Category Archives: Bronze Age

Ancient Crete

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Now that In the Shadow of the Bull will be released this summer, I thought I should talk a little bit about the culture of ancient Crete.

Although it is called the Minoan Era, that is a misnomer. Minos was a mythical king mentioned in Greek stories from Classical Greece, many years later.

What we do know is that this sophisticated society flourished in the Bronze Age, only to be destroyed about 1459 B.C.E, The volcano on the island now called Santorini blew, sending ash as far away as Turkey., and causing massive damage to Crete. Some archaeologists discuss signs of rebuilding but the Achaeans, the Greeks from the Mainland, were able to take advantage and occupy the island.

The iconic statuettes from Bronze Age Crete  are of women (priestesses probably although some scholars claim they are the Goddess) with snakes twining up their arms and around their waists. Snakes were sacred in this Bronze Age religion.

Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term 'goddess' also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The 'Snake Goddess' figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake's close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess
Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term ‘goddess’ also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The ‘Snake Goddess’ figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake’s close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess

The shedding of their skins was a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. One of the resources I read said that the snakes were allowed to live in the houses. (I am not sure how she knows that.) If so, I’m sure that the presence of the snakes kept down the mice.

Currently Crete does not have native venomous snakes and it is thought that there no venomous snakes in Crete during the Bronze Age either. So, of course I had to wonder if the asp was ever imported from Egypt.

(I think everyone knows that Cleopatra is supposed to have committed suicide with an asp. According to my research, however, it was a mixture of poisons including opium and wolfsbane. But I digress.)

The prevalence of women in the artwork, not just statuary but also the mosaics, have lent support to the theory that women enjoyed a high status in this society. It is theorized that the religion featured a Goddess as well as less important Gods. Several were transported virtually unchanged to the pantheon of Hellenic Greece.

Cosmetics

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Lydia, of the Will and Lydia Rees mystery series, does not wear cosmetics of any kind. Although the Colonial periods both men and women boasting fine white wigs and patches, the Federalist culture viewed women who wore ‘paint’ as loose. Lydia, as a former Shaker, would be even more reluctant to wear any kind of cosmetic.

Throughout human history, however, people have worn various forms of paint for adornment. Even war paint is adornment of a sort, although used to strike terror in onlookers instead of awe at their beauty.

I thought of this as I researched my next series, a historical murder mystery set in Bronze Age Crete.

Cosmetics were commonly used in the Ancient World: Egypt, the Middle Ages, and Asia. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, we know from hieroglyphics, murals, frescos and more, they were used by both men and women and all classes. Kohl was the most commonly used cosmetic. Although kohl was the major cosmetic in Crete, in Egypt eye paint was also important. Especially green eye paint. That was made of malachite a copper carbonate pigment. Kohl was made from galena, a dark gray ore and crushed charcoal. Both the malachite and the galena were crushed and missed with gum or water to make a paste. Cosmetics were so important cosmetic palettes were found buried in gold with the deceased’s grave goods.

Kohl was used for lining the eyes, like modern eyeliner. It offered health benefits in the form of protection from disease, bugs and sun rays. Red ochre clay was ground up and mixed with water to create a paste to paint on the lips and cheeks.

This was a lot less dangerous than the white lead women used to paint their faces in Elizabethan times. Lead is toxic so these women were gradually poisoning themselves. (Medieval women also plucked the front hair on their heads also to give themselves a high forehead.

The ban on cosmetics for “virtuous” women continued through the eighteen hundreds but returned as a fashion imperative during the nineteen twenties when so many other changes happened. Women have worn cosmetics, especially lipstick, since. (Lipstick, BTW, used to be made with the blood of small cochineal beetles to give that scarlet shade.)

I wear eyebrow pencil to darken my pale eyebrows, mascara for my blond lashes and eyeshadow, continuing the history of eye paint since the Bronze Age.

Currently Reading – and the whiff of patriarchy?

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The first book I read this week was A Simple Murder by Linda Castillo.

I chose it because it shares a title with my first Will Rees mystery series.

