Labrys - Minoan Civilization

Minoan Civilization

The term, and the symbol, is most closely associated in historical records with the Minoan civilization, which reached its peak in the 2nd millennium BC, and specifically with the worship of a Goddess. Some Minoan labrys have been found which are taller than a human and which might have been used during sacrifices. The sacrifices would likely have been of bulls. The labrys symbol has been found widely in the Bronze Age archaeological recovery at the Palace of Knossos on Crete. According to archaeological finds on Crete this double-axe was used specifically by Minoan priestesses for ceremonial uses. Of all the Minoan religious symbols, the axe was the holiest. To find such an axe in the hands of a Minoan woman would suggest strongly that she held a powerful position within the Minoan culture.

In the Near East and other parts of the region, eventually axes of this sort are often wielded by male divinities and appear to become symbols of the thunderbolt, but in Crete, unlike the Near East, this axe is never held by a male divinity, only by female divinities and her priestesses. It was probably the symbol of the arche (Mater-arche:matriarchy).

The bull is a symbol of Zeus and indeed the labrys is associated with an archaic symbol of the thunder deity whom Zeus and others become as storm gods wielding their thunder weapons and are found in familiar motifs of Indo-European mythology. Examples are the Nordic god Thor, who hurls his mjolnir to cast thunder and lightning upon the earth, or Indra, who uses his favourite weapon the vajra. Similarly, Zeus throws his Keravnos to bring storm. The labrys, or pelekys, is the double axe Zeus uses to invoke storm.

"Many points go to prove that the double-axe is a representation of the lightning (...). The worship of it was kept up in the Greek island of Tenedos and in several cities in the south-west of former Hellenic Asia Minor, and it appears in later historical times in the cult of the thundergod of Asia Minor (Zeus Labrayndeus). An impression from a seal-stone shows the double-axe placed together with a zigzag line, which represents the flash of lightning" states Chr. Blinkenberg Control over a frightening natural phenomenon such as lightning always has been a chief reason for propitiation of deities.

In feminist interpretations (particularly by Marija Gimbutas) however, it is also interpreted as a symbol of the Mother Goddess and compared to the shape of a butterfly rather than an axe. Robert Graves interprets it as the symbol of the moon of the great goddesses, with the two curved edges indicating the waxing and waning phases on either side of a full moon.