Great video! Man, Minoan religious is so mysterious. I'm just fascinated with how griffins, bulls and cows are appear in a lot of art and are sacred to so many ancient cultures - Minoan, Egyptian, Hittite, Harappan and later Indian, Persian and I'm sure many others I can't think of off the top of my head. Thanks for posting this!
Well the griffin is a winged lion, lions being the representation of the element of fire and the eagle the element of air. SO it's a metaphysical symbol!
5:37 why did we call her only the "snake goddess" while she gets a weasel on her head ? snakes and weasel get a common feature : eating mice ! that could make sens for an old version of Demeter protector of wheatfields...
Snake goddess because religious practice comes from childbirth knowledge and ritual. Snakes often killed children and people. Women developed medicine and anti-venom. Demeter is De-mater , great mother. Mid-wives, helping women give childbirth in safe place. 1 in 3 women would die in childbirth from blood loss. Pharmacology was part of religion.
I'm surprised you didn't mentioned Demeter in relation to the Minoan Snake Goddess - from Wikipedia " In Cyprus, "grain-harvesting" was damatrizein. Demeter was the zeidoros arοura, the Homeric "Mother Earth arοura" who gave the gift of cereals (zeai or deai).[32][33] Most of the epithets of Demeter describe her as a goddess of grain. Her name Deo in literature [34] probably relates her with deai a Cretan word for cereals." Great video as always! - Also, I would love to know your take on Sanchuniathon's writings!
I think it's important to approach Minoan religion, though it is our connection to it from a distance by Greek mythology that allows us to still remember it faintly, "backwards", so to speak. For example, when we approach a god like Velchanos and then equate him with Zeus we are perhaps putting ourselves on the wrong foot already. It is reminiscent of the romanization of Gaul, and the compelled fusion of their gods; Sulis, god of the baths, gets merged with Minerva, god of wisdom, law, art, trade, etc. In the creation of "Sulis-Minerva" you do technically still remember the original god, but the product is now something different, a convenient fusion for the powers that be. I think that's the same case with a being like Velchanos, and I would renege on the idea that Velchanos had much to do with Zeus in his time. There isn't much evidence for him being a storm god, male deities often do not showcase in seals as being in positions of worldly authority like Zeus (I can think of only one seal that showcases what is likely to be a masculine entity, or just a king, lording over a landscape, otherwise they are usually all feminine in form), and he also does not originate in a culture that elevates patriarchal spiritual dominance. Where Zeus reigns supreme on a court of gods subservient to him, where El is chief among them in Canaan, where Odin and Dagda are considered all-father, Velchanos was likely something more like a divine prince--perhaps even something like a protagonist to the human subjects of this land. An entity more recognizable as flesh and blood than the incredibly abstract personage of his mother. It is why when we see entities like the 'snake goddess' (which I would say is something more like a 'snake priestess') it is important to highlight the symbolism rather than the literal. Snakes are associated with many symbols--eternity, change, life and death, they represent the uncanny, they slither out from holes in the ground as if birthed from the earth itself, they remind one of Potnia Theron and her dominion over animals. My understanding of Velchanos is that he represents an inherent duality in Minoan religion. The mother goddess is the giver of life, Velchanos perhaps represents life given. She is the sun that shines, she is an entity who permeates through all of nature, every creature and every being. I think when you have a goddess so abstract as to be considered the mother of all things, the mother of Velchanos, the mother of the birds and the bees and the mountains and the trees, and the fish in the stream, and the snakes that slither, and the humans who walk this planet trying to figure it all out--there's going to be an element of ineffability. It is why I do not see the 'snake goddess' figurine as a representation of any one goddess and more becoming of a priestess or queen trying to invoke her nature. How could you distill that ultimate, cosmic substance of life-giving motherhood into one figurine? While it is unclear exactly what Velchanos' relationship is with her, most sources and experts seem to believe that he was her Divine Son so to speak. There may have been a consortship between them, or it simply could've just been a mother-son relationship. Likely these two were also expected to be represented in the kings and queens of this land. After all, in the bronze age it was not uncommon for kings and queens to be synonymous with the position of high priest/high priestess. Though indeed we lack many concrete sources on Minoan religion, there are some that attempt a really admirable look at it. I highly recommend Nanno Marinatos' "Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine" for anyone interested. It attempts to use context clues of the various behaviors, rituals, gods, traditions, etc. of Crete's neighbors like Egypt, Hatti, Ugarit, Sumeria, etc. to gauge how the Cretans may have assembled their own culture and develop a "near eastern koine". It is also important to remember that Zeus is an Indo-European construct, let us not forget that Zeus was once Dyeus, and that it was not until the end of the Early Minoan period that Indo European migrations would've made their way into Greece--where as Crete was chiefly populated by a local population mixed with Anatolians who would've arrived with their own novel beliefs more equitable with the beliefs of pre-Indo European "Old Europe". All that being said, and going along with the notion of looking "backwards", I would not be surprised if the Minoans ended up influencing some of Greece's spirituality after their absorption. It is indeed possible to be the source of entities like Demeter, Dionysus, Persephone, Ariadne, and more. I just don't think we should approach it expecting Minoan gods to come anywhere close to 1:1 or equitable with Greek gods. Like I said, it is metaphorically like expecting ancient Celtic motifs to gel with the ancient Roman motifs, and in doing so we water down what exactly these entities may have represented to their people and equate them more so with the values and beliefs of their subduers.
I am a little surprised that the Thaistos Disk did not get a mention, which some scholars regard as a hymn to a Minoan God/ Goddess. Would it be possible to trace the Minoan religion after the Minoan population dispersal post the explosion of Thera to the Levant coast and the subsequent large coastal trading towns, like Tyre. Were the gods maintained by the Mycenaeans? Please keep publishing your Minoan material which is of great interest. Finally, is the image of the double headed axe also a religious symbol? Last visited Crete 19 years ago and explored all the major palace/ temple sites with Zacros the final site. Arrived there after a fierce thunder storm which washed the remnants clean of dust making it possible to discern axe signs on many stones
I find it kind of interesting how when referring to linear A (being undeciphered) in RUclips videos very often the tablet HT17 is shown - a tablet with more or less clear evidence that it represents cretan and non- cretan place names called iruja (not cretan?), duja (not cretan??), tanati (not cretan), dare (cretan) and tetu (not cretan???) and the name of the scribe (?), qeti. Great video!!
Zeus Zagraios was also worshipped. A linguistic theory claims that Zagros and Zeus both mean the same thing. That Zeus is actually Zagros under a different name. I didn't know about Potnia though. Nice little video. Thank you!
Just watched this and your video on What Language did they speak in Troy? Both great. Subbed. Regarding Minoan religion, what do I know, but it looked quite plausible to me that the versions of Zeus and other Greek gods shown from later periods may well represent the merging of Greek gods with other local Cretan deities that were thought to have similar characteristics/functions? We know that happened elsewhere in the Greek world later on.
Minoan religion was one of the hardest for me to learn about, especially on my own. Thanks a lot for sharing more of this aspect of their civilization with us!
It seems extremely unlikely, as we don't even know what the underlying language was. That is to say-- if it was a phonetic script and we somehow knew what the sound values were, we still wouldn't have a clue as to what any of it meant. But if it was ideographic, it is not used to label anything pictorial, so we have no clue what concepts the symbols represented.
