DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7519#0308
A SURVEY OF THE MINOAN CIVILIZATION 273
keeps the pillars as a central feature. The private houses also
begin to have their own shrines, though these seem to keep
to the old simple form of pillar-room. Finally, after the fall
of the Palaces in L.M.I-II, we see the simpler rustic sanctuaries
returning, probably as centres of worship for the whole com-
munity, not merely for the nobility. That this is a return to
an old fashion which had never died out is evident from the
scenes on earlier rings and gems where a goddess is often shown
seated with her attendants in a sacred grove.
Throughout their history, indeed, the Minoans were worship-
pers of nature, who was represented from M.M. times by a great
Mother Goddess, Mistress of Trees and Mountains and Lady
of the Wild Animals. As representing the fertility of nature
she is often credited with a son—a boy-god. In Greek times
her attributes were divided among a number of goddesses,
Athene takes her snakes, Aphrodite her doves and her son,
Artemis, her stags, and various nymphs her mountains, streams,
and forests. But there was always the tendency in Crete to
combine these goddesses into one, and Britomartis or Diktynna
was more truly the goddess of Crete than the politely Hellenized
Athene or Artemis.
When pictured on the rings and seal stones, the goddess is
always bareheaded, with her long tresses floating in the wind.
In the more urbane statuettes destined for Palace use she wears
a tiara or crown, and no doubt it is this tradition which is
followed in the capped figures of L.M.lli. In either case she
follows the women's fashion of the period. Her son is shown
either naked or wearing the normal loin-cloth. Occasionally
he wears a peaked cap. He is one of those soulless, faun-like,
heartless boys whom you meet in the wilder parts of Crete
to-day.
Being divinities of the earth, the water, the air, and all that
in them is, they were evidently considered to be resident in
pillars, trees, or queer stones, and Evans has made out a very
good case for the ritual means of evoking them by invocation,
by summoning on a conch-shell, or by dancing, and for the
outward manifestation of their presence by the appearance of
birds perching upon the cult object.1
Two objects must be mentioned in connexion with religion.2
The first is that known as the ' horns of consecration '.3 A
1 P. of M., Index, 147. 2 Nilsson, M.M.R., 152.
3 Cook, Zeus, I., 508, gives reasons for supposing their origin to
lie in the setting of actual horns on an altar.
18
keeps the pillars as a central feature. The private houses also
begin to have their own shrines, though these seem to keep
to the old simple form of pillar-room. Finally, after the fall
of the Palaces in L.M.I-II, we see the simpler rustic sanctuaries
returning, probably as centres of worship for the whole com-
munity, not merely for the nobility. That this is a return to
an old fashion which had never died out is evident from the
scenes on earlier rings and gems where a goddess is often shown
seated with her attendants in a sacred grove.
Throughout their history, indeed, the Minoans were worship-
pers of nature, who was represented from M.M. times by a great
Mother Goddess, Mistress of Trees and Mountains and Lady
of the Wild Animals. As representing the fertility of nature
she is often credited with a son—a boy-god. In Greek times
her attributes were divided among a number of goddesses,
Athene takes her snakes, Aphrodite her doves and her son,
Artemis, her stags, and various nymphs her mountains, streams,
and forests. But there was always the tendency in Crete to
combine these goddesses into one, and Britomartis or Diktynna
was more truly the goddess of Crete than the politely Hellenized
Athene or Artemis.
When pictured on the rings and seal stones, the goddess is
always bareheaded, with her long tresses floating in the wind.
In the more urbane statuettes destined for Palace use she wears
a tiara or crown, and no doubt it is this tradition which is
followed in the capped figures of L.M.lli. In either case she
follows the women's fashion of the period. Her son is shown
either naked or wearing the normal loin-cloth. Occasionally
he wears a peaked cap. He is one of those soulless, faun-like,
heartless boys whom you meet in the wilder parts of Crete
to-day.
Being divinities of the earth, the water, the air, and all that
in them is, they were evidently considered to be resident in
pillars, trees, or queer stones, and Evans has made out a very
good case for the ritual means of evoking them by invocation,
by summoning on a conch-shell, or by dancing, and for the
outward manifestation of their presence by the appearance of
birds perching upon the cult object.1
Two objects must be mentioned in connexion with religion.2
The first is that known as the ' horns of consecration '.3 A
1 P. of M., Index, 147. 2 Nilsson, M.M.R., 152.
3 Cook, Zeus, I., 508, gives reasons for supposing their origin to
lie in the setting of actual horns on an altar.
18