Category Archives: Ancient Crete

Ancient Religious Mysteries

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In A Murder of Furies, Martis undergoes an initiation in order to embark upon several quests.

Although I imagined most of what Martis endures, I read widely about the ancient mysteries, particularly about Dionysus and Artemis. Both are very old Gods and it is believed both were present in the pantheon of Bronze Age Crete. Because these were mysteries, known only to the initiated, not much was known about either.

However, we can make some educated guesses.

Since Dionysus was the God of wine, ecstasy, and music, it is thought his rites involved all three. (Both wine and hallucinogenics, as well as sex , dancing and singing.) The following is a quote from The Bacchae by Euripides.

“Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood’ ‘In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting ‘Euoi!’ [the god’s name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.

Dionysus predates the Olympian pantheon so this wild release is wholly different from the cool logic of an Athena or measured behavior of Apollo.

The other God, or Goddess in this case, that I researched was Artemis. Her great temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Like Dionysus, she is thought to be of pre-Greek origin, a goddess in her own right, before the Classical Greeks tied her to Zeus and put her in with their Olympic Gods. In Minoan Crete, there was a link between a goddess Britomartis and Artemis. Both were hunters, nurturers of the young, and virgins. In both cases, the bear was sacred to them. (In Murder of Furies, I begin with a ceremony in which little girls dress as bears, a ceremony also described as occurring in Classical Athens.

In both cases, we know very little of the mysteries involving their rites. (No one talked, apparently.) My takeaway, though, was that the initiations involved a transformation into someone different and that is what I tried to convey with Martis (whose name I adapted from Britomartis. I will add that the initiation was as difficult as the final quest itself.

Zeus and Dionysus in Crete

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The Cretan Zeus is not quite the same as the Classical Greek version of the God. For one thing, the Cretan Zeus is more of a harvest God who is born again each spring and dies in the Fall. Since Classical Greeks thought all Gods and Goddesses should be immortal, they changed the attribute of the God whose name they’d taken and declared all Cretans are liars. They kept, however, the story of his upbringing in a cave after his father, Cronus in Classical Greek mythology, swallowed all his children.  A prophesy declared one would be his killer. To prevent that, Cronus swallowed them. But Rhea, to protect her remaining child, dressed a stone in swaddling clothes so Cronus swallowed the rock instead.

In both versions, Zeus was nursed by a nanny goat – or one of several other animals such as a pig. Take your pick. I’ve now read several variations. Zeus’s crying was masked by the Kouretes, a group of armed men who clashed their weapons together to hide the cries.

So what does this have to do with Dionysus? Well, the Cretan Zeus is more like Dionysus. A mortal harvest God followed by ecstatic worshippers.

When I was in Greece at Delphi I asked our tour guide why Dionysus was so different from the Classical Greek Gods. They do not embody the Dionysian wildness and several represent rationality. She didn’t know but I have the answer now. Dionysus is a very old God. He is named in the linear B tablets. And in many, if not most, of the other Middle Eastern Bronze Age religions there are other Gods like him.

These early beliefs were concentrated on fertility – not just human fertility although in Bronze Age Crete the High Priestess, as an earthly representation of the Goddess, represented that fertility. Ritual intercourse was practiced not only in the Mediterranean but as far away as Norway. For these early farmers, fertility among the livestock and of course a good harvest meant the difference between life and death. According to Joseph Campbell, in very early times the king of the land, (or the consort to the Priestess) was sacrificed so that his blood would nourish the land and promote that fertility. This practice evolved to a ritual sacrifice, using animals or other rites that stood in for the death of the king.

That is why the High Priestess had such power. Although we are not entirely sure how much, I imagined her as THE power, with her consort controlling the administration of the state. Bulls and other animals were sacrificed, but other rituals were also employed. I suggest that the consort is required to reestablish his strength by facing a bull in the ring.

Of course, as the Priestess comes to the end of her fertile years, she would be replaced with a younger woman.

