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8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
1/8
The Myth of Europa and Minos
Author(s): P. B. S. AndrewsReviewed work(s):Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Apr., 1969), pp. 60-66Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642899 .
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8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
2/8
THE
MYTH
OF
EUROPA
AND
MINOS
By
P. B. S.
ANDREWS
EUROPA
was the
daughter
of
Phoinixor
Agenor,
king
of
Phoenice,
and
Telephassa;
her brother was
Cadmos.
Zeus
came in
the form
of a
bull and carried
her
away
to
Crete,
where
she
gave
birth
to
Minos,
also
Rhadamanthys
and
Sarpedon
the elder. Afterwards she
married
Asterios
(or Asterion),
who reared
her
children.
Their father
sent Cadmos to search for
her,
but
he
never
found her.
When
in his
wandering
he came
to
Delphi, Apollo
commanded him
to
abandon the
search and
go
and found Thebes instead.
Minos married
Pasiphae, daughter
of the
Sun
(Helios);
she
bore him
Ariadne and
Phaidra.
(Also
other children in various
traditions.)
Minos
prayed
to Poseidon to send him
a
bull for
sacrifice,
but the bull
which
appeared
was
so beautiful that
he
kept
it and sacrificed another. Posei-
don in
anger
made
Pasiphae
love
his
bull;
she
coupled
with it and bore
Minotauros
(sometimes
also
called
Asterios),
a
man with
a
bull's
head.
Minos confined Minotauros
in the
house
Labyrinthos
and
fed
him
on
human flesh.
When
Minos
conquered
Athens,
the Athenians were com-
pelled
to send their children
to feed
Minotauros,
until Theseus came
with
them,
killed
Minotauros
with
the
help
of
Ariadne,
and
escaped.
These are the
essential contents of the
myth,
as
given
in
agreement
by
all the best authorities.
It is
evident at once that
Europa
and
Pasiphae
are
doublets;
each
is
a
queen
of Crete who
mates
with
a
divine
bull and bears
a
son called
Mino-. Therefore
they
are in
principle
the same
person;
which means
that their names are interchangeable, and so should be those of their
kinsfolk.
Phoinix
is
evidently
a
suitable
name for the
Sun,
and Tele-
pha[e]ssa
for
the Sun's wife
(cf.
Euryphaessa,
mother
of Helios
in
the
Homeric
Hymn).
Agenor,
however,
who
is
not
in
Homer,
seems not to
fit the
pattern
and to be intrusive.
Conversely, Europa,
whatever
it
means,
should be
as
appropriate
as is
Pasiphae
to a
daughter
of
the
Sun;
and
Cadmos should
be
appropriate
to a son
of
the
Sun.
Europa
cannot
have
been
formed to
mean
'wide
eye'
in Greek
(though
it
might suggest
it to
a
Greek-speaker),
since
e'p11s
in
such
compounds
is not elided. Since
Cadmos and Europa are both 'Phoenician', it is striking that in Phoeni-
cian,
as
in Semitic
generally,
q-d-m
and
'-r-b
mean
respectively
'sun-
rise/east'
and
'sunset/west'.
According
to Pausanias
(iii.
26.
i)
Pasiphae
in
his
day
was
a
title of
the
Moon;
he does
not
say
whether in this
capacity
she
was
daughter
8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
3/8
THE MYTH OF EUROPA AND MINOS 61
or sister of Helios. But
it is
equally
suitable in
principle
for
either
luminary.
In all known
religions
of
the
bronze-age
east,
from
Anatolia to
Sumer
and Egypt, the Moon is a male god. Sometimes he has a consort, but she
is
not
necessarily
a
moon-goddess;
at
Ugarit,
for
instance,
where
her
name is
borrowed
from
Sumerian,
she
is
daughter
of the
god
of
summer
and herself a
pure fertility-goddess,
the
type
of the divine
Bride. It
seems
perfectly possible
that the case
was
the same
in
Minoan
cult-
though
not
necessarily
in
Mycenaean,
since
the
Greek
grammatical
genders
of the luminaries were
surely
already
determined.
