from the archaeological museum in Heraklion, Greece.
It is distinctive for having both Greek and Roman elements.
Hades a.k.a. Aidoneus a.k.a. Pluto, was notable for being one of the few Chthonic (i.e. underworld based) gods in the Greek pantheon. He was Zeus's brother and Persephone's uncle.
Persephone (a.k.a. "Kore", i.e. the maiden) was worshipped in a distinctive way in Crete which is notable:
In the Near eastern myth of the early agricultural societies, every year the fertility goddess bore the "god of the new year", who then became her lover, and died immediately in order to be reborn and face the same destiny. Some findings from Catal Huyuk since the Neolithic age, indicate the worship of the Great Goddess accompanied by a boyish consort, who symbolizes the annual decay and return of vegetation. Similar cults of resurrected gods appear in the Near East and Egypt in the cults of Attis, Adonis and Osiris.
In Minoan Crete, the "divine child" was related to the female vegetation divinity Ariadne who died every year. The Minoan religion had its own characteristics. The most peculiar feature of the Minoan belief in the divine, is the appearance of the goddess from above in the dance. Dance floors have been discovered in addition to "vaulted tombs", and it seems that the dance was ecstatic. Homer memorializes the dance floor which Daedalus built for Ariadne in the remote past. On the gold ring from Isopata, four women in festal attire are performing a dance between blossoming flowers. Above a figure apparently floating in the air seems to be the goddess herself, appearing amid the whirling dance. An image plate from the first palace of Phaistos, seems to be very close to the mythical image of the Anodos (ascent) of Persephone. Two girls dance between blossoming flowers, on each side of a similar but armless and legless figure which seems to grow out of the ground. The goddess is bordered by snake lines which give her a vegetable like appearance She has a large stylized flower turned over her head. The resemblance with the flower-picking Persephone and her companions is compelling. The depiction of the goddess is similar to later images of "Anodos of Pherephata". On the Dresden vase, Persephone is growing out of the ground, and she is surrounded by the animal-tailed agricultural gods Silenoi.
Kerenyi suggests that the name Ariadne (derived from ἁγνή, hagne, "pure"), was an euphemistical name given by the Greeks to the nameless "Mistress of the labyrinth" who appears in a Mycenean Greek inscription from Knossos in Crete. The Greeks used to give friendly names to the deities of the underworld. Cthonic Zeus was called Eubuleus, "the good counselor", and the ferryman of the river of the underworld Charon, "glad". Despoina and "Hagne" were probably euphemistic surnames of Persephone, therefore he theorizes that the cult of Persephone was the continuation of the worship of a Minoan Great goddess. The labyrinth was both a winding dance-ground and, in the Greek view, a prison with the dreaded Minotaur at its centre. It is possible that some religious practices, especially the mysteries, were transferred from a Cretan priesthood to Eleusis, where Demeter brought the poppy from Crete. Besides these similarities, Burkert explains that up to now it is not known to what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenean religion. In the Anthesteria Dionysos is the "divine child".
Try as I might, I did not see any visual depictions of someone else related to this husband, wife and dog family, Minthe anywhere on my trip, although at least some of their children (most famously Dionysus) were depctied. Even a store keeper in a particularly promising mythology and mythology replica store wasn't familiar with Minthe, about whom Wikipedia explains:
In Greek mythology, Minthe (also Menthe, Mintha or Mentha; Greek: Μίνθη or Μένθη) was a naiad associated with the river Cocytus.
Etymology
The -nth- element in menthe is characteristic of a class of words borrowed from a Pre-Greek language: compare acanthus, labyrinth, Corinth, etc.
Mythology
Minthe was dazzled by Hades and made an attempt to seduce him, but Queen Persephone intervened and metamorphosed Minthe, in the words of Strabo's account, "into the garden mint, which some call hedyosmon (lit. 'sweet-smelling')".[1]"Mint (Mintha), men say, was once a maid beneath the earth, a Nymphe of Kokytos (Cocytus), and she lay in the bed of Aidoneus [Hades]; but when he raped the maid Persephone from the Aitnaian hill [Mount Etna in Sicily], then she complained loudly with overweening words and raved foolishly for jealousy, and Demeter in anger trampled upon her with her feet and destroyed her. For she had said that she was nobler of form and more excellent in beauty than dark-eyed Persephone and she boasted that Aidoneus would return to her and banish the other from his halls : such infatuation leapt upon her tongue. And from the earth spray the weak herb that bears her name."[2]
Culture
In ancient Greece, mint was used in funerary rites, together with rosemary and myrtle, and not simply to offset the smell of decay; mint was an element in the fermented barley drink called the kykeon that was an essential preparatory entheogen for participants in the Eleusinian mysteries, which offered hope in the afterlife for initiates.
