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MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE

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« Reply #30 on: February 25, 2009, 11:29:24 pm »

the ancestors of the people who migrated from Caledonia to Wales. In one Welsh poem the Otherworld is referred to as "the cruel prison of the earth, the abode of death, the loveless land". 1 The Babylonian Hades was similarly gloomy and was similarly dreaded. Ishtar descends to--

The house out of which there is no exit . . .
The house from whose entrance the light is taken,
The place where dust is their (the souls') nourishment and their food mud.
Its chiefs are like birds covered with feathers.

But in pre-Dynastic Egypt the worshippers of Osiris, like a section of the Welsh folks, believed that the Otherworld was a land of plenty in which corn was sowed and crops reaped in season. A similar Paradise was believed in as far north as Scotland. It is referred to in a Perthshire fairy story. A midwife is taken to a fairy mound to nurse a fairy child, and is given a green fluid with which to anoint the eyes of the little one. The fairy woman moistens the right eye of the midwife with this fluid, and bids her look. "She looked", the narrative proceeds, and saw several of her friends and acquaintances at work, reaping the corn and gathering the fruit. 'This', said the fairy, 'is the punishment of evil deeds.'" 2 In ancient Egypt the fairy would have said it was "the reward of good deeds".

Burial customs afford us no exact evidence regarding these varying beliefs, which grew up in localities and were imported from one country to another. In Egypt the adherents of the cults of Osiris and Ra who believed in different Paradises mummified their dead, although, in the one case, happiness in the after state was believed to



p. xli

be the reward of good conduct n this life, and, in the other, of those who by performing ceremonies obtained knowledge of the formulæ which were the "Open Sesames" required by departed souls to secure admission to the boat of the sun.

Similarly, it does not follow that the cremation custom had the same significance at all periods. In the Iliad the ghost of Patroklos declares that he will never again return from Hades when he has received his meed of fire. Modern Hindus burn their dead, 1 but the soul may either depart to Paradise or continue its round through other existences on this earth. In Sanskrit literature the fire-god, Agni, "the corpse devourer", conducts souls to the "land of the fathers". The Persian fire-worshippers do not cremate their dead, although they may have done so at one time, but expose them to be devoured by wild birds. Of special interest is the practice of the Mongolian Buriats. The bodies of those who die in autumn and winter are piled up in a log-house in the midst of a forest. When the cuckoo begins to call, in May, this house is set on fire and the accumulated bodies are cremated together. Persons who die during the summer are burned immediately. 2 That the Aryo-Indians had knowledge at one time of the belief involved is suggested by a reference in the Mahabharata. Describing the heaven of Yama, the sage Narada says that he saw there "all sinners among human beings as also (those) that have died during the winter solstice". 3 The explanation may be that there were lucky and unlucky hours, days, and months for death as for birth. The




p. xlii

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« Reply #31 on: February 25, 2009, 11:29:50 pm »

omens at birth which foretold an individual's fate were supposed to give indication of his manner of death. One of the Scottish midwife prophecies runs:

Full moon, full sea,
Great man shalt thou be,
But ill deith shalt thou dee. 1

Omens at death threw light on his fate in the after life. The Buriat custom has evidently a long history behind it. Perhaps it was originally believed that those who died in winter were doomed to exist ever afterwards in cold and darkness. Such a belief imported into India would in time cease to have any significance. The new country had new terrors which supplanted the old, and influenced the development of religious beliefs.

Among certain peoples who did not believe, like the Achæans, the Aryo-Indians, and others, that the soul was transferred to Paradise through the medium of fire, burning was a punishment. Erring wives in ancient Egyptian and Scottish folk-tales are burned at the stake. 2 Similarly, witches were burned alive. Sir Arthur Evans has brought together interesting evidence regarding "the revival of cremation in Europe in mediæval and modern times to get rid of vampires". 3 Bodies of persons whose ghosts had become vampires, which attacked sleepers and sucked the life-blood from their veins, were taken from tombs and publicly burned. The vampires were thus prevented from doing further harm. Herodotus tells that when Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, caused the mummy of Pharaoh Amasis to be burned, he displeased both the Persians and the Egyptians. "The Persians", he says, "hold fire to be a god, and never by any chance burn




p. xliii

their dead. Indeed, this practice is unlawful, both with them and with the Egyptians--with them for the reason above mentioned, since they deem it wrong to give the corpse of a man to a god; and with the Egyptians, because they believe fire to be a live animal, which eats whatever it can seize, and then, glutted with the food, dies with the matter which it feeds upon. Now, to give a man's body to be devoured by beasts is in no wise agreeable to their customs, and, indeed, this is the very reason why they embalm their dead, namely, to prevent them from being eaten in the grave by worms." 1

The evidence afforded by the Cretan burial customs is of special significance. From the earliest times until the close of the Bronze Age the dead were buried. Then cremation was introduced by invaders, who are believed to have been identical with the Achæans of Homer. The new custom had, in this instance, not only a religious but an ethnic significance.

