DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0616
goo ' ICWrJLti 1UMB KtAKbU 1U MINOS IN SICILY
Apollo of a ritual vessel, the double of which was found in the Treasury 0f
the central Shrine in the great Minoan Palace ?
Minos' From the same records we learn that the last Minos, pursuing th»
Expedi- runaway Daedalos to Sicily, had taken refuge with the native King- Kokalos
t,on- the story of whose treachery in pushing him into a bath' of boilino- hot
water may itself have originated from the bath-like form seen among Late
His fate Minoan clay coffins.1 More significant still, however, is the sequel. His
Temple Cretan followers, to whom the body of Minos had been handed over as the
Tomb. victim of an accident, buried him, we are told, in a magnificent manner,
laying his bones in a concealed tomb beneath the earth 2and building above
it, visible to all, a temple of Aphrodite—the ' Lady of the Dove', who at
Elymian Eryx 3 was still regarded as one and the same divinity as those of
Kythera and Paphos. This last detail is valuable, as it takes us back to the
prehistoric stratum of Cretan religion, in which Minos stood in direct rela-
tion—not, as later, to Zeus—but to the great Mother Goddess.
The whole course of the excavations at Knossos has emphasized the
fact that the ' House of Minos ' was a sanctuary quite as much as a p dace.
It was in fact a home of a succession of Priest-kings.
It was natural then to suppose that the burial place of these might
also conform to the old tradition, and, in the course of the early explora-
Royai tions, I had myself been inspired by the hope of finding such a ' temple
Isopata of tomb '• But the only tomb discovered that had a claim to be called ' royal'
another —that brought out at Isopata, at some distance from the Palace, on a height
type. . .
overlooking the harbour-town—though of considerable architectural interest,
was still simply a burial vault of a keeled and corbelled type, compared
above to the ' Royal Tombs ' of Ras Shamra.'1 It may well have been that
traditionally connected with the warrior prince Idomeneus, who was said
. to have led eighty ships—the largest contingent—to the s'ege of Troy.
The new light, indeed, thrown on the Isopata Tomb by the ' Royal
1 The actual discovery of Late Minoan Mycenae and Knossos. (See, too, J. Naue,
pottery in Sicily due to Professor Orsi's Die vorromischen Sckiberier, p. 9.) We have
researches, from r<Sgr onwards, has itself been here an archaeological proof that there was in
long known, though it did not reveal bath- Sicily a continuous tradition from the great
shaped larnakes. A resume" of it is given in days of the Later Palace,
my Prch. Tombs of Knossos (Archaeolo^ia, lix, " Diod., 1. iv, c. 79, 3. Later on (op. at., c. 79,
pp. 498,499, and notes). The interesting point 4) when the Akragantines built a city here
is that, though the pottery to hand is L.M. III, (Herakleia Minoa) the bones were returned
swords found with them, which are of indi- to the Cretans,
genous fabric, are derivatives from good s Diod., 1. v, c. 77, 5.
L. M. I prototypes, to be matched both at ' See above, p. 77rseqq.
Apollo of a ritual vessel, the double of which was found in the Treasury 0f
the central Shrine in the great Minoan Palace ?
Minos' From the same records we learn that the last Minos, pursuing th»
Expedi- runaway Daedalos to Sicily, had taken refuge with the native King- Kokalos
t,on- the story of whose treachery in pushing him into a bath' of boilino- hot
water may itself have originated from the bath-like form seen among Late
His fate Minoan clay coffins.1 More significant still, however, is the sequel. His
Temple Cretan followers, to whom the body of Minos had been handed over as the
Tomb. victim of an accident, buried him, we are told, in a magnificent manner,
laying his bones in a concealed tomb beneath the earth 2and building above
it, visible to all, a temple of Aphrodite—the ' Lady of the Dove', who at
Elymian Eryx 3 was still regarded as one and the same divinity as those of
Kythera and Paphos. This last detail is valuable, as it takes us back to the
prehistoric stratum of Cretan religion, in which Minos stood in direct rela-
tion—not, as later, to Zeus—but to the great Mother Goddess.
The whole course of the excavations at Knossos has emphasized the
fact that the ' House of Minos ' was a sanctuary quite as much as a p dace.
It was in fact a home of a succession of Priest-kings.
It was natural then to suppose that the burial place of these might
also conform to the old tradition, and, in the course of the early explora-
Royai tions, I had myself been inspired by the hope of finding such a ' temple
Isopata of tomb '• But the only tomb discovered that had a claim to be called ' royal'
another —that brought out at Isopata, at some distance from the Palace, on a height
type. . .
overlooking the harbour-town—though of considerable architectural interest,
was still simply a burial vault of a keeled and corbelled type, compared
above to the ' Royal Tombs ' of Ras Shamra.'1 It may well have been that
traditionally connected with the warrior prince Idomeneus, who was said
. to have led eighty ships—the largest contingent—to the s'ege of Troy.
The new light, indeed, thrown on the Isopata Tomb by the ' Royal
1 The actual discovery of Late Minoan Mycenae and Knossos. (See, too, J. Naue,
pottery in Sicily due to Professor Orsi's Die vorromischen Sckiberier, p. 9.) We have
researches, from r<Sgr onwards, has itself been here an archaeological proof that there was in
long known, though it did not reveal bath- Sicily a continuous tradition from the great
shaped larnakes. A resume" of it is given in days of the Later Palace,
my Prch. Tombs of Knossos (Archaeolo^ia, lix, " Diod., 1. iv, c. 79, 3. Later on (op. at., c. 79,
pp. 498,499, and notes). The interesting point 4) when the Akragantines built a city here
is that, though the pottery to hand is L.M. III, (Herakleia Minoa) the bones were returned
swords found with them, which are of indi- to the Cretans,
genous fabric, are derivatives from good s Diod., 1. v, c. 77, 5.
L. M. I prototypes, to be matched both at ' See above, p. 77rseqq.