Text from the video:
Hi! Do you remember the last video? In that material I showed you the Mt Juktas Peak Sanctuary. A link to the video from that place is under today’s material. OK, now I go down the mountain along a sandy road towards my current destination, which is archeological site Anemospilia. Nothing interesting is going on now, so look at this Minoan sarcophagus from the Hagia Triada. It is a Late Minoan work of art, dated on 1370 – 1300 BC. You can see it in Archeological Museum in Heraklion. Now, for us, interesting is that you can see a bull sacrifice on one side of the sarcophagus. Because in Anemospilia, most scientists say, bulls sacrifices took place. Apart from the person playing the instrument, we can see only ladies here. Are they all priestesses? I don't know. One woman is washing her hands. Another is collecting into the vessel the blood of the sacrificed animal. Behind her in a processional arrangement there are few other ladies.
I must end this report because there is a viewpoint near the road. Let’s see. There should be a nice landscape. Oh! Do you see what I see? Bones. From cows. Everywhere many bones. From cows, I think. I mean - not human. Rather. And a lot of feathers. Birdies were eaten here too? Eagles are circling above this place all the time. But eagles don't seem to hunt cows. Jabberwocky!
“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!’
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!”
Do you remember the old film by Terry Gilliam? I'd better go from here because…
Signs on the way to the viewpoint. Maybe here is the answer to what I saw? My Greek is so poor and I can’t find any explanation on them. Maybe you know Greek and you can write in comment what is written on these boards?
Anyway, I'd better go on my way.
Parking space next to the Anemospilia archeological site. As everywhere in mountainous Crete, the view is picturesque. Anemospilia. Let’s go. Closed here. So we have to look for another entrance.
Temple of Anemospilia. It seems that this temple was built about two thousand years BC. And it is located by the former Minoan road to the peak sanctuary at the top of Mount Juktas. Anemospilia is famous for the possible human sacrifice that took place here.
There was a terrible moment then - about the time of the eruption of Thera, that is, the year 1650 BC. Because this year is pointed as the collapse of the temple. Perhaps there were preliminary seismic shocks, perhaps after the eruption of Thera, the earthquakes continued. So the people in this disastrous situation decided to make a human sacrifice. This place is no exceptional. In extremely dreadful situations, people did such sacrifices everywhere until the spread of Christianity. Earlier, the human sacrifices were forbidden in Judaism, as can be seen in the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, but this wasn’t common in other cultures.
Everything seems to show that the human sacrifice took place in the temple next to me. How do you know? Because it was preserved like nothing in the area. During, almost certainly, an earthquake, the entire sanctuary collapsed, leaving the scene as it was over 3,500 years ago. Let's go and see.
Corridor. The famous three entrances. To three rooms.
Let's start with this room. The room with human sacrifice will be at the end. Here, as was indicated by artifacts, bloodless sacrifices took place: fruit, cereals, vegetables. There were found bowls with some particles of food like in all other places with bloodless sacrifices.
A room in the middle. Here were pitoses and larger vessels. Clay feet from some kind of statue were also found here. The feet are larger than human feet, and they stood on a bench at the back, next to the wall opposite the entrance. There was a lot of charcoal near the feet, probably a remnant of the wooden rest of the statue of the deity. There is no data to define what kind of deity it was.
Next room was connected with a human sacrifice. Here, somewhere in this place was a table. An eighteen-year-old young man laid on it, in a pose as if he was tied up. On a young man a dagger or a spear end with the head of a boar.
In this place laid the priest in a boxer's position. Like this. The priest, considering the local conditions, was simply a giant, because he was 1.78 m tall. The priest was 38 years old. The young man on the sacrificial table had a height more typical for this region, that is 1.65 m.
The priest wore an iron-silver ring on his finger. The ring was so melted in the fire which destroyed the temple that it is impossible to recognize what is on it. Considering that the whole scene took place in the Bronze Age, the iron was probably meteoric. To find out if I was right, I wrote to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum and many times asked scientists who work in the field of ancient history but received no other answer than a hypothesis that it was probably meteorite iron. It seems to me that nobody analyzed it thoroughly, so let’s stay with the meteorite iron. And if so, this ring must have been very valuable and probably rich in symbolism due to its origin.
The priest was also wearing a bracelet - an agate seal that depicted a boatman in a boat. Notice that the rower is carved in the dark part of the agate which cuts into the light part in a narrow band. The boat, on the other hand, apart from the fragment under the rower, is located in the bright part. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
And behind the offering table, here, laid 28 years old woman. Face down, with legs apart and outstretched arms.