Like certain of the Palæolithic tribes in western Europe, the early Cretans buried their dead in caves and rock shelters. As caves were dwellings, this was a form of house-burial. House-tombs have been found in Cretan as in Babylonian towns. The custom is referred to in the Ethiopic version of the mythical life of Alexander the Great. That hero was reputed to have "asked one of the Brahmans, saying: 'Have ye no tombs wherein to bury any man among you who may die?' And an interpreter made answer to him, saying: 'Man and woman and child grow up, and arrive at maturity and become old, and when any one (of them) dieth we bury him in the place wherein he lived; thus our graves are our houses. And our God knoweth that we desire this more than the lust for food and meat which all men have; this


p. xliv

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« Reply #32 on: February 25, 2009, 11:31:17 pm »

is our life and manner of dwelling in the darkness of our tombs.'" 1 This conversation can never have taken place in. India, but it is of interest in so far as it reflects a belief with which the author was familiar.

In Palæolithic times a cave was deserted after the head of the family was buried in it. There were also, however, burial-caves. The Cro-Magnon people, for instance, sometimes deposited whole families, or the members of tribes, in one of these. One cave has yielded no fewer than seventeen skeletons. Caves and rock-shelters were similarly utilized in Crete. It became customary, however, to construct chamber-tombs, which may have been imitations of caves. One at Aghia Triadha, near Phæstos, in south-central Crete, is some 30 feet in diameter. The remains of no fewer than 200 skeletons of men, women, and children were found in it. Other chambers adjoining added fifty to this number. Family tombs of this kind, which were entered by narrow passages, were sometimes circular, and developed into the beehive style of tomb found in Mycenæ and Tiryns. They date back to early Minoan times (C. 2800 B.C.). Others were of rectangular shape, like those found near Knossos. The Cretans also buried their dead in terracotta chests, in which the bodies Jay in crouched position as in the pre-Dynastic graves of Egypt. These larnakes or sarcophagi were probably of Egyptian origin. They have also been found in Sicily and Italy. Sometimes the Cretan sarcophagi were profusely decorated. Like the tombs, they contained vessels, seals, daggers, amulets, &c.

The Cretans were worshippers of the Great Mother goddess who inhabited the abode of the buried dead. She was the Earth Mother. Caves were entrances to the Underworld over which she presided. In Crete,


 

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« Reply #33 on: February 25, 2009, 11:32:10 pm »



LIMESTONE SARCOPHAGUS, SHAPED LIKE A CHEST, FOUND AT AGHIA TRIADHA

The thin plaster covering is painted with scenes connected with the cult of the dead. (See pages 289-290)

 


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« Reply #34 on: February 25, 2009, 11:33:17 pm »

p. xlv

where no temples were erected, votive offerings were deposited in caves, the most famous of which were those on Mount Dicte and Mount Ida. According to Greek legend, the mother-goddess Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a Cretan cave. The ferocious mother-goddesses of England and Scotland, as is shown (Chapter III), were cave-dwellers. Palæolithic artists drew and painted their magical figures of animals in the depths of great caves.

Demeter of the Grecian Phigalia--the Black Ceres--lived in a cave, which is still regarded as sacred. This deity, who is believed to be a form of the Cretan Great Mother, was also associated with stone circles. Pausanias, writing of the town of Hermione in the Peloponnese, says that near it "there is a circle of huge unhewn stones, and inside this circle they perform the sacred rites of Demeter". 1

Stone circles, single standing-stones, and groups of stones like those at Carnac in Brittany were erected at burial-places. Offerings were made to the dead whose spirits had become associated with the Earth Mother. These spirits might be summoned from their tombs to make revelations. When Odin visited the Underworld to consult the Vala (witch or prophetess) regarding Balder's fate--

Round he rode to a door on the eastward
Where he knew was a witch's grave,
He sang there spells of the dead to the Vala,
Needs she must rise-a corpse-and answer. 2

