Mycenae - Religion

Religion

For a more comprehensive list, see List of Mycenaean deities.

Much of the Mycenaean religion survived into classical Greece in their pantheon of Greek deities, but it is not known to what extent Greek religious belief is Mycenaean, nor how much is a product of the Greek Dark Ages or later. Finley detected only few authentic Mycenean beliefs in the eighth-century Homeric world, but Nilsson suggested that the Mycenean religion was the mother of the Greek religion. Through the oral tradition Homer transferred the beliefs during the Dark Ages, but he kept in memory the confederacy of the Greeks under the powerful king of Mycenae. when gods walked along friendly with men, and the "heroic-age" when great heroes dominated the scene. The belief in gods as embodiments of power, the heroic outlook inherited from a distant past together with the local chthonic cults, were later fitted into the frame of the city-states and his demands into an elastic system.

From the history traced by Nilsson and Guthrie the Mycenean pantheon consisted of Minoan deities, but also of gods and goddesses who appear under different names with similar functions in East and West. Many of these names appearing in the Linear B inscriptions can be found later in classical Greece like Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Hermes, Eileithyia and Dionysos, but the etymology is the only evidence of the cults.

There are several reasonable guesses that can be made, however. It seems that originally the Myceneans like many Indo-Europeans considered divine any object that inherited an internal power ( anima). Certain religious beliefs were mixed with the beliefs of the local populations as it appears in the old cults of isolated Arcadia which survived up to classical Greece. In these cults Poseidon appears usually as a horse, which represents the river spirit of the underworld as it usually happens in northern-European folklore.The precursor goddesses of Demeter and Persephone are closely related with the springs and the animals, and especially with Poseidon and Artemis who was the first nymph. Mycenaean religion was almost certainly polytheistic, and the Myceneans were actively syncretistic, adding foreign deities to their pantheon of deities with considerable ease. The Myceneans probably entered Greece with a pantheon of deities headed by some ruling sky-deity which linguists speculate might have been called *Dyeus in early Indo-European. In Greek, this deity would become Zeus (pronounced zdeus in ancient Greek). Among the Hindus, this sky-deity becomes "Dyaus Pita". In Latin he becomes "deus pater" or Jupiter; we still encounter this word in the etymologies of the words "deity" and "divine."

Later in some cults Zeus is united with the Aegean Great Goddess, who is represented by Hera, in a "holy wedding" (hieros gamos).At some point in their cultural history, the Myceneans adopted some Minoan goddesses like Aphaea, Britomartis, Diktynna and associated them with their sky-god. Many of them were absorbed by more powerful divinities, and some like the vegetation goddesses Ariadne and Helen survived in Greek folklore together with the cult of the "divine child", who was probably the precursor of Dionysos. Athena and Hera survived and were tutelary goddesses, the guardians of the palaces and the cities. In general, later Greek religion distinguishes between two types of deities: the Olympian, or sky, deities (including Zeus), which are now commonly known in some form or another; and, the chthonic deities, or deities of the earth. Walter Burkert warns:

"To what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenaean religion is a question which has not yet found a conclusive answer"

and suggests that useful parallels will be found in the relations between Etruscan and Archaic Greek culture and religion, or between Roman and Hellenistic culture

The pantheon included also deities representing the powers of nature and wild life, who appear with similar functions in the Mediterranean region. The "Mistress of the animals", later called Artemis, who was the first nymph, may be identified as the Minoan Britomartis, and has similar functions with the Sumerian Ninhursag. Poseidon is the lord of the sea, and therefore of storms and earthquakes, (the "Earth shaker" in Linear B tablets ). He may have functioned as a pre-Hellenic chthonic Zeus, the lord or spouse of the Earth goddess. Athena whose task was to protect the olive-trees is a civic Artemis. The powers of animal nature fostered a belief in nymphs whose existence was bound to the trees and the waters, and in gods with human forms and the heads or tails of animals who stood for primitive bodily insticts. In Arcadia were depicted animal-headed gods, indicating than in the remote past the gods were conceived as animals and birds, in a surrounding of animal-headed daemons. Later the gods were revealed in human forms with an animal as a companion or symbol. Some of the old gods survived in the cult of Dionysos (Satyrs) and Pan (the goat-god).

