In Dawn of the Gods, London: Arcadia Press, 1968

Hawkes throws a lens on the Bronze Age great lord/war theme in Iraq, Egypt, and other countries, and contrasts it with Crete, where "there was hardly a trace of these manifestations of masculine pride and unthinking cruelty." And no statues of kings either. She concludes that their absence may indicate "that the occupants of Minoan thrones may have been queens." [75-6]

She notes that Knossos "palace" was "strongly inturned upon its central court" [77] which accords with speculation that it was the mythical labyrinth. She describes how the person seated on the throne faced toward a sunken shrine room: "The descent into the ground suggests an approach to the goddess in her aspect as Earth Mother." [78] Other shrine rooms stood nearby.

She describes how a triple shrine (of a kind seen often in the seals) faced the central court. It had side chambers, each with two sacred columns, and a fifth column in the central chamber. Nearby, the two faience snake goddesses were found in two underground stone cists where temple treasures were held. Behind the shrine were two more crypts with square pillars that had libation hollows at the base. "In the throne, the lustral basin, the sacred columns and pillars, the double axes and horns of consecration, the Great Goddess was present in many manifestations." [79]

Right next to the throne room, "a wide flight of steps with central columns... led up to the spacious state apartments" on the next floor. This area was also accessed "by a roundabout passage decorated from end to end with with two zones of processional figures -- young men and girls [she wrote this in 1967] bearing offerings."

Beyond these large reception halls, "the royal living quarters were of modest size," and she speculates that a suite with sea frescos might have belonged to the queen. [I'm agnostic about the royalty/palace aspect here; we should consider that priestess might be the more apt title.] "The fact that the workshops of the potters, gem-cutters and others faced on to the central court and were only separated from the royal quarters by a passageway, suggests that artists and craftsmen held an honorable place in the palace community." [80]

"Many features of the design of the palace of Knossos, then, can be said to express a feminine spirit. It had domesticity, privacy, lightness of touch and domestic amenities. It was probably set among gardens and flower beds." And then she goes into the interior decoration, especially the frescos with running spirals, rosettes, and joyous nature scenes--nature for its own sake, not "the hunter's desire to possess and kill." [100] She writes with awe that the frescos created "an atmosphere charged with a sense of all-pervading-moving-springing life." [102]

She also makes a strong case for women continuing to make and paint pottery in the classic period, while recognizing the pattern of men taking over the craft "with the coming of civilization and with the adoption of the wheel." But she makes a case for it having been in female hands at least to the Old Palace period. [95] We don't have any evidence about this.

A paved processional road known as the Sacred Way led to the Little Palace, which had its own pillar crypts. At the opposite end, at the northwest corner of the main "palace" (i'm still searching for the right word here; i'd say temple but for the living quarters) is a courtyard to which stepped elevations were added. It has been called a theater, but Hawkes suggests that the shallow steps were not seats for an audience but "designed for participants in performances that were still ritualistic": dancers, choruses, recitations. She notes that at Knossos "anyone on the steps and the plinth would have had direct access to the Throne Room quarter through a private entrance." And she proposes that this theater area might be "the famous dancing floor of Ariadne." [86-7]

Whether or not it is, this legendary dance floor is very important from a shamanic point of view, and ties in with the figurines with snakes wrapped around their arms. Such dancing grounds are also found in the "post-palatial" shrines after the Mycenaean conquest. Sacramental dance and entering into exalted spiritual states was central to Cretan religion. We see it in the incised stone seals and the golden rings also. And women are at the center.

Max Dashu