The sex of the Sun varies. In
Egypt
and Sumer and
among
the
eastern
Semites he is
male,
with or
without
a
consort.
In
Hatti,
however,
the
principal
royal
deity
was a
sun-goddess, though
there was also a sun-
god;
and at
Ugarit
the
sun-goddess
appears virtually
alone. Her name
was
1-p-s,
beside the
regular
Semitic masc.
s-m-s'.
This
parallelism
somewhat
recalls
that of
IE
fem.
*suwen-
and
masc.
*sdwel-.
Again
it
seems
possible
(especially
in
view of the
'Phoenician' association of
Europa)
that the Minoan
cult resembled the
Ugaritic,
or
perhaps
rather
the
Hittite,
in
this
respect.
I
suggest,
therefore,
that the
myth
of
Europa
and Minos is
really
'astronomical' and reflects
the
ritual of an
important
event
in
the calen-
dar,
the
appearance
of the first new moon of summer-most
likely
regarded
as the
beginning
of the
year.
Europa
is
the
sun-goddess,
Minos
(here)
the
moon-god,
Zeus the
constellation
Taurus,
and Asterios the
constellation Orion.
(Rhadamanthys
and
Sarpedon
are
intrusive in the
myth
as
such;
they
are
type-kings,
possibly
of Phaistos
and
Mallia,
associated with Minos in his
capacity
as
king
of
Knossos.)
The
goddess
comes
up
from
her
father's
palace
on the eastern
shore,
riding
on the
back of the
Bull of
Heaven-i.e. at the time of the
heliacal
rising
of the
Pleiades, the 'shoulder' of Taurus; and at evening she is brought to bed
in
the west
('-r-b)
of the
new moon with
his
bull-horns.
In
1500
B.C.
the
Pleiades
would rise
at the end of
April,
in
2000
B.C.
about a week
earlier.
The
myth
in
fact
is
not
simply
a
pretty
fairy-tale,
much less a
fragment
of
genuine
history,
about human
kings
and
queens
of
Crete.
It is a
perfectly practical
instruction
to
priests
and
people:
in
modern
terms,
'The
year
begins
with
the
new
moon which
appears
on
a
day
when
the
sun
rose with the
Pleiades.' In
the direct
ancestry,
in
fact,
of
the
plain-
language
instructions in
the Works
and
Days;
it
was not for
nothing
that
that was attributed to the same poet as compiled the first comprehensive
summary
of
mythology.
Of course
the
relationship
of
new moon to heliacal
rising
would
actually vary
considerably
from
year
to
year;
if
the Pleiades
just
missed
a new
moon,
as it
were,
by
the
next time round most of the
stars of
8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
4/8
62
THE
MYTH OF
EUROPA
AND
MINOS
Taurus
would be
rising
before the
sun and some of
those
of Orion. This
is
why
the
Starry King
as well
as
the Bull of Heaven comes
into
the
myth
as
a
long-stop;
in
any
case,
when
the
new moon
really
did coincide with
the rising of the Pleiades, the stars of Orion would be dominating the
dawn
by
the
next
lunation,
which
is
why
Asterios has the
bringing
up
of
Minos.
If
this
was the
basis of the Minoan
calendar-year,
it would
easily
be
discovered that
if the
moon and Pleiades coincided
well
in a
particular
year, they
would tend to do so
again
in
each
eighth year
thereafter,
at
any
rate for
the best
part
of
any
single
lifetime's
observation. The
octaeteris
seems to be an
Aegean
discovery,
not used
in other
systems.
It is
much too
crude
a
cycle
for a
precise
calendar,
since the moon is
about
i4
days
later each
eighth
year,
but it was
quite
good enough
for
the
bronze-age Aegean.
