Nearly Five thousand years ago in the late third millennium BCE, a flourishing Minoan civilization was entering the Bronze Age on the Aegean island of Crete and the smaller islands in the vicinity, like Thera to the north. Located in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, Crete linked the cultures and peoples from all three Mediterranean continents – Europe, Africa, and Asia. Crete’s particularly strategic position in the Mediterranean nurtured a remarkable and illustrious Grecian society (funk). Minoan civilization was characterized by impressive lithic structures, advanced cultural sophistication, technological progress, and stunning arts and crafts in the forms of ornately painted ceramics and palace frescos, as well as stone carvings. According …show more content…
Fresco wall art reflected the political and cultural attitudes of the time and show that women played a significant, if not binding, role in the structure of Minoan civilization (Olsen 388); Pithoi excavated from Neopalatial palaces point to the use of palaces as storage facilities for local production, as well as imports and exports; multiple-story construction and large open courtyards arguably demonstrate that communal behaviors were also taking place in the palaces. Minoan palatial complexes, distinguished by such architectural masterpiece as the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Zakros, operated as regional centers of economic and political power (Knappet …show more content…
(Olsen 388) Idealizing women as child-nurturers was of almost no interest to Minoan Crete. Instead, women of Minoan iconography are almost uniformly depicted outside of domestic contexts (Olsen 380), they occupy prominent spatial positions outdoor assemblies and processions, interact with each other either in conversation or in dance, and act in religious contexts either as individual worshippers or as officials involved in sacrificial rituals (Olsen 390). Above all, emphasis is on the social rather than the biological, the public rather than the domestic, women were assigned power and status (Olsen 382). Scenes reflecting a thematically unified program of a great goddess, her mythological underpinnings, and the festival of her fertility are illustrated in Minoan frescoes. Women were portrayed in cult scenes, seen guiding people through ritual behavior, and believed to be able to secure the divine presence and give permanence to ritual (Gates