3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great published research on Minoan studies..., July 25, 2011
This review is from: Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine (Hardcover)
I am sort of irritated by the review left by Barnaby Thieme primarily because it is apparent that this individual has spent little time, if any, studying Near Eastern art and iconography of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age periods. Also it seems that the reviewer harbors some negative feelings toward Dr. Marinatos.
I will start off by stating that to date, it has been an extremely difficult task in interpreting the life and beliefs of the Minoans primarily due to a lack of decipherable texts. Our current understanding of them relies heavily on the inscriptions of foreign nations (i.e. Egypt, Ugarit, etc.) and also the much later Iron Age mythologies of ancient Greece. And early Minoan scholarship looked to the nearest neighbors (the Mycenaeans) for any identification and interpretation of the nation. This may have clouded the field of study and set it back many generations.
I believe that Dr. Marinatos took an excellent approach in re-interpreting Minoan kingship and their duties to the gods/goddesses; that is, by comparing Minoan art and iconography to that of the ancient Near East (Ugarit, Hatti, Assyria, etc.) and Egypt. The comparisons made it obvious that all the cultures shared common themes and therefore provided a much clearer interpretation of the Minoan lifestyle. As a result, I feel that she successfully met all of her objectives and I am satisfied with her results.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Minoan religion, October 15, 2010
This review is from: Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine (Hardcover)
Due to the fact that the Minoans left no decipherable texts we know very little about their religious beliefs. Usually the Minoans are approached from a Greek perspective, often retrofitting Greek mythology to what is presumed to have been Minoan reality. Actually the Minoans are best viewed as a north-west outpost of the Near East rather than as a south-east anlage of Europe. Marinatos presents an extraordinary tour-de-force viewing the Minoans from a Near Eastern perspective. This is the best analysis of Minoan religious beliefs that I have come across. It is not easy reading, but for anyone truly interested in the Minoans this is an essential text - there is nothing else published that comes even close. Highly recommended!
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6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A House of Cards, April 22, 2011
This review is from: Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine (Hardcover)
There will be those who don't believe one should write a negative review on the basis of 40 pages of a book, but that is how long it took me to reluctantly conclude that Marinatos's approach is so unsound that I could no longer accept her basic statements at face value. This book is like a caricature of comparative religions and its methods.
She starts with the persuasive and uncontroversial position that Bronze Age Crete was part of a cultural milieu that had more in common with its neighbors in the Near East than Classical Greece, and should be regarded as part of a "koine" that includes kingdoms ranging from Anatolia to Egypt. As she points out, Evans himself speculated on the connection between Minoan civilization and the Near East. This thesis is as old as our knowledge of Bronze Age Cretan civilization.
Her novel tact is to treat this concept of a koine as the basis for using interpretive criteria developed from the close study of neighboring civilizations to interpret Minoan art, and on that basis to derive a novel religious theory. This is an attractive program, and one that I greeted with great enthusiasm.
I was dismayed to find how carelessly Marinatos wields her blunt hermeneutical instrument, and the degree to which she lacks critical perspective on the tenuous nature of her claims, derived as they are a speculative method. I am all for speculation, particularly when we have little to go on but fragments, but we must remain clear about what we are doing. Marinatos shows herself to be anything but. Let's consider her argument in detail.
The first leg of her argument is for the existence of a kingship in Minos, which is a controversial claim. To establish the existence of Minoan royalty, she identifies iconographic tropes of royalty found in distant civilizations and concludes that in Bronze Age Crete, an independent civilization with its own well-defined borders, a highly-distinctive and highly-developed material culture, and an unknown language, those symbols must have a common meaning. If a robe with a particular sash meant royalty to the Hurrians, then it meant royalty in Minoan Crete as well.
Yes, there is circumstantial evidence suggesting that some images may depict kings, but Marinatos concludes on the basis of the koine that we have established this interpretation beyond question, which is bewildering.
Her powers of circular reasoning are extraordinary. When considering an icon of an apparently-exalted female figure, Marinatos writes that one might interpret this figure as a priestess instead of royalty. However, we must eliminate that possibility because there is, in the second millennium, no distinction made between a high priest and a royal figure - the high priest IS the king or queen, who acts as mediator between the human and celestial realm. I could not believe my eyes when I read this. She uses the conclusion she is trying to establish as evidence in favor of that conclusion.
Let us go back to her claim that, from Greece to Anatolia in a period of 1,500 years, for which we have limited and confusing documentary evidence, there can be no society that differentiates between the high priest and the king. What, then, can she possibly mean when she argues that painted subjects are kings, not priests?
What does she mean by king, anyway? Is the term not ambiguous, particularly when applied to cultures that do not distinguish between the secular and religious authority? If she is going to argue on behalf of the existence of a controversial category, should she not define it, so we know what she is trying to establish?
I made a good faith effort to get the overall gist of her global argument, but a few chapters in I was scanning every sentence to make sure I could accept her claims at face value. And you know what? Life's too short.
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