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Death and Afterlife in Minoan Religion

1997; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4000/kernos.643

2034-7871

Bernard Dietrich,

Ancient Near East History

Death and Mterlife in Minoan ReligionMinoan religion centred on the fruitfulness of nature and its powers of renewal.Death was a necessary stage of that process to ensure rebirth.Did the Minoans or Mycenaeans, for that matter, look beyond that recurring cycle of life from death ?Burial practices do not contribute any decisive information on this point.The mode of disposaI of the physical remains had little bearing on religious belief: cremation or burial served the same purpose and had no particular significance in what was thought to happen after death.Nor did either method fundamentally affect the nature of funerary ceremonial 1 .In such a pragmatic vision of death as a natural stage in the repeating cycle of renewal there is little room for concepts of afterlife.The belief in a continued separate existence in sorne otherwordly fourth dimension presupposes the notion of survival in sorne form of individual identity after death.Minoan and Mycenaean iconography is not helpful on that point, or at best ambiguous.A terracotta model, that was found in the tholos complex at Kamilari, consists of two pairs of figures sitting against the wall of a portico and receiving offerings of food from two smaller male figures who stand before them 2 (Fig. 1).The setting recalls the scene on one of the long sides of the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, where the statue-like main figure of the dead is being offered various gifts 3 .Both representations are instances of a special service for, tendance of, or more likely cult of the dead.The extended festival, that is depicted on the sarcophagus, includes sacrifice in honour of the dead, gifts and libations.All of those were cornmon on such occasions from the early funerary cuits about the tombs in the Mesara 4. Underlying the 'celebration' of death with its elaborate ritual, which also included communal meals, is the expectation of renewal.