The formal paved courts within the “palaces” (Central Court), and one or more on its exterior (generally a West Court), are believed to have formed “theaters” for key public events of a politico-religious character. Over time, as the “palaces” become more enclosed and less accessible, the roles of internal and external courts may have altered considerably. The West Court, arguably particularly important for ceremonies linking the town and those elite groups believed to have controlled the rituals of the “palace complexes” and of the Central Court, has a carefully-enhanced outer face of the “palace” fronting it, with fine-cut ashlar work. The insets along this fayade may indicate important upper-floor windows, and some suggest that elite members formally presented themselves at these apertures (“windows of appearance”) to the assembled populace, perhaps in conscious imitation of Egyptian royal practices. This could have been a sign of real power or some sacred theater.
However both academic and popular imagination has long speculated whether the Central Court was the locus of a different, more intriguing activity, bull-leaping (Color Plate 5.1). This dangerous “sport” or “ritual” is so frequently portrayed that it assuredly played a major part in the Minoan mental world. Young men, and quite possibly women, grasped a charging bull’s horns, somersaulted onto its back, then somersaulted off, to be caught by a companion on the ground. Like all recent Mediterranean bull-sports, deadly accidents could occur, and indeed there are scenes of such a kind. But is such an athletic feat even possible? Some expert bull-fighters say absolutely not. A recent video onYouTube does though show an athlete somersaulting over a charging bull, but not via a first leap onto its back. Furthermore Graham (1962), in his notable study of palatial architecture, suggested that the Central Court design could be matched in particular portrayals of the “sport,” and indeed has claimed to have found traces of possible “safety-barriers” around the Knossos example. There is also the unlikely coincidence that later Greek myth, in its tale of Theseus accompanying a regular tribute of Mainland youths to the palace of King Minos at Knossos, informs us that they were to be sacrificed to the bull-monster the Minotaur. Cretan palatial art uses bulls and bull-horns as a regular emblem, both for prestigious artifacts and as architectural decoration. Finally, scholars have frequently drawn links between the earth-shaking powers attributed to the later god Poseidon and the permanent threat and frequent visitation of earthquakes on Crete; perhaps in Minoan Crete, this supernatural force requiring appeasement had metamorphosed into a giant bull beneath the earth tossing the island with its horns. In combination, a reasonable argument can be made that the immense and potentially violent power of bulls was the basis for a form of cult-propitiation in palatial times.
However, does Minoan art portray a Minoan legend, or a real event whose public performance and real-world fatalities, like contemporary Spanish and French bull-sports, created a propitiatory or merely cathartic theater of the conflict between humans, death, and dangerous subterranean forces? Personally I believe that bull-leaping took place, especially given the recurrent detailed and varied depictions (not least the accidents). How to accommodate the skeptics of its feasibility? Sherratt (1995) has emphasized the significance of narcotic consumption in Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age societies, with clear evidence in Minoan art. Were the bulls drugged so that they were dangerous, but slower and less deadly, so that bull-leaping was usually successfully accomplished? This recently became less hypothetical, since doping tests are now applied at premier Spanish bullfights to counter allegations that bulls have been drugged to make the matador’s job easier.
We have so far mentioned public events which often (always?) included a ritual element (I share the opinion that Minoan society was diffused with religion). Formal evidence for cult includes structures interpreted as shrines and representations on frescoes, gems or in figurine form which are with variable degrees of confidence taken to relate to supernatural beings or events.
Surprisingly small structures, for example facing onto the Central Court, are reasonably interpreted as palace shrines, whilst larger complexes such as at Archanes near Knossos (Sakellarakis and Sapouna-Sakellaraki 1991) are likewise clearly temples. The cult paraphernalia and similarities to artistic scenes combining such structures with supernatural activity form convincing evidence. Much less clear are the possible readings of images on wall-paintings and in mobile art. In the illustrated gems (Figure 5.12a—b) a female figure hovers in the air above ecstatic worshippers, and a seated woman receives gift-bearing females “in state” in an open-air context (note the opium poppies and the double-axe, the latter a recurrent motif in Minoan art and argued to have a central ritual role). Scholars are at odds if these are goddess-scenes, or priestesses and followers in activities of a ritual hallucinogenic nature. The figurines of women are also variously seen as priestess (or) worshipper (or) goddess images, while the occurrence on some of them of snakes also favors a religious context.
Unequivocal evidence for religious activity, if of an extreme form and unparalleled context, comes from the temple complex of Arkhanes Anemospelia. The excavators suggest that a young man was being sacrificed on an altar slab by a woman and an older man when a great earthquake brought the structure down, sealing the entire scene. It is proposed that the event was propitiatory against the quake after pre-shocks warned of its imminence.
Peak sanctuaries and rarer sacred caves found throughout the island have pre-First Palace era origins as places of local worship. The larger class of peak sanctuary is generally defined by an enclosure wall (in Classical Greek called a temenos) with an open-air
Figure 5.12a Scene on Isopata engraved ring gem showing ritual dancing in a natural setting with a small floating figure. Drawn by V.-P. Herva after Platon and Pini 1984: no. 51, from V.-P. Herva, “Flower lovers, after all? Rethinking religion and human-environment relations in Minoan Crete.” World Archaeology 38 (2006), 590, Figure 2.
Figure 5.12b Engraved ring gem. Offerings to a seated female figure before a mystical tree. Clyde E. Keeler, Apples of Immortality from the Kuna Tree of Life. New York 1961/Hathi Trust Digital Library.
Altar, sometimes a roofed storeroom, and gifts by worshippers, particularly clay but sometimes also metal figures. These could be seen as reflecting various desired relationships with divine powers: human figures as worshippers, human body-parts to seek healing, and animals to promote their fertility (Fitton 2002).
I have argued (Bintliff 1977a—b) that a sacred landscape of local cult centers was already widespread in EM Crete, linking dispersed farms and villages into district community cult practices. Their number rises dramatically in the “Palace” periods, and I proposed that the “court-complex” elites used local cult foci as a grassroots basis to tie ideologies of family, clan, and district community into regional or even island-wide systems of belief. This could support the “palace” foci through creating physical links between worship at peak and cave sites at different geographical levels and for different combinations of population. I drew on an insightful ethnographic analogy (Vogt 1968) which described hierarchies of ritual practice in traditional Mexican society, in which processional ceremonies unite household groups at hamlet shrines, then groups of households visit district shrines, and finally representatives of whole regions process to prominent mountain shrines. This pattern of increasing physical integration creates a ritual cohesion, and at the same time a hierarchy of social statuses can be made visible when we see who are the key players and organizers of ritual at each spatial and social level. In the same way, local Minoan groups may have worshipped at dispersed rural shrines, then representatives from a whole district could have processed to ritual performances at focal peak sanctuaries or sacred caves, finally selected participants from a whole region (maybe the entire zone centering on each palace), might have processed to certain key sanctuaries. Amongst the latter we can surely rank those rituals taking place in the outer and inner courts of the palaces themselves.
As for Minoan divinities, Dickinson (1994) wisely warns against traditional assumptions of a unitary Minoan pantheon (fixed group of gods or goddesses), as well as a dominant Great Goddess. It is more likely that the current trend to see regionalism in Crete should lead us to expect diverse local cults, and this suits the variety of offerings found archaeologically.
World History