I love your channel, hopefully you will make a video about Ancient Latium and the Latin cities, culture, language, mythology and the foundation of Roma, plus the Latinii tribes. I love to watch your videos👏🏻👍🏻
Yes, 100%. In fact, I’m currently working on a large 1h video about the Etruscan civilization. After that, early Latins will be the natural thing to do when it comes to Italy. We will get there!
@@WanaxTV Going to watch that. I find the Etruscans interesting. I personally wonder whether they are actually a pre-IE people or not. Linguists say that their language is unrelated to us, genetics say that they were IE people, meanwhile Ancient Greek writers say they were natives of Italy but did the same with Sabinii which were an Italic tribe close related to Latinii and Umbrii. They are mysterious, their civilisation had an impact on the Italic tribes, and Roma itself. I can't wait for the video🔥👍🏻
@@InAeternumRomaMater It has been long time in the making. Everything is done except the animation, which is ongoing at 15%. It's taking time because I want to do it right, culture, language, religion, social structure, history, wars w/ Rome, everything. It will probably be another 3 smaller videos before the Etruscans are out! 2 out of 3 hopefully coming this month.
The Hymm to Demeter from Eleusis from Classical times mentions her coming from Crete. Artemis also has myths set on Crete and Britomatis who is local to Crete seems 'Artemis like'. All of these suggest Minoan origin.
This video was a nice introduction. As far as I know, the Keftiu (minoan) people used to have trade connections with Egypt. Both nations worshipped gods with partly animal features. They must therefore have influenced each other. My idea is that the undeciphered linear A should be searched for in the context of the names of the deities. Such a work could also help to identify the ancient minoan gods.
7:23 Those Minoan Genii’s look similar to wyvern Dragons. I mean if you look up images of them and you look closely, you’ll notice that they seem to have what resemble scales on their sides (possibly with wings), spikes along their backs, horns on their heads, and their heads themselves seem somewhat horse-like (Similar to Dragons from the Middle Ages). If you think I’m crazy, then please correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s difficult to talk about such a topic, because there is very little material about it, I propose to make a video about the forgotten Mycenaean gods: Paean, Daedalus, Enyalius
The idea of a Cretan "Snake Goddess" was an ideological construct of the archeologist Arthur Evans, and once his predilections were known the locals happily sold him many forgeries to bolster his theory. Today the notion is supported by only two authentic finds, both of which were found as fragments and extensively "reconstructed" by Evans. One of those figurines seems to have genuinely been covered in snakes. The other, whose reconstruction is shown in this video, holds two objects with spiral markings unlike any real snake. To me they look more like skeins of yarn. None of the frescoes or other archeological finds support the idea of a snake goddess.
I agree. There are also theories that the ‘Goddess’ held a snake in just one hand, not in each hand. Perhaps “Goddess” in question is not necessarily associated with snakes, but is the female which frequently appears on the frescos performing rituals?
If Zeus was indeed born on Crete, that means he wasn't an Indoeuropean God , such as the Roman Jupiter. It could also be that 2 independent entities, with similar characters but different origins, fused together into the well known process of Religious Syncretism. Anyway it is so intriguing to me this dichotomy of Zeus born on Mont Ida on the Island and the Arcadic one worshiped on Mount Lykaion (= wolf! a predator, not a father... with evidence of human sacrifice...). I wish to know what happened for developing a male deity who survived into the Christian Trinity. Such an entitity must be very powerful if he's shaping our believes for longer than 3000 years. Maybe he was already active as male God in Catal Hoyouk, and that suspicion strikes me deeply.
Zeus being born on Crete was more so likely a mythological invention of the Greeks who came to control and influence the island rather than a sign of Zeus originating in Minoan mythology. It would be fundamentally bizarre and doesn't have any corroborating evidence in the archaeology, koine, and linguistic legacies to explain why Zeus would originate in their beliefs, also I'm not sure where you got the idea that Jupiter wasn't Indo European as well (???). There is just much more reason for a sky-bound god to originate from Indo Europeans both linguistically (Dyeus Pater, sky father) and geographically than on an isolated island usually associated with earth deities. On the steppe, the sky rolls on and on its distant horizon. On Crete, lush flora infuses with towering mountains and cliffs. The Mycenaeans were an Indo European people whereas the Minoan civilization was already entering it's Middle Period when powers like Mycenae were on the rise. >>> The Mycenaeans probably entered Greece with a pantheon of deities headed by some ruling sky-deity, which linguists speculate might have been called *Dyeus in early Indo-European. In Greek, this deity would become Zeus (pronounced Zeus or Dias in ancient Greek). Among the Hindus, this sky-deity becomes "Dyaus Pita". In Latin he becomes "Deus Pater" or Jupiter; we still encounter this word in the etymologies of the words "deity" and "divine". Later in some cults, Zeus is united with the Aegean Great Goddess, who is represented by Hera, in a "holy wedding" (hieros gamos). At some point in their cultural history, the Mycenaeans adopted some Minoan goddesses like Aphaea, Britomartis, Diktynna and associated them with their sky-god.[45] Many of them were absorbed by more powerful divinities, and some like the vegetation goddesses Ariadne and Helen survived in Greek folklore together with the cult of the "divine child", who was probably the precursor of Dionysos.
@@tek.s Thank you for the information, so much. Of course Jupiter was an Indo-European deity ( probably I didn't made it clear), maybe He epitomizes the way they thought about religion but I cannot see how the Mycenaean invaders could make up/ import such an important figure and impose it to the original local community, the Etero-Cretans, who kept their language and traditions alive, in some forms, till classical times. The only made up, totally artificial god I know of is Serapis, and I can easily understand how the Ptolemaic Dynasty was successful with him, something that I cannot understand about in the Mount Ida Zeus....
A frequent motif in frescoes and seals are three women performing rites. Wether they are deities or priestesses is not possible to know. In some scenes one of them appear to receive tributes from the others. There seem also to have been sacred threes. The bulls were probably sacrificed. In the minotaur story Minos is punished for not sacricifing a bull to Poseidon. So you get here a hint of what you were supposed to do with a bull.
Their writing alphabet had some letters, from the Hellenic alphabet. Their goods were some of the Hellenic gods as well. It looks like They were related to the Hellenic people.
The minoans spoke a non-indo-european langauge and there are already minoan phases on crete when the yamnaya (proto-indo-europeans) were expanding, so it's very unlikely that minoan religion comes from a PIE source. There are some influences because they lived near, traded with, and were probably conquered by IE speaking people.
The point is that Zeus was undeniably Proto-Indo-European and imported to Minoan civilization from Greece, not the other way around. They also had some sort of cultural influence from the Luwians, because we actually are able to identify Luwian loan words in Linear A. Luwian is another Indo-European language, though I don’t know of any imported god from them. Their linguistic cognate with Zeus would have been Tiwaz. Other religious influences were Phoenician Canaanites. The sky god El is heavily associated with the bull in Canaanite mythology.
I know the snake godess clearly looks like a godess but I think they may be representations of the priests. The frescos also show women with important status. There could be many explanations about it. What if the women priests were in charge of psychodelic rituals or something like that. There are many possible explanations about why they represented their women with such high status and religious importance. And i'm not talking about the matriarcal society idea. Just priests doing crazy stuff
Another source of Greek Mythology is the Hittite Empire, by way of the dispersion into the Levant, where it was transmitted to Greek traders, following the Bronze Age Collapse. Both the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures seemed to have cthonic roots - noting the shaft burials. These would seem to imply a different theogeny, possibly influenced in part by Egypt with who they traded. Oddly, they don't seem to have a sea god.
