GODDESSES AND MONSTERS
Looking for the Cretan labyrinth
Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890). He pointed out that the Minotaur sacrifice, held every eight years, coincided with the “normal length of the king’s reign”. After each eight-year period, the king would retire to the oracular cave on Mount Ida to receive guidance from Zeus. 3 Frazer suggested that the monster could have been a red hot brazen bull in a sacred ceremony that involved roasting humans alive to renew the strength of the king or the Sun. The brutal image is reminiscent of that of Moloch, the god of Canaan, which jumped out of the pages of the Old Testament to influence iconic silent films Cabiria and Metropolis.
Of course, Frazer’s suggestion wasn’t based on archæological evidence, since Knossos hadn’t even been excavated yet. But could there be a fragment of truth to that part of the story? More recently, three archæological discoveries have suggested that the sophisticated bull-worshipping civilisation had a darker side.
In 1967, archæologist Peter Warren found fragments of a human skull at the early Minoan site of Fournou Korifi. The lack of other bones ruled out the possibility of a burial, so he worked with the hypothesis that the skull had been deliberately placed there, which would indicate ancestor worship or human sacrifice. Over a decade later, in 1979, the discovery of several skeletons in Anemospilia, a Minoan site near Heraklion, raised many questions. The scene that the archæologists found remained frozen in time, buried by the effects of a violent earthquake. A skeleton found on an altar-like construction appeared to be that of a young man who had died of blood loss, probably after his carotid artery was severed, and there was evidence that his legs had probably been bound. Next to him was a large blade, and among the debris, a jar that contained bull’s blood. A third discovery was unearthed, again by Peter Warren, in Knossos in 1980: about 200 bones of children between 10 and 15 years old were found in the North House. At least 20 of these bones showed butchering marks, perhaps
made with a thin obsidian knife, which again pointed to ritual cannibalism. It’s difficult to reconcile this darker side with the elegant vitality and the intelligence that the frescoes exude.
The mistress of the Labyrinth
Ariadne remained the most elusive figure on my visit to Knossos. In the myth, she is the daughter of King Minos and Pasiphæ, and therefore the Minotaur’s half-sister, a detail often overlooked but one that gives her more complexity. In the fascinating (if snubbed by academics) The White Goddess, Robert Graves translated Homer’s verses from the Iliad as “Dædalus in Cnossos once contrived/a dancing floor for fair-haired Ariadne”. Scholar Károly Kerényi translated it as Ariadne of the “beautiful braids of hair”, an epithet that Homer used more often to refer to goddesses. Both Graves and Kerényi theorised that Ariadne, arihagne, the utterly pure, was therefore a goddess; Kerényi identified her as the “mistress of the Labyrinth” and noted that, in an inscription on a Linear B tablet, the libation offered to her was equal to the amount of honey offered to all the other gods. For him, this extraordinary distinction could only be explained if she was a Great Goddess.
Kerényi also noted that Plutarch (c. AD46-120) referred to a cult of Ariadne in the island of Naxos in his Vita of Theseus. Curiously, according to him, the Naxians recognised two Ariadnes. The celestial one was married to Dionysos, whereas the earthly one helped Theseus, eloped with him, and was abandoned by him shortly afterwards. She retired then to Naxos, where she died. Plutarch wrote that there were two celebrations for these two Ariadnes, though they were very different in spirit: the one for the goddess was joyful, the one for the mortal, gloomy and sorrowful.
The snake goddess
Searching for references to Ariadne in Knossos I look at Minoan art, where anonymous women appear prominently. I see no threads and no labyrinths, but there is a bull: two fair-skinned female acrobats stand next to it in the taurokatharpsia fresco. 4 I also find out that the iconic ‘Ladies in Blue’ fresco is a reconstruction based on very small fragments, visible because they appear slightly offset from the main composition. Despite the critics (Evelyn Waugh thought it looked like a cover of Vogue), it’s a beautiful piece of art.
The most intriguing Minoan female figures can’t be found in the palace, but in the museum of archæology of Heraklion. They’re two faience figurines 5 that have become the Rosetta Stone of the collection, as the crowd gathering around them suggests. Discovered by Evans in 1903, during his fourth campaign at Knossos, the first was a large fragment of a female figure sporting bare breasts and an apron over a long flounced skirt. In her right hand she held a slithering snake. Evans referred to the figure as a “priestess or votary” and thought it part of a shrine. The figure was promptly reconstructed with another snake in her left hand and a head with expressive features, probably inspired by that of the bigger, somewhat rougher statuette that was found next to it.
The small figurine is widely known as the Snake Goddess, and Evans referred to the larger one as a Mother Goddess. They share the same glass case, and the same enigmatic stances, proudly showing their breasts. Evans suggested a link to the cult of Wadjet, the Egyptian cobra goddess who offered protection to women at childbirth and who had an oracle in the city of Per-Wadjet, still active in times of Herodotus. However, they could also be linked to Kebechet, the daughter of Anubis, depicted as a woman with the head of a snake. This goddess assisted her father in embalming during the process of mummification, and was therefore connected to the renewal of life. Snakes aren’t just a symbol of fertility and rebirth, they are also the guardians of the underworld, and, in this chthonic form, they’re part of an oracular tradition.
There’s a third female figurine in the museum that intrigues me, with her stylised lines, sphinx-like smile and eyes that appear closed. Her hands are raised in a silent greeting, and she’s wearing the pods of opium poppies around her head. This Poppy Goddess dates from the 13th century BC and was found in a sanctuary in Gazi, suggesting that opium could have been used as an entheogen in Minoan religious rituals. According to Kerényi, there could have been a connection between these and the Eleusinian mysteries, the religious ceremony held around the autumnal equinox in Eleusis. These so-called Greater Mysteries, ta Mysteria, were cults to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fertility, and her daughter Persephone, abducted by Hades. Little is known about the celebration, but Kerényi quotes first century BC historian Diodorus of Sicily, who writes: “Elsewhere such rites are communicated in secret, but in Krete, in Knossos, it had been the custom since time immemorial to speak of these ceremonies quite openly to all”. Earlier, I referred to my journey as a pilgrimage. Visiting the place where a myth may have originated can be a numinous experience, particularly when the myth has a personal meaning, as it has in my case. Reflecting upon it, I realise it’s because it holds the first reference to women’s wisdom that I can recall. The mysterious Ariadne doesn’t reveal herself – or perhaps she does, but under the appearance of a goddess.
The physical traces of a bullworshipping cult and the references to a Great Goddess feel like glimpses of the great mystery, a passage to an otherworld populated by archetypes and mythical creatures. The myth is serving its function, at least according to Mircea Eliade: in answering its call, as I walk among the ruins, I’m detaching myself from the present, returning to a mythical age and coming closer to the divine.