Minoan Performance and Bull-Leaping

On Crete, a Greek island, images and buildings preserve athletic feats, dance, and music from the first-palace (Protopalatial) period (about 1900–1700 BCE) and second-palace (Neopalatial) period (about 1700–1450 BCE), as well as later Mycenaean rule. After about 1450 BCE, Knossos palace records use Linear B, a script for Mycenaean Greek; the earlier Minoan script Linear A remains undeciphered. These performances took place within settlements of homes and workshops, the wider setting described in Daily Life in Minoan Crete.

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Bull-leaping at Knossos

The Heraklion Archaeological Museum dates the Bull-Leaping wall painting, or fresco, at Knossos to about 1450–1400 BCE. It decorated an upper-floor room in the palace’s East Wing and is the best-preserved of at least four paintings of the same subject found there. In the reconstruction described by art historian Senta German, one person grasps the bull’s horns, a second turns upside down mid-vault above its back, and a third faces the animal’s rear with arms outstretched. The museum identifies the scene as an acrobatic sport involving bulls and says that studies disagree over how the positions fit the movement from ground to bull’s back and landing.

A smaller ivory bull-leaper from Knossos, dated about 1600 to 1500 BCE, was found with at least two other ivory figures and a faience, or glazed-ceramic, bull’s head. The three-dimensional figure stretches through the air, with modeled leg muscles and fingernails; traces of red paint remain, copper-gilt wires formed the hair, and gold foil found with the figures may have been clothing. The ivory preserves no support. Its excavator proposed that wires suspended the leaper above the bull, a possible way to stage the dynamic group rather than a surviving piece of apparatus.

Steps and audiences

At Phaistos, in the palace’s West Court, a retaining wall for the higher Upper West Court also formed eight broad steps. The area was built in the Protopalatial period and remained in use into the Neopalatial period. The archaeological description by Diazoma says spectators sat on the steps to watch activities in the court, including ceremonies, sacred dances, or athletic games. Two slightly raised processional causeways crossed the paved court, and a large staircase connected it to the palace’s monumental entrance.

The Knossos stepped viewing area, often called the theatral area, had a different plan. Outside and northwest of the palace, two L-shaped wings with wide, shallow steps met at a square space called the official gallery. The site description suggests that the royal family may have watched from this gallery while other spectators stood on the lower steps. It estimates room for about 500 people and records a rainwater channel beside the steps.

Music and group movement

The Harvester Vase from the royal villa at Hagia Triada dates to about 1500–1450 BCE. Its figures, carved in shallow relief, show men carrying implements identified by the museum as harvesting and winnowing tools; winnowing separates grain from chaff. They walk and sing to the rhythm of a sistrum, a rattle shaken by one man in the procession. At its head, a differently dressed man carries a staff; the museum suggests he may have been an official or priest. The black steatite, or soapstone, vessel was made in three pieces, and only its upper body and neck survive. The museum interprets the scene as a likely rural religious festival and suggests the vessel may have been used in that context. It identifies the vessel as a rhyton, with openings at top and bottom for pouring libations, liquid offerings made in a ritual.

A clay sistrum model from the cemetery at Archanes Phourni, dated about 2000 to 1800 BCE, shows how the instrument could make sound. Three clay discs were threaded on horizontal wooden rods attached to the frame; shaking the rattle made the discs strike one another. The model was found beside a child burial. Its rods in the museum display are modern restorations, while the three discs and hollow handle are ancient.

A clay group from Palaikastro in eastern Crete, dated about 1400–1300 BCE, preserves four figures. In the museum’s restoration, three female dancers with arms at shoulder height and palms nearly touching form a ring around a central musician playing a kithara or lyre, a string instrument. The lyre’s arms end in S-shaped decorations resembling swan heads. The group’s base is missing; small tenons on the dancers’ garments indicate that they were attached to a ring-shaped base. The musician has no matching tenon, so the museum suggests he may have stood separately. Open-bowl offering vessels called kernoi were found with the figures, and the museum proposes that the dance may have accompanied a first-fruits offering. The group dates to the period of Mycenaean administration on Crete.

Music at a burial

The Hagia Triada sarcophagus, a painted stone coffin from Tomb 4 in the cemetery, dates to about 1370–1320 BCE and preserves music within an elite funerary setting. On one long side, a procession brings models of animals and a boat to the deceased, while priestesses pour libations into a tub between poles topped with double axes. The other long side shows a bull sacrifice and bloodless offerings at an altar before a sanctuary with a sacred tree. The museum states that music accompanies these rites. Minoan-fresco scholar Mark Cameron identifies a lyre player with the libation procession and a flute player beside the ox sacrifice. A lyre is a string instrument sounded by plucking. A scholarly poster by María Isabel Rodríguez López of Complutense University identifies the pipe as an aulos, a double-reed wind instrument played by blowing through its reed mouthpiece. The two scenes show music accompanying distinct actions offered to the deceased.