And this
theory exactly
explains
Homer's
saying
of
Minos:
EvvcAopoS
oiAEVuE
l6S
lr~d&hou
apto-r'is.
(Od.
xix.
'79)
The statement
only
makes
sense,
in terms of
the
octaeteris,
f 'Minos'
here is the moon. The sun
is
always
there at the
right
time,
and so for
practical
purposes
are the
stars;
it
is
only
the
moon
that
goes wandering
all over the
place,
and turns
up properly
or
its
appointmentonly every
eight (or
by
Greek
reckoning
nine')
years.
As to the Moon's
being
the
'confidential
ossip'
of
great
Zeus,
is the
implication
of
this
perhaps
hat
Zeus
himself,
the
Sun,
and
everyone
else can
see and
hear
what
goes
on
in the
daytime;
only
the
Moon
is around at
night
to
hear,
and
report,
what
possibly
treasonable
whispersgo
on
in
the
dark?
I
see
no
difficulty
n
supposing
that the
proper
name
or title of the
Moon became
the
regularroyal
title of the
kings
of
Knossos.
It cor-
responds
directly
to 'Son of
RE"' s the
principal
title
of
the
kings
of
Egypt, and to the kings of Hatti sometimescallingthemselvessimply
'the
Sun'. The Cretan
king
was
regarded
as
the
earthly
representative
and avatar
of the
other
luminary,
because
there was
no
male
sun-god
at
all or because
he
was
a minorand
unimportant
igure.
Philologically
he
identification
eems
of
some
interest,
since
it is
hard,
if Minos
really
means
the
moon-god,
not to
connect
it with
*mines-
in some
unidenti-
fied
IE
language.
The
accepted
view that
non-Greek
words
of
this
type
are w-stems
like true Greek
pirlrpcos
as been
challengedby
Linear B
interpretation:
f
e-ro-e and
to-ro-o there
are
really
herjei
and
Trios,
they must in fact be formers-stems.
The
interpretation
f
Asterios
as Orion
to
Zeus'
Taurus
is I
think
certain. We have
no reason to
assume
a
priori
that
the ancients
divided
the
constellations
s we
do,
but the
Bull and
the
Giant
are
surely
of all
constellations
he most
compulsive.
In the Mediterranean
hey
south
8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
5/8
THE
MYTH
OF
EUROPA AND
MINOS
63
at
just
the
right
altitude to
catch
the
wondering eye,
and are
always
the
right way
up. They
lie in
the most
brilliant
region
of
the
sky,
with three
first-magnitude
stars between them besides the
Pleiades
and
Hyades,
Belt and Sword, and four more strung round them to the east. And to a
Minoan the Giant would
surely
have
a
special
appeal-for
would
he
not
see
in him
a
bull-dancer,
with
tight
belt and
codpiece,
reaching up
his
arms
to
seize the
horns of
the Bull
and vault between
them
?
(May
it
not
even have been
this
fancy
which first
impelled
Cretan
athletes to
try
whether
it could
really
be
done?)
It seems to
me
impossible
to
accept
that Cadmos brother
of
Europa
and Cadmos founder of
Thebes can
be
originally
the
same
person;
they
have
been
confounded,
and
their
myths
run
into
one,
through
a
purely
chance
homonymy
of Phoenician
q-d-m
with the native Helladic ethnic
Cadmeios.
The
myth
of
search for a lost
god
is found alike at
Ugarit
(Anat
and
Baal),
in
Hittite
(Telepinus),
and
in
classical
Greece
(Demeter
and
Kore).
