palace, and this class is specially well represented in the tablets of Hagia Triada (M.M. iii. and L.M. i.). The later class (B) of the linear script is that used on the great bulk of the clay tablets of the Cnossian palace, amounting in number to nearly 2000.
These clay archives are almost exclusively inventories and business documents. Their general purport is shown in many cases by pictorial figures relating to various objects which appear on them—such as chariots and horses, ingots and metal vases, arms and implements, stores of corn, &c., flocks and herds. Many showing human figures apparently contain lists of personal names. A decimal system of numeration was used, with numbers going up to 10,000. But the script itself is as yet undeciphered, though it is clear that certain words have changing suffixes, and that there were many compound words. The script also recurs on walls in the shape of graffiti, and on vases, sometimes ink-written; and from the number of seals originally attached to perishable documents it is probable that parchment or some similar material was also used. In the easternmost district of Crete, where the aboriginal “Eteocretan” element survived to historic times (Praesus, Palaikastro), later inscriptions have been discovered belonging to the 5th and succeeding centuries B.C., written in Greek letters but in the indigenous language (Comparetti, Mon. Ant. iii. 451 sqq.; R. S. Conway, British School Annual, viii. 125 sqq. and ib. xl.). In 1908 a remarkable discovery was made by the Italian Mission at Phaestus of a clay disk with imprinted hieroglyphic characters belonging to a non-Cretan system and probably from W. Anatolia.
The remains of several shrines within the building, and the
religious element perceptible in the frescoes, show that a considerable
part of the Palace of Cnossus was devoted
to purposes of cult. It is clear that the rulers, as so
commonly in ancient states, fulfilled priestly as well as
Character of
Minoan religion.
royal functions. The evidence supplied by this and
other Cretan sites shows that the principal Minoan divinity was a
kind of Magna Mater, a Great Mother or nature goddess, with
whom was associated a male satellite. The cult in fact corresponds
in its main outlines with the early religious conceptions of
Syria and a large part of Anatolia—a correspondence probably
explained by a considerable amount of ethnic affinity existing
between a large section of the primitive Cretan population and
that of southern Asia Minor. The Minoan goddess is sometimes
seen in her chthonic form with serpents, sometimes in a more
celestial aspect with doves, at times with lions. One part of her
religious being survives in that of the later Rhea, another in that
of Aphrodite, one of whose epithets, Ariadne ( = the exceeding
holy), takes us back to the earliest Cnossian tradition. Under her
native name, Britomartis ( = the sweet maiden) or Dictynna, she
approaches Artemis and Leto, again associated with an infant
god, and this Cretan virgin goddess was worshipped in Aegina
under the name of Aphaea. It is noteworthy that whereas, in
Greece proper, Zeus attains a supreme position, the old superiority
of the Mother Goddess is still visible in the Cretan traditions
of Rhea and Dictynna and the infant Zeus.
Although images of the divinities were certainly known, the principal objects of cult in the Minoan age were of the aniconic class; in many cases these were natural objects, such as rocks and mountain peaks, with their cave sanctuaries, like those of Ida or of Dicte. Trees and curiously shaped stones were also worshipped, and artificial pillars of wood or stone. These latter, as in the well-known case of the Lion’s Gate at Mycenae, often appear with guardian animals as their supporters. The essential feature of this cult is the bringing down of the celestial spirit by proper incantations and ritual into these fetish objects, the dove perched on a column sometimes indicating its descent. It is a primitive cult similar to that of Early Canaan, illustrated by the pillow stone set up by Jacob, which was literally “Bethel” or the “House of God.” The story of the baetylus, or stone swallowed by Saturn under the belief that it was his son, the Cretan Zeus, seems to cover the same idea and has been derived from the same Semitic word.
A special form of this “baetylic” cult in Minoan Crete was the representation of the two principal divinities in their fetish form by double axes. Shrines of the Double Axes have been found in the palace of Cnossus itself, at Hagia Triada, and in a small palace at Gournia, and many specimens of the sacred emblem occurred in the Cave Sanctuary of Dicte, the mythical birthplace of the Cretan Zeus. Complete scenes of worship in which libations are poured before the Sacred Axes are, moreover, given on a fine painted sarcophagus found at Hagia Triada.
The same cult survived to later times in Caria in the case of Zeus Labrandeus, whose name is derived from labrys, the native name for the double axe, and it had already been suggested on philological grounds that the Cretan “labyrinthos” was formed from a kindred form of Labyrinth and Minotaur. the same word. The discovery that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe and its associated divinities has now supplied a striking and it may well be thought an overwhelming confirmation of this view. We can hardly any longer hesitate to recognize in this vast building, with its winding corridors and subterranean ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition; and as a matter of fact a maze pattern recalling the conventional representation of the Labyrinth in Greek art actually formed the decoration of one of the corridors of the palace. It is difficult, moreover, not to connect the repeated wall-paintings and reliefs of the palace illustrating the cruel bull sports of the Minoan arena, in which girls as well as youths took part, with the legend of the Minotaur, or bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens was forced to pay annual tribute of her sons and daughters. It appears certain from the associations in which they are found at Cnossus, that these Minoan bull sports formed part of a religious ceremony. Actual figures of a monster with a bull’s head and man’s body occurred on seals of Minoan fabric found on this and other Cretan sites.
It is abundantly evident that whatever mythic element may have been interwoven with the old traditions of the spot, they have a solid substratum of reality. With such remains before us it is no longer sufficient to relegate Minos to the regions of sun-myths. His legendary presentation Historic substratum of Cretan myths. as the “Friend of God,” like Abraham, to whom as to Moses the law was revealed on the holy mountain, calls up indeed just such a priest-king of antiquity as the palace-sanctuary of Cnossus itself presupposes. It seems possible even that the ancient tradition which recorded an earlier or later king of the name of Minos may, as suggested above, cover a dynastic title. The earlier and later palaces at Cnossus and Phaestus, and the interrupted phases of each, seem to point to a succession of dynasties, to which, as to its civilization as a whole, it is certainly convenient to apply the name “Minoan.” It is interesting, as bringing out the personal element in the traditional royal seat, that an inscribed sealing belonging to the earliest period of the later palace of Cnossus bears on it the impression of two official signets with portrait heads of a man and of a boy, recalling the “associations” on the coinage of imperial Rome. It is clear that the later traditions in many respects accurately summed up the performances of the “Minoan” dynast who carried out the great buildings now brought to light. The palace, with its wonderful works of art, executed for Minos by the craftsman Daedalus, has ceased to belong to the realms of fancy. The extraordinary architectural skill, the sanitary and hydraulic science revealed in details of the building, bring us at the same time face to face with the power of mechanical invention with which Daedalus was credited. The elaborate method and bureaucratic control visible in the clay documents of the palace point to a highly developed legal organization. The powerful fleet and maritime empire which Minos was said to have established will no doubt receive fuller illustration when the sea-town of Cnossus comes to be explored. The appearance of ships on some of the most important seal-impressions is not needed, however, to show how widely Minoan influence made itself felt in the neighbouring Mediterranean regions.
The Nilotic influence visible in the vases, seals and other fabrics of the Early Minoan age, seems to imply a maritime