I also enjoy Linda’s books and have read them all. This work consists of five interlinked short stories, all starring Kate Burkholder and the Amish.U admit I prefer her novels but these were fun and were a little lighter than her novels. (It seems funny to consider murder mysteries ‘lighter’,)

The second book is Queens of the Wild; Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe. This is nonfiction; a study of Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, Mistress of the Night and the Old Woman of Gaelic Tradition. Hutton challenges most of the current scholarship in claiming these are NOT pre-Christian Goddesses.

I am reading it as part of my research for the new series I am working on. It will take place in Bronze Age Crete. Women figured prominently in this society and the mosaics, seals and other artifacts discovered seemed to indicate, not only a Goddess as the supreme being, but the importance of women.

Why do I find the Hutton work so disturbing?

When I began my research into what is popularly known as the Minoan Civilization, I began with a work by Nilsson, one of the first archaeologists to dig in Knossos. He was convinced that the many depictions of women in the mosaics, including a very famous one showing them participating in bull leaping, had to be showing Goddesses. Why? Because women simply couldn’t be that important. His prejudices were clear and informed his interpretation of this ancient civilization.

Granted, understanding a society that is separated from us by over 3000 years is very difficult, especially when one is working with mosaics, jewelry, seals and other artifacts, (no newpapers or written records to help) as the clues to interpret the inner workings of a culture. With that said, however, the lesson I took away is that we all judge based on the cultural mores we’ve internalized. It is important not to assume that because gender roles in the early twentieth century followed one pattern that they were set and unchangeable, and fit every human society. Most scholars now posit that women were indeed that important in that society.

So, back to Hutton. I admit I haven’t quite finished this work and maybe I will agree with him more when I’m done than I do now. His focus does appear to be more about the Christian world of the early Middle Ages and a discussion of how these pagan goddesses came to be in a Christian society. We shall see.

Snakes and serpents, oh my

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The iconic statuettes from Bronze Age Crete  are of women (priestesses probably although some scholars claim they are the Goddess) with snakes twining up their arms and around their waists. Snakes were sacred in this Bronze Age religion.

Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term 'goddess' also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The 'Snake Goddess' figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake's close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess

Snake Goddess describes a number of figurines of a woman holding a serpent in each hand found during excavation of Minoan archaeological sites in Crete dating from approximately 1600 BCE. By implication, the term ‘goddess’ also describes the deity depicted; although little more is known about her identity apart from that gained from the figurines. The ‘Snake Goddess’ figure first discovered was found by the British archaeologist Arthur Evans in 1903. The figurine found by Arthur Evans uses the faience technique, for glazing earthenware and other ceramic vessels by using a quartz paste. After firing this produces bright colors and a lustrous sheen. The figurine is today exibited at the Herakleion Archeological Museum in Crete. The snake’s close connection with the Minoan house is believed to indicate that the goddesses shown in these figures are Household Goddesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Goddess

 

The shedding of their skins was a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. One of the resources I read said that the snakes were allowed to live in the houses. (I am not sure how she knows that.) If so, I’m sure that the presence of the snakes kept down the mice.

Currently Crete does not have native venomous snakes and it is thought that there no venomous snakes in Crete during the Bronze either. So, of course I had to wonder if the asp was ever imported from Egypt.

(I think everyone knows that Cleopatra is supposed to have committed suicide with an asp. According to my research, however, it was a mixture of poisons including opium and wolfsbane. But I digress.)

The asp’s bite is very venomous. The victim dies in about four minutes.

The Magnificent Horse Part 2

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he new God-centered religion and the status of women intersected.

Patriarchy went with these mounted warriors and the status of women took a nosedive. This culture worshipped male Gods and was stratified with warriors at the top, priests next, and craftsmen below. Warriors were buried with their weapons and sometimes their horses.

Take the Mycenaeans, for example. The Acheans were one of the first waves to hit Greece. In my previous blogs about Helen of Troy, I talked about her status. She was a princess, semi-divine, wealthy and the heir to the throne. Not her brothers – her. So the transformation of a women’s status was gradual. However, she could not choose her husband and her life was marked by rape and violence. At least the Mycenaeans were influenced by the earlier Bronze Age culture. As successive, and more warlike, waves of invaders came down eventually even Crete was breached and its cities sacked and burned.