Good but missing a lot of angles. Obviously the Potnia (Great Goddess) was the highest, but young male gods may have sought some of her authority. Why no mention of the famous Potnia Theron, the Mistress of Wild Beasts? I think it's likely the Great Goddess, since prehistory, represented the mystery of birth, life, and death, i.e., time.
Bull leaping was also common in Anatolia. Hittite Hüseyindede Vases (Bc 1.650) includes bull leaping scene which was a part Wedding entertainment. Since Hittites were Indo-European this tradition probably taken from local Anatolians (Hattians or maybe previous tribes) World’s first city was Çatalhöyük (bc 7.000) placed in south central Anatolia. Çatalhöyük houses decorated with bull heads. Probably Minoans migrated from Anatolia. Those bulls and bull cult carried to Crete from Anatolia.
The animal was probably aurochs (either _bos primigenius_ or _bos thrinacius_ the aurochs species native to the nearby island of Cythera), and not simply domestic cattle bull
an agricultural culture in the east of 7-8 000 BC has nothing to do with the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean of the historical times of 2000 BC with writing and maritime trade and naval knowledge
Unfortunately your history knowledge is insufficient. There was an Anatolian farmers migrations to Europe started from 8.000 BC. Their last stop was Britain and they reached Britain at 4.000 BC. They teached local populations farming as growing wheats, domesticating cows, sheeps, goats etc. When hunter gatherer locals learned farming they stopped moving and started to locate in fixed places closer to rivers. Staying fixed places with other people led creating villages and cities. This also increased the culture and civilisation level. Most Probably farming starting point was Göbeklitepe (bc 11.500) Who teached farming to hunter-gatherer Gobeklitepe people is a big question mark. Aliens, god ?
Fortress of Lugh made a video about the origins of the name Europa (Europe). There he presented interesting information about Zeus, Europe and Talos, in which the name of Talos was often understood as a synonim of the sun, and Europe seen as a goddess that personifies the earth. So you could take the story as Zeus crossing a body of water to find this Mother Earth figure guarded by the Sun, positioning Krete as the center of the world. Also, I have always argued that heroes from the greek heroic age are gods under the guise of legendary heroes, kings and queens; this should not be strange, since the romans turned much of their native mythology into legends and "history".
@@LuisAldamizPossibly proto-Semitic people called the lands west to them (where the sun sets down) “yereb/‘ereb”. The Minoans adopted the word during trade contacts and corrupted it to some unknown Minoan form (e.g. *werepe). In Greek mythology, Cretan Europe is a princess from Canaan that was taken to the west seated on a bull. The myth could have been Minoan in its origin. It is interesting that the Myceneans must have adopted the myth and hellenised the word in a way that made sense in their language (“eurys”=wide and “ope/opse”=looks or eyes). In Iron Age Argos, “europe” was an epithet of Hera, who was particularly described as wide-eyed and associated with female cows. But this is a concept almost identical to Egyptian goddess Hathor, who must have been well known to Canaanites and Aegeans since the Bronze Age. A possible explanation is that Cretan Europe was a manifestation (one of the many aspects) of the Cretan mother goddess of nature, human beings and gods. That goddess must have been influenced by a Canaanite concept for Egyptian Hathor and perceived by Cretans as coming to Yereb/‘Ereb (West) on a bull, her being also associated with cows. It is from Crete that Myceneans picked and shaped the Greek concept for Europe and wittingly adapted the name (meaning West) to the looks of the godess being wide-eyed. Cretans maintained the concept that the Great Mother Goddess was actually the Earth Cretans stood on, their island. So the goddess was associated with the western lands in more general terms, especially after the conquest of Crete by Myceneans. The concept of Europe (the land) grew bigger already by archaic times.
@@alps. - Can't be Semitic: the Semites were too far away from Europe, SE of Asia Minor even at their greatest extent, they should be irrelevant re. European toponymy. It doesn't look Vasconic to me either (other Greek words and other regional toponymy does but not Europa), so it could be Tyrsenian (hard to say) or it could be just plain Indoeuropean Greek, in which case Eu-roos-pa (land of good rivers) makes sense especially if the name lingers from early Indoeuropeans, who lived by the largest rivers of Europe and all the wider region (Nile excepted): the Volga, the Don, the Dniepr and the Danube. It were also the ancient Greeks for all we know, who named the three continents first of all -- although I'll grant you that the Phoenicians and other peoples, including quite seagoing Vasconics in Sardinia, Italy and Iberia, and the Tyrsenians of the Aegean surely too, probably had some concept of the different landmasses, whatever names they used.
The word Zeus comes from Proto-Indo European language, so the original Minoan chief god was not linely called Zeus [...] but it wouldn't surprise me if the Greeks who later conquered the Minoan's took the names of Minoan gods and added Zeus as a prefix to them. The name Zeus alone may be a simplification as it may have had its origin as a prefix to denote a god, so all ancient greek gods may have started out as Zeus [...] and then later, the prefix was dropped for all the Gods except for the Father God, whose name was shortened to just the prefix. Unfortunately, we may never know what the Minoans called their gods since we can't translate their language. Maybe one day we will find a Rosetta stone for Linear A. After all they were a seafaringnpwople with extenaive trade networks. Maybe we will find a treaty or other document written in both Linear A and Egyption or Hittitte. That would be a complete gamechanger for bronze age archeology.
The minoans has Probably a type of religion not too dissimilar of the early archaic fertility polytheistic religions of anatolia and the near_east.with godesses and gods more as equals worshipping it as great_mother earth and father sun and grandmother moon and minor_deities like animalistic or mythological creatures depicted akin to thatbof sumerian minordeities and the sacred bull representing a very important symbolic representation of chtonic virility and wildforces of nature akin to bull_icons in the etruscans and ancient greek minotaurlegends and as representing symbolically the ancient canaanite god baal or in the myth of europa.and snakes are sacred symbols of healing power and divine wisdom representing nature and fertility of the sacred earth itself not too different of greco_roman view the divine symbolic function of snakes like with the god of healing namely asclepius and even not too distant of snake_godlike entities from ancient egyptian mythology and in later ancient roman chtonic ancestor_spiritscults or protective genies sometimes depicred as snakes in households altars.that i view their cosmology as something like this maybe a echoiing in later cultic anatolian mothergoddess like cybele and some their ancient magical rituals maybe akin to cult of hecate the ancient greek moongoddess.heaven and earth where equally important in veneration including nature and agriculture and maybe human_sacrifices where just very very primal rituals to appease their gods in some distorted way reflected in minotaur_legend.
From where Minoans come from? Are they indoeuropeans? They worshipped Dyeus? From where the bulls and bullfighting come? These bulls were imported from the mainland from where the indoeuropean ancestors of minoans came from?
They look like anything but Indoeuropeans. I'd go for Pelasgo-Tyrsenians of a distinct sub-branch (i.e. distinct from the Pelasgians that arrived later with the Greeks, who were probably from Thessaly rather) but they could also be somewhat related to the Vasconics (mainline European Neolithic farmers).