In all these
cases the
lost
one is the
spirit
of
fertility,
and
therefore
must be
found and
recovered-till
next
year -in
the
end. If
the
search
of Cadmos for
Europa
is
original
and
integral,
it
must
surely
be
of
the
same
type. Europa
is
only
the
sun-goddess,
as
such
quite
simply,
for the
immediate
calendar
purpose
of
this
myth,
but
the
functions
of
bronze-age gods
are never
as
simple
and
clear-cut
as
that:
as
a
great royal
goddess
of
Crete,
the
divine
queen
of
Knossos,
she is
properly,
if
cumbrously,
'the
aspect
of the
fertility-goddess
embodied in
the
sun',
just
as Artemis
and
her
avatars are
'in
the
forest',
and
the
oldest
Aphrodite,
sprung
from
the sea-foam on the fall
of
the
seed
of
Heaven,
'in
the
sea'
(the
exact
equivalent
of
Ugaritic
Asherah).
If
Cadmos then
ever in
fact set out in
search of
her,
he must
certainly
have run her to
earth
in
Crete
in
the end.
The
myth
of
Cadmos of Thebes on
the other hand
begins
simply
at
the point where a wandering man arrives, following or driving a cow
with
a
sacred
mark,
to win a wife
and found
a
city.
It has a close doublet
in the
foundation-myth
of
Colophon,
also traceable to
Delphi,
where
'Ragged
son of
Pot'
(Rakios
of
Lebes)
arrives
from
nowhere
to
marry
the
weeping
Manto,
daughter
of
Teiresias. The roots
of
this lie some-
where
far back in
neolithic
Europe,
for
we find
the three main
persons-
ragged
man,
weeping
maid,
and the
cow 'with
the
crumpled
horn'-even
turning up
in
our
English
nursery rhyme
of the House that
Jack
Built.
It
is
the
myth
of the
founding
of the
first
'city'
ever,
by
the
fertility god
and goddess and their magic cow; it has nothing whatever to do with
Europa
and
Cadmos,
the sun
goddess
and
god
of
Minoan Crete.
Perhaps
Agenor,
however,
was the
Theban's
original
father?
In the
astronomical
context
it is
tempting
to
equate
Ariadne and
Phaidra
with
the
constellation
Gemini,
but I think
this would be
wrong.
8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
6/8
64
THE
MYTH
OF
EUROPA
AND MINOS
In the first
place,
since Minos has the
sun-goddess
both for
mother
and
for
wife,
he is
surely likely
to have her
for
daughter
too-and so he
plainly
has in Phaidra
('beaming,
especially
of
luminaries');
while
Ariadne was clearly recognized even in classical times as an avatar of
Aphrodite.
In
the
second,
there is a
strong
hint
in
the
Odyssey
that
the
two
daughters
should
really
be three:
c~aSprlv
-rE
-TTp6KpiV
E
i
OV
KCKaAV
T'
Api&lvilv.
(Od.
xi.
321)
Procris
in
classical
myth
is the
wife of
Cephalos
and located
in
Attica;
as such she
is
made
daughter
of
Erechtheus.
Classical
versions,
e.g.
that
in
Apollodorus
Bib.
ii.
15. I,
contain
extraordinary
and
revolting
details
which seem
to have been
worked
up
from
something
primitive
to
make
an Alexandrian novelette. The
points
which seem relevant here are,
however,
that
she
was
a
huntress;
that
she
spent part
of
her life at
least
with
Minos,
as
a
rival
of
Pasiphae
for
his
love;
that
she
received,
either
from him
or from
Artemis,
a
spear
that never missed its
mark
and a
hound that
never lost its
quarry,
which she
gave
in turn to
Cephalos;
that
Eos was
her rival
for
the love
of
Cephalos,
and that on Eos'
instigation
he killed
her
by
mistake with
her
own
spear.
This
looks like a confused Athenian version
of some
originally
Minoan
(or perhaps
rather
Cycladic)
myth
about
the
rivalry
of the
sun-goddess
and Artemis for
the love
of
the same
hero. Eos is
evidently
the
only
goddess,
as
such,
who
can
represent
the
Aegean
sun-goddess
on
the
Greek-speaking
mainland. The
gifts
of Procris
can
only
be
proper
to
Artemis
herself;
it
is
interesting
to have
here
an Artemis who hunts
with
the
spear,
as in
Minoan-Mycenaean
art,
instead
of the
bow.
