Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

532
The double axe in relation
precedent in an archaeologist's experience. But beyond a certain point the
niches proved empty, and the icy water too deep to be dredged, and by the
evening of the 14th there was no more to be done.'
The existence of wooden and stalactite columns into which axes
were, so to speak, hafted throws light on another group of 'Minoan'
monuments. Already in 1900 Sir A. J. Evans had drawn attention
to two small chambers in the palace at Knossos, each of which
contains a central pillar formed of four square gypsum blocks and
Fig. 402.
Fig. 403.
repeatedly engraved with the sign of the double axe (fig. 402)'.
Commenting with great acumen on that signature he had said
'There can, I venture to think, belittle doubt that these chambers are shrines,
probably belonging to the oldest part of the building, and the pillars thus marked
with the sign of the God are in fact his aniconic images... It will be shown from
a variety of evidence that the most typical form of the Mycenaean sacred pillar
is represented as actually performing a structural function, and is in fact a "Pillar
of the Housed."'
1 .Sir A. J. Evans in the Ann. Brit. Sch. Ath. 1899— 1900 vi. 32— 34 fig. 6. Figs. 402
and 403 are from photographs taken by me in i9or. The latter shows an interesting
block, in the palace wall, with a trident incised on the top of a double axe (' Middle
Minoan iii ' : Sir A. J. Evans ib. (903— 1904 x. 28).
^ Sir A. J. Evans in ihtjoiirn. Hell. Sited. 1901 xxi. iii fig. 5.