Note 64.2 — Chapter IV · Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean.

We turn at last to the Minoan-Mycenaean and proto-Hellenic periods; for our present purpose the two cannot well be kept apart, as much of the evidence concerning the former is derived from records of myths and religious customs that were in vogue in the later period. Our first glimpse of the Minoan religion, which Sir Arthur Evans more than any one else has revealed to us,64.2 gave us the impression of an aniconic worship that had for its sacred “agalmata” such fetich objects as the sacred pillar or double-headed axe, but which did not express its actual imagination of its divinities in any art-type. If this were so, we should not be able to answer the question how far the Minoan religion was purely anthropomorphic until we have found the interpretation of Minoan writing. But our store of monuments has been much enriched by later discoveries in the Palace of Knossos, and in one of its private chapels in which the Cross was the central sacred emblem, Sir Arthur Evans found the interesting figure of the snake-goddess—purely human, but holding snakes in her hands and girdled with snakes, while before her stands a votary brandishing a snake:65.1 again, a Minoan signet-ring published by him65.2 revealed the great mountain-goddess herself on the summit of a peak flanked by lions and holding a spear. These may be actual reproductions of cult-images; and many other gems and other works have now been published by him and others proving that the people who belonged to this great Aegean culture of the second millennium habitually conceived of their gods in human form, even if they did not as a rule erect their idols in their temples. Thus on a gem which shows us an act of worship performed by a female votary before a sacred pillar, a human-shaped god with rays round his head and holding a spear is hovering in the air above it;65.3 and on the great sarcophagus of Praisos we have on the one side a complex scene of ritual, conspicuous for the absence of any idol or eikon of the divinity, and at the other end a human form of god, or it may be hero, standing as if he had just come forth from his shrine or heroön.65.4 In fact, the Minoan-Mycenaean religious monuments have revealed to us at least three personages, anthropomorphically conceived, of the popular religion of the period that we may call pre-Hellenic: a great goddess, often represented as throned, with fruits and emblems of vegetation around her, or as standing on a mountain and associated with lions; a god who is sometimes conversing with her or is descending from the sky armed with spear and shield,65.5 and sometimes rayed; thirdly, the goddess with the snake as her familiar. To this extent, then, the Minoan-Mycenaean peoples were on the same plane of religion as those of Mesopotamia: and the record of the anthropomorphic divinity can be traced in the Aegean area back to the fourth millennium B.C. by the nude figures in stone of a goddess of fecundity with arms pressed across her breasts, a type belonging to the Neolithic period.