Marinatos, 'Marinatos on Wright on Marinatos', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9508
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9508-marinatos-marinatos
@@@@95.8.11, RESPONSE: Marinatos on Wright on Marinatos
Minoan Religion: A Response to J. Wright
Not every critical review requires a response. Scholarship needs
dialogue, divergent views should be heard, theories should be evaluated.
What has prompted an answer on my part to J. Wright's review of my
Minoan Religion, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 6 (1995), are
not his disagreements but his misunderstandings of the intention of my
book which is on Minoan rituals and symbols and not on state formation.
He gives the impression that my account of religion is devoid of social
context, and that I am unaware of the use of myth and ritual as
instruments of power. According to Wright, there is 'inadequate
consideration of the evolution of Minoan religion as part of an
increasing complex and unified society that emerged in Crete during the
second millennium BC' (p. 62).
None of the above is true. If I have not devoted much space to
the emergence of chiefdoms and states, the 'emergence of priesthood'
etc., it is because I find that theoretical models can be dangerous. If
historical evidence is inadequate on the emergence of the Minoan
priesthood, for example, I prefer to confine myself to what we have,
namely iconography, and draw on parallel phenomena of the historically
well documented cultures of the Near East. In addition, valuable work on
such subjects has already been conducted by P. Warren, J. Soles, K.
Brannigan and others whose research I have used and cited. There is scope
for a different approach to the religion of Minoan Crete based on
religious phenomenology; this approach neither confines itself to pure
archaeological description (pace Wright, p. 69), nor expands on
theoretical models. Parallel phenomena from other cultures offer
suggestions (although not proof) of what may have happened in Crete.
Surprisingly enough there is much on which we agree. Like Wright,
I have stressed the importance of feasting and drinking rituals in a
palatial context (pp. 99-103), and although I have not included
charts to illustrate power relationships, I do clearly state the social
implications of rituals controlled by the palatial elite. In the feasting
ceremonies, for example, I postulate a link between the aristocracy
inside the palaces and the people outside (p. 103). By the way, such
dining rituals and feasts are finding confirmation in the recent
excavations of G. Rethemiotakis at a new palace at Galatas, Crete.
Feasting is one example only of how the upper classes controlled ritual;
there are others as well cited in the book, such as the performances
enacted by the palatial elite in areas adjacent to palaces and villas. I
conclude: "The Minoan religious system then was centered around the cult
centers .. that we call palaces. Their appearance ... served as a
unifying force, while the rulers must have legitimized their authority by
monopolizing religion" (p.110).
A serious accusation by Wright is that I mix Minoan and Mycenaean
levels of cult, as though I were unaware that there are historical
changes in Crete. Wright is puzzled as to why the Hagia Triada
sarcophagus is discussed in a chapter which deals with prepalatial Crete.
He would indeed have been very right had I not explicitly stated my
choice for doing so: "This chapter has focused mostly on the Prepalatial
period but, as must have been become evident, the cult of the dead
persisted into the Palatial and even Postpalatial eras. It seems logical
to close our discussion with two pieces which supplement the
archaeological data with iconographical evidence" (p. 31). My reasoning,
as stated, is that the archaeological finds can be better understood with
supplementary information from art. True, the Hagia Triada sarcophagus
dates some centuries later than the Prepalatial and Protopalatial
artifacts. However, there is no evidence that fundamental beliefs changed
in Crete even after the so-called Mycenaean takeover. This is not just a
tacit assumption on my part. I have tried to demonstrate the
continuity of the fundamental concepts of Minoan religion in ch.
11, a conclusion that most scholars would not disagree with. At the same
time I have consistently drawn attention to the historical and social
changes: "If the picture that I have attempted to sketch has some truth
in it, it follows that the palaces were the backbones of the religious
system and that some radical transformations would have occurred after
their dissolution. This is indeed what happened ... there were new
features in the expression of the cult, although the essential beliefs
remained the same" (p. 244). It is thus puzzling that the explicitly
stated postulates of my reasoning would be ignored, especially since the
analysis of the Hagia Triada sarcophagus is self-sufficient and is not
used to explain earlier evidence.