Folk-memories of the ancient custom of summoning the spirit of the dead still survive in rural districts. An archæologist who recently conducted investigations at a stone circle in northern Scotland asked a ploughman if



p. xlvi

he knew anything regarding it. The answer was to this effect: "It is said that if you walk round it three times against the sun at midnight, you will raise the devil." Our demonology is the last stage of pagan mythology. The summoning of the devil, or the spirits of the Underworld, was a ceremony performed for purposes of divination, or to compel the aid of infernal beings. As only one grave is sometimes found in stone circles, it may be that a circle was erected when a great chief, or great priest or priestess, died, so that the ghost might be propitiated and called up to assist his or her kinsfolk in times of need. A patriarch or teacher would thus be worshipped after death like a god, and especially as a guide to the spirit world. The Babylonian Gilgamesh was a hero who first entered the cave which led to Paradise. So was the Indian Yama; he was the first man to "find the path for many", and he became god of the dead. Osiris, as Apuatu, was "opener of the ways", and similarly reigned in Hades. The Cretan Minos is in the Odyssey a lawgiver, like Osiris, of the Underworld. In Greek mythology the guide of travellers, who conducts the soul on his last journey, is Hermes. His name appears to be derived from herma, which signifies a cairn or a standing-stone. The Thracian "square Hermes" was a pillar surmounted by a human head--a form which is evidently a link between a standing-stone and the statue of an anthropomorphic deity. It may be that some of the anthropomorphic deities were simply deified ancestors, priests, or priestesses.

The Great Mother, who was worshipped by the Cretans and other pre-Hellenic peoples in south-eastern Europe, was the goddess of birth and death, of fertility and fate. As the ancestress of mankind she gathered to her abode in the Underworld the ghosts of her progeny.

p. xlvii

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« Reply #35 on: February 25, 2009, 11:33:32 pm »

p. xlv

where no temples were erected, votive offerings were deposited in caves, the most famous of which were those on Mount Dicte and Mount Ida. According to Greek legend, the mother-goddess Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a Cretan cave. The ferocious mother-goddesses of England and Scotland, as is shown (Chapter III), were cave-dwellers. Palæolithic artists drew and painted their magical figures of animals in the depths of great caves.

Demeter of the Grecian Phigalia--the Black Ceres--lived in a cave, which is still regarded as sacred. This deity, who is believed to be a form of the Cretan Great Mother, was also associated with stone circles. Pausanias, writing of the town of Hermione in the Peloponnese, says that near it "there is a circle of huge unhewn stones, and inside this circle they perform the sacred rites of Demeter". 1

Stone circles, single standing-stones, and groups of stones like those at Carnac in Brittany were erected at burial-places. Offerings were made to the dead whose spirits had become associated with the Earth Mother. These spirits might be summoned from their tombs to make revelations. When Odin visited the Underworld to consult the Vala (witch or prophetess) regarding Balder's fate--

Round he rode to a door on the eastward
Where he knew was a witch's grave,
He sang there spells of the dead to the Vala,
Needs she must rise-a corpse-and answer. 2

Folk-memories of the ancient custom of summoning the spirit of the dead still survive in rural districts. An archæologist who recently conducted investigations at a stone circle in northern Scotland asked a ploughman if



p. xlvi

he knew anything regarding it. The answer was to this effect: "It is said that if you walk round it three times against the sun at midnight, you will raise the devil." Our demonology is the last stage of pagan mythology. The summoning of the devil, or the spirits of the Underworld, was a ceremony performed for purposes of divination, or to compel the aid of infernal beings. As only one grave is sometimes found in stone circles, it may be that a circle was erected when a great chief, or great priest or priestess, died, so that the ghost might be propitiated and called up to assist his or her kinsfolk in times of need. A patriarch or teacher would thus be worshipped after death like a god, and especially as a guide to the spirit world. The Babylonian Gilgamesh was a hero who first entered the cave which led to Paradise. So was the Indian Yama; he was the first man to "find the path for many", and he became god of the dead. Osiris, as Apuatu, was "opener of the ways", and similarly reigned in Hades. The Cretan Minos is in the Odyssey a lawgiver, like Osiris, of the Underworld. In Greek mythology the guide of travellers, who conducts the soul on his last journey, is Hermes. His name appears to be derived from herma, which signifies a cairn or a standing-stone. The Thracian "square Hermes" was a pillar surmounted by a human head--a form which is evidently a link between a standing-stone and the statue of an anthropomorphic deity. It may be that some of the anthropomorphic deities were simply deified ancestors, priests, or priestesses.

