Clan and Family

     Crete's many kinds of beauty can make us forget that all its cultural wealth began in the harsh realities of wholesale migration. As Lawrence Durrell remarked, once Crete is in your blood, you can literally die of homesickness. Perhaps it was such "original" ordeals that taught Cretans the value of home, of comfort and pleasure, of life in the eternal here-and-now. If anything is clear from the archaeology, Crete's immigrants found a common desire there for a very beautiful public ceremonial life. For that is what they built, still were building when "history" darkened the sky, and what they took with them in diaspora.

     Here is a basic outline of Crete's ancestries and cultural mixtures, developments and changes over time. Research shows that the mythological and archaeological streams of information we have are, not surprisingly, telling a similar, increasingly-clear and remarkable story.

     First the essence of ancient Crete's "royal" lineage (see Graves' Greek Myths for full citations of sources on each):

EUROPA

weds then-demigod

 ZEUS/ASTERIUS:

EUROPA and ZEUS

"adopt"

MINOS (of Cnossos),   RHADAMANTHYS (Phaestos),   SARPEDON (Zakros)

MINOS weds PASIPHAE (daughter of Kriti and Helius):

MINOS and PASIPHAE become parents of

ANDROGEUS    ARIADNE    DEUCALION

Androgeus ("Earth-Man") is murdered at Athens, launching Crete's final conflict with mainland Mycenean and other cultures (Ariadne's Brother below);

Ariadne ("Most Holy" or "High Young Fruitful Mother of the Grain") does not personally survive in some accounts. In others, she and her younger brother Deucalion ("Sweet Wine," "Flood Rider," or "New Wine Sailor") both survive Crete's final cataclysm---or at least, do so each through "many children" who typify the bountiful dispersal of Cretan family-groups after the conquest. For example:

Oenopion (Plenty Wine), Thoas (Nimble), Staphylus (Bunch of Grapes), Tauropolus (Bull-Slayer), Latromis (Wanton) and Euanthes (Flowering) all became "vine cult ancestors" among the later Helladic tribes of islands such as Chios, Lemnos, Peparethos and Thracian Chersonisos (all place-names ending in "Minoan" -os). For wine, like olive oil, there was "no substitute"; and knowledge of its production was a great asset in creating new settlements and prosperous economies:

Amphictyon (Fastens Together) became a leader of a northern confederation called the Amphictyonic League, and "first to mix water and wine";

Orestheus (Votary of the Mountain Goddess) became a leader in Ozolian Locris;

Hellen (Bright) became "father of all Hellenes" with Thessalian, Achaian/Mycenean, and Dorian children;

Idomeneus (Knowing One), a leading suitor of Sparta's Helen, was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae's war against Troy, but only as a co-commander; and

Enyues (Warlike), became ruler of the island Cournos.

     Below is a Cretan Chronology incorporating both myth and archaeological evidence to give an idea of how Crete's clans and families understood their eclectic past:

13,000-6000 (Mesolithic) "Temple Cultures" of Malta, Gozo, Catal Huyuk

10,000 "Pelasgian" immigrants (via mainland Lerna, many isles) reach Crete: sacred and/or clan-totems include the Snake and the Goat

5000-3000 (Neolithic) Libyan and Nile Delta Egyptians (via "Menos") arrive bringing more advanced ceramics, copper-working, painting-styles: totems include the Dove and Double Axe: styles include the distinctive Cretan kilt and goatskin "aegis"

3000-2000 (Copper) Emigrants from Middle Eastern city-states (Tyre, Mari, etc.) bring Bull-totems, and more advanced smelting-methods that open The Bronze Age (2000-1200 BCE). Circa 2900 many communal settlements appear (Myrtos, Vasilikit etc.); and by 2300 the potter's wheel is in use. Cretans begin to locate sources of tin

2000-1750 The Labyrinth and centers at Phaestos and Zakros are built: great strides in bronze-working (mix of copper and tin), seal-stones, gold-smithing: evidences of many foreign contacts include Egyptian scarabs and use/adaptations of hieroglyphic writing. At least two serious earthquakes damage Cnossos

1700 Earthquakes wholly destroy Cnossos and other centers: Cretans rebuild, including improved indoor plumbing, wood-laced walls, "Marine Style" pottery, Linear A writing; while Carian and other Aegean cultural influences increase

