Crete-Discover the Unknown Crete

The Diktaion
Antron of
Psychro is
believed to have
been the
birthplace of
Zeus
western Crete) the honour of being the
birthplace of the Greeks on supreme god,
Zeus. In Hesiod's Theogony we read that
Cronus, king of the Titans and husband of his
own sister Rhea, devoured his children
(among whom Demeter, Hades, Poseidon,
Hestia and Hera) because a prophecy had
foretold that one of them would dethrone
him. At the birth of Zeus, Rhea tricked
Cronus, having him swallow a rock wrapped
in swaddling bands in the place of the child,
and immediately afterwards she escaped
with the newborn into the grotto of Psychro.
Fed on the honey of the bees and the milk of
the goat Amalthea and defended by the
warlike Kouretes who beat their shields hard
to cover the sound of the infant's cries, Zeus
was saved. Once grown, he killed his cruel
father (not before having forced him to
vomit up his siblings), taking on the role of
chief divinity in the Greek pantheon.
In 1900, to explore the immense cavern,
as dark and humid as maternal placenta,
filled with stalactites and stalagmites of the
most varied forms and colours, the English
archaeologist David Hogarth even had to
use dynamite to make a route for himself
through the narrow underground
passageways: there he found idols, ceramics,
cult objects, gold and ivory, seals and jewels,
altars for sacrifices and a niche that was
identified as the "crib of Zeus".
For many centuries
the grotto of
Psychro was a place
of worship, from
the Middle Minoan
period to Roman
times, and rich
votive offerings
have been found by
the archaeologists
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