The Great Mother, who was worshipped by the Cretans and other pre-Hellenic peoples in south-eastern Europe, was the goddess of birth and death, of fertility and fate. As the ancestress of mankind she gathered to her abode in the Underworld the ghosts of her progeny.

p. xlvii

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« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2009, 11:33:42 pm »

She was the source of the food-supply, which she might withhold at will by raising storms, causing floods, or sending blight and disease. It was important that account should be taken of her varying moods--that her intentions should be ascertained by means of oracles, so that she might be propitiated, or controlled by the performance of magical ceremonies. She assumed various forms at different seasons and under different circumstances. Now she was the earth serpent, or the serpent of the deep--the Babylonian Tiamat--and anon the raven of death, or the dove of fertility; she might also appear as the mountain hag followed by savage beasts, or as a composite monster in a gloomy cavern, like the horse-headed Demeter of Phigalia. The beautiful northern goddess of the Greek sculptors was a poetic creation of post-Homeric times, when her benevolent character only was remembered. Still, Rhea ever retained her lion, which crouched beside her throne--a faint memory of her ancient savage character.

The Achæan conquerors who burned their dead were worshippers of the sky- and thunder-god, the Great Father. They believed that the souls of the dead ascended to a Paradise above the clouds. Hercules burned himself on a pyre and fled heavenwards as an eagle; the soul of the Roman Emperor ascended from the pyre on which his image was placed, on the back of an eagle. The eagle was the messenger of Zeus, and the god himself may have originally been an eagle. The Zu eagle of Babylonia and the Garuda eagle of India were ancient deities; indeed, Tammuz, in his Nin-girsu form at Lagash was depicted as a lion-headed eagle. Cyrus claimed to be an Achæmenian--that is, a descendant of the patriarchal Akhamanish, who was reputed to have been protected and fed during childhood by an eagle.

p. xlviii

The double-headed eagle of the Hittites, which now figures in the royal arms of Russia, was a deity of great antiquity. In Egypt one Paradise was the Underworld of Osiris and the other the Paradise above the sky to which Horus ascended in the form of a falcon. Babylonian mythology makes references to the Paradises of Anu and Bel and Ishtar, to which the patriarch Etana ascends on the back of an eagle, as well as to the island Paradise discovered by Gilgamesh and the gloomy Underworld where souls eat dust and drink muddy water. So do the beliefs of mingled peoples survive in complex mythologies.

The archæological evidence of Crete and Greece shows clearly that the cremation custom had an ethnic significance. Whence then came the Achæans of Homer who were the cremating people, or at any rate were identified with them in tradition? Professor Ridgeway 1 has summarized a mass of important archæological data regarding prehistoric burial customs, and writes: "From this rapid survey it is now clear to the reader that cremation was not developed in the countries lying around the Mediterranean, whilst on the other hand it was already practised in Central Europe, possibly even in the transition period from stone to bronze. But as the Achæans practised it at least 1000 B.C., there is a very high probability that they had come into Greece from Central Europe, where the fair-haired peoples were certainly burning their dead before the end of the Bronze Age, or at least 1200 B.C." He regards with favour the view that the ancestors of the cremating Hindus--the Aryans and Indo-Europeans of the philologists--migrated from Europe into Asia before the Iron Age.

The theory that the Achæans were a Germanic people
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« Reply #37 on: February 25, 2009, 11:34:34 pm »



VOTIVE OFFERINGS FROM THE DICTEAN CAVE

The three upper rows are bronze objects: those in the two lower, are in made of terra-cotta.

(See page xlv; also Chap. XIII, pages 297-299.)

 


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« Reply #38 on: February 25, 2009, 11:34:52 pm »

p. xlix

and that the cremation custom originated in the forests of Germany has not received wide acceptance. Account must be taken of the archaic cremation custom of the Mongolian Buriats which has been referred to. No trace of seasonal burnings have been found in Europe. The Achæan dead might be cremated at any time of the year. Were the ancestors of the Buriats in touch at some remote period with a people among whom cremation was practised before it obtained in Central Europe?

The earliest evidence yet obtained of cremation comes from southern France. M. Verneau, who is the authority on the burial customs of the Palæolithic cave-dwellers of Grimaldi, has found that among the Cro-Magnon peoples of the Third Interglacial Period ceremonial interment by inhumation was the general rule. He found, however, a single instance of cremation. Offerings similar to those found with buried bodies were associated with the burned bones. Of course, we know nothing about the beliefs regarding the destiny of the soul which obtained among the Cro-Magnon peoples. The majority of these, it may be noted, were tall, averaging about 5 feet 10 inches in stature. M. Verneau, however, discovered two skeletons of alien type which he refers to as members of "a new race".