The snake goddess/priestess resembles a lot the serpent-maiden gender-binary montheistic principle of ancient Vasconic religion (present also in Delphi before the sacrilege of Apollo, i.e. Indoeuropean patriarchal takeover). Notice how she carries an owl over the helmet, directly relating her to Athene, Ishtar and the western iconography of "oculados" (big-eyed idols, various types, which clearly depict owls as symbol of a goddess, also represented in other ways and present in the toponimy such Andarax, name of the river of Los Millares, which reads as "Rock of the Lady" in Basque). The bull cult was also present in Iberia, where it seems to have replaced the earlier deer cult, some time in the Copper-Bronze ages' transition. It's also mentioned in the legend of Atlantis (which I believe was a Copper-Bronze era civilization in what's now Portugal) that the Atlantean kings gathered regularly to have a bullfight (ritual hunt of the bull), drink its blood and then pass judgment. As it's well known, such traditions, which were also present somehow in Çatalhöyuk (again a presumably Vasconic site), still survive in Iberia and southern France, including a bloodless variant ("recortadores") that is virtually the same thing as shown in the Minoan frescos. These "bullfighting" traditions probably stem from the early Neolithic, in which bovine cattle was domesticated in Southern Anatolia by the proto-Vasconics, and may have played also a role of ritual coming of age for young men, which again is still an informal thing in Iberia, where bloodless bullock "run and avoid" events, usually called "vaquillas" (i.e. "bullocks", although it reads literally as "little cows" but they are male calves of various ages in fact) have been arguably the most popular festivals, held until recently in almost every village's festivals. Re. the mountain sanctuaries: · Ida (mother of Minos and nurse of Zeus, related to Cybele via the Corybantes), maybe how the Eteocretans called Gaia? · Dikte Diktyna = Diana (Artemis) · Asterousia might be related to the legend of Astraea or otherwise to Astronomy/Astrology
@@afk1352008 - Looks like an owl and it is an owl, get a larger image from search. Timaeus: [119] (...) "As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. "And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment, and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise:-There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons, but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt [120] "its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups, and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial".
It would be difficult to translate Linear A because there is so little source material and bilingual texts either do not exist or were lost/damaged (for example, a bilingual text was lost from the archives during the Invasion of Crete during WWII and has not been seen since). It sadly doesn't give the AI, or human translators, much to work with.
@@tek.s Well this further gives hope that bilingual Greek-Eteocretan tablets are still out there waiting to be discovered. Also, Linear A served as the base for Linear B, so it’s not impossible that solely based on that, somebody (or something - AI) is eventually able to crack the code.
I think we need to stop using the word worship when it comes to understanding ancient practices. I prever revered, or respected, or held in high regard. Worship has a hint of dropping to your hands and knees and groveling. 😂 That said, if you arent talking about drugs and medicine, then you have a lacking ancinet world view. Snakes were everywhere. People got but. Common household problem. People need antidotes. Ever consider how they were made? Take a look at Malta. Those megalithic structures arent temples. They are human prisons for experiments on slaves
The snake was an Illyrian deity or at least venerated as something close. The worship of snakes and bulls probably in Indo-Europeans comes from the Kura-Araxes people of south Caucasus. Probably they brought metallurgy into northern Caucasus and consequently into the Caspian steppes. Minoans probably were Kura-Araxes people the same as Etruscans and Rhaetians. Ydna - J2.
The serpent or (later) dragon is the Basque or Vasconic male aspect of the gender-binary God (fertility cult). It just lingered among various Indoeuropean traditions, usually as victim of slaying (Apollo, Thor) or some other lesser role. Bovine cattle was primarily domesticated by the Vasconics in Southern Anatolia and the "bullfight" traditions are also important in Çatalhöyuk and Iberia (and South France), where there is archaeological evidence for replacement of an older deer cult for a bull one in the rock art and, if we attend to the narration of Atlantis (which I also place in Iberia, more specifically in Portugal), was also part of their tradition (ritual hunt of the bull, whose blood was drank before dispensing justice).
@@LuisAldamiz the bull cult in Iberia came from Minoan (Pelasgian) settlers and colonists in eastern Spain shores. Bull cult was widespread in early bronze age cultures. Anatolian Neolithic farmers had as primary deity the mother earth. The cult of fertility. It makes sense as long as the dominant of cultures of the bronze age became Kura-Araxes and Yanmaya whom were pastoralists. Meanwhile the Neolithic Anatolian farmers were sedentary farmers.
@@sidritqafzezi3958 - There's absolutely no evidence for any such "settlers" or contacts in fact, there is a lot of evidence for contact and very active trade with Syria instead a bi-directional contact for a long period, beginning with ivory imports *from Syria* (extinct Syrian elephant) in the Copper Age and continuing with Iberian-like influences in Syria and Jordan (Dolmenic Megalithism, including one Potruguese plate idol). It's weird but there's no sign of Cretan interaction until the adoption of tholos tombs (of Western origin) in Greece, incl. parts of Crete, which is directly related to MBA Mycenaean-El Argar intense interactions (which can be tentatively associated to the Heraklean legends in the Far West = Hesperia = Hispania). "Anatolian Neolithic Farmers" = proto-Vasconic peoples. What part of they settled nearly all Europe we do not understand? Kura-Araxes were either Indoeurpean or Hurrian or a mix of both, totally unrelated to Vasconics (except for the broader West Asian Neolithic roots, very diverse, they all had).
@@Ecthelion007 - We don't know that much, the exact formation of the Illyrians is not well understood. What we know is that they were in place by the Iron/Classical Age and that they are directly ancestral to modern Albanians.
6:20 i dont want to sound anti-feminist but... in old Athens of the mighty goddess Athena women had no right to vote. so the minoan goddesses or priestesses were not for sure evidences of a liberal minoan society. we could also compare to the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary ... not the most feminist chapter of the western history.
Great video! Man, Minoan religious is so mysterious. I'm just fascinated with how griffins, bulls and cows are appear in a lot of art and are sacred to so many ancient cultures - Minoan, Egyptian, Hittite, Harappan and later Indian, Persian and I'm sure many others I can't think of off the top of my head. Thanks for posting this!
The cows, must be so important, not only because of their meat and milk, but it must he helped for other aspects of production
Remember that a sacred cow was required for the start of the Norse creation story.
Thanks! I’m so happy to have finally gotten the video out. I hope it was a nice little series of the Minoan videos.
Well the griffin is a winged lion, lions being the representation of the element of fire and the eagle the element of air. SO it's a metaphysical symbol!
Bull heads were also in Çatalhoyhük.
5:37 why did we call her only the "snake goddess" while she gets a weasel on her head ? snakes and weasel get a common feature : eating mice ! that could make sens for an old version of Demeter protector of wheatfields...
Hmm... Yes, the goddess who protect the Farmfield, it must be
A parallel to Bastet, it appears.
Snake goddess because religious practice comes from childbirth knowledge and ritual. Snakes often killed children and people. Women developed medicine and anti-venom. Demeter is De-mater , great mother. Mid-wives, helping women give childbirth in safe place. 1 in 3 women would die in childbirth from blood loss. Pharmacology was part of religion.
@@____________838 Bastet was a lioness goddess in the Minoan times.
@@gyenisviktor6895 Are you attempting to add more information to what I said, or argue against what I said? Your intent is unclear to me.
I'm surprised you didn't mentioned Demeter in relation to the Minoan Snake Goddess - from Wikipedia
" In Cyprus, "grain-harvesting" was damatrizein. Demeter was the zeidoros arοura, the Homeric "Mother Earth arοura" who gave the gift of cereals (zeai or deai).[32][33]
Most of the epithets of Demeter describe her as a goddess of grain. Her name Deo in literature [34] probably relates her with deai a Cretan word for cereals."
Great video as always! - Also, I would love to know your take on Sanchuniathon's writings!
It is she ever referenced holding snakes?
The founders of Eleusis were said to have come from Crete in classical times.
