Related Research Articles
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands,whose earliest beginnings date to c. 3500 BC,with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000 BC,and then declining from c. 1450 BC until it ended around 1100 BC,during the early Greek Dark Ages,part of a wider bronze age collapse around the Mediterranean. It represents the first advanced civilization in Europe,leaving behind a number of massive building complexes,sophisticated art,and writing systems. Its economy benefited from a network of trade around much of the Mediterranean.
Knossos is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city.
The Triple Goddess is a deity or deity archetype revered in many Neopagan religious and spiritual traditions. In common Neopagan usage,the Triple Goddess is viewed as a triunity of three distinct aspects or figures united in one being. These three figures are often described as the Maiden,the Mother,and the Crone,each of which symbolizes both a separate stage in the female life cycle and a phase of the Moon,and often rules one of the realms of heavens,earth,and underworld. In various forms of Wicca,her masculine consort is the Horned God.
The Potnia Theron or Lady/Queen of Animals is a widespread motif in ancient art from the Mediterranean world and the ancient Near East,showing a central human,or human-like,female figure who grasps two animals,one to each side. Although the connections between images and concepts in the various ancient cultures concerned remain very unclear,such images are often referred to by the Greek term Potnia Theron regardless of culture of origin.
Mycenaean Greece was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece,spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states,urban organization,works of art,and writing system. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. The most prominent site was Mycenae,after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos,Tiryns,Midea in the Peloponnese,Orchomenos,Thebes,Athens in Central Greece and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus,Macedonia,on islands in the Aegean Sea,on the south-west coast of Asia Minor,Cyprus,while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant,and Italy.
Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age culture or civilisation in Southeast Europe,centred in the Lower Danube Valley. Old Europe is also referred to in some literature as the Danube civilisation.
In Ancient Egyptian religion,Taweret is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" means "she who is great" or simply "great one",a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes,pendulous female human breasts,the limbs and paws of a lion,and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven","Mistress of the Horizon","She Who Removes Water","Mistress of Pure Water",and "Lady of the Birth House".
Atsipades is an archaeological site of a Minoan peak sanctuary in western Crete. It is an open-air peak sanctuary,situated on a mountain and open to the elements. It was discovered by K. Nowicki in 1985.
Prinias is an archaeological site in Crete that has revealed a seventh-century BCE temple with striking similarities to ancient Egyptian architecture,including an Egyptianised seated goddess. It is 35 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Iraklion,about halfway between Gortyn and Knossos. Above the site is a peak sanctuary,a sub-Minoan survival.
Minoan religion was the religion of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization of Crete. In the absence of readable texts from most of the period,modern scholars have reconstructed it almost totally on the basis of archaeological evidence of such as Minoan paintings,statuettes,vessels for rituals and seals and rings. Minoan religion is considered to have been closely related to Near Eastern ancient religions,and its central deity is generally agreed to have been a goddess,although a number of deities are now generally thought to have been worshipped. Prominent Minoan sacred symbols include the bull and the horns of consecration,the labrys double-headed axe,and possibly the serpent.
In Greek mythology,Despoina or Despoena was the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon and sister of Arion.
Lucy Goodison is a writer who has combined work as an archaeologist of the prehistoric Aegean with involvement in the practice and teaching of body psychotherapy and engagement with issues of social justice. She has focused on actively challenging the mind/body split and bridging the divide between thinking and feeling that is basic to the western world view. Her books include:Death,Women and the Sun:Symbolism of Regeneration in Early Aegean Religion;Moving Heaven and Earth:Sexuality,Spirituality and Social Change;and Holy Trees and Other Ecological Surprises.
The Great Goddess hypothesis theorizes that,in Palaeolithic,Mesolithic and/or Neolithic Europe and Western Asia and North Africa,a singular,monotheistic female deity was worshipped.
Peter Michael Warren,is a British archaeologist and academic,specialising in the Aegean Bronze Age. From 1977 to 2001,he was Professor of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Bristol,where he is currently Professor Emeritus and a senior research fellow at the university.
The Palaikastro Kouros is a chryselephantine statuette of a male youth (kouros) excavated in stages in the modern-day town of Palaikastro on the Greek island of Crete. It has been dated to the Late Minoan 1B period in the mid-15th century BC,during the Bronze Age. It is now on display in the Archaeological Museum of Siteia. Standing roughly 50 cm tall,its large size by the standards of other figurines in Minoan art,and the value of its materials may indicate that it was a cult image for worship,the only one known from the Minoan civilization.
