Jacquetta Hawkes - Research Into Minoan Civilization

Research Into Minoan Civilization

In her general work on the Minoans (Dawn of the Gods, 1968), Hawkes was one of the first archaeologists to suggest that the ancient Minoans might have been ruled by women; the idea had been discussed long before by historians of culture and religion (for instance Joseph Campbell), and outside of the academic community, sometimes by feminists. Hawkes noted that very little if any evidence of a Minoan male ruler exists, whereas abundant evidence of such rulers existed among the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians and other Minoan contemporaries. Furthermore, images of strong and powerful women abound in Minoan art, where both men and women are shown provocatively and elegantly dressed and in some pictures seem to move on equal terms; whereas in Egyptian, Assyrian and classical Greek art, human women (as distinct from goddesses) are never shown as the equals of males. Hawkes stated that "the absence of these manifestations of the all-powerful male ruler that are so widespread at this time and in this stage of cultural development as to be almost universal, is one of the reasons for supposing that the occupants of Minoan thrones may have been queens" (Dawn of the Gods, page 76).

She also noted the evident love of nature, both wild and cultivated, in Minoan art and architecture, the lack of a striving for monumentality in the palaces and the absence of war and motives dramatizing a sense of destiny, guilt and brooding in Minoan art, as opposed to the heavy, foreboding and warlike architecture of Mycenae and the strong presence of themes of fate, martial heroism and moral guilt in later Greek mythology, some of the stories of which must, in an early form, already have existed at Mycenae (as well as similar motives in Babylonian literature, e.g. in the Gilgamesh epic). Although we do not know anything of the specific content of Minoan myth and folklore, themes of the kind mentioned - war, destiny, guilt, curses - do not even seem to be alluded to in the art of the period, as also noted by Hawkes. This perspective on the differences between Crete and Mycenaean Greece has remained controversial but has also spurred discussion about Minoan Crete, its religion, the nature of its monarchy and the wider set of relations between Minoan, Mycenaean and later Greek cultures.