#6. The Minoan Lady

In September 2015, I was for a week on the island of Crete, Greece, and visited Knossos, and the Minoan Palace, the largest Bronze Age archaeological site ¹. I had already seen many pictures of the palace on the web, but when there I was touched by the atmosphere in a surprising way. Because thousands of tourists visit this site day after day, and so many tourist buses and cars fill the parking spaces, I expected that it would become a noisy, stressful experience, but the visitors were silent, calm, and did not even talk with each other. The atmosphere was so intensely peaceful that it is justified to compare the site with a sacred place. I remember what I once read about powerful energy spots on earth, in the magnetic field of the earth, in the soils, and all the layers beneath the surface.

Monasteries were also built on these special spots. Stonehenge ²  is another example. The Minoans who lived in the palace of Knossos were highly civilised, not only rationally, but also spiritually. Priestesses were also living in the palace of Knossos, an enormous complexity of buildings with even four storeys. The Minoan Lady, also named La Parisienne, was a priestess ³ . The text continues below the picture.

Cretan Garden

Cretan-Garden

When I decided to start a webshop to sell soaps made out of Cretan olive oil⁴, herbs and essential oils, and searching for a picture that could be used for the logo, the icon in the media and blog, my thoughts went almost immediately to that one picture ⁵ that I made in the Archaeological Museum in Heraklion, in 2015. It was an intuitive choice. For me, the Minoan Lady was and is what I would like to represent in my products: ethics, values, respect, dignity, aesthetics, beauty.

It is a pity that I lost the article that I once read about Minoan priestesses in Knossos and their role in the herbal garden: only priestesses were allowed to pick the herb salvia fruticosa, or Greek sage. For that sage ritual, they had to wear a white dress, because that herb was holy. When I smelled dried Greek sage some years ago -for the first time in my life- I understood. Because of that intense aroma, I also understand why it is used in rituals to clean the atmosphere in rooms, in buildings with negative energies, graveyards, in a diversity of cultures, worldwide ⁶.

The use of soap in the Minoan Civilization

It is not certain if the Minoan Lady used soap herself. There is nothing written about the use of soap in the palace of Knossos, though the first soaps seem to have been made in Greece, during the Minoan times. Here are some articles with information that explain, for instance, the use of salt in bathing rituals:

“Before modern medicine, salt water treated patients as a healing remedy. Before the modern spa day, firm believers in its healing created the concept of therapeutic bathing. In order to cleanse the body, they infused salt with herbal blends, lavender and bay laurel leaves that extracted daily toxins. Another contribution salt progressed into was basic soap making. Dated around 2800 BC, the Greeks were one of the first soap makers who created mixtures of alkaline salts with local vegetable oils, animal fats and wood ashes to form soaps and detergents. By contrast, today an individual uses soap for bathing or personal hygiene. In ancient times, it was produced for cleaning cooking utensils, goods and medicinal purposes.” ⁷

“The oldest archaeological findings in Europe related to bathing habits date from the Bronze Age (2,400–800 BC). In the palaces of Knossos and Phaistos in Crete, the population of the Aegean Minoan civilisation left traces of special chambers devoted to bathing. Alabaster bathtubs excavated in Akrotiri (on Santorini Island), as well as washing basins and feet baths, showed how people from the Minoan civilisation maintained their personal hygiene.” ⁸

“Lustral Basins were first identified by Arthur Evans ⁹ at Knossos and consist of a sunken rectangular room reached by an L-shaped or dog-legged stairway. There is often a balustrade running alongside the stairway, normally ending with a pilaster supporting a column. All the examples at Knossos, like the one at Mallia (above), were lined with gypsum and so Evans thought they were used for bathing—a clay tub was even found in one of them. However, a few of them were found in areas of the palace; the Throne Room, for example, where relaxing in the tub seems unlikely. In those cases, Evans believed they were used for ritual purification through lustration—hence the name” ¹⁰

Additional information

1. Minoan woman or goddess from the palace of Knossos (“La Parisienne”) – Khan Academy
2. Appendix Two, La Parisienne – Erenow, Biographies and Memoires
3. Journal article – Water, Fertility and Purification in Minoan Religion – Oxford University Press
4. How ‘ritual’ were the Palaces? – The Secret of Civilization
5. Minoan Religion, Ritual, Image and Symbol – Nanno Marinatos, Academia
6. Hydro-technologies in the Minoan Era – IWA
7. Minoan civilization – YouTube playlist
8. Archaeological Museum Heraklion – Photo album Flickr
9. Minoan Art, Archaeological Museum Heraklion – Photo album Flickr
10. Herbs for health and beauty in Minoan Crete – Explore Crete
11. The Minoan Harem : the Role of Eminent Women and the Knossos Frescoes [article] – Nanno Marinatos
12. Cretan-Garden olive oil soaps – Webshop

Footnotes

1. The archaeological site of Knossos, Crete – Photo album Flickr ↩︎
2. Stonehenge – Wikipedia ↩︎
3. Knossos and the Minoan Civilization – World History ↩︎
4. Cretan-Garden olive oil soaps – Webshop ↩︎
5. Picture Minoan Lady – Flickr ↩︎
6. Salvia fruticosa and rituals – Scholarly articles ↩︎
7. Importance of salt in Ancient Greece – Greek Boston ↩︎
8. Ancient Greek and Roman bathing – Blog Stella ↩︎
9. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete – Nanno Marinatos ↩︎
10. Lustral Basins in Knossos – Odyssey ↩︎