Realien: Materialien von Anton Hafner (KZU Bülach)
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(Angabe folgt) Juli/August 1984
Knossos: New Excavations and Discoveries
By Peter Warren
The Minoan civilization has long been considered one of the gentler and more "civilized" of the world's ancient cultures. Its Cretan capital of Knossos is rightly celebrated as one of antiquity's greateste sites. Best known for its Bronze Age palace, Knossos was, in fact, a large and well-planned urban center, one with large adjoining mansions and paved roads providing excellent access to the agricultural countryside. But playing a part may have been hitherto unsuspected aspects of Minoan civilization.
Recent discoveries made during excavations in the city have produced evidence that the Minoans may well have practiced child sacrifice and perhaps even ritual cannibalism. Such a conclusion constitutes a rather startling challenge to the traditional image of the Minoans, and the finds on which this argument rests came as a real surprise to the excavators who discovered them. Under the direction of the author, the British School at Athens has been conducting new escavations to the northwest of the palace since 1978 (through 1982) with the major goal of documenting the growth and emergence of the city of Knossos. This objective has been met to a considerable extent in the area investigated; urban occupation has been documented back to 2000 B.C. and specialists are presently elucidating the details of stock-keeping and the environment back through some 2,400 years.
But it was during excavations of levels dating from the Bronze Age - more exactly from a destruction which occured around 1450 B.C. - that the evidence for human sacrifice was found. Bones from the bodies of two children. with ages of roughly eight and 11, were discovered in one room. while a set of ritual drinking vessels uas found in an adjacent basement. The bones of the children bear clear evidence that their flesh was carefully cut away, much in the manner of the flesh of sacrificed animals. In fact, the bones of a slaughtered sheep were found with those of the children, and a knife mark found on one of the sheep's vertebrae strongly suggests that the sheep's throat was cut. Moreover, as far as the bones are concerned; both children appear to have been in good health a requirement in antiquity for sacrificial animals. Startling as it may seem, the available evidence so far points to an argument that the children were slaughtered, and their flesh cooked and possibly eaten in a sacrificial ritual made in the service of a nature deity to assure the annual renewal of fertility.
We must begin by reviewing the interlocking evidence that supports this hypothesis. lt consists of the architectural evidence and the rich ceramic record and iconography that the Knossos excavations yielded: the burnt remains of the building in which the ceramics and bones were found; associated evidence from the artifactual record; and finally - though not least - the known myths and rituals from Cretan antiquity and elseewhere. The major ceramic find was a remarkahle and complex pottery deposit of at least 37 vessels, most of which had originally stood or had heen stored in large jars in the northern hall of a first floor room. As the building burned, however, this collection fell through the collapsing floor and into the basement. These vessels, together with four more from the North Court (which originally must have comprised part of the same collection) give evidence of a cult which involved the pouring of ritual libations.
There are two important subsets among these 37 vessels. The first comprises ten large vessels, including four pithoi and their contents; the secornd comprises 13 other vessels which were found in the upper floor fill of the basement, separate from the pithoi and their contents. Of the ten large vessels, four were pithoi that varied considerably in their contents. The two most important ones contained smaller vessels known as rhytons - vessels for pouring ritual libations. Twelve of these remarkable rhytons were found together; a number of others were found nearby. A comparable collection of ritual vases stored in a pithos comes from a house southwest of the palace. Discovered by the original excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, it comprises a set of snake vessels. The comrnon feature of the rhytons is a small hole in the base through which liquid could be let out slowly. Six of them form pairs, almost twins, two each of cups and one of miniature baskets. This pairing recalls the "Gamp Stool Fresco" from the Knassos palace, in which pairs of men sit opposite each other performing drinking rituals in the presence of a priestess or goddess.
There are three other cup-rhytons among this group of t.welve. One has a band of figure-eight shields alternating with objects which may well be large squills, Urginea maritima, common in Crete and used now and in antiquity as a protective fertility charm. Significantly, at one end of this band of decoration is a gorgoneion, remarkably comparable to later Greek rendering, with wild staring eyes, large nose and protruding tongue. From its top emerge sprays just like the leaves which help to define the squills.
