The closest and perhaps the most exciting part of the Minoan Empire to the Artemisium is the Island of Thera. It is a mere 250 kms from Ephesus to Thera. When the volcano, like 19th century Krakatoa blew its top 3500 years ago, it buried in ash (cf Pompeii) the holy Minoan town now known as Akroteri. Thus it preserved a series of remarkable murals including ones showing oared trade galleys. These murals have been interpreted with great success by Dr Nanno Marianatos and her father before her. They show much of immense artistic and religious interest. A key illustrated matter concerns women’s life changes.
It would be unthinkable that no Ephesian–Theran links existed. And indeed we have lots of evidence that they did, such as votary dedications to ‘The Cretan Lady of Ephesus’. On Thera as at the Ephesian Artemisium, priestesses and, later, Eunuch priests each went through three stages, as postulant (Kore), as initiatiant (Persephone), and then a (Demeter like?) post-priestess role. These stages we know of for Ephesus from sources such as Pliny and Plutarch. On Thera they are illustrated pictorially by such obvious devices as dress and flat chests (for the crocus-gathering Kore stage).
Small, exposed breasts and shaved or partly-shaved heads is for when the initiated ‘Persephone’ has shed blood on the illustrated butterfly (horned) altar of The Mother. This may not merely refer to a natural first menstruation. Perhaps we may draw an analogy with a ceremony depicted in the Stanley Baker and Sir Michael Cane film, ‘Zulu’. Here girls ritually deflowered themselves en masse prior to the Isandalwana battle and to marriage. The exquisite Cycladic statuettes which were usually buried with women in Neolithic times may have served a similar purpose. Such deflowering, as with the hatred of the very meaningful pig, may illustrate a principle that ‘what Patriarchy most denigrates, Matriarchy most values’. If so, we may recognize a further assertion of Matriarchal Power in female control of female virginity.
Mature women wear full heads of swept-back hair. Their costumes in particular manifest décolletage. The enthroned Minoan Goddess/Queen is attended by griffins, by monkeys and by a Kore offering crocuses, a plant used to alleviate menstrual pain.
In comparing these two periods, separated by 1500 years, we can recognize changes from mother-daughter to father-son-power. Lincoln, in his ‘Emerging from the Chrysalis’, a work on female menarchal initiation, and N.Marianatos have both used the Persephone Myth to throw light on Aegean ritual.
From the Theran murals, much concerning the rituals and beliefs of the originally matriarchal Ephesian Artemisium may be gleaned. There are numerous very interesting Minoan allusions on the 2000 year old Great Artemis Statue. Primarily, the overall noble harmony suggests an Egypto-Cretan, that is non-Greek, origin. There is a strange shape linking the head and torso of the statue. This, no doubt, physically strengthens the work, a matter especially relevant because of its massive polos crown. But, interestingly, this support resembles the shape of the famous Knossos Throne. With both works, the griffin symbol is dominant. The upper portion of the Artemis torso invites semi-inverted comparison with the décolletage of the elegant women of Thera and Crete. Necklaces of ornamental dragonflies and water birds are seen on the Theran Goddess.