Research I

Bones and Stones

Social Upheaval in the Early Bronze Age and its affect on Cypriot polity

23JAN1999



Ishtar assembled the girl devotees,

The prostitutes, and the courtesans;

Over the right thigh of the bull of heaven

She set up a lamentation. 1



A. Bernard Knapp in his discussion of Bronze Age trade and its affect on shaping the rise of complex society in Cyprus makes a bold statement, "As power created religion, religion stabilized power."2 This statement is informed by a misconceived notion that, prior to the rise of interregional trade and the power structure itinerant to maintaining the safety of the copper resources on the island, there was no power structure or religious hierarchy on Cyprus. This mistaken assumption derives from the myopic study of Cypriot society as a closed system and the continued assertion that power resides only in the economics of trade and the action of martial politics. Under further scrutiny this doesn't hold up, even if the archaeological record is sparse in suggesting the contacts with external cultures and shows a lack of militaristic fortifications. To explicate this we will look at the similarities between religious icons of Anatolian and Early Bronze Age Cypriot and Minoan societies, which argues the existence of not only a religious but also a cultural connection between them. We will also discuss the turmoil created by the movement of Indo-European invaders into the region and show how this might have affected the developing Cypriot polity beneficially.

In her ovumal 3 and highly controversial work Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe Marija Gimbutas suggests that there is a similarity in the iconic imagery of many of the cultures living in southeastern Europe and the western Mediterranean, including Anatolia, Crete and Cyprus. 4 Cultic images include the bird, bee, bull, butterfly, and snake, of which the bull and snake have specific relevance to our discussion here. The bull represents the horns of the crescent moon, which for obvious reasons is associated with menstruation and the feminine power of creation. In Catal Huyuk in western Anatolia bulls horns are displayed below the figure of the 'Birth-giving Goddess'. 5 The ubiquitous 'horns of consecration' of Crete represent these same ideas.

Bees and butterflies are also represented in frescoes and paintings at Catal Huyuk 6. All of these cultic images are a major element of the religious iconography found in the Minoan culture of Crete in the western Mediterranean. The snake, which is consistently depicted in images of Minoan priestesses as well as in temple adornment suggests, as do the others, the concept of 'periodic regeneration'7, which is analogous to birth and the power of the feminine. Riane Eisler in The Chalice and the Blade suggests that around the time that Catal Huyuk was first abandoned in the middle of the 7th century BCE, that the refugees fled to Crete and established the Minoan culture. 8 Another wave of refugees from Anatolia possibly fleeing the final destruction of Catal Huyuk at the hands of the first 'Kurgan' wave of Indo-Europeans in the 3rd century BCE brought much of these same cultural traditions, as well as their metallurgic skills to early Bronze Age Cyprus. 9

One of the best examples of these iconic overlaps can be seen in a clay bowl model of a sanctuary from the Vounous cemetery on the north coast of Cyprus dated to the Early Bronze Age between 2500 - 1900 BCE. The model depicts a religious service in an open-air sanctuary, which is 'perhaps the most precious document for the prehistoric religion of Cyprus'. 10 It is described by V. Karageorghis as containing several human figures, one of which kneels before a triad of xoana (cultic portrayals) which wear bull's masks and carry snakes in their hands. A figure that wears a crown sits on a throne before these images, probably a local chief or king. Another figure is attempting to climb over the wall to see what is happening within the shrine, which suggests a distinction between the initiate and the uninitiated. There are bulls which are possibly sacrificial, as well as women figures holding infants, which Karageorghis mistakenly posits may also be destined for sacrifice, while Gimbutas shows these 'nurse goddesses' are another common cultic image of the Old European Goddess culture. 11

Another clay model of a sanctuary from the same time period that was found at Kotchati in central Cyprus shows similar iconic representation. In this one a figure stands before a wall with three pillars topped by bull's heads while horn like projections are displayed on either side of the middle pillar. The figure is in the act of pouring libations into a large amphora on the rectangular floor centered beneath the pillars. (Fig. 1)12 Gimbutas points out that this type of sanctuary depiction is an example of the religious culture of Old Europe which shows that ritual activity was a vital part of these cultures. 13

Libations at a Cyprus Font
Fig. 1

But Gilgamesh called the craftsman, the armorers, all of them.

The artisans admired the size of the horns…

He brought (them) into the room of his rulership (?)

And hung (them) up (therein). 14



It was the invasion of Anatolia by the Indo-Europeans in the 3rd millennium BCE and the subsequent invasion of the Greek archipelago in the 2nd millennium BCE that instigated social upheaval in the region. The refugees from these campaigns were driven down into the Pelopennese and across to Crete. 15 It is reasonable to assume that some of these same refugees came over from southwestern Anatolia into Cyprus, as can be seen in the discovery of Anatolian pottery 'hobs' in the Middle Bronze Age site of Alonia. 16 This is evident not only from the subsequent growth of the Cypriot copper industry, due to the disturbance of trade routes and continental sources, but also from the introduction of militaristic architecture around the copper production sites. The increase in wealth concentrated in the west of Cyprus from the burgeoning interregional demand for Cypriot copper shows that these sites were constructed not relative to any foreign invasion, but as defensive structures against raids from the less industrial eastern portion of the island. 17

It is this rapid growth in copper production and interregional trade that Knapp believes is the cause for the sudden emergence of complex society and a managerial elite on Cyprus; although in a latter article he suggests it is the growth of plough agriculture that sows these seeds. He does strike closer at the heart of it when he connects this instead with the change in social organization from a kinship or matrilineal to a kingship or patriarchal system. 18 The Indo-European invasion of the Mediterranean and Anatolia in the Early Bronze Age was the primary force which reorganized the landscape in social, political, and economic terms. 19

