Category Archives: Bronze Age Crete

What color was the Minoans Hair?

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I’m sure the overwhelming response is black. After all, dark hair and eyes are consistent with Mediterranean coloring. What then, does one make of Apollo, whose hair was a golden blond? When I asked my Greek guide several years ago why Apollo was supposed to have blond hair, she replied that his hair fit in with his role as the sun god.

Fast forward a few years and a lot more research. It turns out that, although blond hair was uncommon, it was not that unusual. Some of the ancient pottery depicts warriors with blond hair and Achilles in fact was supposed to be fair. Another famous blond – Helen of Troy. She literally was fair. They were not the only ones.

DNA evidence confirms that although the prevailing hair colors were black and dark brown, blond and red hair were not unknown. Partly that was due to contact with people from the steppes.

My takeaway: people have always traveled from place to place, intermarrying with local populations. We are all mutts.

I hope to see everyone at the Cohoes Public Library this Saturday, 11 – 4.

The island of Delos

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According to Greek myth, this small, rocky island was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. (OK, how many knew Artemis is Apollo’s twin?)

Leto, the mother of the twins, was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. Hera was so jealous that she decreed Leda could not find any solid ground on which to rest or to deliver her babies.

But Delos was a floating island so Leto was able to deliver her children there, under a palm tree. Since Artemis was born first, she helped her mother with Apollo’s birth and thus became a protector of women especally during childbirth. (Artemis must have been very precocious since she was, what?, ten minutes old at the most.)

Delos is home to the iconic Terrace of the Lions, a wide pathway lined on both sides by statues of lions. Originally, there were nine to twelve but now only five remain. This terrace was erected by the people of Naxos and dedicated to Apollo. It faces east, toward the Sacred Lake of Delos.

I imagine it was quite scary walking past these lions, with their mouths open as though roaring.


Creator: Mark Cartwright | Credit: Mark Cartwright / World History Encyclopedia
Copyright: Mark Cartwright – CC BY-NC-SA – 

Delos is covered with excavations, including the Terrace of Lions. But now, with rising seas, Delos is in danger of being swamped.

Minoan Tea

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One of the reviewers for On the Horns of Death commented on the fact Martis and her mother, as well as other women in the mystery, drink tea. She questioned whether this might be an anachronism.

In fact, I was not thinking of the teas we get from India and China but instead of an herbal tea made from herbs well known in Crete.

Both sage and dittany were known then. Dittany is an herb that has been used for centuries, right down to early America, as a medicinal plant. A potent and fragrant herb related to oregano, the name comes from Mount Dikte in Crete. And, of course, one of the names for Britomartis, the maiden in the Cretan pantheon, is Diktynna. It is marketed now as a tea called Dictamnus.

Sage is another herb we believe was known and used in ancient times. We use it primarily as a culinary herb but, like oregano today, it also was used as ritually and as a medicine.

Finally, an herb that is marketed as an herbal tea today is malotira. This herb grows at high altitudes on Crete and is valued for its medicinal properties. It is commonly used to treat respiratory illness and digestive problems as well as skin irritation. It has anti-inflammation, anti-fungal and anti-microbial properties.

When I described Martis and company drinking tea, I was visualizing an herbal concoction. Maybe one of the herbs alone, maybe a combination

More about Artemis

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Further proof that Artemis is linked with the Minoan Cretan hunting Goddess Britomartis (or Diktynna which means of the nets.) By the 5th century B.C, this goddess had been completely assimilated into Artemis.

Britomartis, whose name means sweet maiden, was said to have invented hunting nets. This is thought to be one reason she was also called Diktynna. And yes, I took Martis from her name as the name of my main character in the Bronze Age Crete series.

In one of the myths, Britomartis jumps into the sea to escape King Minos and his lust. Fishermen hid her in their nets (an alternate reason for the name Diktynna.)

Am I the only one appalled by the constant stories of rape of all the women in the myths? It does make Artemis’s reaction to the men who watched her or pursued her – frequently death – a little more understandable.

Who is the Minoan Lady of the Beasts?

