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Aegean Gender: Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Classical Greeks



Introduction:
Gender has always been an important part of archaeology, but during the mid to late 20th century, feminist archaeologists were especially excited by the possibility of having found a matrilineal society with a female deity. While some of their interpretations of certain aspects of Minoan society, including the notions of a “mother goddess" and a matriarchy, have been questioned or discredited in recent years, there is certainly evidence for a more gender-equal society on the island of Crete. Minoan society is especially important to consider in the big scheme of things; to find a "Western" society with a looser gender structure like that of the Minoans is rare. Art on the island is sometimes reasonably well-preserved and is mostly associated with religion and ritual. Because we have not deciphered the language of the Minoans, our information about gender roles comes from the depictions of women in these frescoes and figurines. However, from these works of art, archaeologists have been able to discover that women played an important role in Minoan society. The lifestyle of the Minoan women seems more similar to gender in ancient Egypt than in later mainland Greece (See link for details). Mycenaean-ruled Greece shows the start of period of transition in which gender roles became more clearly defined and in which women started becoming more and more associated with domestic duties. By the time of the Classical Greeks, there was an established history of great gender inequality, as evidenced by property laws, house constructions, and social roles. In the archaeological and historical evidence in the Aegean, there seems to be a clear pattern of increasing repression of women over time. Although there may have been some misinterpretations regarding the role of females in Minoan society, there is enough evidence to witness a progression from a time of more freedoms for women and less emphasis on specific gender roles to a system in which gender is much more strictly defined and enforced.

Minoan gender through art and religion:
Art is probably the most important source of information about ancient Minoan society because of the inability of modern day scholars to read their written language, Linear A (See more on Minoan and Mycenaean art). Frescoes and statues found in palaces in modern day Crete provide information about religion, society, and everyday life. There are many depictions of women, which many scholars claim are goddesses. In early Minoan buildings like Xeste 3, there is indeed good evidence depictions of a goddess. The fresco shows a highly adorned woman (presumably the goddess), who is surrounded by females who are all in different stages of development. The widely-accepted interpretation today is that this figure was a goddess of “abundance and fecundity,” which would make perfect sense considering the different aged women surrounding her ( Field, 6). While there is a distinct possibility that these women were goddesses, other scholars are not so sure. Some say that these women may have been important figures outside of a religious context and that they have not been identified as mortal women because “[g]oddesses appear to be less threatening than mortal women to modern sensibilities” (Field,1). Indeed, many of these “goddesses” were deified during the time of Arthur Evans, a time before the feminist movement. If these ancient women were to be accepted as mortals, it would in no way detract from the importance of females in this society. If anything, the fact that artists took the time to depict a mere mortal woman might speak to the value of women in Minoan culture. Regardless, no matter how the frescoes are interpreted, the role of women in this society was very significant, whether that role be political or religious in nature. The fact still stands that there are “a disproportionately large number of depictions of important female figures and [a] corresponding lack of dominant males” (Field, 1). Some scholars can accept the notion of a Minoan goddess, but question her role as a “mother goddess,” as so many others regard her. Barbara Olsen cites the “complete iconographic silence on anthropomorphic motherhood in Minoan Crete” when suggesting that the chief goddess may not have been a “mother goddess” after all (Olsen, 13). Either way, this evidence shows a special place for women in Minoan society that did not exist in the later Aegean cultures.



One of the possible, but often disputed, male figures depicted in Minoan Crete is the Priest-King, which was reconstructed from an incredibly fragmented fresco (Field, 9). The reconstruction has been criticized from the beginning, as many scholars claim that the body parts came from more than one individual (Shaw, 1). These scholars claim that one of the multiple figures from which the "Priest-King" was recreated could be female because the reconstructed individual wears a headdress normally reserved for women. The figure's coloring is also curious, because the paint used to color the skin could be either white with reddish age stains or faded red paint (Shaw, 1). As women are depicted with white skin and men are depicted with red skin, the coloring is a very important consideration. If the subject of the painting was female, she would probably either be a priestess, a political figure, or a female athlete in Minoan society. According to Louise Hitchcock, “[i]t is not unreasonable to suggest that the ‘Priest-King’ was actually a ‘Priestess-Queen’ having herself depicted as a male, a bull-leaper and a sphinx thematically linked by the lily necklace and the lily crown” (Hitchcock, 81).