I think it's important to approach Minoan religion, though it is our connection to it from a distance by Greek mythology that allows us to still remember it faintly, "backwards", so to speak. For example, when we approach a god like Velchanos and then equate him with Zeus we are perhaps putting ourselves on the wrong foot already. It is reminiscent of the romanization of Gaul, and the compelled fusion of their gods; Sulis, god of the baths, gets merged with Minerva, god of wisdom, law, art, trade, etc. In the creation of "Sulis-Minerva" you do technically still remember the original god, but the product is now something different, a convenient fusion for the powers that be. I think that's the same case with a being like Velchanos, and I would renege on the idea that Velchanos had much to do with Zeus in his time. There isn't much evidence for him being a storm god, male deities often do not showcase in seals as being in positions of worldly authority like Zeus (I can think of only one seal that showcases what is likely to be a masculine entity, or just a king, lording over a landscape, otherwise they are usually all feminine in form), and he also does not originate in a culture that elevates patriarchal spiritual dominance. Where Zeus reigns supreme on a court of gods subservient to him, where El is chief among them in Canaan, where Odin and Dagda are considered all-father, Velchanos was likely something more like a divine prince--perhaps even something like a protagonist to the human subjects of this land. An entity more recognizable as flesh and blood than the incredibly abstract personage of his mother. It is why when we see entities like the 'snake goddess' (which I would say is something more like a 'snake priestess') it is important to highlight the symbolism rather than the literal. Snakes are associated with many symbols--eternity, change, life and death, they represent the uncanny, they slither out from holes in the ground as if birthed from the earth itself, they remind one of Potnia Theron and her dominion over animals.
My understanding of Velchanos is that he represents an inherent duality in Minoan religion. The mother goddess is the giver of life, Velchanos perhaps represents life given. She is the sun that shines, she is an entity who permeates through all of nature, every creature and every being. I think when you have a goddess so abstract as to be considered the mother of all things, the mother of Velchanos, the mother of the birds and the bees and the mountains and the trees, and the fish in the stream, and the snakes that slither, and the humans who walk this planet trying to figure it all out--there's going to be an element of ineffability. It is why I do not see the 'snake goddess' figurine as a representation of any one goddess and more becoming of a priestess or queen trying to invoke her nature. How could you distill that ultimate, cosmic substance of life-giving motherhood into one figurine? While it is unclear exactly what Velchanos' relationship is with her, most sources and experts seem to believe that he was her Divine Son so to speak. There may have been a consortship between them, or it simply could've just been a mother-son relationship. Likely these two were also expected to be represented in the kings and queens of this land. After all, in the bronze age it was not uncommon for kings and queens to be synonymous with the position of high priest/high priestess. Though indeed we lack many concrete sources on Minoan religion, there are some that attempt a really admirable look at it. I highly recommend Nanno Marinatos' "Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine" for anyone interested. It attempts to use context clues of the various behaviors, rituals, gods, traditions, etc. of Crete's neighbors like Egypt, Hatti, Ugarit, Sumeria, etc. to gauge how the Cretans may have assembled their own culture and develop a "near eastern koine".
It is also important to remember that Zeus is an Indo-European construct, let us not forget that Zeus was once Dyeus, and that it was not until the end of the Early Minoan period that Indo European migrations would've made their way into Greece--where as Crete was chiefly populated by a local population mixed with Anatolians who would've arrived with their own novel beliefs more equitable with the beliefs of pre-Indo European "Old Europe". All that being said, and going along with the notion of looking "backwards", I would not be surprised if the Minoans ended up influencing some of Greece's spirituality after their absorption. It is indeed possible to be the source of entities like Demeter, Dionysus, Persephone, Ariadne, and more. I just don't think we should approach it expecting Minoan gods to come anywhere close to 1:1 or equitable with Greek gods. Like I said, it is metaphorically like expecting ancient Celtic motifs to gel with the ancient Roman motifs, and in doing so we water down what exactly these entities may have represented to their people and equate them more so with the values and beliefs of their subduers.
I am a little surprised that the Thaistos Disk did not get a mention, which some scholars regard as a hymn to a Minoan God/ Goddess.
Would it be possible to trace the Minoan religion after the Minoan population dispersal post the explosion of Thera to the Levant coast and the subsequent large coastal trading towns, like Tyre. Were the gods maintained by the Mycenaeans? Please keep publishing your Minoan material which is of great interest. Finally, is the image of the double headed axe also a religious symbol? Last visited Crete 19 years ago and explored all the major palace/ temple sites with Zacros the final site. Arrived there after a fierce thunder storm which washed the remnants clean of dust making it possible to discern axe signs on many stones
I find it kind of interesting how when referring to linear A (being undeciphered) in RUclips videos very often the tablet HT17 is shown - a tablet with more or less clear evidence that it represents cretan and non- cretan place names called iruja (not cretan?), duja (not cretan??), tanati (not cretan), dare (cretan) and tetu (not cretan???) and the name of the scribe (?), qeti.
Great video!!
Looking forward to watching this video!
Zeus Zagraios was also worshipped. A linguistic theory claims that Zagros and Zeus both mean the same thing. That Zeus is actually Zagros under a different name. I didn't know about Potnia though. Nice little video. Thank you!
Amazing video! The Talos connection is the most interesting I think.
The posture of the snake goddess reminds me the symbol of Tanit (phoenecian and carthage later). Perhaps goddess of fertility
Just watched this and your video on What Language did they speak in Troy? Both great. Subbed. Regarding Minoan religion, what do I know, but it looked quite plausible to me that the versions of Zeus and other Greek gods shown from later periods may well represent the merging of Greek gods with other local Cretan deities that were thought to have similar characteristics/functions? We know that happened elsewhere in the Greek world later on.
Great Channel, faszinating Topic.
Minoan religion was one of the hardest for me to learn about, especially on my own. Thanks a lot for sharing more of this aspect of their civilization with us!
I wish someone could decipher the words of the Minoans :(
It would be such an amazing thing, there would be a whole new world to explore and reinterpret
It seems extremely unlikely, as we don't even know what the underlying language was. That is to say-- if it was a phonetic script and we somehow knew what the sound values were, we still wouldn't have a clue as to what any of it meant. But if it was ideographic, it is not used to label anything pictorial, so we have no clue what concepts the symbols represented.
Based on minoan genetic admixture Minoan were a mixture between Anatolians and Semitics
Regarding Linear B it is already done by Ventris back in 1950's and he has proved that it was a Greek Language.
@@mohammedalwakeel1983 Egyptians and Middle easterns
I love your channel, hopefully you will make a video about Ancient Latium and the Latin cities, culture, language, mythology and the foundation of Roma, plus the Latinii tribes. I love to watch your videos👏🏻👍🏻
Yes, 100%. In fact, I’m currently working on a large 1h video about the Etruscan civilization.
After that, early Latins will be the natural thing to do when it comes to Italy. We will get there!
@@WanaxTV Going to watch that. I find the Etruscans interesting. I personally wonder whether they are actually a pre-IE people or not. Linguists say that their language is unrelated to us, genetics say that they were IE people, meanwhile Ancient Greek writers say they were natives of Italy but did the same with Sabinii which were an Italic tribe close related to Latinii and Umbrii. They are mysterious, their civilisation had an impact on the Italic tribes, and Roma itself. I can't wait for the video🔥👍🏻
@@InAeternumRomaMater It has been long time in the making. Everything is done except the animation, which is ongoing at 15%. It's taking time because I want to do it right, culture, language, religion, social structure, history, wars w/ Rome, everything. It will probably be another 3 smaller videos before the Etruscans are out! 2 out of 3 hopefully coming this month.
can not wait!
