Minoan Civilization

The subject matter of seals and frescoes discovered at Minoan sites suggests that Minoan culture was steeped in religion. It was a religion centring primarily on female divinities, dominated by the great goddess Potnia to whom offerings of honey were made, and whose symbol was the double axe, the Greek word for which gave rise to the word “labyrinthos”. There seem to have been a number of other divinities (for example, a fertility goddess, a young male deity, a mistress of wild animals, a mountain mother, a goddess of the caves, a tree goddess, and a bull god). It is often hard, however, to determine whether certain outwardly distinct divinities are separate beings or the same divinity represented in a different aspect. A number of the most familiar motifs of Minoan art, the bull or the snake, for example, were most probably religious: the practice of bull-leaping, most famously depicted in a fresco in the palace of Minos, seems to have been a religious ritual.

Minoan religion evolved from the religious beliefs and practices of Neolithic Crete. Female figurines in stone and clay dating from that period resemble those associated with later Minoan religious cults. However, from the Protopalatial period, peak sanctuaries in addition to the earlier cave sanctuaries, began to play a prominent role and temples began to be built on a grand scale: the most famous of these, the labyrinth at Knossos (dating from the Neopalatial period), appears to have been a square structure, approximately 150 m (over 490 ft) wide, containing 300 chambers. There were also changes in burial practice. While the Neolithic custom of burying the dead in caves and rock shelters away from settlements continued, in the Prepalatial period the dead were sometimes placed in clay coffins. Group burials were also made in tholos tombs, domed, circular buildings made of stone with an entrance that faced east. In the Prototpalatial period a new style of burial developed in which the body was placed in a clay storage jar (or pithos).

Between c. 2700 bc and c. 1900 bc a primitive form of hieroglyphic script was used, appearing on seals and as isolated markings. During the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods a form of writing known as Linear A developed. Linear A is made up of a set of signs, most of which represent a single syllable (that is, a consonant plus a vowel); other signs are symbols representing a word (such as “man”, “woman”, “goat”, and so on); there were also signs used for counting. Although the numbers and the symbols in Linear A can easily be read, only a very few of the syllable signs have been deciphered. Linear A was used for short inscriptions, to signify ownership and record religious dedications, and on clay tablets that were used for accounting. Linear B is the script used for administrative records in the Final Palace period at Knossos. Since its decipherment, it has been recognized as an early form of the Greek language.