The presence of a gorgoneion on a Late Minoan IB (1450 B.C.) vase is of great interest for the history of Aegean religion. It was brilliantly shown many years ago by the American scholar A.L. Frothingham (1911) and by Spyridon Marinatos (1927-28) that Gorgo was in origin the great Minoan goddess of nature. Later she figures most strongly in Artemis as mistress of animals, but the later specifically Cretan iconography stresses her as snake goddess, an aspect clearly derived from her Minoan background. The new discovery provides clear support for these theories of the Minoan origin of Gorgo and the gorgoneion, since the latter is rendered just as it is in Hellenic times and is present in a cult context of other ritual vessels.
The other three rhytons recovered from the pithos are a kantharos; an exquisite miniature pithos decorated with ropework bands and medallions; and a miniature, four-handled amphora with an internal cone, suspended at the rim and open at its bottom over the rhyton hole. This vessel, too, is remarkably decorated: four large, figure-eight shields are depicted on it, with white dappling on their black surface irnitating hides. On the top of each shield is a curved line. Such a depiction may well be immediately related to an incised design on a Minoan bronze double axe, where a figure-eight shield is heraldically flanked by human figures. The fact that the scene on the axe, which was elucidated by T. Small in 1966, represents worship of a goddess is made quite clear by comparison with the well-known painted limestone tablet from Mycenae on which a goddess covered by a shield receives offerings from a priestess on each side with an altar depicted in the field.
There is also a number of gold rings bearing related iconographical scenes which deserve to be mentioned. On one of these, a gold ring recovered from Vapheio, a figure-eight shield occurs in a scene of ecstatic dancing and the shaking down of a tree - indications that the shield had a place in the rituals of a nature goddess. The shield is her attribute or symbol or, alternatively, a vehicle for possession of her. Other gold rings, from Arkhanes. Kalyvia, Knossos, and Mycenae, also show scenes of ecstatic dancing and nature rituals with which the scene on the Vapheio ring can be closely linked.
The second subset of important vessels from the upper floor fill which had fallen into the basement also contributes to the conclusion that ritual sacrifice was practiced at Knossos. This subset, comprising 13 varied vessels, includes two magnificent examples of the Marine Style (1500-1450 B.c.) - one a fragrnentary conical rhyton decorated with an octopus, the other a complete alahastron painted with "starfish" and seaweed in alternation.
The Late Minoan IB Marine Stvle was often used to decorate ritual vases and appears to have had a specifically religious connection. Indeed, marine creatures along with fruits and flowers, also figure in the decorations on another famous deposit discovered by Sir Adhur Evans. This deposit came from the Temple Repositories of the palace, and contained ritual objects with faience snake figurines that Evans connected with a great goddess of nature, whose marine aspect he also succeeded in elucidating.
A variety of additional vessels helps to establish the context adjacent to which the chiidren's bones were found, and to strengthen the connections with a fertility goddess and her rituals. They include a fragmentary cup-rhyton, beautifully painted in the Marine Style with spray fronds, triton shells and double axes. An equally lovely spouted jar is painted with starfish, rockwork and hanging marine spray fronds. There were also fragments of a Marine Style amphora with similar motifs, as well as another amphora decorated with horizontal bands containing vertical wavy stripes in black with yellowish mottling. This last is a masterpiece, on which may be seen as a forerunner of more stylized versions of the wavy marbled pattern some 50 yesrs later in the Late Minoan (and Mycenaean) IIIA (ca. 1400 B.C.).
Since the collectinn of vessels at Knossos seems to have been cult set kept in storage for ritual use, it remains to be seen how these vessels connect with the other pertinent data recovered at the site. Liquids for these rituals may have been kept in vessels like the alabastron mentioned earlier and in a large stirrup jar which is also in the collection. The recipient of the libations is likely to have been the goddess of animals and nature. Moreover, the performance of the cult will have occurred at an external location and may well have involved processions with the ritual vessels. Sluch processions are depicted in Minoan art on frescoes from the palace, on a stone vessel with a relief scene, and on a clay impression of a gold ring, both from Knossos. From the evidence of the shield iconography on the gold ring from Vapheio and on related rings, the goddess, again, would seem to have been invoked by ecstatic dancing.
