A Minoan lady, dressed in a gown
of bluish-green, sits with her back to the wall of the right-hand
lower chamber, and the scale of the shrine is given by the fact
that, her seat being on the same level as the floor of the chamber,
her head is in a line with the roof beam which rests on the capital
of the sacred pillar. The remains of an actual shrine discovered
in 1907 close to the Central Court at Knossos show that the fresco
does not exaggerate the smallness of the sacred buildings. The
Gournia shrine, situated in the centre of the town, is about twelve
feet square, and its discoverer believes that the walls of the
sacred enclosure may never have stood more than eighteen inches
high. Here, again, were the horns of consecration, the doves, and
the snakes twined round the image of the goddess.
Of what sort were the acts of worship in connection with the Minoan
Religion? Sacrifice was certainly prominent, and the bull was probably
the chief victim offered to the goddess. In one of the scenes on
the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, a bull is being sacrificed, and his
blood is dripping into a vessel placed beneath his head. Behind is
the figure of a woman, whose hands are stretched out, presumably
to hold the cords with which the victim is bound. Two kids crouch
on the ground below the bull, perhaps to be offered in their turn.
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