The reconstructed horns of consecration at Knossos
"Horns of Consecration" is a term coined by Sir Arthur Evans[1] for the symbol, ubiquitous in Minoan civilization, that is usually thought to represent the horns of the sacred bull. Sir Arthur Evans concluded, after noting numerous examples in Minoan and Mycenaean contexts, that the Horns of Consecration were "a more or less conventionalised article of ritual furniture derived from the actual horns of the sacrificial oxen".[2]
Small clay example, and topping a model building, AMH
The much-photographed porous limestone horns of consecration on the East Propyleia at Knossos (illustration, right) are restorations, but horns of consecration in stone or clay were placed on the roofs of buildings in Neopalatial Crete, or on tombs or shrines, probably as signs of sanctity of the structure.[3] The symbol also appears on Minoan sealstones,[4] often accompanied by double axes and bucrania, which are part of the iconography of Minoan bull sacrifice. Horns of consecration are among the cultic images painted on the Minoan coffins called larnakes, sometimes in isolation; they may have flowers between the horns, or the labrys.[5] It is generally agreed to be something to do with Minoan religion.
A suggestion for a practical use for the large examples on the top of buildings, is that they were used as frames for sighting the movements of heavenly bodies, for example the constellation of Orion, which may have represented the "young god" of Minoan religion.[6]
Comparisons
Evans compared the Horns of Consecration with the four "horns of the altar" of Hebrew ritual,[7] and with the altar with a horned cult object depicted on the stele from Teima in northern Arabia, now conserved at the Louvre.[8]
↑ E..g. in Evans, "Mycenaean tree- and pillar-cult and its Mediterranean relations", The Journal of Hellenic Studies31 (1901) pp 107, 135-38, "§15- The Horns of Consecration".
↑ Evans 1901:137; horns of consecration are juxtaposed with bulls in many configurations on Late Minoan IIIA2larnakes illustrated by L. Vance Watrous, "The Origin and Iconography of the Late Minoan Painted Larnax" Hesperia6.3 (July 1991), pp 285-307).
↑ Geraldine C. Gesell, Town, Palace, and House Cult in Minoan Crete (SIMA, Göthenburg) 1985, p. 62.
↑ An example is the seal illustrated by Evans, "The Palace of Knossos", BSA7 (1900/01), fig. 9 and as fig. 1 in Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton) 1976, and by Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God (1964) 1970, fig. 12.
↑ MacGillivray, Alexander, and Hugh Sackett. “The Palaikastro Kouros: the Cretan God as a Young Man”, p. 168-166, Chapter 14 of The Palaikastro Kouros, a Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and its Aegean Bronze Age Context", British School at Athens Studies, vol. 6, 2000, pp. 165–169. JSTOR. Accessed 22 Feb. 2021
↑ Their special sanctity is reflected in the practice of the sanctuary seeker clasping the horns of the altar (1 Kings i.50; ii.28ff, noted in this context by Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate 2nd. ed. (1988) p. 236 note 9.
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture which was centered on the island of Crete. Known for its monumental architecture and its energetic art, it is often regarded as the first civilization in Europe.
Knossos is a Bronze Age archaeological site in Crete. The site was a major center of the Minoan civilization and is known for its association with the Greek myth of Theseus and the minotaur. It is located on the outskirts of Heraklion, and remains a popular tourist destination.
Bull-leaping is a term for various types of non-violent bull fighting. Some are based on an ancient ritual from the Minoan civilization involving an acrobat leaping over the back of a charging bull. As a sport it survives in modern France, usually with cows rather than bulls, as course landaise; in Spain, with bulls, as recortes and in Tamil Nadu, India with bulls as Jallikattu.
Pseira is an islet in the Gulf of Mirabello in northeastern Crete with the archaeological remains of Minoan and Mycenean civilisation.
Minoan pottery has been used as a tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization. Its restless sequence of quirky maturing artistic styles reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative dates to the strata of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments, exported from 18th century BC Crete, have been found at sites through the Aegean islands and mainland Greece, on Cyprus, along coastal Syria and in Egypt, showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans.
Psychro Cave is an ancient Minoan sacred cave in Lasithi plateau in the Lasithi district of eastern Crete. Psychro is associated with the Diktaean Cave, one of the putative sites of the birth of Zeus. Other legends place Zeus' birthplace as Idaean Cave on Mount Ida. According to Hesiod, Theogony, Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Lyctus and hid him in a cave of Mount Aegaeon. Since the late nineteenth century the cave above the modern village of Psychro has been identified with Diktaean Cave, although there are other candidates, especially a cave above Palaikastro on Mount Petsofas.
