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A Minoan ‘Goddess’ Idol from Sakhtouria
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2013
Extract
In the Museum at Rethymnon there is a Minoan clay idol (Mus. No. 22) of the type of the goddess with uplifted hands. This comes from the village of Sakhtouria in the eparchy of Ayios Vassilios in the Rethymna nome.
The idol is 33·3 cm. high, with the base 9·2 cm. in diameter. The space between the arms at its widest extent measures 33 cm. The left arm and both the hands are missing, together with parts of the chest, neck, jaw, nose, crown of the head, and base. The missing sections have been restored in plaster, except for the hands and parts of the jaw and nose (Plate 41, a, b). The idol is hollow inside, and the lower part of the trunk is tubular with a narrow splayed border round the bottom (Plate 42, a). A splayed base of this type is a regular feature of Late Helladic clay figurines.
The eyes are indicated by slight bulges, and the eyebrows by single curving lines in relief which extend down the sides of the cheeks as far as the jaw and strongly emphasize it (Plate 42, b). The ears are represented by means of a boldly rendered nearly circular fillet in relief (Plate 43, a, b). The crown of the head is filletted, but there are no traces of any attachments for ornaments or sacred symbols, and the hair must have been rendered in paint to judge from the traces of black on the back part of the head immediately below the crown. The features of the face are expressed in generalized but vigorous terms. The face is markedly triangular in shape.
According to the generally accepted view the type of the goddess with uplifted hands first appeared in Crete at the beginning of the Late Minoan IIIB period. In 1958 Professor Doro Levi excavated a Minoan villa near Gortyna, and came upon a shrine there with idols of this type which he assigned on a basis of the pottery recovered to Late Minoan I. The question of the early appearance of the type was thus revived.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1967
References
1 The idol was found by Dhimitrios Tsangarakis at ‘Aï Yiannis’ an hour's walk from the village above the south coast of the island, and was handed to the Museum in 1961. An early L.M. house was first noted by S. Hood at the neighbouring site of ‘Ayios Markos’ on the coast. The author visited this area in May 1966, and observed sherds of coarse ware difficult to date.
2 Vermeule, E., Greece in the Bronze Age (1964), pl. XLI A, B, ECrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylour, W., The Mycenaeans (1964) 71, fig. 20.Google Scholar
3 All the various opinions, together with the generally accepted view, are set forth in the work of Alexiou, St., ‘The Minoan Goddess with Uplifted Hands’, κρητικὰ χρονικά xii (1958) 179–299.Google Scholar
4 Bolletino d'Arte 1959, 237 f.
5 Alexiou (art. cit. 198) gives Levi's dating for the idols as L.M. I, while MissLaviosa, (Ann. xli–xlii, N.S. xxv–xxvi (1963–1964) 9, 23)Google Scholar suggests a precise date for them at the end of the age of the palaces in L.M. II.
6 Miss Williams in publishing the idols from Gournia placed them in L.M. I (Gournia 47 f., pl. XI). This dating was accepted by Evans, (PM iv. 160)Google Scholar and Nilsson, (MMR 2309).Google Scholar
7 Bolletino d'Arte 1959, 245, fig. 14 a, b. Alexiou, loc. cit. pl. Z.
8 Alexiou, art. cit. pl. ΣΤ, fig. 1. Zervos, , L'Art de la Crète (1956), pls. 803–7.Google Scholar
9 Alexiou, art. cit., passim.
10 W. Taylour, op. cit. 70.
11 Mylonas, , Ancient Mycenae (1957) 78–83.Google Scholar
12 Laviosa, op. cit. 11 f.
13 The attempt by Miss Laviosa (loc. cit.) to relate the figurines of the psi-type to the corresponding Minoan figurines is not very convincing because the hands are missing from the examples cited and it is therefore very difficult to determine exactly how they were placed.
14 Zervos, , L'Art de la Crète (1956) pls. 772–4.Google Scholar Alexiou, art. cit. pls. Ε, figs. 1, 2, ΣΤ fig. 1, Z, ⊖, fig. 1.
15 Zervos, op. cit. pls. 771, 775, 807.
16 See above, p. 203.
17 Zervos, op. cit. pls. 744–5.
18 BSA, lxi (1966), 172.
19 Laviosa, op. cit. 10–11.
20 The head of the idol from Sakhtouria bears a slight resemblance to the heads of the idols recently found on the island of Kea (Vermeule, , Greece in the Bronze Age (1964) pl. XL A, BCrossRefGoogle Scholar). Laviosa observes (op. cit. 23–24) that the idols from Kea are very closely paralleled by the idols from Gortyna. In my opinion, however, there is no real similarity between these two groups of idols. The idols from Gortyna are thoroughly standardized products in the full spirit of L.M. III art, while those from Kea stand very close to the art of the close of the M.M. and the beginning of the L.M. periods. The head from Kea (Vermeule, op. cit. pl. XL B) has features which reappear on the head of the idol from Sakhtouria, and they may not be separated by a great interval of time. But the idols from Kea as a whole have an obviously naturalistic character that is entirely foreign to the idols of the goddess with uplifted hands.
21 In reference to the idols from Gazi ProfessorMarinatos, (AE 1937, 290)Google Scholar observed that it was only possible to get some sort of idea of their stylistic and consequently of their chronological evolution from the way in which the bases had evolved, since these were in fact stylized versions of actual Minoan dress. There can, indeed, be no doubt about the stylization of the dress and its conversion into a bell-shaped base. There must surely, however, exist other criteria by means of which the evolution of the type can be traced, even if these idols are (to quote Professor Marinatos) ‘improvised products of ordinary workers in clay who were not dependent upon any regular style’—this for the simple reason that the idols were a form of artistic expression at a given moment of time, and were modelled by craftsmen who were acquainted with the general artistic ambience and aware of the artistic trends of the age in which they lived, and thoroughly competent to reproduce them in clay works of high quality. Minoan religion evidently had a ceremonial and mystical character, and in this sphere improvisation is hardly conceivable. Towards the end of L.M. III there is a noticeable trend towards standardization and generalization in all manifestations of art including, of course, the idols. But this is a regular feature of ages of spiritual and artistic exhaustion. We are, however, bound to look upon all these idols as examples of the art of modelling in clay representative of the period or periods to which they belonged.