A MINOAN DEMETER?
Demeter and Metanira. Detail of the belly of an Apulian red-figure hydra, ca. 340 BC. By Varrese Painter - User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2008, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3839471 In the interest of hopping a little more briskly along this rabbit hole, I have decided to use the simple quote from John Chadwick – a noted Aegean scholar – that I found in Wikipedia and move on. Here it is: The earliest recorded worship of a deity possibly equivalent to Demeter is found in Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos. The tablets describe worship of the “two queens and the king”, which may be related to Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. Apparently, the indicator is the name i-da-ma-te , or Demeter . And there is the date: 1400-1200 BC. That’s early, people. Real early. It indicates that Demeter was an established deity by no later than the Mycenaean period…and possibly earlier. On even earlier Linear A t...