Re: Semele and Demeter

Hello Dennis,

you're right, it was John, sorry for that.

As for the nature of the supposed imports into Minoan Crete:

1.Grain: The only written documents we can read from Minoan Crete belong to
the late Minoan (Mycenaean) period and are written in Linear B - all
administrative tablets. From all I know there have never been any im- (and
neither ex-) ports documented on those LB tablets (although some jars have
been found in mainland Greece that have been produced in Crete, to judge
from the inscriptions they bear.) What we know of the administration of the
Minoan/Mycenaean 'palaces' cereals (barley and wheat) were both available
plentiful and were even the normal 'payment' for workers. One of the tablets
for Crete even gives an amount of nearly 800 tons for one place - needless
to say they would hardly need to import any grain from Egypt!
2. You wrote: >The Greek and Cretan palaces have suffered
some fairly devastating destructions both from invasions and seismic
activity over the last 3000 years<. Now the earthquake-theory still haunts
books, but it has been disproved again and again how 'devastating' they
were. Few places still hold up to have been actually destroyed by earthquake
(let alone Tsunamis which just didn't exist). Still I agree that Cretan
antiquities have suffered much more, last not least by the much wetter
climate! Anyhow - we do have lots of well preserved artifacts, a few even
from Egypt. But that only proves that there was no really big input from
Egypt at any time during the Minoan period. It's just enough of them to show
they did have contact and traded goods.
3. Not even your Levantine (it wasn't called Phoenecia yet in the
Minoan/Mycenean period) theory can hold: there are signs of influence from
Crete in the Levant (e.g. Tell el Dab'a and others) and a moderate amount of
Mesopotamian stamp seals in Crete. Scholars suppose the main interest
Cretans had in Levantine harbors (e.g. Ugarit) was to buy metals from the
Hinterland there. The shipwreck of Ulu Burun shows that in Mycenaean times
trade goods from all around the Aegean were transported equally by the ship.
4. That point is unworthy of you - since the first excavations in Crete by
Arthur Evans Egyptian art has always been on scholars' mind - and they sure
can tell them apart and they do look for them !! There is currently an
exhibition in Iraklion on Cretan-Egyptian relations to prove how much work
archaeologists invest into this subject!
5. (you second 4) The so-called tributaries have been recognized as more
probably being traders quite a long time ago. I seem to remember someone
wrote that Egyptians called them tributaries to show off... There is
absolutely no hint in Minoan archaeology that Crete has ever been a
tributary to Egypt in the Bronze Age!
And I do suggest you read some more into Aegean prehistory/archaeology
before you make any more mistakes in this field. Egypt just never stood
behind Crete, not in direction to Greece, not at all! They were trading
partners and to some degree interested in each other's culture (see the
Minoan-style wall paintings in ancient Avaris or the Sphinxes and similar
subjects on some pieces of Minoan pottery), that's it.

Regards

Sabine Ivanovas