MINOAX AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 625 



with the sub-Mycenaean types from those of the Greek Salamis, and 

 point to an impact on Cyprus from the mainland side about the 

 eleventh century before our era, which may well have been due to 

 the advent of the Pre-Dorian colonists from the Laconian shores. 

 These, as we know from inscriptions, brought with them local cults, 

 such as that of Amyklae ; but what is especially interesting to observe 

 is the whole-hearted way in which they are seen to have taken over 

 the leading features of the Minoan cult. Fanassa, the Queen, the 

 Lady of the Dove, as we see her at Paphos, Idalion or Golgoi, is the 

 great Minoan goddess. The Paphian temple to the end of the chap- 

 ter is the Minoan pillar shrine. Were all these Minoan features taken 

 over in Cyprus itself? May we not rather infer that, as the colonists 

 arrived, with at least a sub-Mycenaean element in culture, so too they 

 had already taken over many of the religious ideas of the older race 

 in their mainland home ? In the epithet "Ariadne " itself, applied 

 to the goddess both in Crete and Cyprus, we may perhaps see an 

 inheritance from a pre-colonial stage. 



In Crete, where Hellenic colonization had also effected itself in pre- 

 Homeric times, the survival of Minoan religion was exceptionally 

 great. The nature goddess there lived on under the indigenous 

 names of Diktynna and Britomartis. A remarkable example of the 

 continuity of cult forms has been brought to light by the Italian 

 excavation of a seventh century temple at Prinia, containing clay 

 images of the goddess with snakes coiled round her arms, showing a 

 direct derivation from similar images in the late Minoan shrine of 

 Gournia and the fine faience figures of considerably earlier date 

 found in the temple repositories at Knossos. At Hagia Triada the 

 earlier sanctuary was surmounted by one of Hellenic date, in which, 

 however, the male divinity had now attained prominence as the 

 youthful Zeus Velchanos. As Zeus Kretagenes, he was the object 

 of what was regarded in other parts of the Greek world as a hetero- 

 dox cult. But in spite of the jeers of Kallimachos at the " Cretan 

 liars " who spoke of Zeus as mortal, the worship persisted to late 

 classical times and points of affinity with the Christian point of view 

 were too obvious to be lost. It is at least a highly suggestive fact 

 that on the ridge of Juktas, where the tomb of Zeus was pointed out 

 to Byzantine times and on a height above his birth cave little shrines 

 have been raised in honor of Audevaic Xpcoxog — Christ, the Lord. 



In view of the legendary connection of Crete and Delphi, illus- 

 trated by the myth of the Delphian Apollo, the discovery there by the 

 French excavators of part of a Minoan ritual vessel has a quite spe- 

 cial significance. This object, to which M. Perdrizet first called at- 

 tention, forms part of a marble rhyton in the form of a lioness's head 

 of the same type, fabric, and material as those found with other 



44863°— SM 1913 40 



