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West
Wing: Cult Rooms
Plan
of the Palace showing the location of the cult rooms
in the West Wing
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Central
Staircase
Next
to the Throne Room Suite was a Monumental Staircase
(or Stepped Portico as Evans calls it) leading
to the upper storey. In fact, only the bottom
four steps were preserved, along with a column
base 1.15 metres in diameter—in other words,
supporting a very substantial column. Parts of
a similar but somewhat smaller base were found
in a spot that would correspond to about the tenth
step. A pair of doors at the top of the steps
led to a small vestibule with a single column
and then another flight of stairs continued to
the first floor. Evans restored view is show (right). |
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Tripartite
Shrine
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Tripartite Shrine lies south of the staircase and
was discovered when Evans noticed the imprint of
two pairs of wooden columns, each about 40 cm apart,
separated by a rectangular recess. Evans believed
that he had found the remains of a tripartite shrine,
such as the one depicted in the Grandstand Fresco
found in one of the rooms off the north end of the
courtyard. It depicted a structure with an elevated
central section with a pair of columns and two lateral
ones with a single column in each. Evans believed
that the recess that he had uncovered was the lower
compartment of the central cell—in this case
flanked by a pair of columns on either side. He
felt that there was only room for a single column
in the central portion and restored it that way
in his drawing (right). |
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Detail
of the Grandstand Fresco showing a Tripartite Shrine
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The
deity worshipped is perhaps identified by a number
of clay sealings found in an adjacent room. These
depict a young, semi-nude goddess standing atop
a mountain peak, holding a staff and attended by
guardian lions. Behind her is a shrine topped with
stylized bull’s horns (‘horns of consecration’),
and in front of her is a young male worshipper.
Her name is unknown but she is undoubtedly the Mother
Goddess who dominates so much of Minoan art.
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The
shrine was essentially a façade (and focus
of worship?) for the Temple Repositories located
behind it. The latter were a pair of large, stone-lined
cists containing ritual and sacred objects. from
the First Palace Period. They were replaced after
the destruction by much smaler cists, one of which
is shown in the photo (below). There
was quite a lot of faience, including sacred vessels,
plaques, and statuettes. There are two plaques,
one showing a she-goat suckling her kids (left)
and the other depicting a cow and her calves.
The theme is a common one in Canaanite ivory work
of the period.
The
most spectacular objects were two of faience statuettes.
The larger (H= 35cm.) depicts a woman |
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wearing a tall hat, an embroidered bodice (open
to display her breasts) and a skirtwith a short
apron. Three snakes are arranged about her person.
One is draped around her neck so that it hangs
well down her back. She holds the head in her
right hand and the tail in her left. Two other
snakes appear to slither down her body from the
top of her headdress, gliding past her breasts
to intertwine their heads just below her waist.
The smaller figure (H= 20cm.) was found with the
head and part of one arm missing. She is holding
a small snake in her surviving right hand and
presumably there was another in her right. Evans
found a small fragment of what he took to be her
headdress, a circular crown decorated with raised
medallions. There was a small rivet hole in the
top that matched exactly with the small seated
figure of a cat, perhaps a lioness, and he restored
the figure on that basis. He believed the larger
figure to be the goddess while the smaller was
perhaps a priestess.
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Pillar
Crypts
Further
back are a pair of Pillar Crypts, subterranean rooms
with a square central pillar, often—as is the
case with the one nearer the court—flanked by
a pair of basins, where libations were poured to the
gods and goddesses of the underworld. Next it was a
pair of rooms, one with a number of vats and the other
with a low stone ledge, which were probably associated
with the rituals carried out there. The other crypt
had a single pillar in the centre of a sunken floor.
The pillars were carved with small double-axe symbols—26
of them in the case of the West Crypt. These dark chambers
were clearly of religious importance, undoubtedly associated
with deities of the underworld to whom sacrifices and
blood offerings given.
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