Incidentally, the Mycenaean takeover, as Wright envisions it, is
no more than a theory. What speaks against takeover on the dynastic
level, for example? If the new aristocracy were a mixture of Mycenaeans
and Minoans, the former being the dominant elite who imposed their
language, the essential cultural characteristics of Crete would have
remained unaffected. It is true, at any rate, that both religious symbols
and iconography remained stable in Crete although not
static.
Another problem with my book, according to Wright, has to do with
origins. "... the presentation of the origins of Minoan religion is not
seen to be a problem, and Marinatos delays treatment of outdoor peak
sanctuaries until chapter 4 ... Consideration of the outdoor areas of
cult activity ... is central to any discussion of the 'origins' of Minoan
religion" (p. 64). It is precisely because I see a problem that I have
abstained from speculations about cosmogonies. I must confess I have no
way to get to the origins of any religion, much less the Minoan one where
we have such scarce documentation. Exceptions, of course, are such
religions as have emerged in relatively recent times and which are
historically well documented. Even Greek religion posits constant
problems to specialists, and it is well known that there is a split
between those who see a strong Oriental influence as a determining
factor, and those who prefer to see Mycenaean religion surviving into the
era of the polis. To complicate matters, there are local cults
and regional variations. How any one could say anything concrete about
the origins of Minoan religion befuddles me. Even so, I have made a
feeble attempt to show in ch. 2 that cult activity concentrated around
the tombs in early times, and stated only the self evident: that there
was apparently a female deity in charge of regeneration and death. (Such
deities are well documented in the Ancient Orient as well.)
Surely, peak sanctuaries, which Wright connects with 'origins',
reveal nothing about the beliefs of the Minoans since a variety of
deities may have been worshipped there. Nor can we ascertain much about
the nature of early cults. Although peak sanctuaries seem to be a
phenomenon of the First Palaces, earlier evidence of human worship may
have been lost if offerings were modest and made of perishable materials.
Peak sanctuaries merely reflect the choice of spot, in itself not an
unimportant consideration in the understanding of Minoan religious
mentality. Peak sanctuaries obviously had diverse cults and not a single
unified one. What I have stressed is the social context: that they offer
us a glimpse into popular religion and that the type of clientele that
visited nature sanctuaries consisted of men and women, the rich and as
well as the poor (pp. 116,123-126).
As to Wright's complaint that I do not deal with "Minoan
cosmology and myth [which] was [probably] in part retained to be
incorporated into historical Cretan and Greek religion" (p. 69), I have
indeed resisted the temptation to project Greek myths onto the Minoans,
given the problem of continuity and syncretism with the East, a subject
which would well deserve another book.
Wright finds my iconographical analysis inadequate as well. There
is little attempt to recover syntax, rules and grammar of Minoan
iconography, he alleges (p. 68). I find this puzzling since, in fact, I
engage in quite a bit of 'iconographical analysis', although I do not use
the vocabulary mentioned above. It is true, that some scenes I did take
for granted, especially where goddesses or gods, generally acknowledged
to be such, are represented. Yet, I have made sure to discuss the meaning
of puzzling elements or signs, such as columns and trees (pp. 180-181). I
have also dealt with spatial relationships (for example whether we have
outdoor or interior setting) and analyzed gestures, in such scenes as
have ambiguities and in which the identity of figures came into question
(pp. 180-192). Thus, the art historical method is there integrated in the
analysis itself: differentiation of figures by position, gesture and
size, age groups, garments, role division (cf. pp. 133, 135-137, 145).
I shall not dwell on other points of disagreement. I would like
to state, however, that I have tried to always keep the social picture in
the background. I do not claim to always be right, but it is unfair, and
perhaps even disrespectful, to state that I have slipped back "into the
much easier mode of description employed by generations of scholars ..."
(p. 69) The irony is that I find much to agree with in Wright's work on
Mycenaean religion and state formation. If we use different paths to
arrive at our respective conclusions, he working with theoretical models,
I with anthropology of religion, I consider this diversity to be a
healthy state of affairs and not evidence of 'narrow focus' (p. 70) on my
part.
Nanno Marinatos
College Year in Athens