Harpies

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The Ancient Greeks and Romans seem to be fascinated with human/animal hybrids, like the Sphinx, the Centaurs, Sirens and the like. The Harpies are another example of these animal/human amalgams, and like the Sirens, the name is frequently used as a derogatory term for a woman.

What were the Harpies. Bird bodies, women’s faces with supernatural speed and long sharp talons. They were punishers. (One of the most famous of the punished is Phineas. He was cursed with immortality, but normal aging. As soon as he lifted food to his mouth, the Harpies descended and snatched it away. Zeus paused the punishment so Phineas could help Jason acquire the Golden Fleece.)

The Harpies retired to a cave in Crete.

The ancient peoples in Crete, commonly called the Minoans, had rituals involving dances where the women pretended to be birds. The women wore masks and dresses with long flowing sleeves designed to appear as wings.

Like the Minotaur, who I suspect was a man wearing a bull’s mask in some ancient rite, I wonder if the Harpies are the dancing women in their bird masks and fluttering sleeves. The bull, revered in Ancient Crete, became something totally different in the later Greek myths. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dancing maidens evolved into the Harpies.

iFood for thought.

Let’s Eat or Food in different eras

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Since I like to cook, I find researching the food eaten in the different times I write about in my books fascinating. I own several Shaker cookbooks as well as one of the first written (from the late 1700s). (I also own multiple ethnic cookbooks, several Amish, a Middle Ages and Elizabethan cookbooks, and a handwritten cookbook with old recipes handed down by family from the Depression.

I do not, of course, own anything from the Bronze Age Crete mysteries. Not only have we not decoded Linear A, but archaeologists are still excavating and interpreting what they find. Although we know that the Ancient Minoans had grapes and made wine, as well as olives, and olive oil, the rest of their diet is a little mysterious. We are not even sure they ate cheese, although right now theories tend toward yes. Researching what they ate has been a challenge. I assumed they drank an herbal tea and we know they drank beer as well as wine. Since barley was grown throughout the region, it is generally thought that was part of their diet. And since almond trees grow on Crete, we can be pretty sure they ate almonds.

The diet in early America tended to be meat heavy. Farmers had poke, although the pigs were almost feral and allowed to run wild. Cattle, sheep, poultry – all of it could end up on the dinner table. They also consumed game of various types. One of the recipes I saw began ‘tie the front legs of the turtle together.’ Venison is heavily featured. I have several recipes for squirrel (without any direction for cleaning or skinning). One begins with ‘cut two squirrels into pieces’, and ends with ;young squirrels can be fried.’ All I can is say is EWW.

The old time New England cookbook has fewer meat recipes but a lot involving lobsters, oysters, clams and so on. As one would expect.

What surprised me about the Medieval and Elizabethan cookbooks was the amount of spice and sugar used. These must have been food for the wealthy while the poorer folk ate cabbage.

Probably my favorites among these old cookbooks, though, are the Shaker ones. The Shaker Sisters cooked for a crowd so everything is in large amounts. They were famous for their foods, their cider, their seeds. They probably ate the best of anyone.

But what I like is those cookbooks contain extensive baking chapters. All kinds of bread, cakes, cookies and pies. Their potato bread is great, although it makes many more loaves than I need. The one failure that I’ve tried is the recipe for lemon pie. The lemons are sliced thin, covered with sugar, and baked in a crust. It was unbearably sour.

The Depression recipes include such items as navy bean hash, fried bean patties, and desserts such as tomato soup cake and grape pudding. Eggs and sugar were expensive so they were kept to a minimum or left out altogether (usually with some odd substitution.)

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.

Hecate: was she a witch?

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Don’t forget! I’ll be at the Rensselaer Public Library this Saturday from 1 to 3. Six authors will discuss their works, answer questions and sign books.

Since it is Halloween, I thought I’d discuss Hecate. By Shakespeare’s time – in fact, long before, Hecate was a witch, a powerful dark force. The three Weird Sister answer to her calling on her for help and suffering from her wrath.