Next in chronological order, but separated by thousands of years, come the Early Neolithic cremating people of Palestine who dwelt in the Gezer caves. "One of the caves", writes Professor Macalister, "had evidently been used by this people as a place for the disposal of the dead. The body, placed at the sill of a chimney-aperture that provided a draught, was burnt, the remains becoming ultimately scattered and trampled over the whole surface of the floor. From one point of view

p. l

this is unfortunate: the bones were too much destroyed by the action of the fire to make any very extensive examination of their ethnological character possible. All we can say is that we have to deal with a non-Semitic race, of low stature, with thick skulls, and showing evidence of the great muscular strength that is essential to savage life." 1 We have no knowledge of the beliefs connected with the Neolithic cremation custom in Palestine.

Among the Australian natives the body of the dead is sometimes cremated. The ashes are afterwards placed in a skin bag which is carried about. Various other funerary practices, including the eating of the corpse, have been recorded. The belief regarding the soul's destiny, among the Australian cremators, is neither Aryo-Indian nor Achæan in character.

The cremation custom of the Bronze Age had in Europe a precise significance as a ceremony. It was not a punishment, or a safeguard against attack by vampires, but a process whereby the souls of the dead were enabled to pass to another state of existence. The cremating invaders swept westward and north and south and formed military aristocracies. In Sweden only the wealthy people were cremated. The evidence of British archæology shows that cremation and inhumation were practised in some districts simultaneously, and that even one member--perhaps the chief--of a family might be cremated while the others were buried. Ultimately cremation died out altogether in Ancient Britain. The earlier faith prevailed. In southern Europe, however, it lingered on until early Christian times, as did mummification in Egypt. The fact that the Christians were opposed to these distinctive burial customs emphasizes that they had a religious significance.


p. li

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« Reply #39 on: February 25, 2009, 11:35:07 pm »

Dr. Dörpfeld 1 has urged the hypothesis that the Achæans burned their dead only when engaged in distant wars, and practised inhumation in the homeland. He thinks that cremation arose from the custom of scorching bodies prior to burial for hygienic reasons.

No traces of partial burning have been found in the pre-Dynastic graves of Egypt, or in the vast majority of similar graves in Europe. Dr. Dörpfeld refers, however, to charred fragments found in tombs at Mycenæ and elsewhere in support of his theory. Here again the evidence of Crete is of special importance. In the tombs near Knossos have been found, in addition to food vessels, clay chafing-pans and a plaster tripod, filled with charcoal. These may have been portable hearths intended to warm and comfort the dead, or may, on the other hand, have been utilized in connection with magical rites. Deposits of charcoal are often found in Bronze Age graves throughout Europe, and it is suggested that the food intended for the nourishment of the dead was cooked in the grave. On the other hand, the grave fire may have been lit to charm the corpse against the attacks of evil spirits. As a rule, the charcoal deposits are not very considerable. That fires were associated with early burials is suggested by the folk-belief about "death lights" which are seen before a sudden death takes place travelling along a highway, entering a churchyard, and passing over the spot where a grave is to be opened. Early burials took place at night, 2 and the leader may have cast his torch into the open grave so that it might be used by the dead on the journey to the Otherworld. Hermes, the guide of souls, was at one time a god of night and dispensed sleep and dreams.



p. lii

The Cretan portable fire-vessels were, perhaps, substitutes for torches. Lamps are also found in graves. The few partial burnings in the graves of Mycenæ and elsewhere may have been due to accidents at burials. Of course, it is also possible that the individuals met their deaths in house fires.

It will be seen from the evidence passed under review that the theory of the Germanic origin of the cremation custom is hardly conclusive. Evidence may yet be forthcoming that it persisted somewhere in Europe or Asia from Palæolithic times. The evidence afforded by the Gezer cremation cave is suggestive in this connection. As cremation had during the Bronze Age a distinct religious significance, the theory is possible that it was an essential tenet of a cult formed by some great teacher-like Buddha, Zoroaster, or Mohammed, who welded together his followers by the strongest ties which bind humanity-the ties of a religious faith and organization. The cremating peoples were conquerors. They achieved ascendancy over the tribes of Indo-European speech who had been migrating into northern India for several centuries between 2000 B.C. and 1200 B.C.; they have left traces of their influence in northern Asia to the present day among the Mongolian Buriats, whose earth and air spirits are called Burkans or "masters". In Europe they appear to have subdued a considerable part of the Danubian cultural area, and formed there, as elsewhere, a military aristocracy. It is uncertain whether they owed their successes to superior organization or to the use of iron. The Aryo-Indians, in Rig-Vedic times, used a metal called ayas, a word which may have denoted bronze or iron, or both. In Brahmanic times iron was called syama ayas, "swarthy ayas", or simply syama and also karsnayasa, "black ayas", while copper or bronze was

p. liii

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« Reply #40 on: February 25, 2009, 11:35:55 pm »

known as lohayasa, "red ayas". 1 The Homeric Achæans used bronze and iron, but the earlier bands of Achæans who drifted into southern Greece and reached Crete used bronze only, and, it is of significance to note, did not cremate their dead. Possibly, therefore, the late Achæans were led by the cremating intruders of Thrace and had adopted their religious beliefs, which they fused with their own. Geometric pottery and iron weapons were introduced into southern Greece when cremation began to be practised there.