Excellent! Thank you!
The Hymm to Demeter from Eleusis from Classical times mentions her coming from Crete. Artemis also has myths set on Crete and Britomatis who is local to Crete seems 'Artemis like'. All of these suggest Minoan origin.
This video was a nice introduction. As far as I know, the Keftiu (minoan) people used to have trade connections with Egypt. Both nations worshipped gods with partly animal features. They must therefore have influenced each other. My idea is that the undeciphered linear A should be searched for in the context of the names of the deities. Such a work could also help to identify the ancient minoan gods.
So excited but don’t get mad, I’m betting you won’t be able to tell me much on this because it’s not possible to know.
What do you mean?
@@Dasyuhansometimes we just don’t know much about a thing because we haven’t figured out how to decipher the artifacts we have
@@EVOLUTIONINCARNATE thanks
Counting the hours!!!
So much we don't know, possibly what we read in Linear A as pi-pi-tu-na is a devine name. It is reconstructed as Piptuna and reminds of Diktunna
Poasible! It would be great to see more tablets unearthed. I know that they are in there! 😎
7:23 Those Minoan Genii’s look similar to wyvern Dragons. I mean if you look up images of them and you look closely, you’ll notice that they seem to have what resemble scales on their sides (possibly with wings), spikes along their backs, horns on their heads, and their heads themselves seem somewhat horse-like (Similar to Dragons from the Middle Ages).
If you think I’m crazy, then please correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s difficult to talk about such a topic, because there is very little material about it, I propose to make a video about the forgotten Mycenaean gods: Paean, Daedalus, Enyalius
The idea of a Cretan "Snake Goddess" was an ideological construct of the archeologist Arthur Evans, and once his predilections were known the locals happily sold him many forgeries to bolster his theory. Today the notion is supported by only two authentic finds, both of which were found as fragments and extensively "reconstructed" by Evans. One of those figurines seems to have genuinely been covered in snakes. The other, whose reconstruction is shown in this video, holds two objects with spiral markings unlike any real snake. To me they look more like skeins of yarn. None of the frescoes or other archeological finds support the idea of a snake goddess.
I agree. There are also theories that the ‘Goddess’ held a snake in just one hand, not in each hand.
Perhaps “Goddess” in question is not necessarily associated with snakes, but is the female which frequently appears on the frescos performing rituals?
If Zeus was indeed born on Crete, that means he wasn't an Indoeuropean God , such as the Roman Jupiter. It could also be that 2 independent entities, with similar characters but different origins, fused together into the well known process of Religious Syncretism. Anyway it is so intriguing to me this dichotomy of Zeus born on Mont Ida on the Island and the Arcadic one worshiped on Mount Lykaion (= wolf! a predator, not a father... with evidence of human sacrifice...). I wish to know what happened for developing a male deity who survived into the Christian Trinity. Such an entitity must be very powerful if he's shaping our believes for longer than 3000 years. Maybe he was already active as male God in Catal Hoyouk, and that suspicion strikes me deeply.
Zeus being born on Crete was more so likely a mythological invention of the Greeks who came to control and influence the island rather than a sign of Zeus originating in Minoan mythology. It would be fundamentally bizarre and doesn't have any corroborating evidence in the archaeology, koine, and linguistic legacies to explain why Zeus would originate in their beliefs, also I'm not sure where you got the idea that Jupiter wasn't Indo European as well (???). There is just much more reason for a sky-bound god to originate from Indo Europeans both linguistically (Dyeus Pater, sky father) and geographically than on an isolated island usually associated with earth deities. On the steppe, the sky rolls on and on its distant horizon. On Crete, lush flora infuses with towering mountains and cliffs. The Mycenaeans were an Indo European people whereas the Minoan civilization was already entering it's Middle Period when powers like Mycenae were on the rise.
>>> The Mycenaeans probably entered Greece with a pantheon of deities headed by some ruling sky-deity, which linguists speculate might have been called *Dyeus in early Indo-European. In Greek, this deity would become Zeus (pronounced Zeus or Dias in ancient Greek). Among the Hindus, this sky-deity becomes "Dyaus Pita". In Latin he becomes "Deus Pater" or Jupiter; we still encounter this word in the etymologies of the words "deity" and "divine". Later in some cults, Zeus is united with the Aegean Great Goddess, who is represented by Hera, in a "holy wedding" (hieros gamos). At some point in their cultural history, the Mycenaeans adopted some Minoan goddesses like Aphaea, Britomartis, Diktynna and associated them with their sky-god.[45] Many of them were absorbed by more powerful divinities, and some like the vegetation goddesses Ariadne and Helen survived in Greek folklore together with the cult of the "divine child", who was probably the precursor of Dionysos.
@@tek.s Thank you for the information, so much. Of course Jupiter was an Indo-European deity ( probably I didn't made it clear), maybe He epitomizes the way they thought about religion but I cannot see how the Mycenaean invaders could make up/ import such an important figure and impose it to the original local community, the Etero-Cretans, who kept their language and traditions alive, in some forms, till classical times.
The only made up, totally artificial god I know of is Serapis, and I can easily understand how the Ptolemaic Dynasty was successful with him, something that I cannot understand about in the Mount Ida Zeus....
If Zeus is the beardless youth portrayed in the one statue then it would potentially follow that the snake goddess was Rhea, the mother of Zeus.
Any clues on the Minoan/Eteocretan language?
Hard to tell. Check out the previous video - Linear A and the Minoan Language 👍🏻
We probably won’t know much until Linear A is deciphered
A frequent motif in frescoes and seals are three women performing rites. Wether they are deities or priestesses is not possible to know. In some scenes one of them appear to receive tributes from the others. There seem also to have been sacred threes. The bulls were probably sacrificed. In the minotaur story Minos is punished for not sacricifing a bull to Poseidon. So you get here a hint of what you were supposed to do with a bull.
Their writing alphabet had some letters, from the Hellenic alphabet.
Their goods were some of the Hellenic gods as well. It looks like
They were related to the Hellenic people.
I think that these religious views come from even more ancient proto-Indo European religious concepts. Zeus certainly is the ancient Sky Father.
The minoans spoke a non-indo-european langauge and there are already minoan phases on crete when the yamnaya (proto-indo-europeans) were expanding, so it's very unlikely that minoan religion comes from a PIE source. There are some influences because they lived near, traded with, and were probably conquered by IE speaking people.
The point is that Zeus was undeniably Proto-Indo-European and imported to Minoan civilization from Greece, not the other way around. They also had some sort of cultural influence from the Luwians, because we actually are able to identify Luwian loan words in Linear A. Luwian is another Indo-European language, though I don’t know of any imported god from them. Their linguistic cognate with Zeus would have been Tiwaz. Other religious influences were Phoenician Canaanites. The sky god El is heavily associated with the bull in Canaanite mythology.
Snake goddess has an owl on her head....Medea....became Artemis
I know the snake godess clearly looks like a godess but I think they may be representations of the priests. The frescos also show women with important status. There could be many explanations about it. What if the women priests were in charge of psychodelic rituals or something like that. There are many possible explanations about why they represented their women with such high status and religious importance. And i'm not talking about the matriarcal society idea. Just priests doing crazy stuff
Another source of Greek Mythology is the Hittite Empire, by way of the dispersion into the Levant, where it was transmitted to Greek traders, following the Bronze Age Collapse. Both the Mycenaean and Minoan cultures seemed to have cthonic roots - noting the shaft burials. These would seem to imply a different theogeny, possibly influenced in part by Egypt with who they traded. Oddly, they don't seem to have a sea god.