We all know that the Jews are credited with the first monotheistic faith. Not so fast. According to Elinor W. Gadon, the very early Jews also worshipped a Goddess – the Queen of Heaven. In Jeremiah the prophet speaks out against her, saying that the Hebrews were exiled from Judea because of their neglect of Yahweh. (When they were exiled they went to Babylon which was at that time transitioning from Goddess worship to God worship. (Maria Gimbutas – The Living Goddesses.) But I digress, Anyway, according to the Bible, the people retorted that Judea fell because the rituals to the Goddess had been neglected after they’d been forbidden by the Deuteronomic reforms. (Jeremiah 44: 15-19).

By the time of the Classical Greeks and Romans, the status of women was in the cellar. Women were no longer permitted to leave the courtyards of father or husband except on certain religious festival days. In Greece homosexuality and pederasty were institutionalized. It makes a sort of sense if women were so devalued, their only value that of producing heirs, how could they possibly deserve love? In Rome women had no names but that of, first their fathers, and then their husbands.

The situation certainly did not improve with the advent of Christianity. Augustinian uses urine and feces to describe childbirth and refers to women as all that is vile, lowly and corruptible. We know one result of such passionate misogyny: the witch trials of the 1600s. According to Gabon (The Once and Future Goddess) thousands and thousands of women were burned at the stake. Estimates range from 100,000 to 9,000,000 (including women who died in prison). In some villages there were no women left alive.

Because patriarchy has lasted so long we now think of it as ‘normal’. But gradually everything is changing. I started my research with Arthur Evans, the archaeologist who first excavated Knossos. As I read through his writings I found his prejudices on open display. One example: despite all the frescos featuring women, he insisted they must all be of Goddesses. (And a lot of them are.) But his rationale was that there had to be a king, women could not possibly hold the power and the importance demonstrated by the art. And that is why the Bronze Age Civilization has been called the Minoan civilization, after Minos the King referred to in the Theseus myth. (This is not even historically accurate. If there were such a king, he would have probably been a Mycaenaen.)

The agrarian societies were pretty peaceful. That certainly has not been true of all that has come after, up to and including today. War and conquest has continued pretty much unabated for millennia.

Well, I have gone pretty far afield from my study of horses. Would patriarchy have conquered all without the nomadic horde? Maybe. Maybe not. After all, many of the American Indian tribes still take counsel from their ‘Grandmothers’. But I think it is pretty clear that the domestication of horses changed everything.

Wild Horses

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Despite domestication, true wild horses continued to live in Eurasia for the following millennia. I don’t mean the horses in North America that we call wild. These are domesticated horses that escaped human control and went feral. The wild horses of Eurasia had the more robust skeletons, heavier hair, and an almost uncanny skittishness of humans. (One of the traits that was bred into horses was an increasing tolerance of humans.) Forrest reports that wild horses were captured and bred into the more domesticated herds. One mare submitted to a halter but left her foal behind when she fled back into the steppes in early spring. The final wild horse was declared officially extinct in 1969. Who would have guessed it would be so recent?

There are has been an effort to reestablish horses in Mongolia with the Takhi, horses that still bear the genetic signature of the original wild horse breeds,  on the steppes,. This is part of an effort to repopulate the steppes with some of its original inhabitants. Other animals included in this effort are the red maral deer, Mongolian gazelles and argali sheep. Like the original wild horses, these are very wary of human. I suspect that trait may help them survive.

Next: Why horses are important.

The Amazing Horse

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Although horses are not as important to our civilization as they once were – Will Rees of my Historical murder mystery series – could not have functioned without his horses, they bear a weight of history and myth that is probably greater than a dog’s. And dogs have had a long history as special partners to humans.

