So my wife and I had our honeymoon on Crete recently and in the museum of Heraklion we saw her:
I am obsessed!
What do you mean there was a possible Goddess of nature AND cats AND snakes and no one told me about this before??
So basically the Minoan civilization was one of the first civilisations in Europe and we know very little about them and what we know of them comes largely from the fact they were really talented artists, to the point where they have been hired by the Egyptian Pharos. They had a lot of cults on the Greek island Crete and built big labyrinth like "Palaces" there, which we by now know, probably weren't palaces at all. Most often they are assumed to have been temples, but it is subject of ongoing debate. Unrelated to the snake goddess (probably?) they found a cave on Crete filled with double edged axe heads of varying sizes, probably for religious reasons(?) because some of these sizes don't make sense as weapons or tools.
Why did Greek mythology tumblr not tell me about this?
Anyway I bought myself a tiny figure and a T-Shirt (picture below) of the snake goddess and am planning to become a collector of her merchandise now.
Anyway, I have been reading up on the Minoan culture on wiki and I advise other history or mythology nerds to do the same.
