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A Late Minoan Shrine at Knossos
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Extract
The pair of Horns of Consecration at Fig. 1 (A) and plate 46a was found at Knossos in 1969 when an area in front of the Stratigraphical Museum was being levelled for the extension of that building. It lay more or less on the surface, but had been covered and protected by the bole of an olive tree; and it was the removal of this tree which brought the object to light.
At first the author suspected that it had been hidden under the tree some years ago by a villager who had chanced to find it elsewhere. But this suspicion was disproved when further clearance revealed a patch of pebble floor on which were two broken ‘incense-burners’ of Late Minoan type. The area had unfortunately been badly disturbed by later pits and building activity; but enough remained both to trace a strip c. 1·50 m. long of the floor, which had been relaid several times, and to indicate that a line of stones bordering it to the west were the remains of one wall of a room contemporary with the floor, Fig. 2. Clearly, therefore, we had found the ruins of a Minoan shrine.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1970
References
1 It measures 23·5 cm. in height and is 8·5 cm. broad at the base. It is made of a coarse gritty red clay, covered with a cream slip painted dark red; most of the paint has worn off, and it is not certain whether it was painted all over or had some linear design. The base is flat and the horns, which splay at the top, are somewhat oval in section. Between the horns is a raised circular disc which is pierced by a hole.
2 See Nilsson, , The Minoan–Mycenaean Religion (2nd edn.) 165Google Scholar: ‘the normal layer of pebbles’.
3 The stone hatched on Fig. 2 just south of the Horns of Consecration might belong to a cross wall of the shrine since it did not seem to belong to the later wall which it adjoins. Unfortunately the floor could not be traced as far as this stone, since it had been disturbed by a large root of the tree in just this area.
4 For the author's views on the development of the shape of the ‘champagne cup’ see BSA lxiv (1969) 300–1.
5 The bands consisted of two thin strokes bordered by thicker strokes. In L.M. IIIA 1 the strokes, usually four in number, are generally thin and of equal width, whereas in IIIB they are thick and usually one or two in number.
6 Alexiou, St., Late Minoan Tombs of the Harbour of Knossos (Katsamba) (Athens, 1967, in Greek)Google Scholar 63, fig. 37 and pl. 26c where they are called small altars.
7 The horns had been moved before the author saw them, but a slight impression in the soil suggested that they had lain as indicated on the plan.
8 Nilsson, loc. cit. 169 f.
9 In Pit ‘U’, from which other IIIB sherds are published elsewhere in this volume.
10 The cup fragment, now in Heraklion Museum, was in box P. I. 7 as was the sherd with the altar from a closed vessel. The sherd with a double axe was found in one of the P. I. General boxes and seems to be part of a large krater, solid-painted inside; it has already been illustrated in BSA xxxi (1930–1) pl. 19, 13.
11 For the Little Palace shrine, see Evans, , Tomb of the Double Axe 59 f.Google Scholar and PM ii. 519 f. A preliminary account of the excavation of part of the Unexplored Mansion has appeared in Kadmos viii. 43–5 and Archaeological Reports 1969, 31–3.