This is
only
one
example
of
a
myth-theme
which
appears
again
and
again
in
Crete,
the
Cyclades,
and
the Saronic
gulf.
There are
two
ver-
sions.
More
often,
the
rejected goddess
kills her successful rival-who
must therefore
appear
as
a
mortal heroine
(e.g.
Artemis-Procris
here);
her
killer
may
also
do
so,
or
may
retain
her divine
identity.
Less
often,
she
kills the hero
himself;
in
this
case both
goddesses appear
as
such.
The
really
strange
feature
is that
the
goddesses
are
always
two
out of
the
Od.
ix.
321
triad-Sun,
Artemis,
Aphrodite-but
they may
be
any
two,
and either
may play
either role.
Two
fragmentary
versions
appear
in
Od.
xi.
322-5, perhaps incorrectly
welded
together.
First
we
are
told
that Theseus would
lead Ariadne to
Athens,
but never
enjoyed
her ..
.;
the
completion
of
this,
in
classical
Athenian tradition, is that he deserted her in Naxos and took Phaidra
in
her
place-for
which,
in
Euripides'
Hippolytos,
Aphrodite
duly
in
effect
kills
Phaidra.
Then we
are told:
'for Artemis slew
Ariadne
in
Dia,
on
the
evidence
of
Dionysos.' Dionysos
here
is the Cretan Master
of
Animals,
perhaps
hero rather than
god,
and
in
the Athenian
myth
he
8/17/2019 Andrews, 1969, The Myth of Europa and Minos (1)
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THE MYTH OF EUROPA AND MINOS
65
finds
Ariadne
in
Naxos,
deserted
by
Theseus,
and takes her for wife.
Presumably
in the
original
Cretan
myth
he boasted of this to his
rightful
mistress
Artemis,
who then
killed Ariadne.
(Notice
that Dia
perhaps
corresponds to Dione, in Homer mother of Aphrodite, as do Cythera and
Cyprus
to
her usual
titles;
in these
myths
she is
always fundamentally
a
sea-goddess.)
A
Corinthian
version
appears,
much
disguised,
attached
to
Jason
in
Euripides'
Medea. Medea is the
sun-goddess
(granddaughter
of
Helios,
her
father,
like
Europa's,
lord
of
the eastern
shore),
Glauce
lady
of
Corinth
is
Aphrodite
with an
epithet
of the sea for
name;
so the Athen-
ian
roles of Phaidra and Ariadne are reversed.
The
simplest
version
of the other form
belongs
to Delos: Orion the
hunter deserted Artemis for Eos, for which Artemis killed him. This
reverses
the Athenian roles of Procris and Eos. Whether
Orion the
hunter
is
yet
to
be identified with the constellation
is not
clear,
but
in
the
bewildering
kaleidoscope
of
shifting
personalities
among
these
Aegean
gods
it
is
quite possible.
The
Master
of
Animals lurks behind
Cephalos
and
Dionysos
and,
in
some Procris
versions,
Minos
himself,
so
he
may
well do
so
behind
Asterios as
well.
The
original
Troezene version was
presumably
that
Hippolytos
de-
serted
Aphrodite
for
Artemis,
and
Aphrodite
herself sent the sea-monster
to kill him. But Euripides, who was clearly fascinated by the permuta-
tions of this
myth,
has
deliberately
welded
this
and the Theseus version
together
(with
the
Potiphar's
Wife
theme thrown
in for
good
measure)
so that
Aphrodite-Ariadne
takes
simultaneous
revenge
for her
wrongs
on
Sun-Phaidra
and
Theseus,
Artemis and
Hippolytos
all
together.