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Artemis is described in the Iliad as Potnia Theron or the Lady of the Beasts. (Potnia is a term of respect, meaning Lady or Mistress.) It is also a title formerly used by a Minoan Goddess – the Lady of the Beasts.

A similar goddess was worshipped throughout the Aegean. In fact, the Mistress of the Beasts – or something similar – was worshipped as far back as the Neolithic, including Crete. I don’t think it is a big stretch of the imagination to believe that Artemis either took over the role of her precursor or was the Lady of the Beasts under a different name.

What do we know about Artemis? She was a beautiful winged Goddess, usually associated with the Moon. (Although, since her twin brother was Apollo, the sun, there are solar elements as well. Both were children of Leto and Zeus.) She was passionate about her virginity and could be quite cruel to her nymphs when they lost their theirs, even if usually by rape. Young girls were frequently dedicated to her at the age of somewhere between 9 and fifteen. (Scholars disagree about the age.) Suidas and Arktos e Brauroniols wrote that the Athenians decreed that no virgin could be married unless they played the bear for the Goddess. (Interesting and odd to me in light of the beliefs about young girls who die before marriage and children – who become spirits, or willies.) Martis would have been dedicated as well but, unlike most of her peers, she plans to remain a virgin and dedicated to the Virgin Goddess.

Artemis is also a patron of childbirth, again an interesting juxtaposition with a virgin goddess. Women prayed to her for an easy and safe childbirth and shrines to her were present well into Roman times.

She was also a huntress and is frequently pictured with her golden bow and arrows and a pack of hunting dogs. This is the piece that fits in with the Lady of the Beasts. As a beautiful but unattainable woman, she was frequently the object of men’s attentions. With the Greek predilection for violent drama, her reaction toward them tended to be fatal. In one myth, a mortal saw her bathing naked. Artemis turned him into a stag and his own hunting dogs tore him apart.

Although Artemis is a hunter and a protector of women in childbirth, the apparent disconnect does make sense. Fertility of both women and animals, domestic and wild, was necessary for prosperity.

In Classical Greece, Artemis is a daughter of Zeus. But her history is far older than that.

Dyes in Bronze Age Crete

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Since handweaving is one of my hobbies, or was until my books took off and I no longer had time, I am fascinated by ancient textiles. Until modern times, and the Industrial Revolution when looms and weaving became mechanized, weaving was one of the most important professions. In Egypt, some of the hieroglyphics inscribed on walls show weavers. And loom weights have been found in Akrotiri, buried in ash when the volcano that blew the center out of Santorini and severely weakened the Minoan civilization erupted.

Working in tandem with the weavers were the dyers. Of course, until the 1880s when the synthetic dyes were invented, all the dyes were natural dyes. The women of Bronze Age Crete used dyes to create their elaborate and colorful patterned textiles.

The Cup Bearer

Notice the colorful stripes on the figures loincloth in the restored fresco from Knossos.

The camp stool fresco

What were the dyes they used? Yellow from saffron. (A famous fresco depicts a group of young girls collecting saffron from crocuses. Yellow was the color of the young girl.) Blue from indigo. Red from the cochineal beetle. And, perhaps most interested and valuable, purple from the shell of the murex sea snail. Thousands and thousands of shells have been found, speaking to a large operation. Because so many shells were needed to make the dye, purple was very expensive. Hence the name, royal purple. It was too expensive for the common folk, right up through the Middle Ages.

Where is green? Although green is all around us in nature, it is a very hard color to find as a dye. Using green plants does not usually give a green color and if it does, the color is not permanent.

Green usually has been made by dyeing blue and overdyeing yellow. When it was discovered by the painters, green contained arsenic. Napoleon is supposed to have died from arsenic poisoning from the fumes coming off his wallpaper.

Horns of Consecration

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What are the Horns of Consecration? I mention them over and over in my mysteries. (In the shadow of the Bull and On the Horns of Death)

The horns, a symbolic representation of the horns of the sacred bull, were everywhere in Minoan Crete. They ranged in size from smaller ones that edged walkways and stairs to larger ones.

A still intact horns of consecration

As I’ve discussed, one of the features of his culture was the bull leaping which, in my opinion, probably bridged sport and religion.