How do we know what ancient people believed?
Imagine your teacher shows you a box. Inside, there's a broken cup, a tiny statue of an animal, and a few stones arranged in a circle. "These belong to people who lived 4000 years ago," she says. "Now tell me what they believed in."
This is exactly what archaeologists ask about the palaces of the Minoans, who lived on the island of Crete about 4000 years ago well before Classical Greece and the Mycenaeans. The Minoans left no writings about their religion. so archaeologists have to work out what ceremonies and rituals took place by studying the buildings left behind.
Think about the ancient Greeks and Romans. We know so much about their religion because they wrote it down: stories, prayers, instructions. The Minoans were different, their words about their gods haven't survived. Archaeologists have to piece it together from clues to solve this mystery.
Here's a clever trick: even without writing, people show you what they believe through what they do. If you go to a birthday party, you might sing, blow out candles and eat cake. Someone from the future could work out that birthdays mattered to you without ever reading a word about them!
One scholar, Peter Warren, studied Minoan religion as ritual action: things people did in particular places, in a particular order, for a reason. A ritual is a bit like a recipe for something special.
He split them into two kinds:
Rituals of invocation: inviting a god to appear, using dance and song.
Rituals of offering: asking for the god's kindness by giving them something, such as a sacrifice.
Another scholar, Robin Hägg, looked at Minoan art for pictures of a god "showing up," which is called an epiphany. A god might appear as a person, as an object, or as a sacred animal.
Archaeologists can see how Minoan religion changed over hundreds of years. People would worship outdoors, holding ceremonies at peak sanctuaries (special places on mountaintops) and near tombs, where they poured and drank liquids together. For farmers and shepherds, the land itself was sacred.
Around 2000 BCE, huge buildings with a big open courtyard were being built which archaeologists call palaces. The rulers brought religion inside, building rooms that copied nature, adding special priests and helpers, and inventing new objects like rhyta (fancy vessels for pouring liquids). It seems the people in charge used religion to help them stay in charge, because they controlled who could enter the sacred rooms. If only a few people could enter a special room, understand its symbols and take part in its ceremonies, those people held power.
Crete was a land of farmers, so everything depended on healthy crops and animals. Crops need water, so water became a symbol of life and fertility (things growing). Many sacred objects and rooms link to liquids, and mysterious sunken rooms called lustral basins are a good example. The first archaeologists to find them, Arthur Evans, thought they were for washing but later experts had some doubts. The rooms didn't have drains, and were made of gypsum which doesn't hold water well. They would have been ruined if there was liquid in there!
These rooms were small and square, about 2m deep and you would follow a short staircase around a corner to get into it. Some were built in busy parts of a palace, and others were hidden away. At the palaces of Knossos and Kato Zakros, some sat near entrances so perhaps people were cleansed or prepared as they arrived. One idea is that going down into the room felt like a journey into the earth.
At the palace of Phaistos, the sunken rooms were built in an area that usually stored things. You had to follow a long, winding route, with walls decorated with double-axe marks and reddish-painted plaster. Archaeologists think that the winding path was meant to feel like a pretend journey through a landscape. One archaeologist, Lucy Goodison, suggests that the basin worked like a stage that goes down instead of up, perfect for a performance in which something rises up from below!
A photographer named Carlos Guarita noticed that at dawn on certain days, the sun shines through the doorways of the Throne Room at Knossos and picks out particular spots:
Winter solstice (shortest day): the throne is lit up.
Summer solstice (longest day): the sunken basin is lit up, like a spotlight.
Spring and autumn equinoxes: the doorway to the inner sanctuary glows, making a corridor of light.
Along that line of doorways, two of the opening are 20cm wider than the others. It suggests that the builders planned the Throne Room carefully, maybe so a procession could walk along the path of light.
Many ancient cultures cared about north, south, east and west. The Minoan courts were built in similar ways, and in the Odyssey, Odysseus encounters a cave with a south door for the gods and a north door for humans. This doesn't prove that the Minoans thought the same way, but it gives us an idea to test.
Good archaeologists doubt their own ideas. Archaeologists will never know exactly what happened inside the Minoan palaces, but by reading stairs, doorways, paths and sunbeams, they can piece together a thrilling picture of a people who built their beliefs right into their walls.
Try it at home!
Choose a building you know well, like your home or school.
Draw a map of it. Where are the doors, stairs, and hidden corners?
Ask: which rooms can everyone enter, and which are only for a few people?
If an archaeologist found your building in 4000 years, what would they guess about the people inside?
Until next time,
λεῖος πλόος!
Written by Eleanor-Scarlett Russell
Education and Programs Officer
Hellenic Museum
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