The religious element is difficult to identify in Mycenaean Greece,especially as regards archaeological sites,where it remains very problematic to pick out a place of worship with certainty. John Chadwick points out that at least six centuries lie between the earliest presence of Proto-Greek speakers in Hellas and the earliest inscriptions in the Mycenaean script known as Linear B,during which concepts and practices will have fused with indigenous Pre-Greek beliefs,and—if cultural influences in material culture reflect influences in religious beliefs—with Minoan religion. As for these texts,the few lists of offerings that give names of gods as recipients of goods reveal nothing about religious practices,and there is no other surviving literature.
Nanno (Ourania) Marinatos is Professor Emerita of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago,whose research focuses on the Minoan civilisation,especially Minoan religion.
Minoan snake tubes are cylindrical tubes with a closed,splayed out bottom. Generally the tubes feature rings on the bottom and tops varying in number by location. All the tubes have open tops. The most distinguishable feature of snake tubes are their serpentine like handles. Despite their name not all Minoan snake tubes feature snakes. Minoan snake tubes were originally named by archaeologist Arthur Evans. Evans discovered the snake tubes in 1901 and hypothesized that early Minoans worshipped a snake god or goddess based on only two tubes he had discovered. This theory has however received pushback from contemporary archaeologists who have discovered more tubes without the snakes. Later discoveries found the tubes in close proximity to statues of goddesses believed to have been worshipped by early Minoans. Dating snake tubes can be inexact but scholars estimate them to have been created around 1700 BC. Modern scholars,such as Geraldine Gesell,argue that snake tubes played an important role in the construction and function of early Minoan domestic shrines.
References
- ↑ "Christine Morris – Department of Classics – Trinity College Dublin". www.tcd.ie. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ↑ Driessen, Jan, and Charlotte Langohr. "Recent developments in the archaeology of Minoan Crete". Pharos 20.1 (2014): 75–115.
- ↑ Peatfield, Alan A. D. (2016), A Metaphysical History of Minoan Religion, Peeters Publishers, ISBN 978-90-429-3366-8 , retrieved 23 December 2022
- ↑ Martinón-Torres, Marcos; Uribe-Villegas, María Alicia (1 November 2015). "The prehistoric individual, connoisseurship and archaeological science: The Muisca goldwork of Colombia". Journal of Archaeological Science. 63: 136–155. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2015.08.014. ISSN 0305-4403.
- ↑ "Christine Morris". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ↑ Townsend, Andrew (1999). "Lucy Goodison & Christine Morris (ed.). Ancient goddesses: The myths and the evidence. 224 pages, 71 plates, 93 figures, 12 plans, 5 maps 1998. London: British Museum Press; 0-7141-1761-7 hardback £18.99". Antiquity. 73 (279): 230–231. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00088104. ISSN 0003-598X. S2CID 165722744.
- ↑ Gesell, Geraldine C. (2004). "From Knossos to Kavousi: The Popularizing of the Minoan Palace Goddess". Hesperia Supplements. 33: 131–150. ISSN 1064-1173. JSTOR 1354066.
- ↑ Gudorf, Christine E. (2002). "Review of Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence; The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess; Goddesses Who Rule; In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele". Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 70 (1): 198–203. ISSN 0002-7189. JSTOR 1466381.
- ↑ "Standing Committee for Archaeology". Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 23 December 2022.
- ↑ "Trinity Monday 2014 – Fellows and Scholars". www.tcd.ie. Trinity College Dublin. 13 April 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
- ↑ Recht, Laerke; Morris, Christine E. (2021). "CHARIOT KRATERS AND HORSE–HUMAN RELATIONS IN LATE BRONZE AGE GREECE AND CYPRUS". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 116: 95–132. doi:10.1017/S0068245421000022. ISSN 0068-2454. S2CID 236620060.
- ↑ Stein, Diana; Costello, Sarah Kielt; Foster, Karen Polinger (31 December 2021). The Routledge Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-46476-4.
- ↑ Torrance, Isabelle; O'Rourke, Donncha (6 August 2020). Classics and Irish Politics, 1916–2016. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-886448-6.
- ↑ Morris, Christine (1993). "Hands Up for the Individual! The Role of Attribution Studies in Aegean Prehistory". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 3 (1): 41–66. doi:10.1017/S0959774300000718. ISSN 1474-0540. S2CID 161793301.