Good but missing a lot of angles. Obviously the Potnia (Great Goddess) was the highest, but young male gods may have sought some of her authority. Why no mention of the famous Potnia Theron, the Mistress of Wild Beasts? I think it's likely the Great Goddess, since prehistory, represented the mystery of birth, life, and death, i.e., time.
Inanna is the Snake goddess
Nobody knows really - Maybe if more writing is found and a decipherment of Lin A becomes possible we could get a better idea.
Didn't Hera sent 2 Snakes to try to kill Heracles?? It makes a lot of sense for the Snake Goddess to actually be Hera.
Bull leaping was also common in Anatolia. Hittite Hüseyindede Vases (Bc 1.650) includes bull leaping scene which was a part Wedding entertainment. Since Hittites were Indo-European this tradition probably taken from local Anatolians (Hattians or maybe previous tribes)
World’s first city was Çatalhöyük (bc 7.000) placed in south central Anatolia. Çatalhöyük houses decorated with bull heads. Probably Minoans migrated from Anatolia. Those bulls and bull cult carried to Crete from Anatolia.
The animal was probably aurochs (either _bos primigenius_ or _bos thrinacius_ the aurochs species native to the nearby island of Cythera), and not simply domestic cattle bull
an agricultural culture in the east of 7-8 000 BC has nothing to do with the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean of the historical times of 2000 BC with writing and maritime trade and naval knowledge
Unfortunately your history knowledge is insufficient. There was an Anatolian farmers migrations to Europe started from 8.000 BC. Their last stop was Britain and they reached Britain at 4.000 BC. They teached local populations farming as growing wheats, domesticating cows, sheeps, goats etc. When hunter gatherer locals learned farming they stopped moving and started to locate in fixed places closer to rivers. Staying fixed places with other people led creating villages and cities. This also increased the culture and civilisation level. Most Probably farming starting point was Göbeklitepe (bc 11.500) Who teached farming to hunter-gatherer Gobeklitepe people is a big question mark. Aliens, god ?
Zeus is a Proto-Indo-European sky god in origin, definitely not originally Cretan. The bull probably had a lot to do with the Canaanite god El.
Fortress of Lugh made a video about the origins of the name Europa (Europe). There he presented interesting information about Zeus, Europe and Talos, in which the name of Talos was often understood as a synonim of the sun, and Europe seen as a goddess that personifies the earth. So you could take the story as Zeus crossing a body of water to find this Mother Earth figure guarded by the Sun, positioning Krete as the center of the world.
Also, I have always argued that heroes from the greek heroic age are gods under the guise of legendary heroes, kings and queens; this should not be strange, since the romans turned much of their native mythology into legends and "history".
Eu-roos-pa = land of good rivers.
@@LuisAldamiz
No, stop yout pseudo-linguistics.
@@mercianthane2503 - It's good Greek, mind you.
@@LuisAldamizPossibly proto-Semitic people called the lands west to them (where the sun sets down) “yereb/‘ereb”. The Minoans adopted the word during trade contacts and corrupted it to some unknown Minoan form (e.g. *werepe).
In Greek mythology, Cretan Europe is a princess from Canaan that was taken to the west seated on a bull. The myth could have been Minoan in its origin.
It is interesting that the Myceneans must have adopted the myth and hellenised the word in a way that made sense in their language (“eurys”=wide and “ope/opse”=looks or eyes). In Iron Age Argos, “europe” was an epithet of Hera, who was particularly described as wide-eyed and associated with female cows. But this is a concept almost identical to Egyptian goddess Hathor, who must have been well known to Canaanites and Aegeans since the Bronze Age.
A possible explanation is that Cretan Europe was a manifestation (one of the many aspects) of the Cretan mother goddess of nature, human beings and gods. That goddess must have been influenced by a Canaanite concept for Egyptian Hathor and perceived by Cretans as coming to Yereb/‘Ereb (West) on a bull, her being also associated with cows. It is from Crete that Myceneans picked and shaped the Greek concept for Europe and wittingly adapted the name (meaning West) to the looks of the godess being wide-eyed. Cretans maintained the concept that the Great Mother Goddess was actually the Earth Cretans stood on, their island. So the goddess was associated with the western lands in more general terms, especially after the conquest of Crete by Myceneans. The concept of Europe (the land) grew bigger already by archaic times.
@@alps. - Can't be Semitic: the Semites were too far away from Europe, SE of Asia Minor even at their greatest extent, they should be irrelevant re. European toponymy. It doesn't look Vasconic to me either (other Greek words and other regional toponymy does but not Europa), so it could be Tyrsenian (hard to say) or it could be just plain Indoeuropean Greek, in which case Eu-roos-pa (land of good rivers) makes sense especially if the name lingers from early Indoeuropeans, who lived by the largest rivers of Europe and all the wider region (Nile excepted): the Volga, the Don, the Dniepr and the Danube. It were also the ancient Greeks for all we know, who named the three continents first of all -- although I'll grant you that the Phoenicians and other peoples, including quite seagoing Vasconics in Sardinia, Italy and Iberia, and the Tyrsenians of the Aegean surely too, probably had some concept of the different landmasses, whatever names they used.
The word Zeus comes from Proto-Indo European language, so the original Minoan chief god was not linely called Zeus [...] but it wouldn't surprise me if the Greeks who later conquered the Minoan's took the names of Minoan gods and added Zeus as a prefix to them.
The name Zeus alone may be a simplification as it may have had its origin as a prefix to denote a god, so all ancient greek gods may have started out as Zeus [...] and then later, the prefix was dropped for all the Gods except for the Father God, whose name was shortened to just the prefix.
Unfortunately, we may never know what the Minoans called their gods since we can't translate their language. Maybe one day we will find a Rosetta stone for Linear A. After all they were a seafaringnpwople with extenaive trade networks. Maybe we will find a treaty or other document written in both Linear A and Egyption or Hittitte. That would be a complete gamechanger for bronze age archeology.
Could the bull worship be distantly related to Hinduism.
7:33 Minoan Genii(Genie)? That’s fascinating…. I thought they were only in Arab , Islamic mythology? Looks like their origin is Mesopotamia?
They may have connection with🇮🇳 Tamil Pandiyan dynasty
Don't forget the Eskimos 🇬🇷💪
The minoans has Probably a type of religion not too dissimilar of the early archaic fertility polytheistic religions of anatolia and the near_east.with godesses and gods more as equals worshipping it as great_mother earth and father sun and grandmother moon and minor_deities like animalistic or mythological creatures depicted akin to thatbof sumerian minordeities and the sacred bull representing a very important symbolic representation of chtonic virility and wildforces of nature akin to bull_icons in the etruscans and ancient greek minotaurlegends and as representing symbolically the ancient canaanite god baal or in the myth of europa.and snakes are sacred symbols of healing power and divine wisdom representing nature and fertility of the sacred earth itself not too different of greco_roman view the divine symbolic function of snakes like with the god of healing namely asclepius and even not too distant of snake_godlike entities from ancient egyptian mythology and in later ancient roman chtonic ancestor_spiritscults or protective genies sometimes depicred as snakes in households altars.that i view their cosmology as something like this maybe a echoiing in later cultic anatolian mothergoddess like cybele and some their ancient magical rituals maybe akin to cult of hecate the ancient greek moongoddess.heaven and earth where equally important in veneration including nature and agriculture and maybe human_sacrifices where just very very primal rituals to appease their gods in some distorted way reflected in minotaur_legend.