But the most unexpected evidence recovered from the site comes from the second, heavily carbonized level, which constitutes the remains of the ceiling of another basement room, or of the upper floor ceiling above it. The ceiling or roof would have subsided into the basement while it was burning and subsequently settled around the contents of the basement. Beneath this layer was a third level consisting of greenish-gray clavey soil, below which was about 30 centimeters of relatively empty soil forming the fourth level. This lowest level lay over a firm reddish-brown floor level with traces of white plaster at the edges, much older in date.
In the second, heavily carbonized level, as well as in the third level, there were many small vases, mostly common conical cups as well as plain cups, bowls and a juglet - material very similar to the deposits found both in the adjacent southern basement and on the floor of the Cult Room basement across the corridor, into which the ritual vessels had fallen. With it, in the carbonized level, was a fragrnent of the Marine Style amphora described before. This definitely connects the basement deposit with those of the other areas and confirms the Late Minoan IB date of ca. 1450 B.C. for the destruction of the whole building.
The bones of the two children were found intermixed with the pottery remains of the second, carbonized level. Despite the fact that they were found in a layer of carbonized earth, however, the bones themselves had not been burnt. And although they were scattered over the room, some 304 bone pieces in all, there was a sufficient number of bone fragments to make it probable that either the children s whole bodies - or large part.s of them - were either placed or thrown in the room.
The bone remains have been under study by several experts. They were meticulously recorded during the course of the excavations by Sheilagh Wall, who has been working on them in collaboration with J. Musgrave, both of Bristol University, England. Twenty-three skull fragments have been pieced together to reconstruct the skulls of two children. Another 27 bones from all parts of the body were found to have fine knife cut marks on them, often well away from the ends of the bones. The theory that these knife marks indicate the removal of the flesh is supported by anthropologist Lewis Binford of the University of New Mexico, who kindly examined our close-up and microscope photographs. These photographs show that the bones were subjected to repeated sawing or cutting actions -and not 8with one exception) chopping blows. Binford suggests that the position of marks away from the ends of the bones indicates the removal of fleash from whole bodies and not dismemberment. The apparent absence of longitudinal scrapin marks confirms the conclusion that the aim was certainly not to clean the bones of every trace of flesh. The evidence suggests, on the contrary, that only pieces of flesh were removed. Moreover, x-ray photographs of the two skulls and a representative selection of the other bones have been generously made by J. Tsoudheros at the Venizeleion Hospital in Knossos. These photographs were also examined by the late Sir Howard Middlemiss, then professor of radiodiagnosis at Bristol Universitv. Both experts independentlv concluded that the bones showed no pathological abnormalities of any kind, and that the children, at least as far as their bones and cell structure are concerned, appear to have been in normal health at the time they died. In other words, they appear to have been deliberately killed.
Reconstructing the original context in which these child sacrifices may have occurred is, of course, a very difficult matter. It is impossible to say how long the bodies or bones may have lain in the basement before the building burned, just as we cannot say for certain whether the bodies had been flung in or set in carefully either as whole bodies or parts. It is unlikely to have been for long, however, since the bodies and many ordinary small pottery vessels probably were scattered over the floor at the moment of destruction.
It is reasonable, however, to rule out some possibilities on the basis of the evidence. The children, to begin with, do not seem to have been the victims of an ordinary murder, given the elaborate cutting treatment of their bones. Nor do they seem to have been killed with weapons during a hostile attack on the city, since there is no evidence of normal weapon blows, and there is nothing to indicate that this house, much less the city, was the object of a siege or battle. There is also no evidence from the Minoan civilization to indicate that alimentary cannibalism - the eating of human flesh as a foodstuff - was at all customary. And finally, there is no evidence that the bones had been prepared for secondary burial; a common practice among the Minoans; they had simply been cut.