During the Middle Bronze Age these two cultures stared at each other across the gulf of the Mediterranean Sea. Old European culture had retreated to the islands and the Indo-Europeans settled down in their newly acquired lands. A large part of Minoan and Cypriot autonomy was due to copper trade on the part of Cyprus and in the case of Crete the desire to employ their highly skilled artisans and smiths. 20 Even as the Mycanean warrior culture was building palaces on the Greek mainland and surrounding itself with Minoan artisans and architecture, Crete and Cyprus were becoming major crossroads in the interregional trade between the Aegean, Levant, and Egypt. These prestige items, copper, ceramics, and silk 21were the forces behind their survival in the face of the Indo-European invasion, they were also the forces which helped change their cultures focusing them on kingship, militancy, and wealth accumulation.

To view the development of complex society on Cyprus within the limiting framework of a closed system cannot account for all the possibilities that might affect that development. The archaeological record suggests that Cypriot society underwent a drastic change in the Middle Bronze Age. The Indo-European invasion of Anatolia and the Mediterranean, not administration of copper production brought about that change. To ignore the social upheaval throughout the region in the Early Bronze Age, and consequently the likelihood that artisans, craftspeople, and other refugees were absorbed into the Cypriot culture is blindness. To not see the continuity in religious iconography between Cyprus, Crete, and Anatolia, or the rest of southwestern Europe, is likely to spring from a fear of change, a change in perception about the history of religious expression. Fear informed religion; the awe and fear of the power of birth, and religion in turn allayed that fear with a reverence of those who created life.




Notes



1. Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 16. Cited in William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 197.

2. A. Bernard Knapp, "Copper production and Eastern Mediterranean trade: the rise of complex society on Cyprus" State and Society: Emergence and development of social hierarchy and political Centralization. Ed J. Glendhill, et al. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), 159.

3. I use the term ovumal in place of seminal out of deference to gender. The masculine tone of this and other synonyms for original and first (i.e. groundbreaking) continue the erroneous idea that life originates from the male germinal cell or the masculine act of penetration.

4. Marija Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 152-200.

5. James Mellaart, Catal Huyuk, a neolithic town in Anatolia (London and New York: ?, 1967), 102-3, 109, 115-16, 127, 134-35. Cited in Gimbutas, 176.

6. Ibid., Pl. 40 and Mellart, "1963 excavations at Catal Huyuk. Third preliminary report", Anatolian Studies XIV: 39-119. Cited in Gimbutas, 186, 190.

7. Gimbutas, 182.

8. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 30-31. Cited in Terrence McKenna, Food of the Gods (New York: Bantam, 1992), 123-24.

9. Vassos Karageorghis, Ancient Cyprus: 7000 years of Art and Architecture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 31.

10. Vassos Karageorghis, Cyprus, from the Stone Age to the Romans (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982), 49.
11. Gimbutas, 142.

12. Karageorghis, (1981), 46.

13. Gimbutas, 67.

14. Heidel, see note 1. Cited in Thompson, 198.

15. Jacquetta Hopkins Hawkes, Dawn of the Gods (New York: Random House, 1968), 28-30.

16. Ellen Herscher, "Archaeology in Cyprus", American Journal of Archaeology 99: 323.

17. Karageorghis, (1981), 49; (1982), 52-53.

18. Knapp (1986), 149-50; A. Bernard Knapp, "Production, Location and Integration in Bronze Age Cyprus", Current Anthropology 31: 162.

19. Alexander H. Joffe, "Alcohol and Social Complexity in Ancient Western Asia", Current Anthropology 39: 301.

20. Jeremy B. Rutter, "The Nature and Extent of Neopalatial Minoan Influence in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Worlds", (Hanover, NH, 1997 [cited 26 Jun. 1997]); available from Dartmouth College @ http://devlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/history/bronze_age/lessons/ 18.html; INTERNET.

21. E. Pangiotakopulu, et al., "A lepidopterous cocoon from Thera and evidence for silk in the Aegean Bronze Age", Antiquity 71: 428




Sources



Gibutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

Hawkes, Jacquetta Hopkins. Dawn of the Gods. New York: Random House, 1968.

Herscher, Ellen. "Archaeology in Cyprus." American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 257-295.

Hoffe, Alexander H. "Alcohol and Social Complexity in Ancient Western Asia." Current Anthropology 39 (1998): 297-322.

Karageorghis, Vassos. Ancient Cyprus: 7000 years of Art and Archaeology. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1981.

- - -. Cyprus, from the Stone age to the Romans. London: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

Knapp, A. Bernard. "Copper production and Eastern Mediterranean trade: the rise of complex society in Cyprus." State and Society: Emergence and development of social hierarchy and political Centralization. Ed J. Glendhill, et al. London: Allen and Unwin. 149-69.

- - -. "Production, Location, and Integration in Bronze Age Cyprus." Current Anthropology 31 (1990): 147-176.

McKenna, Terence. Food of the Gods. New York: Bantam, 1992.

Panagiotakopulu, E., et al. "A lepidoptrous cocoon from Thera and evidence for silk in the Agean Bronze Age." Antiquity 71 (1997): 420-429.

Rutter, Jeremy B. "The Nature and Extent of Neopalatial Minoan Influence in the Agean and Eastern Mediterranean Worlds" Prehistoric Archaeology of the Agean. Dartmouth College Hanover, NH, 1997. 17 Jan. 1999 .

Thompson, William Irwin. The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981.