The clearest evidence about the Mycenaean pantheon lies in the Linear B texts. As discussed above, only a handful of the deity names in these texts appear both on the mainland and on Crete. We might consider those deities mentioned only on Crete as being Minoan. For those deities mentioned on the mainland, we have at least two possibilities. On the one hand, they may be Greek, meaning that they may derive from the Indo-European civilization that gave rise to the Greek language. Some divine names do have Indo-European etymologies and cognates. On the other hand, they may be pre-Greek, belonging to the indigenous population of Greece before the Greek-speakers arrived. These deities may then have been adopted into the Greek pantheon. Some gods do have a blatantly Indo-European heritage, such as Zeus and Poseidon. Others are more difficult to determine. (The Bronze Age heritages of individual deities are discussed in a later section of this chapter.)
The deities attested to among the Mycenaeans are Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Dione, Marineus, Hera, Artemis, Hermes, Dionysos, Posideia, Trisheros, Man-asa, Pereswa, Dopota, Dipsioi, Drimios, Iphemedeia, the Mother of Animals, the Queens, the King, the Lady of Upojo, the Lady of Asiwia, the Lady of Iqeja, the Lady of Newopeo, and the Lady of Grain, as well as simply Lady (Potnia) (Hagg 1997, 165). Much can be learned from these names not only about Mycenaean religion, but also about continuity of Greek religion into the historical periods. Many deities remained in power throughout Greek history, such as Hera and Hermes, showing that the Greek Dark Age was hardly the utter devastation and re-creation of Greece that scholars originally believed it was.
Other names in the corpus either ceased to exist after the Bronze Age or morphed into nondivine titles, such as Dipsioi, "the Thirsty," possibly referring to the dead. The most vexing of these is the name/title Potnia. By Homer's day, the term meant "revered female," referring either to a mortal or to a goddess. Sometimes the title was specific, as with the Potnia Theron—Mistress of Animals—used in reference to Artemis. The question of who the Bronze Age Potnia was/were, however, is problematic.
The name/title Potnia appears twelve times at Pylos, five or six times at Knossos, three times at Mycenae, and once at Thebes (Boelle 2001, 403). Thus, it is common to both Greece and Crete. In some instances, the word appears alone; in others, it is modified by a concept or place-name. At Knossos we have the a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja, which translates to something like Lady of Athens, and the da-pu-ri-to-jo-po-ti-ni-ja, or Lady of the Labyrinth. At Pylos we have a po-ti-ni-ja-a-si-wi-ja, Lady of Asia; po-ti-ni-ja-i-qe-ja, Lady of Horses; and at Mycenae there is the si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, or Grain Lady (Trumpy 2001, 411-413).
The question is: Is Potnia one goddess or many? Is Potnia similar to the Christian "Our Lady," in the way that Our Lady of Lourdes is also Our Lady of Fatima? Or is Potnia a title applicable to several separate goddesses at once? In both linguistics and occurrence, Potnia is related to the god Poseidon. The Pot-portion of her title may derive from the Indo-European word for possession or ownership, just as Poseidon means "Lord of the Land." Her strongest cult is attested to at Pylos, where Poseidon was clearly the chief god, and she even has the title of i-qe-ja, relating her to horses, just like Poseidon. One could argue that Potnia was the consort of Poseidon. Furthermore, we know from later Greek mythology that Poseidon once mated with Demeter, both of them in the form of horses. If we add this to our study, and combine it with the fact that at Mycenae there was mentioned a Grain Lady (possibly an epithet for Demeter), we might say that Potnia was one universally acknowledged Aegean goddess, understood to be a grain/horse deity, consort of Poseidon, and later manifesting as Demeter.
But then how do we understand titles like a-ta-na-po-ti-ni-ja, "Lady of Athens," which is certainly a title of an Athena-like goddess? How could an apparently Indo-European word like Potnia be identified with a blatantly Mi-noan term like labyrinth? Why does the name/title Potnia appear more than once on some Linear B tablets? Should we understand that Potnia, as one goddess, received different dedications in her different guises, or that the different Potnias referred to distinct goddesses? In the end, it seems probable that Potnia was a title given to various goddesses in the Aegean pantheons. In some instances, such as at Pylos, one goddess was so prominent that she could be referred to merely by the title Lady. At other times, adjectives were used to differentiate among goddesses.
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