Bull leapers are another fresco theme in which the gender is debated. In the “Taureador Fresco,” there is a man leaping a bull and two white-skinned figures, thought to be women, standing on either side of it. The figures are wearing male clothing and do not appear to have breasts, but Minoan artists often neglected to include breasts on female figures (Hitchcock, 78). The white figures also have additional ornamentation, whereas the red male figure does not (Hitchcock, 76). This fresco was probably completed after the Mycenaean takeover of Crete, but it gives support to the fact that Minoan culture lived on after said takeover (Hitchcock, 76). If these figures are indeed women, it means that females were free to participate in the activities that were both outside of the “domestic sphere” and alongside men. In later Greek culture, women are forbidden from even watching the males compete in the Olympics.



All of these works of art show evidence for the importance of women in Minoan society. In other frescoes, women are depicted in social situations that do not relate to motherhood, showing that women were not limited to their domestic duties in this society. They probably had many options and were able to explore various social, political, and religious pathways in Minoan society. In later periods of Aegean society there is no such evidence for this apparent social freedom, and indeed there is evidence against it.

Minoan dress and physical depiction of women:
Once again, the best evidence for the way people dressed in Minoan society is art. Wall paintings have been able to preserve colors and details that would be otherwise lost (Lee, 115). Males were “sparsely clad” and usually wore little more than a codpiece, a belt, shoes, and perhaps jewelry (Lee, 116). Females wore comparatively much more clothing and were essentially completely covered except for their forearms and breasts (Lee, 116). Dress was a dividing factor in gender, because males and females don’t seem to share any similar garments (Lee, 118). It has even been suggested that women made such a point of dressing differently than males in order to highlight how they differed from the male norm (Lee, 118). This shows that, while Minoan women were perhaps not as limited in their social roles as later Greek women would be, there were still strict gender constructions. The key factor is, however, that Minoan women may have been responsible for perpetuating these constructions and may have been celebrating their womanhood (Lee, 120). Perhaps this means that females were not considered “lower” than males, as they often were in other societies, but rather just considered very different than males. Women in paintings and figurines (except for in bull leaping paintings and other such art) were depicted as having a tiny waist, full breasts, long hair, and full hips. The ways that women dressed and were portrayed in art emphasize these qualities, and some scholars suggest that the "provocative" dress was a way of expressing and celebrating women's high status in Minoan culture (Lee, 114). In other words, this depiction of women was not to objectify women or create an "ideal" woman for male enjoyment, but to celebrate the importance of femininity in this society.

Kourotrophoi and burials as evidence for transition of gender roles:
In many sites on the Greek mainland, archaeologists have found kourotrophoi, which are renderings of women and children in the form of figurines. These figurines are the only depictions of mothers an children on the mainland; frescoes, metalwork, and pottery during the Late Bronze age are devoid of such images. Kourotrophoi may have served a number of functions: a child’s toy, “votives, grave offerings, and/or household objects” (Olsen, 10). Whatever their purpose, these objects do tell us that motherhood, or domestic life in general, was an important aspect of female existence in Mycenaean Greece. Minoan Crete completely lacks these specific figurines as well as anything depicting a human mother and child. Even though the Mycenaeans were able to take control of Crete, perhaps after their society had been damaged beyond repair by a volcano (see this wiki on volcanic activity's effect on the Aegean), there is only one kourotrophos figurine that has been attributed to that time period (Olsen 11). Instead, depictions of women on the island of Crete feature them in public assemblies, dancing, conversing, and acting in religious ceremonies (Olsen, 12). This suggests that the Minoan view of women did not necessarily tether them to strictly motherly or domestic duties. It shows that Minoans and Mycenaeans “cannot be read as sharing identical gender ideologies” (Olsen, 12). Indeed, it supports the hypothesis that women in the earlier Minoan society were possibly not as restricted by their gender as to what role they would play in society as Mycenaean women were. This evidence highlights a point of transition for women and a move towards stricter gender roles. In fact, after the 8th century BC, scenes of mothers and children become very common on Crete and are probably an effect of Classical Greek culture, in which women are usually strictly domestic beings who should be seen and not heard.

