Cult-objects were usually of a rude and inartistic kind. A striking exception is found in some brilliantly-coloured figures of ware which if it were modern would be called “faïence,” belonging to the Middle Minoan III period. Perhaps the best example of this ware is a group consisting of the Snake Goddess and her votaries, which was found by Sir Arthur Evans in 1903, and which was used in a shrine of the royal household.
There was a specially important element in Cretan religion reserved for the cult of the dead.
It is obvious from the many tombs that have been excavated, that in very early times it was the practice to bury the body of the dead in a doubled-up position, the knees being drawn up to the breast. In later times the body was laid out at full length. It is not clear whether or not there was any particular significance in this choice of position. There were various kinds of tombs and graves, all of which were used contemporaneously, and of which, perhaps, the most interesting were the “Tholoi.” The word “tholos” properly means a domed building or rotunda, and the particular kind of tomb to which it is applied is a vaulted chamber to which entrance is effected through an underground tunnel, or “dromos.” It is likely that in form these “tholoi” were based upon the huts used—at some period—by the living. There are both round and square “tholoi” found in Crete. The “tholos” of Hagia Triada has a circular ground plan, while the Royal Tomb at Isopata and other elaborate tombs of the great palace-periods are rectangular. The principle of the tholos-tomb was most in use in Mycenæan times, on the mainland of Greece, where the “beehive tombs” almost all retained in the original round formation. The hilly character of Crete led the people to cut out their “tholoi” in the side of the rocky hills, the “dromos,” or tunnel, in this case being driven into the hillside almost horizontally.
Another style of grave was the shaft or pit-grave, which consisted of a pit sunk into the ground, at the bottom of which was the grave itself, closed over with slabs of stone. Still another kind was a combination of the first two, and is known as the “pit-cave.” This was made by first sinking a pit and then cutting out the tomb in the form of a side-recess from the bottom of the pit. A simpler form of burial, known as the “pot-burial,” was effected by trussing up the body, placing it under an inverted jar, and then burying it in the earth. A sixth form was that of the simple grave, like our own. Cremation was not practised in Minoan times, although it was introduced into Crete from Greece in the Iron Age. Clay coffins were first used in the Middle Minoan period, being made in the form of deep boxes with sloping tops resembling the roofs of houses.
Such were the physical conditions of burial. We knew practically nothing of the cult of the dead until 1913-1914, when Sir Arthur Evans published some important disclosures (Archæologia, 2nd series, vol. xv, 1913-14). It was known before that the dead in their spacious tombs were honoured with gift-offerings, which included weapons, jewellery, and objects closely associated with them in their life; that food and drink offerings were made and coal fires lighted, possibly with the naïve or symbolic object of cheering the traveller on his mysterious way. Now, however, a new series of tombs has been found at Isopata, one of which, called by Sir Arthur Evans “the Tomb of the Double Axes,” is proved to be not only a tomb, but a shrine of the Minoan Great Mother. In this tomb were found libation vessels, including a “rhyton” (or drinking-cup) in the shape of a bull’s head made of steatite, and a pair of double axes; the grave which received the body is cut out in the form of a double axe. “The cult of the dead,” says Sir Arthur Evans, “is thus brought into direct relation with the divinity or divinities of the Double Axes, and we may infer that in the present tomb the mortal remains had been placed in some ceremonial manner under divine guardianship.”
Chapter 11: Men and Women, Clothes and Customs
When Knossos fell, Crete ceased to be the pre-eminent power in the Near East. The island itself was overrun by military or naval adventurers, and the centre of Mediterranean life shifted over to the mainland of Greece, whence, indeed, those adventurers came. The interesting thing, however, was that Cretan culture went with it, and neither for the last, nor probably for the first, time “the captive led captive her savage conqueror,” as Horace wrote centuries afterwards. Crete stooped to conquer Greece, just as Greece in her turn stooped to conquer Rome.
The Cretans as a race were quite distinct from the contemporary inhabitants of Greece, physical types being sharply divided by the shores of the mainland. It may be asked: Is it worth while speculating about the physical characteristics of a people which flourished 4,000 years ago, whose very existence was obscured by the Dark Age that comes before Greek history, and whose existence was not rediscovered until the other day? Yet archæology works wonders. It is true that in this particular field, in which archæology is chiefly dependent upon portrait-paintings and bones, there is more controversy and less certitude than in the others; and that craniology, or the study of skulls, with their much-disputed classification into “brachycephalic” or broad-headed, “dolichocephalic” or long-headed, and “mesocephalic,” midway between the two, is a fruitful source of confusion; that the “cephalic” index—that is, the breadth of the skull above the ears expressed in a percentage which gives the proportion of this breadth-measurement to the measurement of the length of the same skull from the forehead to the occiput—is a poor index of anything at all. Still, there is ground for assuming that from the later Stone Age onwards the islands of the Ægean were mainly peopled by members of the “Mediterranean” race, small of stature, with oval faces, with what craniologists might call rather “long” heads, with small hands and feet, a dark complexion, dark eyes and black curly hair.
According to Professor H. L. Myres in his Dawn of History, the north-west quadrant of the Old World resolved itself racially into three belts, which were determined by geographical conditions. (Pp. 30 et seq. Williams & Norgate, 1912.) In the north were the pure white-skinned “Boreal” men of the Baltic basin; next came the sallow “Alpine” type, then the red-skinned “Mediterranean” man. The third was an intruder from the South, not from far enough south for him to be a negro, but probably from the northern shores of Africa. His intrusion “formed part of a much larger convergence of animals and plants from the south and south-east into the colder, moister regions which have been released since the Ice Age closed.” The limit of the movement seems to have been fixed by the shores of the mainland, further north than which the lungs and constitution of the people concerned forbade them to go.
The establishment of the existence of the Mediterranean race has had, among other results, that of making it no longer possible, as was invariably the practice before Crete was excavated, of ascribing all obscure factors in the beginnings of Greece to a Phœnician origin. We now know, for instance, that the art of writing came from Crete, Phœnicia being the medium; and that Phœnicia itself was merely a late centre of the general Ægean civilization, and got its name merely because it was the best-known branch of the “red-skinned” race; for “Phœnikes” literally means “Red-skins,” and in Homer Phœnix himself is a King of Crete and grandfather of Minos.