When I first began my research for my Bronze Age series, I was astonished to find that horses did not arrive on Crete until sometime in the Middle Bronze Age. There is a picture of a man in one of the one-sailed Cretan ships with a horse in the bow. No one knows if that is actually how horses reached Crete of if the artist was employing creative license. I mean, who doesn’t visualize the amazing chariot race in Ben-Hur (set many hundreds of years later) or even the importance of horses in the Iliad (again later). The giant wooden horse represented a creature so familiar to everyone no even questioned it.

But I digress.

Here’s what I recall from my childhood dinosaur phase. First, the proto horses certainly did not foretell their importance in later millennia. They were small, about the size of a rabbit. But they survived when the mastodons and other enormous mammals did not. Fossils from these early horses have been found in Wyoming. (And in Eurasia where they became extinct.) But how can that be when there were no horses here until they were brought by Europeans? Well, as the climate changed, changing from forest to grasslands, the proto horse changed with it. Four toes evolved into into a large central toe and then into hooves.

Then what happened? They passed over the land bridge from what is now Alaska back to Eurasia – which turned out to be a good thing for these early horses. In North America, the change in climate and fauna brought woodland. Now the land bridge was submerged and they could not escape. So they died out on this continent. But they thrived in Eurasia.

Now fascinated with  this amazing animal, I began researching them, not how they interacted with humans – although I couldn’t really avoid us – and discovered they have a pretty astonishing  history of their own.

Who is Helen?

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I’ve been blogging about Helen for a few weeks now so shouldn’t we know who she was? Well, not really.  Troy itself was thought to be mythic – until it was discovered.

Hughes believes Helen existed. I do too; the evidence is compelling. But the real Helen has been overlaid with so many other beliefs it is hard to know what to think.

For one thing, Hughes believes Helen became a minor Goddess in her own right. Women prayed to her for an easy childbirth. In a cave in Greece there is a stone worn flat by the gyrations of many women grinding against it as they prayed.

I have also heard that one cult believes Helen never went to Troy. (Thanks Sarah).

One thing is true, however. Helen has been viewed through the lens of (mostly) men’s eyes and decreed a harlot, a sinner, whose beauty lured men to destruction. (I always wonder about this attitude. It assumes men have no self-control. Seriously?) If Paris abducted her (and there is a lot of discussion on whether she was a willing participant or not), it was Helen’s fault. She was too beautiful. A woman’s beauty was to be possessed. It belonged to men.
And the men did not hesitate to take it, whether she was willing or not. Theseus (remember him? He was the destroyer of the Minotaur) was about fifty when he saw Helen dancing by the river bank with a number of other virgins. Dancing was a common religious ritual. Although still a child, she was already the most beautiful person in the world. Theseus saw her and just had to have her. Her age at this point has been given as 12, 10 or 7. He raped her and took her home. Helen’s brothers Castor and Pollux mounted a campaign against Theseus. Not only had he raped their sister but he had come into a country that did not belong to him and he attacked her in the middle of a religious rite. This early experience foreshadowed Helen’s future.

While many girls were married in their early teens, 7 seems incredibly young, even for that time. Theseus was the Mycenaean idea of a hero: aggressive and someone who took what he wanted.

Reading the writings of some of the early Christian monks is horrifying, depressing, enraging – pick your description. Everything is Helen’s fault simply because she is female and beautiful. The paintings of Helen and her abduction show a half-naked Rubenesque woman, her skin so pale it is luminous, surrounded by men as she is led away. Remember, she would have been a young girl at this point. Does anyone else see the disconnect between a woman condemned for her beauty being led away barely veiled in transparent draperies? What is it about the male psyche that hates the very thing that draws him so powerfully? A question for greater brains than mine.

But I digress.

In any event, after reading this book, I have a new appreciation of the complexity of Helen’s life (mythical or not) than I had before. Paraphrasing Shakespeare: she was “more sinned against than sinning.”

Princess Helen

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My knowledge of Helen is taken from popular culture: movies, myths and the like. I began to realize that I actually knew very little of the story. I picked up a biography by Bettany Hughes called: Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore.

Very interesting.

