Category Archives: Priestesses

Gods and Goddesses of Bronze Age Crete

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From the preponderance of female figures on seals and in frescoes, archaeologists believe Crete worshipped a Supreme Goddess, probably a fertility Goddess from Neolithic times. (Similar to Astarte.)There is some dispute whether the statuary depicting women with snakes in their hands are representations of the Goddess or Priestesses engaged in a ritual.

note the tiered skirt, the short-sleeved jacket and the tight belt around the waist.

Besides the Supreme Goddess, there was a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses. Poseidon, the God of the Oceans and Earthquakes, is one. (He was adopted by the mainland Greeks with almost no change.) Dionysus is another God, a very old one. A vegetation God, he is the God of wine as well as the Master of Animals. Unlike the Gods and Goddess of Classical Greece, Dionysus is not immortal. He is born each spring, grows to manhood throughout the year, and dies in winter.

One particularly interesting feature of Dionysus is his birth, in a cave and nourished by nanny goats. Sound familiar? The Cretan Zeus, a relative latecomer to the pantheon, is ascribed the same birth story. In Classical times, the same tale is told of Zeus’ birth, (although with a myth about the Titans surrounding it.) Zeus, of course, was elevated to the major God for the Classical Greeks.

The Goddesses are more complicated. Were they individuals or aspects of the Supreme Goddesses? Maybe a mix of the two? Aphrodite is connected to the Bronze Age and her name is pre-Greek. Artemis was a virgin, and the hunt was sacred to her, just as the Classical Greeks believed. Hera was another important Goddess. Shrines to her have been found in Crete. She was responsible for childbirth, a task she shared with Artemis. In the Classical Greek pantheon, she was reduced from being an important Goddess in her own right to Zeus’s jealous wife.

Britomartis meaning Sweet Virgin or Sweet Maiden, was worshipped by the fishermen. Her other name is Diktynna for the nets the fishermen used. I took her name and used the second half, Martis as the name of the protagonist in In the Shadow of the Bull and the sequels.

What about the Minotaur? Was the bull-headed man a God?We know that bulls were very very important in Ancient Crete. The statuary and frescos of bull leapers and the many representations of bulls is proof of that. But, was the Minotaur sacred? I choose to believe that the Minotaur was a creation of the Mainland Greeks, representing something they did not understand – rituals involving masked priests.

As excavations and study of this amazing culture continues, I’m sure we discover more about their religion.

Priestesses

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From the frescos, the statuary and other artworks, we know women had a lot of power in Bronze Age Crete. Seals show a female figure as several times the size of the male figure; that is assumed to be a representation of a Supreme Goddess with a less important consort or son beside her.

Other works show figures in the traditional clothing: the short, tight short-sleeved jackets and long skirts, with elaborate headdresses. Two very famous statues show these women holding snakes (which were sacred.) These, it is theorized, are the Priestesses.

In many cultures, women were expected to know prayers/spells and make regular offering to the Gods to safeguard their homes and families. The Bronze Age was an age when many women died in childbirth (estimates rise as high as half) and miscarriages and stillbirths were common. Women employed amulets, prayers, and appeals to wise women to help them attract their love, inspire pregnancy, make the birth easy, keep the baby safe and more. These practices continued up through Roman times.

Christianity does not have priestesses. The only formal avenue for women in their worship is to become a nun. The spells, love potions, amulets and so one went underground, to women who became feared as witches.

In Ancient Crete, women would have been responsible for the prayers and sacrifices to keep their homes safe. Clearly, as shown by the above statue, there were other women whose responsibilities were far greater.

In In The Shadow of the Bull,

I imagined a class of Priestesses who lived separately and were responsible for all the rituals involving appeals to the Goddess. This was their profession. I suspect these women would have also attained a high degree of political power as well so, in my reconstruction of the world, I made the female ruler also the High Priestess with the others below her.

I will be taking a break for the next few weeks but I will return the last week of October.