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The Sacred Grove

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

K. D. White
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Extract

Students of comparative religion have long been familiar with the evidence furnished by ancient Mediterranean myth and ritual pointing to the existence of a common fund of religious experience amongst the early civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East. In spite of wide divergences between the views of anthropologists of the extreme diffusionist and anti-diffusionist schools, there has in the last twenty-five years or so been a decided reaction in favour of the historical method in this field of study, and there appears to be general agreement that a common culture-pattern, embodied in a common fund of myth and ritual, existed in Egypt, Babylonia, and Palestine. This hypothesis of a common pattern is supported by an ever-increasing volume of archaeological evidence. Routes of migration of peoples and commercial and other cultural contacts indicate a complex interchange of ideas between the Near East and the Mediterranean region generally. Of cardinal importance for the understanding of these mutual relations in early times are the discoveries in Crete, where evidence of extensive cultural relations with the Orient and Egypt, as well as with the mainland of Greece, has come to light.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , October 1954 , pp. 112 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1954

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References

page 112 note 1 For a general survey of the question see Hooke, S. H., ‘The Myth and Ritual Pattern of the Ancient East’ in Myth and Ritual (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar; and, for a full and up-to-date bibliography, Picard, Ch., Les Religions préhelléniques (Paris, 1948), 95 ff.Google Scholar

page 112 note 2 On the contacts between Asia, Egypt, and Crete see Evans, , The Palace of Minos (London, 1936), ii. 2Google Scholar, and, for a full account, Demargne, P., La Crète dédalique (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar, emphasizing the importance of contacts between Crete and Mesopotamia.

page 112 note 3 See Glotz, G., La Civilisation égéenne2 (Paris, 1937), 474–85.Google Scholar

page 113 note 1 Op. cit.

page 113 note 2 The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 2 (Lund, 1950), containing an exhaustive survey of the monuments of Cretan cult.

page 113 note 3 For a good account of the popular religion of Greece see Nilsson, M. P., Greek Popular Religion (New York, 1940).Google Scholar

page 114 note 1 Evans (J.H.S. xxi (1901), 200) pointed to a remarkable survival of the pillar cult in a remote area of Macedonia; see below, p. 118. See also Lawson, J. C., Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1910).Google Scholar

page 114 note 2 Numbers xxi. 16–17.

page 114 note 3 Viii. 3. 12.

page 114 note 4 Religion of the Semites 3 (London, 1927), 102 ff.

page 115 note 1 Genesis, xxviii. 10–22.Google Scholar

page 115 note 2 Genesis, xviii. 1–8.Google Scholar

page 115 note 3 Sozomenos, , Historia Ecclesiastica, ii. 4Google Scholar, quoted by Frazer, , Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), iii. 59 ff.Google Scholar

page 116 note 1 Persson, A. W., The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times (Berkeley, 1942).Google Scholar

page 116 note 2 The Golden Bough, pt. iv (London, 1907).

page 116 note 3 The affinities of the Cretan Lady of Wild Things or Mistress of Animals with the coasts of Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine are well attested. Apart from the Astarte myth we have from Ras Shamra a fine ivory pyxis depicting the goddess in Minoan sacred dress flanked by animals heraldically disposed (illustrated in Schaeffer, C. F. A., Ugaritica (Paris, 1939)Google Scholar, frontispiece and Plate xi). In general see Dussaud, R., Les Découvertes de Ras Shamra et l'ancien Testament (Paris, 1941).Google Scholar

page 117 note 1 Such an interchange of religious cults would be the natural result of the widespread cultural contacts now firmly established by archaeological evidence: ‘It seems that we must now admit that the entire Eastern Mediterranean during the third and second millenia b.c. was an area of free movement of ideas’ (Picard, op. cit. 99).

page 117 note 2 ‘Tree and Pillar Cult’, J.H.S. xxi (1905), 100. Recently Picard and others have reacted strongly against the negative view of Nilsson in favour of Evans's hypothesis: see Persson, A. W., op. cit. 7, 32 f.Google Scholar; 63, fig. 15. The pillar may from time to time have replaced the human form of the deity.

page 118 note 1 1 Kings xv. 14.

page 118 note 2 Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), ii. 72 if.

page 118 note 3 iii. 22. 12.

page 118 note 4 On the prominence of this cult in Arcadia see Farnell, L. R., Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1907), ii. 429Google Scholar, and references cited there.

page 119 note 1 Farnell, , op. cit. i. 205 f.Google Scholar, and references cited there.

page 119 note 2 Ibid. iv. 148.

page 119 note 3 Greek Popular Religion (New York, 1940), 8.

page 123 note 1 In the grotto at Arkalochori Marinatos discovered a large stalagmite surrounded by votive offerings including clay vessels, and small double axes. See Musson, M. P., Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 2, 60 f.Google Scholar

page 123 note 2 Ezekiel, xx. 28.Google Scholar

page 123 note 3 Deut. xii. 2–3.

page 124 note 1 e.g. Judges iv. 5 (Deborah); I Sam. xxii. 6 (Saul).

page 124 note 2 Folk Lore in the Old Testament (London, 1918), iii. 62 ff.

page 124 note 3 Cato, , R.R. 139.Google Scholar

page 124 note 4 Essay VI, ‘Early Hebrew Festival Rituals’, in Hooke, S. H., op. cit. 111 ff.Google Scholar

page 125 note 1 Hooke, , op. cit. 124.Google Scholar

page 125 note 2 Op. cit. 140, and references cited there.

page 125 note 3 lxii. 4.

page 125 note 4 As his titles Nomios (He of the Pastures) and Lykeios (Lord of Wolves) would suggest.

page 126 note 1 St. Francis of Assisi, Hymn to the Sun.