But in Ancient Greece, Hecate was not a witch. She was a Goddess, not a child of Zeus, but, like Dionysus, a divinity far older than even the Mycenaeans. She could slip easily between the world of the living and the world of the dead. When Hades took Persephone, Demeter asked Hecate to find her daughter, which Hecate did, locating Persephone in the Underworld.

Hecate, triple bodied, was the goddess of the crossroads, and, by extension, of boundaries. Her eyes could see into the souls of me and her torch was brighter than the moon. Since she was not a witch, she did not rely on magic or spells. (She evolved into a witch throughout the centuries.)

Hecate is usually represented holding torches, a key or snakes. That suggests to me that her roots go all the way back to Minoan times and the Priestess for whom snakes were divine. Her frequent companion was a large black dog. Together they were so fearsome that when she went to Hades, even the spirits of the dead stepped aside.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Archaeological advances

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One of the things I find so interesting about the research into the distant past is how many more things are discovered, seemingly every year. One would think that after decades of excavation, everything would have been discovered already. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recently a labyrinth was discovered on Crete on the top of a hill. Crete has undergone many excavations but clearly there is still plenty more to find.

And, as science moves on, we have better tools. archeogenetics is a new and burgeoning field. The discoveries made through testing DNA have upset many long held beliefs. The Etruscans, for example, believed to have emigrated from Anatolia to Italy are now found to be from the Caucasus.

Tests of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe have been similarly surprising.

Previously, they were thought to have migrated to the High Plains from the Great Lakes. Some anthropologists have argued that the Tribe’s language if part of the Algonquin family. Nothing in the Blackfoot oral tradition supports this.

DNA supports their belief that they have lived on their ancestral lands since time immortal. Current linguistic research indicates that the Blackfoot language has features belonging to an ancient language that predates Algonquin. 

Even coffee has proven to have a surprising journey. The coffee bushes evolved in Eastern Africa in a few different strains that eventually interbred. The plants that grew on the eastern side of the Great Rift Valley remained wild but the ones on the eastern side were brought to the Yemen city of Mocha. Folklore says that the red berries were eaten. (Yuck.) Oral histories say that an Indian monk brought the berries to India from which it spread around the world. Dutch explorers cultivated c. arabica on Java – Typical. Another variant was cultivated by French colonists – Bourbon – and that combination of those two varieties largely gave rise to the coffee most of us drink today. Who knew?

Age and Athletes.

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The Olympics are associated with Classical Greece, where these games officially began.

But there were contests of athletic skill before that. And women participated. At least we know they did in Sparta. (Some of the writings by men in other areas were shocked by the freedom of Sparta’s women.)

Since the murals and frescoes in Knossos seem to display both male and female athletes, I chose to believe the young women in Minoan Crete also engaged in races and other games of skill.

And with the Summer Olympics are going on now, I’ve reflected on the athletes who are competing.

I’ve gotten more than a few questions on the youth of my protagonist. (Martis is 16.) Here’s my question: do you think a forty-year old has the stamina, the speed, and the fearlessness to run at a charging bull?

Even in the 2024 Olympics, the athletes tend to be young. One of the skateboarders is 11. Another competitor is 12. There are quite a few teenagers competing. DHINIDHI DESINGHU, a swimmer from India, is 14 years old.

Hezly Rivera. American gymnast, is 16. After Kamila Valieva, a Russian figure skater, won at fifteen (and then lost the gold because of a doping scandal) the age for competing in figure skating has been raised to 17.

The ‘old’ athletes in their late twenties are referred to as though they have one foot in the grave and the other on a roller skate. Simone Biles, arguably the best modern female gymnast, is the oldest competitor at 27 since the 1950’s. She’s referred to as a ‘veteran’ and ‘experienced.’So, a 16 year-old athlete is not an outlier at all, even now.

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.

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.