tombs ?—where, in the half-light, the snakes
seem actually to dart forward from the walls.
1 See P. of Af., ii, Pt. I, Sections 45 and For an approximate chronology of a series of
46, and especially p. 296 seqq., 'The House destructive convulsions at ICnossos, see 'op. cit.;
of the Fallen Blocks '. This house had been p. 320, note 3.
crushed by huge blocks over a ton in weight - See P. of M.s iii, p. 12.
flung some twenty feet from the Palace wall.
could not have been without their effect". Like the earlier, the successive
overthrows of the Palace in its later forms were due to seismic causes.
A minor ruin that marks the end of the earlier phase of M. M. II Was
followed near its close by what must have been an overwhelming catastrophe.
The similar disaster that befell the building" about the end of the Third
Middle Minoan Period was the result of another severe earthquake.1
Can it be doubted that the Goddess who was Lady of that Underworld
from which this vast destruction issued was invested with direr attributes ?
Beneath the gloomy vault of her sunken ' Lustral Area', to the North-
West of the Palace—now cleared of its seismic debris—the unheeded
prayer of some more ancient litany may still be thought to echo—apericulo
terrae motus libera nos Domina !2
The evidence above cited shows that, at least from the Third Middle
Minoan Period onwards, serpents of the most deadly-kind had become the
attributes of the Goddess in her Palace Shrines. It matters little whether
the sacral mark was taken from an actual adder, or, as suggested from very
similar markings of the cat snake, its Cretan equivalent, whose poison fangs
were farther back in the jaw.
The common name of both snakes among the Modern Greek country-
men is, as already noted, ox^rpa or adder, a name connected with that of
the fearsome "Ex^a of Greek mythology—the Mother of the Sphinx,
which itself betokens the ' strangler ' or ' constrictor \ *-Exif anc^ *X^''a are> m
fact, the ancient Greek terms for the adder or viper.
Thus the token is distinctly viperine—the ' adder mark' of the Goddess
as the incarnation of her dread chthonic power as the ' Earth Shaker'.
Snakes
of God-
dess in
raal ure
cult
viperine.
The
1 adder
mark'
of che
Goddess.
Etruscan Parallel. Adder Mark of Demon of Underworld.
In this connexion a remarkable parallel presents itself. On the
volcanic soil of Italy, where subterranean forces of another kind continually
threaten to break forth, Etruscan imagination called into being furies and
demons of terrific aspect, in the same way wielding- deadly serpents.
Who can forget the awe inspired by these active agents of Hades on
a first visit to the Tarquinian tombs ?—where, in the half-light, the snakes
seem actually to dart forward from the walls.
1 See P. of Af., ii, Pt. I, Sections 45 and For an approximate chronology of a series of
46, and especially p. 296 seqq., 'The House destructive convulsions at ICnossos, see 'op. cit.;
of the Fallen Blocks '. This house had been p. 320, note 3.
crushed by huge blocks over a ton in weight - See P. of M.s iii, p. 12.
flung some twenty feet from the Palace wall.