Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

53^ The double axe in relation to horns
An earlier^ shrine of somewhat similar character was discovered
by Miss H. A. Boyd, now Mrs Boyd-Hawes, at Gournia in eastern
Crete^. Here too was a low earthen tripod thinly coated with plaster,
'four cultus vases bearing symbols of Minoan worship, the disk,
consecrated horns and serpent, a terra-cotta female idol entwined
with a snake, two heads of the same type as the idol, several small
clay doves and serpents' heads, all of coarse terra cotta, and a fragment
of a pithos, on which a double-ax and disk are modeled
in reliefs'
The horns that appear so frequently in connexion with the double
axe are in all probability bovine. An agate intaglio from Knossos,
belonging to the 'Late Minoan' period, shows a double axe rising
between the curved horns of a bull's head (fig. 407)'*. A lentoid
sardonyx from the Argive Heraion, now in the Schliemann collec-
tion at Berlin, is engraved with a similar design (fig. 4o8)''. In the
fourth shaft-grave at Mykenai were found about fifty-six specimens
of bull's head-and-axe cut out of gold plate; some of these had a
double axe of normal shape (fig. 409 a, by ;
others had its blades
duplicated (fig. 409 c, d)\ Finally, a Mycenaean krata^irova Salamis
in Kypros (Enkoini), preserved in the British Museum*, is decorated
' Sir A. J. Evans in the Ann. Brit. Sch. Aih. 1901— 1902 viii. 105 says ' of still later
date,' but ib. 1902— 1903 ix. 84 n. i 'perhaps contemporary (as most of the remains at
Gournia) with the First Period of the Later Palace at Knossos.' See also R. M. Dawkins
ib. 1903— 1904 X. 195.
2 H. A. Boyd-Hawes, B. E. Williams, R. B. Seager, and E. H. Hall Gournia,
Vasiliki and other prehistoric sites on the Isthnuis of Hierapetra., Crete Philadelphia 1908.
* H. A. Boyd in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian
Institution for 1903— 1904 Washington 1905 p. -170. See also C. H. & H. Hawes Crete
the Forerunner of Greece London— New York 1909 pp. 93, 97
Archeology London 1915 p. 155 fig. 55, D. A. Mackenzie Myths of Crete