THE BATTLE OF CRETE THE BATTLE OF CRETE - Pancretan ...

able as Europa, dates mid-seventh century
BC. There were two competing myths relating
how Europa came into the Hellenic
world, but they agreed that she came to
Crete, where the sacred bull was paramount.
In the realized that the bull must
be a god. She pleaded with him to pity her.
Zeus spoke to her and explained his love.
After arriving in Crete, Europa had three
more familiar telling, the one presented before,
she was seduced by the god Zeus in
the form of a bull, who breathed from his
mouth a saffron crocus and carried away
to Crete on his back— to be welcomed by
Asterion, but according to a more literal
version in Herodotus, she was kidnapped
by Minoans, who likewise were said to have
taken her to Crete. The mythical Europa
cannot be separated from the mythology of
the sacred bull, which had been worshipped
in the Levant. The story of Europa is interesting
because it reveals something of the
nature of myth. Even in ancient times
Herodotus recognized the story as relating
to a political act of one culture on another.
He thought that Cretans went to Phoenicia
and captured a princess, perhaps in a
bull-shaped vessel. But archaeology has
revealed the importance of the bull to the
Cretans. To the Minoans of Crete the bull
was a symbol of their religion. And the crocus
is of particular interst to young Minoan
women. The myth may reveal the transfer
of an important goddess cult from Phoenicia.
Perhaps Aphrodite, who came from
Phoenicia, is implicated.
The myth may mean that when Aphrodite
came, she dominated the Minoan religion,
just as Europa rides the bull. Eventually
the Minoan civilization was conquered
by the Mycenaeans of the mainland.. But
she does produce her effect on the Greek
culture, as suggested by the fact that her
sons become important components of
Greek religion. Europa does not seem to
have been venerated directly in cult anywhere
in Classical Greece, but at Lebadaea
in Boeotia, Pausanias noted in the second
century CE that Europa was the epithet
of Demeter— “Demeter whom they surname
Europa and say was the nurse of
Trophonios”— among the Olympians who
were addressed by seekers at the cave
sanctuary of Trophonios of Orchomenos,
to whom a chthonic cult and oracle were
dedicated: “the grove of Trophonios by the
river Herkyna. ...there is also a sanctuary
of Demeter Europa... the nurse of Trophonios.”.
SOURCE: CRETE TODAY
[cretan mythology]
MAY 2008 | KPHTH
17