The fusion of the various peoples who struggled for supremacy in Greece before and during the early Hellenic period culminated in the growth of its historic civilization. But the influence of its earliest culture, that of Crete, ever remained. It first entered the Peloponnesian peninsula, and although it was overshadowed there and elsewhere during the long period of unrest which followed the Dorian invasion, it continued to develop in contact with alien cultures in the Anatolian colony of Ionia, which in turn proved to be "the little leaven which leavened the whole lump" once again.

So far, nothing has been said regarding the evidence of language, of which so much was made by the scholars of a past generation. But can much really be said with certainty in this connection? The idea that the peoples of Indo-European speech were of common racial origin and inheritors of a common stock of religious beliefs no longer obtains. "Language is shown by experience", as Mr. Hogarth says, "to be changed by conquest more easily than type of civilization. . . . The Turkish conquering minority (of Asia Minor) has imposed its tongue on the aborigines of Ionia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Cappadocia alike.


p. liv

Yet the type of civilization and the fundamental cult-beliefs of the people are not those of the true Turks." Referring to Greece, he says that "later Greek speech may have been fundamentally mid-European, largely contaminated with Ægean survivals; or it may have been fundamentally Ægean with mid-European intrusions, as our own language is fundamentally Anglo-Saxon largely contaminated by the speech of Norman conquerors". 1

The chapters which follow begin with the Palæolithic Age in Pleistocene times, and the reader is afterwards presented with a popular account of the archaeological discoveries in Crete and Greece which have thrown so much light on the growth of pre-Hellenic civilization. Classical traditions are also drawn upon, and comparisons made between Cretan and Greek deities. Comparative evidence is provided in dealing with the growth and significance of primitive beliefs, and various theories which have been advocated are either indicated or summarized. As environment has ever had a formative influence in the development of religious beliefs and in determining the habits of life of which these are an expression, descriptions of natural scenery in various parts of the Ægean area are given to enable the reader to visualize the conditions of life under which pre-Hellenic civilization grew and flourished. In the historical narrative the chief periods of the contemporary civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and the land of the Hittites are noted, and there are frequent references to early Cretan connections along the trade routes, by land and sea, with the remote ancestors of the peoples of the present day in Central and Western Europe.



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« Reply #41 on: February 25, 2009, 11:36:15 pm »

Footnotes
xxi:1 Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, Angelo Masso, pp. 175 et sq.

xxi:2 Quoted in Ripley's The Races of Europe, pp. 172 et seq.

xxii:1 Custom and Myth, pp. 87 et seq.

xxii:2 Scenes and Legends, pp. 31-32 (1835).

xxiii:1 Ionia and the East, p. 107

xxvi:1 That is, so far as can be indicated by skull capacity.

xxix:1 The Ancient Egyptians, p. 43.

xxix:2 Folk-lore of Northern Counties, p. 144.

xxx:1 Leicester County Folk-lore Series, p. 29. In White's Selborne reference is made to the "shrew ash" in Hampshire.

xxx:2 Dalzell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 191-2.

xxx:3 Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, A. Wiedemann, p. 226.

xxx:4 The Iliad, I, 1 et seq.

xxx:5 Strabo, XIII, 604.

xxx:6 Strabo, XIII, 604, and also Ælian, H. A., XII, 5.

xxxi:1 Rigveda, II, 33.

xxxi:2 Isaiah, lxvi, 17.

xxxi:3 Samuel, i, 5-6.

xxxiii:1 Scripta Minoa, pp. 3, 4, 6.

xxxvi:1 Census of India (1901), Vol. I, Part I, pp. 352 et seq.

xxxvi:2 Indian Myth and Legend, pp. 148 et seq.

xxxvii:1 The Ancient History of the Near East p. 48

xxxviii:1 Iliad, XXIII, 75.

xl:1 Celtic Religion, E. Anwyl, pp. 60 et seq.

xl:2 Graham's Picturesque Sketches of Perthshire.

xli:1 Except, as was the case in Rome (Juvenal, XV, 140), the bodies of infants. Those under eighteen months are in India buried head downwards in jars. Mothers who die in childbed are not cremated either, but buried.

