Ideology > Cronus

Cronus

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Greek Ideology


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In this article titled, Two Knights and a Goddess: Sir Arthur Evans, Sir James George Frazer, and the Invention of Minoan Religion the author Eller attempts to dissect the origins of the modern “rediscovery” of Minoan religion and some of the elements and background that went into the early theory. Originally it was believed that when Sir Arthur Evans uncovered Knossos and the Minoan civilization he was influenced by the death of his mother and wife and thus had an innate bias when he uncovered Minoan goddess figurines throughout the course of his excavation. Others believed he had a Eurocentric bias and others believe he cherrypicked through the evidence he uncovered. Even still others believed he was influenced by the works of Sir James George Frazer who was an influential author who wrote the Golden Bough which widely influenced people of the time. Whatever the theories, throughout the course of his archaeological expeditions. Evans began to grow his fledgling idea of what the Minoan religion could have been and he centered it around the idea of a female goddess deity. After some analyzing of many sources the authors determined this was not the case and may have been more of a case of selective bias. Most of the evidence discussed in this article was in the form of references to other articles. However, Sir Arthur Evans also takes many logical freedoms when he speculates that his proposed early Minoan goddess represented an early amalgamation of later Greek gods such as Artemis, Aphrodite and others. In reality, without any written evidence it is very hard to reconstruct ancient religions of extinct cultures. Something interesting that I noted was that its faulty to assume these figurines were involved in any spirituality or religion at all. They could just as easily be dolls or toys or other figurines with a purely secular use. Its a very common modern conception to associate all artifacts with religious purposes, but if we took a cross section of artifacts from our modern society it would reflect more practical items than religious icons everywhere. In reality, we need to examine all of the evidence uncovered from these areas, as there are many male figurines that are just not given as much weight due to the bias that comes with automatically accepting Evans early theories as fact. Overall some of the ideas interpreted it that Sir Arthur Evans really wanted to attribute this idea of a mother goddess and the associated aspects because it lent to the Eurocentric bias of the time. Evans wanted to tie the discovery of this civilization in with the development of Europe as a whole. Some suggest Evans wanted to associate his mother goddess with the Virgin Mary and to provide early theories for the development of Christianity in the region. However, this is the wrong view to have, as modern evidence suggests the Minoan language may be tied more to the East and knowing what we now do about the development of civilization, this would make sense. Overall, whatever the motivations for Sir Arthur Evans development of the Minoan mother goddess as his theory for the Minoan religion he must be viewed with the historical context of the time and his theories taken into account as such. It may be wise to look at this for what it is, simply a theory and not a fact with which to hop more evidence ripe with confirmation bias to prove the point. In examining ancient religions we must be careful not to make presumptions about the simplicity or complexity of our ancient ancestors beliefs or if “religious icons” really represent those at all.