One of the things that has always puzzled me is the description of the God Apollo – the sun God. He has blond hair. Why?  This is Greece after all.  Helen is always described as blond. And Menelaus is described as having red hair.

Like all of the countries in Europe, Greece has seen regular influxes of new people. In the Neolithic and Paleolithic such movements populated islands like Crete. But once a area is populated a wave of new people is viewed as an invasion.

The Mycenaeans were one such group. Described by archeologists as an Indo-Duropean culture, they swept onto the Greece mainland and then to Crete. By around 1500 B.C. the pottery and architecture on Crete, although heavily influenced by the Minoans, was now Mycenaean. And they were a warrior patriarchal culture.

But I digress.

These Mycenaeans apparently carried genes for both blond and red hair.

Helen is also described as fair and white-skinned.  Pale skin certainly goes with blond hair, that is true, but I think the association with fair skin and beauty has a much longer history. Both Egyptian and Cretan art color males as reddish-brown. The women, even the bull-leapers wearing loincloths like their male teammates, are white. White lead for the skin has been found in tombs. (So white lead to whiten the skin has a long history – take that Queen Elizabeth I.) Some of the frescos and cult figures show women with that unnaturally white skin. Red circles are painted on their cheeks and chin and the scarlet suns are surrounded by dots.  The research I have done suggests these decorations had some religious meaning but I don’t think anyone knows for sure.

Anyway,  Paintings of Helen right through the Middle Ages portray her with an almost corpse like pallor.  Why is that considered beautiful?  Because she clearly did not toil in the fields?

The other cosmetic used throughout the Mediterranean is kohl. We are familiar with the frescos that show both men and women with the heavy black lines around their eyes. The use of kohl actually had a practical purpose: it protected the eyelids from sunburn and acted as an insect repellent. A recipe for kohl includes charred almond shells, soot, and frankincense. It must have been incredibly sticky. However, it was probably necessary.

In the well-known bust of Nefertiti, one eye is blind. Is the statue damaged? Or is this an accurate representation of Nefertiti? Caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, trachoma is easily spread through direct personal contact, shared towels and cloths, and flies that have come in contact with the eyes or nose of an infected person. If left untreated, repeated trachoma infections can cause severe scarring of the inside of the eyelid and can cause the eyelashes to scratch the cornea (trichiasis). In addition to causing pain, trichiasis permanently damages the cornea and can lead to irreversible blindness.

One other note. Writings from that time, including Homer’s Iliad, describe Helen as ‘shimmering’ and ‘glittering’. Besides the jewelry she wore, Helen would have been dressed in the finest of clothing. According to Hughes, the linen clothing of that time would gave been brushed with olive oil which leaves a shiny residue. So she actually would have glittered. Who knew?

 

Princess Helen

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Besides her reputation as a great beauty, Helen was a princess and a very wealthy one at that. Because property and wealth went down through the woman, Helen was the heir to Laconia and the surrounding area. So, as in common in myths and fairy tales, there was a great contest for Helen’s hand in marriage. After a full year of stick fighting and boxing and so on, there were still a number of contestants standing. After another contestant is chose and screws up his chance by getting drunk, Menelaus, the richest man in town, takes home the prize.

Helen would have been, at most, in her teens. Maybe even early teens. Menelaus was already a man. Remember that when you think of Paris. By all repute, he had the body of a God and a dewy beauty. The consensus back then that he was weak and effeminate – not a warrior. His own brother (Hector) says this: “Our prince of beauty – mad for women, you lure them all to ruin.” In my mind I picture him as a member of a boy band – catnip to an adolescent girl. So disaster was all but ensured.

And here’s a question that puzzled me until I began doing research. Helen spent more than ten years with Paris and by all accounts was not a reluctant participant. Why did Menelaus take her back? She fades from history when she returns to him.

Because this was a matrilineal society, the land, the position and the resources went from mother to daughter. Not father to son. So Menelaus had to take Helen back if he wanted to continue as king of Laconia.

Am I being too cynical to suspect the whole furor – the war and all – was not over Helen because of her great beauty but because without her Menelaus lost his kingship?