References
4 comments:
Dear Andrew, that was a most enlightening post! One part caught my interest in particular: " Burkert explains that up to now it is not known to what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenean religion."
That is indeed a crucial issue. As I understand it, one possible contributing reason for the decline of the Minoan civilization was the slow Mycenaean invasion of the Greek islands.
As far as I remember (from Lazaridis 2018) aDNA the Mycenaeans, had a significant component from the Eurasian steppe. This of course begs the question of the origin of their religion: did it travel with the steppe peoples and is it therefore derived from that of these early bronze age people? What is your opinion? NeilB
@NeilB
"one possible contributing reason for the decline of the Minoan civilization was the slow Mycenaean invasion of the Greek islands."
Close. By my reckoning "fast" would be a better description, but to get away from relative terms and into numbers, most of Minoan civilization was destroyed by Mycenaean invasion in a period not longer than a few decades, but core, the Palace of Knossos, was a last redoubt of the Minoan civilization for roughly another century after it was defeated everywhere else.
My opinion is that the Mycenaean pantheon was predominantly derived from an Indo-European core transmitted from the proto-Indo-Europeans to the Greeks via the Mycenaean people, but that everywhere that the Indo-European core was spread, that pre-existing local religious ideas both in terms of content and in terms of modes of demonstrating one's devotions, were incorporated syncretically as a substrate influence in the conquering people's religion in much the way that pagan modes of worship and traditions were incorporated in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, for example, with saints filling the gap that was once filled by pagan deities, and Christian churches often built on the locations of pagan shrines and temples.
I'll have more to say about the pre-IE to IE transition in forthcoming posts inspired by what I learned in my recent travels.
Wow! It's like you read My mind. Anyone of my age group schooled in England is conversant with the parallels between Greek and Roman deities and I had always wondered how far back in time the pantheon went in one form or another, but until the Lazardis (2018) paper I hadn't considered the pagan beliefs from the late Neolithic and early bronze age might be the source. Makes me pause to think, when did humans (or even Neanderthals for that matter) invent/'find' God for first time. I really do wonder when and where the idea of omnipotent beings 'above' us came about? I just have a deep suspicion that as soon as language came about, so did 'religion'.
What about you - how far back, in the history of humanity would you guess at? NeilB
The conventional wisdom among anthropologists, sociologists and historians of religion is roughly that there is a natural progression of religious concepts from animism, to polytheism with "monster" gods, to fully anthropic polytheism, to henotheism (the worship of a single god while not denying the existence or possible existence of other deities), to monotheism with a personal God, to monotheism with a more impersonal and abstract God as for example in deism, to atheism.
In the conventional wisdom, animism is associated mostly with hunter-gatherers and early sedentary fishing economy people, polytheism with "monster" gods started to emerge in the late Neolithic, Eneolithic (i.e. copper) and early Bronze ages bridging from animism to anthropic polytheism, anthropic polytheism trending towards henotheism is a Bronze age to early Iron Age phenomena, monotheism with a personal God is a late Iron Age to Medieval concept that starts to transition by the early modern era into monotheism with a more abstract God, and true atheism is predominantly something that gains currency was foundations like modern physics and evolution have arrived on the scene, basically in the 20th century.
There are legitimate criticisms to this conventional wisdom (what does one make of Japan or neo-paganism and WIcca, for example?). But there is something to it.
A not entirely unrelated notion is that people imagine the metaphysical world in the image of the political, economic and social structures of their own. Animism corresponds to nomadic hunter-gatherer bands. Anthropic polytheism corresponds to the "chiefdom" phase of political development, henotheism corresponds to the confederations of chiefdoms that preceded true kingdoms (e.g. in late Bronze Age Greece), a personal God corresponds to a simple unitary Kingdom, an abstract God corresponds to an Empire, and atheism corresponds to a large economically complex Republic.
Post a Comment