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)

KOURETES OF RHEA-KYBELE

last

with his instruments, were found in a very late Minoan tomb in Ea
Crete.1

This orgiastic aspect of the old Cretan worship - is, in fact, well repre-
sented in the Kouretes of its later phase, who danced around the infant
Zeus. According to the Eteocretan tradition preserved by Diodorus, they
were half savage in their habits of life, dwelling in caves and thickets on
the mountains3—■something akin to the Selloi of Dodona. It is in the train
of Rhea-Kybele, on the Phrygian side, however, that we find the best
survival of this aspect of the cult. The mendicant priests or Metragyrts of
the Great Mother—amongst whom, it may be remembered, the Second
Dionysios of Syracuse enrolled himself in his old age'1—may well have
recalled the physiognomy of the head on this Knossian intaglio.

1 At Mouliana in Siteia; 'E^>. 'Ap^., 1904,
pp. 46-8, and Fig. ir.

2 On traces of an orgiastic cult in Crete see
especially M. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean

''''11 *»** .(■**

Religion^ p. 506 seqq.
a Diod. V. c. Ixv, i.
' Klearchos in Atlienaeus,

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I • • • •

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BLACK
WHITE
M YELLOW

Fig. 170. Fragment of Painted Stucco Frieze from 'High
Priest's House' (see p. 205).