Only
Dionysos,
in
an Athenian
tragedy,
is
beyond
her
power-but
he at least
did
prefer
her,
even
if he afterwards
betrayed
her.
Doubtless other
versions
may
still be
found,
or
once existed.
The
theme
perhaps
contributed
something
to
the
Judgement
of
Paris,
but
in
that all three goddesses
improperly
appear
together, and the Sun and
Artemis have been
replaced
by
the
Mycenaean royal
goddesses,
Hera
Queen
of Heaven
and
Athene
the
shield-goddess.
This curious
myth-complex
is
perhaps
of little
interest
in
itself,
but
I
have discussed it
at
some
length
as evidence for the cult of
a
prehellenic
sun-goddess
in
the
presumed
area of
the
Minoan
'empire'-Crete,
the
Cyclades,
Attica,
and the Saronic
gulf.
I
have
found no variant in
the
Mycenaean
Peloponnese,
as
yet.
One
remaining
feature of the
Pasiphae
version of
Europa
is
worth
noticing.
It is clear that this is in fact an Athenian distortion of the true
Cretan
myth,
almost a deliberate
parody, inspired by
a
hostility
to
'Minos'
with
its
roots
deep
in
immemorial folk-tradition. How far its
details are the deliberate invention of
tragedians
is hard to tell
(but
surely
3871.1
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8/8
66
THE MYTH OF EUROPA
AND
MINOS
at least the
wooden
cow?);
but
there seems
no
reason to
doubt that at
some remote
period
Athens
was
subject
to
kings
of Knossos
and was
compelled
to
supply young
athletes,
of
both
sexes,
to
be trained
for
the
bull-dance. But this does not in itself explain the substitution of Posei-
don
for Zeus
as
god
of the sacred
bull,
nor
the
motif
of
Minos'
cheating
over
the
sacrifice.
I have
already
pointed
out
(Greece
&
Rome,
N.S.
xii,
no.
I
[1965])
that
exactly
the same theme
of Poseidon's
anger
at
being
cheated of his due
by
a
king
is
found
in
the
myth
of Laomedon of
Troy,
and that there it
can
be
confidently
connected with
a
genuine
tradition
of the
Troy
VI
earthquake.
Here
the
implication
is
surely
the same. But the tradition
is distorted
or
disarranged
as
we
have it-it
hardly
makes sense to make
the Athenian tribute to the cruel Minotaur the result of a disastrous
earthquake
in
Crete
itself,
which
would
surely
be
rather the
occasion for
Athens
to revolt and end it.
And
in
any
case
Knossos
seems
to have had
so
many
great earthquakes
that
there
is no
way
of
linking
the Athenian
tradition
with
any particular
one. All we
can
say
is
that
Athens
always
remembered
a
great
Cretan
earthquake,
and
mixed
it
up
inextricably
with the
Minotaur tradition
since
it too
went
to
prove
how
very
wicked
Minos
was. What
Minos
really
did
to
enrage
the
Earthshaker was
of
course
unknown,
but
it was safe to assume
with him that
it would be
something
to do with
bull-sacrifices,
and would
certainly
be
something
both
as mean
and as
stupid
as it was
wicked.
VERSION
Mr.
JonesI
'There's been an accident 'they said,
'Your servant's
cut
in
half;
he's
dead '
'Indeed '
said
Mr.
Jones,
'and
please
Send me the
half that's
got
my
keys.'
HARRY GRAHAM
'Accipe,
vera
loquor,
caedem,
Damasippe,
cruentam;
'Membra
iacent
famuli
dimidiata
ui '
Nuntius
haec.
dominus
dictis
immobilis,
'esto:
Quae
retinet claves
pars
referenda
meas '
HERBERT
H.
HUXLEY
x
Mr.
Jones
is
reprinted
from
Ruthless
Rhymes
for
Heartless
Homes
by
Harry
Graham,
by
kind
permission
of
the
publishers,
EdwardArnold
Ltd.