From where Minoans come from? Are they indoeuropeans? They worshipped Dyeus? From where the bulls and bullfighting come? These bulls were imported from the mainland from where the indoeuropean ancestors of minoans came from?
They look like anything but Indoeuropeans. I'd go for Pelasgo-Tyrsenians of a distinct sub-branch (i.e. distinct from the Pelasgians that arrived later with the Greeks, who were probably from Thessaly rather) but they could also be somewhat related to the Vasconics (mainline European Neolithic farmers).
Στον Ποσειδώνα
The snake goddess/priestess resembles a lot the serpent-maiden gender-binary montheistic principle of ancient Vasconic religion (present also in Delphi before the sacrilege of Apollo, i.e. Indoeuropean patriarchal takeover). Notice how she carries an owl over the helmet, directly relating her to Athene, Ishtar and the western iconography of "oculados" (big-eyed idols, various types, which clearly depict owls as symbol of a goddess, also represented in other ways and present in the toponimy such Andarax, name of the river of Los Millares, which reads as "Rock of the Lady" in Basque).
The bull cult was also present in Iberia, where it seems to have replaced the earlier deer cult, some time in the Copper-Bronze ages' transition. It's also mentioned in the legend of Atlantis (which I believe was a Copper-Bronze era civilization in what's now Portugal) that the Atlantean kings gathered regularly to have a bullfight (ritual hunt of the bull), drink its blood and then pass judgment. As it's well known, such traditions, which were also present somehow in Çatalhöyuk (again a presumably Vasconic site), still survive in Iberia and southern France, including a bloodless variant ("recortadores") that is virtually the same thing as shown in the Minoan frescos. These "bullfighting" traditions probably stem from the early Neolithic, in which bovine cattle was domesticated in Southern Anatolia by the proto-Vasconics, and may have played also a role of ritual coming of age for young men, which again is still an informal thing in Iberia, where bloodless bullock "run and avoid" events, usually called "vaquillas" (i.e. "bullocks", although it reads literally as "little cows" but they are male calves of various ages in fact) have been arguably the most popular festivals, held until recently in almost every village's festivals.
Re. the mountain sanctuaries:
· Ida (mother of Minos and nurse of Zeus, related to Cybele via the Corybantes), maybe how the Eteocretans called Gaia?
· Dikte Diktyna = Diana (Artemis)
· Asterousia might be related to the legend of Astraea or otherwise to Astronomy/Astrology
The animal above the headdress looks like a feline.
Where exactly Plato mentions bullfights Timaeus' story of Atlantis?
@@afk1352008 - Looks like an owl and it is an owl, get a larger image from search.
Timaeus:
[119] (...) "As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number.
"And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judgment, and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise:-There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons, but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt
[120] "its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups, and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial".
she resemble a Gypci cobra queen
🙂🙃🙂🙂🙂🙃🙃🙃
Has anyone yet tried to decypher Linear B with AI?
*Linear A and l think yes but it was inconclusive
It would be difficult to translate Linear A because there is so little source material and bilingual texts either do not exist or were lost/damaged (for example, a bilingual text was lost from the archives during the Invasion of Crete during WWII and has not been seen since). It sadly doesn't give the AI, or human translators, much to work with.
@@tek.s Well this further gives hope that bilingual Greek-Eteocretan tablets are still out there waiting to be discovered.
Also, Linear A served as the base for Linear B, so it’s not impossible that solely based on that, somebody (or something - AI) is eventually able to crack the code.
Absolute autism moment
I think we need to stop using the word worship when it comes to understanding ancient practices. I prever revered, or respected, or held in high regard. Worship has a hint of dropping to your hands and knees and groveling. 😂
That said, if you arent talking about drugs and medicine, then you have a lacking ancinet world view. Snakes were everywhere. People got but. Common household problem. People need antidotes. Ever consider how they were made? Take a look at Malta. Those megalithic structures arent temples. They are human prisons for experiments on slaves
Egyptians, aka the real Greeks Nubian related people. But they claim to be native baIkan
The snake was an Illyrian deity or at least venerated as something close.
The worship of snakes and bulls probably in Indo-Europeans comes from the Kura-Araxes people of south Caucasus. Probably they brought metallurgy into northern Caucasus and consequently into the Caspian steppes.
Minoans probably were Kura-Araxes people the same as Etruscans and Rhaetians. Ydna - J2.
The serpent or (later) dragon is the Basque or Vasconic male aspect of the gender-binary God (fertility cult). It just lingered among various Indoeuropean traditions, usually as victim of slaying (Apollo, Thor) or some other lesser role.
Bovine cattle was primarily domesticated by the Vasconics in Southern Anatolia and the "bullfight" traditions are also important in Çatalhöyuk and Iberia (and South France), where there is archaeological evidence for replacement of an older deer cult for a bull one in the rock art and, if we attend to the narration of Atlantis (which I also place in Iberia, more specifically in Portugal), was also part of their tradition (ritual hunt of the bull, whose blood was drank before dispensing justice).
@@LuisAldamiz the bull cult in Iberia came from Minoan (Pelasgian) settlers and colonists in eastern Spain shores.
Bull cult was widespread in early bronze age cultures. Anatolian Neolithic farmers had as primary deity the mother earth. The cult of fertility.
It makes sense as long as the dominant of cultures of the bronze age became Kura-Araxes and Yanmaya whom were pastoralists. Meanwhile the Neolithic Anatolian farmers were sedentary farmers.
@@LuisAldamiz you need to accept the fact that Basques descend from Western hunter gatherers of Spain.
@@sidritqafzezi3958 - There's absolutely no evidence for any such "settlers" or contacts in fact, there is a lot of evidence for contact and very active trade with Syria instead a bi-directional contact for a long period, beginning with ivory imports *from Syria* (extinct Syrian elephant) in the Copper Age and continuing with Iberian-like influences in Syria and Jordan (Dolmenic Megalithism, including one Potruguese plate idol). It's weird but there's no sign of Cretan interaction until the adoption of tholos tombs (of Western origin) in Greece, incl. parts of Crete, which is directly related to MBA Mycenaean-El Argar intense interactions (which can be tentatively associated to the Heraklean legends in the Far West = Hesperia = Hispania).
"Anatolian Neolithic Farmers" = proto-Vasconic peoples. What part of they settled nearly all Europe we do not understand?
Kura-Araxes were either Indoeurpean or Hurrian or a mix of both, totally unrelated to Vasconics (except for the broader West Asian Neolithic roots, very diverse, they all had).
@@Ecthelion007 - We don't know that much, the exact formation of the Illyrians is not well understood. What we know is that they were in place by the Iron/Classical Age and that they are directly ancestral to modern Albanians.
Und die SPRACHE War GRIECHISCH ! ! .
Minoans or Mycenae the both where groups of Canaanites from Arabia Africa and Levantine
6:20 i dont want to sound anti-feminist but... in old Athens of the mighty goddess Athena women had no right to vote. so the minoan goddesses or priestesses were not for sure evidences of a liberal minoan society.
we could also compare to the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary ... not the most feminist chapter of the western history.
Arians from southeast Europe,not greeks
oh, enlighten us with your knowledge and tell us what they were, you all-knowing being