That child sacrifice was not totally unknown in Bronze Age Crete is suggested by a scene on a Late Minoan I ring impression recently published from Khania. It depicts a large seated female figure, probably a goddess, before whom stands a child in a skirt. most probably a girl. Over the child is what looks very much like a hilted sword one poised for the kill.
The argument being made here may be taken a step further. namely that the flesh of the children at Knossos was also cooked and perhaps eaten for ritualistic purposes. This surmise finds an analogy in Homers detailed description of the sacrifice to Apollo in the Iliad. Book 1, 469-66: the meat of the sacrificial animals was cut off before cooking, to be consumed, as Homer tells us, by gods and men. We must recall now another of the large pithoi fallen and broken in the Cult Room basement, across the corridor from the basement room with the bones. Its contents were shells, edible snails, young human phalanges, and a human vertebra with a knife cut, with burnt earth suggesting cooking.
Human consumption is certainly not proved by the Knossos finds, but it seems less probable that all this preparation of meat was intended only for symbolic offering to a divinity than that it was actually eaten. This seems especially so when one reviews the religious context within which these Bronze Age remains could have a place. Myths, of course, must be used with great caution as supporting evidence in any archaeological context, since the relationship between myth and ritual practice remains very problematic, as recent structuralist thinkers repeatedly wrarn us. On the other hand, for archaeologists working with early agrarian societies, to shy away from religous interpretations is unwise. And for students of the Minoan world, with its frequent and detailed religious iconography over a long period, to do so is folly. It is necessary that we study the history and development of ritual as well as the beliefs which ritual expressed. Moreover, continuity of religious beliefs implies previous stages of religious practice (i.e., ritual) as well as belief.
When we look at the myths which may be relevant in this case, the one which comes most readily to mind is that of Zagreus, a myth that is very likely to have been Cretan in origin. And it might well be that behind this myth lies an early Cretan tradition of child sacrifice and consumption. According to the myth, the young Zagreus was guarded by the semi-divine Kouretes, but was lured with toys by the Titans, white-besmeared gypsum men. Zagreus, in human form or in that of a bull, was torn to pieces and devoured. In late sources, he was cooked as meat before being eaten. He subsequently reappears and is brought to life again.
Dionysos experienced a mode of death very similar to that of Zagreus, also in the form of a bull, and the two were closely identified by Greek writers. A passage about Zagreus in Euripides' play The Cretans (fragment 79, Austin) immediately recalls the first choral ode of the author's The Bacchae. on Dionysos. But beyond the mode of death and treatment, there are clear differences between the two divinties. The death of Dionysos, insofar as he is manifested in the form of a bull, is intimately linked to ancient mountain-roaming rites from central Greece and Thrace called oreivasia. The death and devouring of Zagreus, however, has no connections whatever with mountain-roaming rites. As Marcel Detienne of Ecole des hautes études, Paris points out, the Zagreus myth must have been in origin a separate myth. Indeed, we note in this connection that the general framework of Euripides' ode in The Cretans is not Dionysiac orgiastic cult, but the achievement of Orphic purity. Zagreus was the mythical figure central to Orphism, and the fact that the Orphics used this myt h suggests its pre- Orphic existence. In The Crretans, he is associated with Idian Zeus, tbe Mountain Mother, and the Kouretes.
In Greek times, moreover, Zagreus was considered equivalent not only to Dionysos, whose cult was for this reason, as the late Martin Nilsson explained, rare in Crete, but also to Cretan Zeus (Zeus Kretagenes), the youthful fertility god. Several ancient authors affirm this identity, as do inscriptions relating to the Cretan festival of annual renewal called Thiodaisia in honor of the young god. Zagreus' non-Greek name and his presence in Crete both suggest a pre-Greek, Minoan ancestry - a position argued by the well-known historians of Greek religion, W.K.C. Guthrie and K. Kerenyi. In addition, the Zagreus myth may lie behind the statement of the third-century B.C. historian of mythology, Ister of Cyrene, in his book on Cretan sacrifices, that the Kouretes sacrificed children to Kronos, with the real divinity in question being Zagreus and not Kronos.