1650- This "new palace" period sees rising population, building of coastal towns, "country mansions" that supervise inland Crete, writing at 27 sites. Heavy overseas contacts and island-colonies founded. Aegean immigrants increase (Aeolian, Ionian), bringing the gray and blue-eyed graikoi to "the black-headed ones" of Crete. Ascendancy of mountain and horse-god Poseidon. Cnossos est. at 80,000 inhabitants

1628 Best estimate of the great eruption of the Thera Volcano: in 1600 further shocks add damages

1550 Mainland Achaian/Mycenean centers appropriate more and more Cretan elements and expand hilltop homes toward "palaces"

1500- Mycenean influences in Crete: they begin to adapt Linear A toward Linear B, later known as "early Greek." Circa 1500 another earthquake strikes

1450 Mycenean conquest destroys Crete's main culture-centers: Cnossos a semi-ruin continues as their center of political dominance

1400 Cnossos itself is destroyed (agency still uncertain) although "squatters" continue occupation

1350 Fortification of Mycenae and other Achaian centers

1300 Cretan mountain-refuges such as Karphi carry on what they can of "Minoan" ways: in the lowlands, villagers cling to Goddess-ways evident in tiny "house-shrines" and other artifacts found everywhere outside the main political centers

1200 The Iron Age opens as many Cretan clans find their ways to new homes in Cyprus, Ugarit (northern Syrian coast), Cycladic and Middle Eastern trade-ports; where "history" eventually brands them as the infamous "Sea Peoples" and Philistines (more below). The Myceneans are already in steep decline (Trojan War c. 1225): "Dorians" displace them and instantiate thorough changes creating the male-centered "polis." Cretan art-forms enter the "Geometric" period: lively realism gives way to crude, stiffly-symmetrical fantasy: "naturalism has been sacrificed to an art form that is primarily conceptual" (Marinatos 230). The "Code of Gortyn" includes traces of female political rights/powers.

     What were the main trends between these lines of Cretan history, manifesting and affecting the living memories of Crete's clans and families?

     One was an evolution from traditions of early "tholos" or round communal tombs (for ex. Myrtos) toward smaller and then individual burials. On the one hand, Crete's culture-centers were clearly cooperative in evolving their oikos nomos (source of our word economy) through common language, artistic styles, road-systems and communications (which Cretans say included the use of polished mirrors for flashing signals across the island). Some see an emergent "class-based society" (different social statuses based on economic roles) that yet lacked "grave inequalities": the average "Minoan" home was the roomy rich envy of its foreign contemporaries.

     On the other hand, the slow change in burial customs may reflect increased centralization of economic and other powers in individuals, typified by the ascendancy of "King Minos" himself. The problem is that no source outside of Athenian and mainland "propaganda myths" seems able to produce a "King Minos." Rodney Castleden's several books offer an example. For all the meticulous study in his Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete, Castleden sees only "a monarch with very limited secular power...who formed a charismatic focus for public ceremony" (24); and finds "the effective secular leader" in a Mycenean-style Lawagetas or War Leader, sharing that power with priestesses (176). Castleden is typical of historians who see and don't see: he prefers to believe that "a king with limited power is more likely," at the same time finding "no evidence" of "a Priestess-Queen rather than a Priest-King"---though who controlled the "limits" on this "king" he cannot bring himself to say, even as his own evidences (see 5, 24, 28, 30, 32, 126) suggest it was precisely women doing so. Sir Arthur Evans himself exclaimed "The throne of Ariadne!" upon first sight of the Cnossos throne: within minutes he changed that to "Minos."

     Originally, "marriage" or matrimony meant marrying into "the woman's clan" and taking up residence with them. Clans knew their origins and ongoing relations as centered in the mother-bond. Myths and legends clearly describe great "class mobility" via marriage, as women were free to choose their mates from higher or lower station. Another support for "women's rights" and powers was the knowledge of birth-control: the now-extinct plant sylphium was a staple-source into Classical times, replaced by others including Asafoetida, Wild Carrot (Queen Anne's Lace, a monthly tablespoon of whose seeds still serve today), Pomegranate, Myrrh, Rue; and "abortifacients" from Pennyroyal to Artemisia. (See the excellent survey in Archaeology Magazine, March/April 1994; though it scarcely credits what we can only call women's scientific experiments, trials-and-observations, that created the first bodies of such knowledge).

