The gate of the year

Clay statuette representing a female deity, dating to the Minoan period (1400-1300 B.C.), from the sanctuary of Gazi (island of Crete), now in the Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Greece.
The goddess’ head is adorned with a headdress surmounted by birds and bovine horns, both recurrent symbols, suggesting the relationship of the goddess with the animal world. The Minoan civilization was dominated by the image of a great female goddess, who appears in various guises: as goddess with serpents, and as war, hunt and tree goddess. It is not clear whether these functions were attributes of different figures or were summed up into a single divinity. Such variety of representations depends also from the fact that the goddess was worshiped in different geographical places, taking specific and local characteristics in each of them. The sanctuaries were mainly in natural places, like caves or mountain peaks (Pelon-Marinatos 2005). Since the Archaic and Classical periods, the different female divinities of the Greek pantheon assumed some of the aspects which were once proprieties of the ancient Great Mother, whose origins went back to Prehistoric times (see scheme below).

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Female Symbols

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Clay statuette representing a female deity, dating to the Minoan period (1400-1300 B.C.), from the sanctuary of Gazi (island of Crete), now in the Archaeological Museum, Heraklion, Greece. The goddess’ head is adorned with a headdress surmounted by birds and bovine horns, both recurrent symbols, suggesting the relationship of the goddess with the animal world. The Minoan civilization was dominated by the image of a great female goddess, who appears in various guises: as goddess with serpents, and as war, hunt and tree goddess. It is not clear whether these functions were attributes of different figures or were summed up into a single divinity. Such variety of representations depends also from the fact that the goddess was worshiped in different geographical places, taking specific and local characteristics in each of them. The sanctuaries were mainly in natural places, like caves or mountain peaks (Pelon-Marinatos 2005). Since the Archaic and Classical periods, the different female divinities of the Greek pantheon assumed some of the aspects which were once proprieties of the ancient Great Mother, whose origins went back to Prehistoric times (see scheme below). [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]