But why, then, would the flesh of these sacrificed children have been both cooked and esten, if indeed that was the case? A problem in trying to see a common framework for the new finds from Knossos and the Zagreus myth and the religion of Cretan Zeus is that the myth does not appear to contain any element of sacrifice. Further, if the story of Zagreus is taken to be reflected in ritual practice, and if ritual in turn implies repeated actions, then any proposed correlation between the deaths of these children and the rituals celebrating the myth of Zagreus runs counter to the fact that the finds from Knossos, so far, constitute a unique instance.
A solution to this problem may lie in a connection between the evidence on the gold rings mentioned earlier and the mythology. Both the iconography of the rings and the annual cornmemoration of the death and rebirth of the youthful Zeus Kretagenes or Zeus Idaios - an event celebrated by Pythagoras on his visit to the Idaian cave in central Crete have to do with the annual renewal of the fertility of the natural world. Just such a purpose also underlay the orgiastic dancing rituals of the god of fertility so fully described in the Palaikastro hymn to Dictaian Zeus. In these rituals, the shield had a role as it also evidently did in the cult scene on the Vapheio ring. But the young god of annual renewal, who died and was reborn each year, cannot be seen in isolation from the great goddess. It was her power that was evidently invested in the shield, if we take up the explicit evidence of the painted tablet from Mycenae and the scene engraved on the Mesara double-axe. It was argued that the miniature amphora-rhyton with the shields and the gorgoneion cup-rhyton from Knossos were to be associated with these two latter representations, and with the scenes on the gold rings. Thus, these vessels from Knossos - indeed, the cult set as a whole - may have served in fertility rituals to the Mistress of Animals and Nature and her young consort.
If, then, we seek to connect the two contextually adjacent and archaeologically linked deposits - the cult vessels and the children's bones - within a single ritual framework, and see the children as having been both sacrificed and perhaps eaten as a ritual enactment of the killing and devouring of Zagreus, it remains to be emphasized that Zagreus was a god concerned with fertility. Whatever his mountain-roaming associations may have been in Orphism~ and the religous practices of the fifth century B.C., Zagreus was as we have seen very similar to if not identical with Cretan Zeus, the youthful god of fertility. The links seem further strengthened by the oldest statement concerning Zagreus, a line from the lost epic Alkmaionis: "Mistress Earth and Zagreus, highest of all gods " The final epithet surely implies that Zagreus is to be identified with Zeus, in direct association with Rhea.
The quest for the fertility of the whole natural world would thus have been expressed both in ecstatic dancing rituals and in a ritusl of child sacrifice and a possible sacramental meal, through which the Minoans may have identified themselves with the god reborn, and thus with the source of fertility, the Earth Mistress of whom he was consort. The ecstatic dancing is witnessed on the gold rings with which, through the shield, we have connected the cult set of pottery. The stories of the life of the young Zeus, Zeus Kretagenes redivivus, Idaios and Dictaios, and that of the child Zagreus - each protected by the Kouretes, each of non-Greek, Minoan ancestry - are identical Ecstatic immanence, both with and without the sacrificial eating of animals and people, was a means of acquiring not only his power, but also that of the great Minoan goddess of nature.
One other possible interpretation of the finds remains to be discussed. The context in which the children's bones were discovered was the destruction of a particular building that formed a part of a wider destruction over the whole site of Knossos. Did some major natural disaster, like an earthquake, befall the city? Did its citizens, fearing disaster, sacrifice these two children in an effort to avert what they sensed was coming? Such a disaster may well have befallen the city, and our finds were in the destroyed part of the city. But while the averting of natural disaster might have been sought by a plain sacrifice, the new finds, with their further evidence of flesh carefully cut away and perhaps consumed, are more than such a sacrifice. It would seem most inappropriate to remove and perhaps consume human flesh in the hope of averting a natural disaster.
The singularity of the finds, however, remains mysterious and arresting. Despite this problem, the evidence suggests that we must amplify our picture of the Minoans' religious practices to allow for the possibility that ritual cannibalism may have existed as part of a long and complex sacrificial tradition. Knossos may yet yield additional information to bolster this thesis. In the meantime, the possibility remains to intrigue us about one of the greatest early human civilizations.
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