The woman, a priestess, was 1.54 meters tall. It seems to be quite typical for women in Crete at that time. This additionally shows how tall the priest in the room was for that past society.
Big emotional pressure of the whole situation is additionally increased by the fact that the sacrifice of the young man rather took place before the temple collapsed on all participants of the drama. How do you know this? Researchers who studied the skeleton noticed the difference in the color of the bones in the upper and lower parts. They estimated it was due to less blood in the upper half of the skeleton.
At this point, please remember the bull’s sacrifice from the sarcophagus from Hagia Triada. This image shows a priestess collecting the animal's blood into a vessel. Most researchers suggest that it happened in a similar way here in this room.
There was one more man, here. It seems he was running away. Next to him were the broken remains of the vase. Scientists believe that this vase was filled with blood – the offering was done. When the man was more or less where I’m standing, everything collapsed due to the earthquake. The rest was completed by the fires from the lamps that were here. Everything that was flammable burned down, and the temple that had stood here suddenly turned into a stone tomb.
There is one more thing. Such construction of the temple is unusual for the Minoans. Minoan temples are more labyrinthine. But there was a researcher who believes that this wasn’t the exit from the temple but that the part similar to the one at other side was here. Now completely ruined. Traces of something are here. Only they are too small to say that they are such rooms.
And there is one more thing as a curiosity, because the temple has an unusual appearance for the Minoans. The sacrificial table is also unusual for Minoans. The Minoans were wooden, and here it was stone. Additionally in this room from which I started, 2 bronze pyxis of the Mycenaean type were found. One type was found in the so-called King’s Tolos at Fourni Cemetery, and the other was found simply in a grave in Mycenae. So maybe this can be a small trace. Could this temple be connected with Mycenaeans?
The place of the drama. Just like it was, it stayed until 1909, when Evans unearthed it. It is also enigmatic, because all other places after huge earthquakes, also after this earthquake, were rebuilt, reconstructed. Even with greater brilliance than before. It was left as it was. That’s why we don’t find other so interesting situations elsewhere because they have been tidied up and rebuilt. Here nothing.
But why? This place could be connected with the community which disappeared after the earthquake. So there was no people or no more culture that would be interested in this place. Maybe it was a Mycenaean enclave that hasn’t returned. Or there was a kind of taboo, because it was a human sacrifice after all.
Summarizing. In the face of a cataclysm that cannot be dealt with, the community prepares a sacrifice of what is most valuable , that is human sacrifice. It used to be like that with all societies. In an exceptional situation, exceptional actions were taken to appease the deity. The offering was done, but the earthquake happened anyway. After this cataclysm and others at that time, society tidied and rebuilt the country. However, they didn’t touch this place. Not at all and never.
Walking through these ruins, tidied by modern scholars, an idea constantly hits my head - that aspect of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, in which God says that people can’t be killed as a sacrifice for the God. There - Isaac survived. Here - all those who made such sacrifice died. And people, impressed with the metaphysical implications of what happened here, didn't touch this place. Of course, it could have been otherwise, but I had to share this thought with you.
And above it all rose and rises the Sacred Mountain of Juktas, now with a typical Minoan sanctuary at the top.
I’d like to add that Anemospilia wasn’t left out in the rebuilding as it was generally unknown. None of these things. There was a Minoan road from here before it was demolished. The road leading to Mt Juktas Peak Sanctuary. Not a narrow path, but a clear, well-kept road that was visible when Evans did excavations here. He marked it on the map.
Finally, in order not to be groundless, that the entire ancient world did human sacrificies in special times, I have a few examples. In the book "The Golden Bough", Frazer describes the human sacrifice did by the Ancient Greeks during the plague epidemic. He also points to Plutarch who described the sacrifice of a woman in Boeotia. Also Livy in his "History" described a human sacrifice made by the Romans after the defeat at Cannae, about which you can read on the portal Racjonalista.pl. Moreover, Polish prof. Duczko said in one of the radio broadcasts that there are archaeological evidence that sacrifices of children were made during the Eleusinian Mysteries in Ancient Greece.
Humanity and our condition. We often feel as better people than these oldest people. We are talking about progress, better morality. But, as the aphorism of Lec says: if a cannibal eats with a knife and fork, is it progress?
And this is where I end today’s episode. Thanks for watching and I invite you to see other videos. If you like this content, please subscribe and see you in the next material. Bye, bye!
Some pictures from Anemospilia
I'm showing the pose of the priest found here.
The iron-silver ring which had on his finger the priest from Anemospilia
An agate seal - bracelet which on his wrist had a priest from Anemospilia.
A dagger or a spear end which was found on the skeleton of a young man on the offering table
A boar's head on the dagger from Anemospilia.