The Myceneans adopted probably from the east a priest-king system and the belief of a ruling deity in the hands of a theocratic society. At the end of the second milemnium BC, when the Mycenean city-state collapsed, it seems that the Greek thought was gradually released from the idea that each man was a servant to the gods, and sought a "moral purpose". It is possible that this procedure started before the end of the Mycenean age, but the idea is almost absent or vague in the Homeric poems, where the interference of the gods is not related on the rightness or wrongness of men's actions. Later Hesiod uses a lot of eastern material in his cosmology and in the genealogical trees of the gods, and he introduces the idea of the existence of something else behind the gods, which was more powerful than they. This is the powerful Fate (Moira), who in the Homeric poems is acting in parallel with the gods and predestinates the events. Hesiod complies to the Greek desire of an order in the universe, and tries to bring the gods under a rule comparable to the rule which controls the lives of men. In Greek mythology this power is named Ananke (necessity).

The Olympian system is an ordered system . The Greek divinities live with Zeus at their head and each is concerned with a recognizable sphere. However certain elements in some Greek cults indicate the survival of some older cults from a less rationalized world, old cults of the dead, agrarian magic, exorcism of evil spirits, peculiar sacrifices, and animal headed gods, In the Homeric poems the avenging Fate was probably originally a daemon, acting in parallel with the gods. Later the cult of Dionysos Zagreus indicates that life-blood of animals was needed to renew that of men. A similar belief may be guessed from the Mycenean Hagia Triada sarcophagus (1400 BC), which combines features of Minoan civilization and Mycenean style. It seems that the blood of a bull was used for the regeneration of the reappearing dead. Probably most of these cults existed in the Mycenean-age and survived by immemorial practice.

A secondary level of importance was the cult of the heroes, which seems to have started in the Mycenean-age. These were great men of the past, who were exalted after death to honour, because of what they had done. According to an old Minoan belief beyond the sea there was an island called Elysion, where the departured could have a different, but happier existence. Later the Greeks believed that there could live in human form only the heroes, and the beloved of the gods. The souls of the rest were drifting unconsciously in the gloomy space of Hades. Gods and men had common origin, but there was an enormous gap between the immortal gods and the mortal men. However certain elements indicate that the Myceneans probably believed in a future existence. Two well preserved bodies were found in Shaft Grave VI, and Helbig believed that an embalming preceded the burial. In the shaft graves discovered by Schliemann the corpses were lightly exposed to fire in order to preserve them

Mycenaean religion certainly involved offerings and sacrifices to the deities, and some have speculated that their ceremonies involved human sacrifice based on textual evidence and bones found outside tombs. In the Homeric poems, there seems to be a lingering cultural memory of human sacrifice in King Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia; several of the stories of Trojan heroes involve tragic human sacrifice. In the far past even human beings might be oferred to placate inscrutable gods, especially in times of guilty fear. Later sacrifice became a feast at which oxen were slaughtered.Men kept the meat, and gave the gods the bones wrapped in fat.

Beyond this speculation we can go no further. Somewhere in the shades of the centuries between the fall of the Mycenaean civilization and the end of the Greek Dark Ages, the original Mycenean religion persisted and adapted until it finally emerged in the stories of human devotion, apostasy, and divine capriciousness that exists in the two great epic poems of Homer. It was the beginning of the religion which later the Greeks considered Hellenic, and embodies a paradox. Though the world is dominated by a divine power that the gods bestow in different ways on men, nothing but "darkness" lay ahead and life was sometimes frail and unsubstantial.