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.
Minoan art is the art produced by the Bronze Age Aegean Minoan civilization from about 3000 to 1100 BC, though the most extensive and finest survivals come from approximately 2300 to 1400 BC. It forms part of the wider grouping of Aegean art, and in later periods came for a time to have a dominant influence over Cycladic art. Since wood and textiles have decomposed, the best-preserved surviving examples of Minoan art are its pottery, palace architecture, small sculptures in various materials, jewellery, metal vessels, and intricately-carved seals.
Minoan palaces were massive building complexes built on Crete during the Bronze Age. They are often considered emblematic of the Minoan civilization and are modern tourist destinations. Archaeologists generally recognize five structures as palaces, namely those at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Galatas, and Zakros.
Velchanos is an ancient Minoan god associated with vegetation and worshipped in Crete. He was one of the main deities in the Minoan pantheon, alongside a Mother Goddess figure who appears to have been his mother and consort, with the two participating in an hieros gamos.
The Prince of the Lilies, or the Lily Prince or Priest-King Fresco, is a celebrated Minoan painting excavated in pieces from the palace of Knossos, capital of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization on the Greek island of Crete. The mostly reconstructed original is now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum (AMH), with a replica version at the palace which includes flowers in the background.
The Hagia Triada Sarcophagus is a late Minoan 137 cm (54 in)-long limestone sarcophagus, dated to about 1400 BC or some decades later, excavated from a chamber tomb at Hagia Triada, Crete in 1903 and now on display at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum (AMH) in Crete, Greece.
The bull-leaping fresco is the most completely restored of several stucco panels originally sited on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the Minoan palace at Knossos in Crete. It shows a bull-leaping scene. Although they were frescos, they were painted on stucco relief scenes. They were difficult to produce. The artist had to manage not only the altitude of the panel but also the simultaneous molding and painting of fresh stucco. The panels, therefore, do not represent the formative stages of the technique. In Minoan chronology, their polychrome hues – white, pale red, dark red, blue, black – exclude them from the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM) Periods. They are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created no earlier than MM III. The flakes of the destroyed panels fell to the ground from the upper story during the destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late Minoan (LM) II. By that time the east stairwell, near which they fell, was disused, being partly ruinous.
Minoan seals are impression seals in the form of carved gemstones and similar pieces in metal, ivory and other materials produced in the Minoan civilization. They are an important part of Minoan art, and have been found in quantity at specific sites, for example in Knossos, Mallia and Phaistos. They were evidently used as a means of identifying documents and objects.
The Minoan bull leaper is a bronze group of a bull and leaper in the British Museum. It is the only known largely complete three-dimensional sculpture depicting Minoan bull-leaping. Although bull leaping certainly took place in Crete at this time, the leap depicted is practically impossible and it has therefore been speculated that the sculpture may be an exaggerated depiction. This speculation has been backed up by the testaments of modern-day bull leapers from France and Spain.
The Throne Room was a chamber built for ceremonial purposes during the 15th century BC inside the palatial complex of Knossos, Crete, in Greece. It is found at the heart of the Bronze Age palace of Knossos, one of the main centers of the Minoan civilization and is considered the oldest throne room in Europe.
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.
The Minoan Moulds of Palaikastro are two double-sided pieces of schist, formed in the Minoan period as casting moulds for plaques with figures and symbols. These include female figures with raised arms, labrys double axes and opium poppy flowers or capsules, two double axes with indented edges, the Horns of Consecration symbol, and a sun-like disc with complex markings, which has been claimed by some researchers to be for making objects to use in astronomical predictions of solar and lunar eclipses.
Minoan snake tubes are cylindrical ceramic tubes with a closed, splayed out bottom. Sir Arthur Evans interpreted them as "snake tubes", that is vessels for carrying or housing snakes used in Minoan religion. They are now usually interpreted as "offering stands", on which kalathoi, or offering bowls were placed in shrines. They are described as varying in material and construction despite sharing a common purpose. In the context of domestic shrines snake tubes are believed to have sat on top of or adjacent to a cult bench. In between the tubes would have been a goddess figurine and plaque which featured animal depictions.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
