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This volume presents the salvage excavation of a Minoan settlement
at Bramiana in southeastern Crete that was destroyed during the
creation of a new system of agriculture in the 1980s. Excavation of
the site provides new evidence for a Bronze Age economy based on
trade, agriculture, and craftwork. This publication is a test case
for a highly successful new system of organizing all the pottery
based on its petrography, sorting it by materials and workshop
practices. The results show the existence of an unsuspected large
trade network operating across hundreds of kilometers for the
routine distribution of cooking pots and other clay vessels and
their contents. The Minoan settlement used the lustrous and silky
smooth fine ceramics invented presumably in the still undiscovered
palace near modern Ierapetra; this technology would be used for the
fine Mycenaean tableware of the Late Bronze Age.
In 1962, after a period of secret looting, the location of a shrine
for the Greek Goddess Eileithyia was discovered by the police in
south-central Crete at the modern town of Tsoutsouros, ancient
Inatos. The cave dedicated to this ancient goddess of childbirth
and motherhood was excavated that year by Nikolaos Platon and
Costis Davaras on behalf of the Archaeological Museum in
Herakleion. It was filled with remarkable votive gifts including
over 100 items of gold along with Egyptian figurines and seal
stones, bronze objects, and hundreds of clay figurines. The dates
of the shrine's use extended from before 2000 B.C. to the Roman
Imperial period. Many of the clay images are especially appropriate
for this deity because they include pregnant women, embracing
couples, figures in preparation for childbirth, mothers holding
babies, and a young child in its crib. A Greek language book
highlighting the shrine and its major discoveries is now translated
into English. It provides images, catalog entries, and explanatory
texts for the most important discoveries from this unique shrine.
This volume provides a catalogue of the ancient Egyptian imports
and Egyptianising artifacts found in 1962 during the excavation of
a cave near Tsoutsouros (ancient Inatos), Crete, Greece. The cave
was a sanctuary dedicated to the Minoan and Greek goddess
Eileithyia, the little known goddess of childbirth and motherhood
whose offerings depict pregnant women, women in labour, and couples
embracing, among other motifs. The Aegyptiaca of the Minoan and
Mycenaean eras on Crete signify the political and economic
relations between the Aegean rulers and the Egyptian royal court.
Several of the objects are Egyptian scarabs, which certainly
represent official Egyptian-Cretan affairs, especially those dating
from the reign of Amenophis III to the end of the eighteenth
Dynasty. Many of the objects catalogued come from the 10th to 7th
centuries BC, linked to veneration of the goddess of childbirth and
motherhood. The volume is illustrated with colour photographs
depicting statuettes, seals, and vessels found at the site.
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