xli:2 A Journey in Southern Siberia, Jeremiah Curtin, p. 101.

xli:3 Sabha Parva, Section VIII (Roy's translation, p. 27).

xlii:1 Lamont's Chronicle of Fife, p. 206.

xlii:2 Indian Myth and Legend, p. xxxvii, and Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 143

xlii:3 Comptes Rendus du Congrès International d'Archéologie, 1905, Athens, p. 166.

xliii:1 Herodotus, III, 16.

xliv:1 The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, E. Wallis Budge, pp. 133-4.

xlv:1 Pausanias, II, 34.

xlv:2 The Elder Edda, O. Bray, p. 241.

xlviii:1 Early Age of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 481 et seq.

l:1 A History of Civilization in Palestine, pp. 15, 16.

li:1 Melanges Nicole (in honour of Jules Nicole), 1905, Geneva, pp. 95 et seq.

li:2 For particulars of the custom of using torches and lights at funerals, see Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. II, pp. 776 et seq. (1899 ed.).

liii:1 Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, Macdonald and Keith, Vol. I, pp. 3 11 32, and 151.

liv:1 Ionia and the East, pp. 105-7.



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« Reply #42 on: February 25, 2009, 11:48:45 pm »

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MYTHS OF CRETE AND PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE
CHAPTER I
Primitive Europeans of the Glacial and Inter-glacial Periods
Geological and Mythical Ages of the World--Myths as Products of Environment--The Deluge and Great Winter Legends--New World Cataclysms--Doctrines of Decadence and Evolution in World's Ages Myths--Sages of the "Wandering Jew" Type--The Monsters of Geology and Mythology--Story of the Pleistocene Age--First Glacial Period--Mauer (Heidelberg) Man--Second Glacial Period--The Age of Chellean Culture--The Piltdown Skull--Acheulian Culture Stage--Third Glacial Period and Mousterian Man--Cro--Magnon Race and Grimaldi "Bushmen"--Aurignacian Cave Pictures and Beliefs--Solutrean Culture--Fourth Glacial Period and Magdalenian Man--The Problem of Eoliths--Approximate Duration of Palæolithic Age.

THE system which obtains among modern scientists, of dividing the history of the earth into geological epochs and the pre-history of man into cultural periods, was anticipated by the priestly theorists of ancient civilizations, who established the doctrine of the mythical Ages of the World. These early teachers were:, no doubt, as greatly concerned about justifying their own pretensions and the tenets of their cults as in gratifying the growing thirst for knowledge among the educated classes. When they

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undertook to reveal the process of creation and throw light on the origin and purpose of mankind, they exalted local deities in opposition to those regarded supreme at rival centres of culture and political influence. Many rival systems of a national religion were thus perpetuated. But the various city priesthoods of a particular country found it necessary to deal also with problems of common concern. Among other things, they had to account for the various races of whom they had knowledge and to give divine sanction to existing social conditions; nor could they overlook the accidental discoveries which were occasionally made of the relics of elder and unknown peoples and the bones of extinct animals.

These mythology-makers, of course, possessed but meagre knowledge of their country's past, and were accordingly compelled to draw freely upon their imaginations; but they should not be regarded on that account as merely dreamers of dreams and inventors of miraculous stories. Indications are forthcoming which show that they were not wholly devoid of the scientific spirit. They were close observers of natural phenomena, and sometimes made deductions which, considering the narrowness of areas available to them for investigation, were not unworthy of thinking men. It seemed perfectly reasonable to the Babylonian and Egyptian scientists, who saw land growing from accumulations of river-borne silt, and desert wastes rendered cultivable by irrigation, to conclude, for instance, that water was the primary element and the source of all that existed.

This doctrine, which holds that the Universe is derived from one particular form of matter, has been called "Materialistic Monism". Ultimately, when mind was exalted above matter, the belief obtained that the inanimate forces of nature were subject to the control of

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« Reply #43 on: February 25, 2009, 11:49:15 pm »

the supreme Mind, which was the First Cause. This later doctrine is known as "Idealistic Monism". It was embraced by various cults in Babylonia, India, and Egypt. In the latter country, for instance, the great god of Memphis was addressed:

Ptah, the great, is the mind and tongue of the gods. . . .
It (the mind) is the one which bringeth forth every successful issue. . . .
It was the fashioner of all gods.
At a time when every divine word
Came into existence by the thought of the mind
And the command of the tongue. 1

In Egypt and Babylonia, where inundations of river valleys were of periodic occurrence, and where, at rare intervals, floods of excessive volume caused great destruction and loss of life, and even brought about political changes, it was concluded that the old Ages were ended and new Ages inaugurated by world-devastating deluges.