      The clans and families painted on the processional corridors of Cnossos are making pilgrimage there. They bring more than we see in their hands. The fruits of Crete's village-fields fill the built-in granaries, their olive oil and wine the huge jars, all of it "tax" or "tribute" that brings a voice and a share in foreign trade. Soothing this (to take that "cynical" view) is an endless year-round of programmatic shared sacrifices, ceremonies and social events whose splendor inspired the images we have.

     Without a single definitive "royal image" as to who was in "effective secular power" in Crete, we can only conclude with what is hugely before our eyes. What was called the Damos or "the collective relationships of women behind the scenes"---a consensus-based living network of guiding voices---performed this function, reaching of course by family relation ("My sister is a priestess") into the highest echelons of public office. As in most of Native America and a great many other cultures where the social web is the true restraint on "alpha males," male leaders were the best listeners and followers. The "ruling class" commissioned the painted walls of Cnossos to foster what was already fruitfully there: Themis (the ancient law, the way of the ancestors: the way things have always been done, in Jane Harrison's words).

     We can't dismiss the many images and the roles of no-doubt powerful ("charismatic") men among these people. But again, the maligned because never-studied Robert Graves' works give us a great deal of insight. In his infamous The White Goddess and elsewhere, Graves traces ancient Cretan traditions of religious and social life down the cultural ages---for of course, Cretan culture did not disappear. At the Cretan root of these Graves argues the powerfully-compelling presence of a "priest-king"; who reigned for a set although variable span of years, and then was sacrificed in ceremonies believed to ensure the renewal of all life. There is nothing "inferior to The Goddess" about such a Minos. Many things about him are crucial to the social health of the group. Most of all, again much like men in Native American cultures, this Minos is a man because he knows his place within his world.

     In what may have been the "Minoan" ceremonial calendar, Graves describes a yearly-round of five natural seasons that parallel five stages of this king's spiritual life. His Birth is accomplished at the Winter Solstice (via the Palm tree as above). His Initiation or education comes at the Spring Equinox, as the Ash and Alder come to life (and provide many woods for boat-oars to spears). He it is who dances "at the head of his daemons" (the people) in the song you saw above. At Midsummer, Minos "dances The Changes" as the Oak King before the people, symbolizing each of their totems in turn (from Goat to Snake to Bull, Eagle and Lion). Depending on the year, either his Marriage to the High Priestess is accomplished, or he marries The Goddess in eternity by his sacrifice and a new king takes office. A Cretan "king's" consent to the return (not surrender) of his powers must have been a compelling behavior-example to the men.

     With the Autumn Equinox comes Minos' Rest or Repose---that old-age time of turning inward, returning to the caves for oracles from Earth and Ancestors; and as well of dancing in ecstatic union with (and as) Dionysos of the Vine, the Goddess' half-divine son and lover we find on countless Cretan seals. At last, his Death comes around The Wheel in the moon of the Elder (Greek Myrtle), that waterside tree of "witches" (learned women) and "doom." And 'round comes the Spring Solstice...

     Birth, Initiation, Marriage, Rest, and Death---phases of human life taught by The Earth and its rhythms the seasons. What endures, what changes, what matters and what doesn't.

There is more to understand about "human sacrifice" but we should ask first what it costs ourselves to avoid rather than incorporate the fact of change and death in our spiritual life. There is a reason that the drama on the edge of Modernism (Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken) brings us to realize that only at death's door do we discover that we have not lived. The "women's psychology" works of Nancy Qualls-Corbett (The Sacred Prostitute) and "work with the dying" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross demonstrate the healing and inspiring potentials at stake.

     If Crete's families taught their children a concept of common birth and common destiny, we may wonder less why "marriage" and gender itself seem not to have caused cosmic crises in the expressions of their world. (The 19th century is full of semi-comic accounts of travels by "learned men" in the Cyclades, who discover to their horror that women there still have far too much "say" and far too little concern over the paternity of children.)

     Ms. Nyani Martin, artist and writer of the Cretan world, shares this brief sketch giving her well-researched impressions of a moment in "Minoan" family time: