172 i Flora Unveiled
been adversely affected, although the extent of the impact is unclear. Mainland Greece,
located farther away from the eruption, apparently emerged unscathed. In contrast, the
ensuing economic and social stress in Crete is blamed by some historians for initiating the
decline of the Minoan Second Palace Period, which paved the way for the eventual domina-
tion of the island by the Mycenaeans.
Just as Rome’s embrace of Greek culture reached its ultimate fulfillment through the
physical assimilation of its more venerable mentor, so, too, did the Mycenaeans’ embrace
of Minoan culture eventually culminate in the loss of Crete’s independence in the late
fifteenth century bce, ushering in the Last Palace Period of Minoan society. Under
Mycenaean domination, Greek replaced the Minoan language, and the palace at Knossos
was rebuilt with a strong Mycenaean flavor.
For the duration of the Last Palace period, Minoan religion seems to have become more
decentralized and more variable in its expression. By the thirteenth century bce, benched
shrines (small, rectangular, one- room buildings with a bench along one wall for offerings)
were located within individual villages. Such shrines often contained large clay female
figurines, which were called “goddesses- with- upraised- arms” by Spyridon Marinatos, the
archaeologist who first discovered them in 1937.^64 In contrast to the more generalized
“nature goddesses” of the ring seals, the terracotta goddesses, or priestesses, with upraised
arms of the Last Palace Period of Crete typically wear tiaras or crowns adorned with sacred
objects— birds, disks, horns, double axes, snakes, and plants— which are thought to repre-
sent either aspects of a single goddess or attributes of individual goddesses.^65
The difference in ethos between the terracotta goddesses- with- upraised- arms and the
Minoan religious art of earlier periods is profound. Gone are the self- confident exuberance
and ecstatic states of the earlier Minoan goddesses of the seals and frescoes. Gone, too, are
the stunning artistry and skilled craftsmanship that characterized the works of the First
and Second Palatial Periods in their glory days. Stiff and formal- looking, mute and expres-
sionless, they nevertheless speak eloquently of the enduring power of religious devotion.
The largest of the goddesses- with- upraised- arms found at Gazi is about 2.5 feet tall and is
known as “The Poppy Goddess, Patroness of Healing,” the name originally given to her
by Spyridon Marinatos (Figure 6.21A). The slits of the poppy fruit capsules on her tiara
(Figure 6.21B) are painted a darker color, resembling the color of dried poppy juice.^66 The
Minoan Poppy Goddess may, in fact, represent the earliest evidence for the use of psychoac-
tive drugs as part of a religious ritual and/ or healing. Her closed eyes and parted lips sug-
gest a trance- like state, while the deep creases around her mouth could be interpreted as an
incipient frown or smile, or perhaps a self- canceling hybrid of the two.
The poppy plant (Papaver somniferum) was well- known to the Greeks of Homer’s day for
its pain- relieving and sleep- inducing qualities. In Book IV of The Odyssey, Homer refers to
a certain pain- negating drug (nepenthes pharmakon). The reference occurs in the scene in
which Telemachus, distraught over his father’s absence, visits Helen and Menelaus at Sparta
to obtain information about Odysseus’s fate. To alleviate his pain, Helen prepares an herbal
anodyne:
Presently she cast a drug into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain
and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow. Whoso should drink a draught
thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl, on that day he would let no tear fall down his