The deductions of the early scientists in northern Europe were similarly drawn from the evidence afforded by environment, and similarly influenced by persistent modes of thought. They saw shoals formed and beaches overlaid by sand washed up by the sea from, as it appeared, some sand-creating source, and conceived that on the floor of ocean there stood a great "World Mill" propelled by giantesses, which ground the bodies of primeval world-giants into earth meal. "'Tis said", a saga author set forth, "that far out, off yonder ness, the Nine Maids of the Island mill stir amain the host-cruel skerry-quern--they who in ages past ground Hamlet's meal. The good chieftain furrows the hull's lair with his ship's beaked prow." 2



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In the Elder Edda the god of the mill, who appears to be identical with Frey and the original Hamlet, is called Mundlefore, "the handle-mover":

The Mover of the Handle is father of Moon
And the father eke of Sun.

This "World Mill" caused the heavens to revolve round a fixed point marked by the polar star, which was called veraldar nagli, the "world-spike".

Believing that sun and moon rose from the ocean, and that therefore light came from darkness, they concluded that winter preceded summer at the beginning.

Untold winters ere Earth was fashioned
    Roaring Bergelm was born;
His father was Thrudgelm of Mighty Voice,
    Loud-sounding Ymer his grandsire. 1

In the north it was observed also that growth was promoted when the ice melted, and the teachers reasoned that the first being, Ymer, came into existence when sparks from the southland, or "poison drops from the sea", fell upon the primeval icebergs, and caused drops of trickling water to fertilize the clay.

From Stormy-billow sprang poison drops
Which waxed into Jotun form.

The Babylonians, on the other hand, who were familiar with the part played by reeds in accumulating mud and binding river-banks, taught that-

Marduk (Merodach) laid a reed upon the face of the waters.
He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed. . . .
He formed mankind. 2



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« Reply #44 on: February 25, 2009, 11:49:40 pm »

It may be, too, that the ancient teachers, who framed creation myths and expounded local forms of the doctrine of the World's Ages, mingled at times with their pseudoscientific deductions and brilliant imaginings dim and confused racial traditions of early migrations and varied experiences in different areas of settlement. Some of these traditions may have had origin before the dawn of the Neolithic or Late Stone Age. As will be shown, certain customs, which are familiar to students of ancient civilizations, were prevalent among primitive peoples in the vast Palæolithic or Early Stone Age. With these customs may have survived in localities legends associated with or based upon them. The possibility remains, therefore, that in Persian mythology there are memories not only of an area of settlement among the mountains where severe winters were as greatly dreaded as exceptional floods in river valleys, but even of one of the last recurring phases of the Ice Age. A poetic narrative relates that the patriarch Yima, who afterwards became Lord of the Dead, constructed a shelter to afford safe protection for mankind and their domesticated animals during the "evil winter", with its "hard, killing frost". He had been forwarned of this approaching world-disaster by the supreme god Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd). Perhaps the "shelter" was a southern valley to which the proto-Persians were compelled to migrate on account of the growing severity of successive winters and the lowering of the perpetual snow-line around mountain-fringed plateaus they were accustomed to inhabit. It is related in the Avesta, one of the Persian sacred books, that "before the winter the land had meadows. . . . The water was wont to flow over it and the snow to melt." A similar prolonged winter is foretold in Icelandic mythology. According to the Prose Edda, which is a

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patchwork of fragmentary legends of uncertain origin and antiquity, it will precede the destruction of the universe by the giants of frost and fire (lightning). "In the first place will come the winter, called Fimbul winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the world; the frosts will be very severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun impart no gladness." 1

From the Voluspa poem of the Elder Edda we gather details of--

A Sword Age, Axe Age--shields are cloven,
A Wind Age, Wolf Age, ere the world sinks.

Then, after describing a period of universal destruction, the soothsayer proceeds:

I see uprising a second time
Earth from the ocean, green anew:
The waters fall, on high the eagle
Flies o'er the fell and catches fish. 2

Various accounts of universal cataclysms come from the New World. Representative of these are the legends of the Arawaks of North Brazil regarding periods of flood, storm, and darkness, and those of the Mexicans, which deal with the destruction of early races by deluges caused by several succeeding suns perishing from lack of sustenance.

The most highly developed doctrinal systems of World Ages which have survived from antiquity are found, however, in the Mythologies of India, Greece, and Ireland. There is more than one account in Aryo-Indian literature of the periodic Ages called Yugas. These are embraced in longer Ages of sufficient duration to satisfy the



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