Another source from which we can measure increasing inequality during the Mycenaean phase is burial practice. From about 2000-1600 BC, there is not much gender differentiation in burials, and it is a period marked by “simple, small graves” (Voutsaki, 7). After this time, however, when there is an increase in wealth and tomb size, gender differentiation “seems to acquire more importance” (Voutsaki, 17). This fits in with the usual pattern of inequality forming among more developed, urban societies. Minoan Crete was somehow able to avoid this pattern, however, and women "never ceased playing an important role in the public life of the cities" (Hooker, 1). One piece of evidence that might contradict the hypothesis of increasing strictness regarding the domestic roles of women comes from the Palace at Nestor, on the Greek mainland. Archaeologists also found linear B tablets that provided "information about an extensive labor force of both men and women, of diverse social and occupational status (Davis, 1).

**Women in Classical Greece:** =With roots in the Mycenaean civilization, Classical Greece exemplified the most obvious gender inequality of the previously mentioned Aegean societies. It seems as though Greece, unlike Crete, ended up following the pattern of increased social inequality with the rise of urban areas. Before urbanization, there is primarily the "private life," where males and females balance each other out and are therefore more equal (Foxhall, 3). When the "community" and "public" aspects are introduced into a family's life, however, more attention is paid to how male and female roles become more separate (Foxhall, 3). According to Foxhall, "[s]ince women's roles were most productively played out in the private world of the household, where male and female were integrated, it was only men who could operate effectively in the public world with its polarised and hierarchical system of gender roles" (Foxhall, 11). Women in Athens were essentially unable to own or dispose of property and had to rely on male guardians (Foxhall, 5). The exception to this rule seems to be a woman's dowry, which was often kept separate from her husband's property. It must also be regarded that "the wife had the ultimate power of veto regarding her dowry, for if she left the household her dowry went with her" (Foxhall, 17). This seemingly lone form of economic control was created in this way so that women would remain within the social norm; Greek women were supposed to be as publicly inconspicuous as possibly, and this dowry control kept the decision ultimately "out of the public eye" (Foxhall, 17-18). Unlike Minoan Crete, this Greek society shows evidence for very rigidly defined gender roles, and there are obviously not many options for women besides marrying and producing children. =

Conclusion:
 The above evidence shows a possible trend in gender relations among the ancient Aegean societies. From the earlier days in Minoan society, where artistic renderings of people and ceremonies show a possibility for more gender equality, the societies transform into a system with a seemingly more repressive gender structure. Women in Minoan society seem to have relished their femininity, judging from the way they dressed, but were also able to maintain important roles in society, including roles as priestesses, athletes, and other positions of importance. Minoan society is a unique society to study, and its gender structure is interesting and different compared to other structures.There is even an argument that women acted in important political roles on Ancient Crete. On mainland Greece, shortly before and during the Mycenaean age, the existence of Kourotrophoi point to a more rigid system of gender roles, in which women were more and more seen as domestic beings. After the Mycenaean takeover of Crete, customs do not immediately change, but with time they do indeed transition. The trend continues in Classical Greece, where women do not have equal property and ownership rights and are meant to be silent, inconspicuous figures. Overall, the evidence suggests a developing system of more and more rigid and repressive gender roles over time.