The scrivener continued. “When the Minoans first started ritualizing the liaison of the goddess and her consort, a human youth would have been chosen as the personification of the year god. He might have spent some time in this cave undergoing a symbolic birth into his role as a nature deity. During the time of his reign, he would have been treated like a god. At some point in the year, he would have mated with the high priestess as she acted the role of the goddess. Their union would guarantee the fertility of the land. At harvest time, the youth may have been sacrificed.”
“You mean sacrificed as in murdered?” Cassie shook her head. She couldn’t reconcile the playful artwork of the Minoans with the idea that they were capable of blood rites.
“The sacrifice of the year god was a practice shared by many ancient cultures and may go back as far as the Paleolithic era. In fact, Christian religion is based on the same idea. Jesus sacrificed himself for the sake of his people and then was resurrected. Lest you think too badly of the Minoans, however, it does appear that they came to substitute an animal as the ritual victim instead. I believe that’s why bull sacrifice became so prominent in Crete. The bull is the offspring of a cow. He is sacred because he bears the bucranium, the symbol of the goddess’s regenerative powers. Therefore, he becomes an appropriate metaphor for the sacrifice of the year god.”
“What’s all this got to do with Zeus?” Cassie asked abruptly, bringing the conversation full circle.
“It was a way for the invaders to interject their own principal deity into the mythology of the native people. They said their thundering sky god was really the year god of the Minoans which made it easier for the local people to accept him.”
The pythia laughed humorlessly. “Who would be stupid enough to fall for that idea?”
“Given a long enough period of indoctrination, it’s quite an effective ploy. The same maneuver was used successfully by the Catholic Church to convert goddess-worshipping pagans to Christianity. The Celts in Ireland were resistant to conversion until some enterprising missionary explained to them that the Virgin Mary was really their great goddess is disguise. The misogynistic church fathers would never have actively promoted the divinity of Mary if it hadn’t won them new converts.”
Cassie once more looked around to see what Erik was doing. The security coordinator was now searching the other half of the chamber and was still oblivious to their dialogue.
The pythia was quiet for several moments, weighing everything Griffin had told her about the legend of Zeus’s birth. Something still didn’t add up. “You said this Minoan consort god died at the end of each year. I always heard that Zeus was immortal and all-powerful.”
Griffin nodded approvingly. “You’re quite right to point out the inconsistency. The Hellenes found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, or perhaps a cave and a hard place. They wanted to fit their deity into Minoan mythology, but that meant they had to accept his mortality. They resolved the problem by going into a state of denial and conveniently forgetting to tell that part of the story. The new version of the myth, minus the death of Zeus, was repeated often enough and long enough that it eventually came to be accepted as fact. By 600 BCE, Epimenides of Knossos, a Cretan himself, wrote a poem in defense of the immortality of Zeus and chastised his fellow countrymen for daring to say otherwise. He wrote, ‘All Cretans are liars.’”
Cassie chuckled in spite of herself. “And I thought brainwashing was a twentieth century invention.”
Erik rejoined them. “While you two were yakking, I covered the entire room. There’s nothing here. Let’s go.”
Chapter 36 – Cryptic
By the time the trio had climbed out of the cave and back down the mountain, it was mid-afternoon. Cassie and Griffin insisted they stop for a brief lunch at one of the tavernas at the base of the trail before continuing onward to Karfi. Erik’s look of contempt spoke volumes, but he offered no objection. He even condescended to order a bowl of soup for himself.
A half hour later, somewhat less hungry and irritable, they all piled back into the car to continue their journey. Fortunately, the ruins of Karfi were only a short distance from Psychro. Just outside the town of Tzermiado, Erik unaccountably pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked it. Cassie looked out the window. They were nowhere near the ruins.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.
“We have to hike to the top from here. There aren’t any roads, and the foot trails aren’t marked too well either.”
The three got out of the car while Erik retrieved his back pack from the trunk. This time, he reached inside and brought out a trail map which he handed to Griffin.
“Oh, I see,” the scrivener said, squinting first at the map and then at the mountain.
Cassie walked up to him and raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Care to explain it to me, then?”
“Unlike all the other villages we’ve seen, Karfi is located some distance above the plateau. It lies in the saddle between two mountain peaks which means we have quite a climb ahead of us.”
Erik looked at his watch. “It’s going to take us close to an hour to get there. I don’t want to have to navigate these trails after dark, so we’d better get going now.”
He hoisted the pack on his back and walked toward a trail marker.
The other two fell in behind him.
“So Karfi was the end of the line for the Minoans?” Cassie asked Griffin.
He nodded. “Sadly, yes. The Dorian invasion spelled the demise of their civilization in the lowland areas of the island. To their credit, the Minoans tried to carry on and maintain their traditional culture after the collapse. They
