Footnotes :  

165 Sarah P. Morris: “Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art“, cited above, pages 180 and 181.
 

166 Sarah P. Morris: “Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art“, Princeton University Press, 1992, chapter 6: “Daidalos in Crete”, subchapter “Minos and Moses”, pages 172-194, see pages 180 and 181.
 

167 John Chadwick: “The Mycenaean World” (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1980, page 100.
 

168 Mircea Eliade: “Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth”, 1958, edition consulted Harper and Row, New York, 1975, page 3.
 

169 Erich Neumann: “The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype”, 1955, translation consulted Princeton University Press, 1974, page 175; see also Mircea Eliade: “Patterns in Comparative Religion”, 1958, edition consulted New American Library, New York, 1974, pages 380 to 382 on “The symbolism of the ‘Centre’”.
 

170 Mircea Eliade: “Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth”, 1958, edition consulted Harper and Row, New York, 1975, pages 3 and 108 to 124.
 

171 John Chadwick: “The Mycenaean World” (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1980, page 100.

  The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk. Copyright 2012 by Peter Aleff    by Peter Aleff      Scroll 21

5.5.2. Initiations in Crete

In Crete, we saw that the legendary king Minos had to enter the underworld cave to receive “new laws” from his dead father so that he could renew his reign. The story reflects a precise parallel to the Egyptian justification of kingship. 

There are additional similarities between the concepts of kingship in Egypt and in Crete.  For instance, when the Egyptian king died, he became Osiris, the judge and ruler of the dead.  King Minos, too, became a judge of the dead.

Minos may even have imported his very name from his southern neighbor. This name seems to have been a royal title derived from the “enduring” name of king Menes that was written with the Senet-gameboard hieroglyph.

This early Egyptian king from around 2920 BCE, also known as Narmer, was the reputed founder of the pharaonic state, and the transformation of his name Menes into a title for Cretan rulers would parallel the way modern titles such as “Czar” and “Kaiser” were derived from the name of Julius Caesar, the founder of the Roman imperial system¹⁶⁵. (Caesar lacked the gameboard but not its accessories since he famously said, when starting the civil war that ended the Roman Republic, “the die is cast”.)

The difference between Menes and Minos is only apparent.  Menes is the name reported by Manetho; Herodotus called him Min, Diodorus Siculus referred to him as Minas, and Josephus made it Minaos¹⁶⁶. Since we have no record what vowels the ancient Egyptians used, it is the sameness of the consonants that counts.

The parallels between the rulers of Crete and of Egypt further include a royal rite that may correspond to the Heb-Sed ceremonies and that the scholar of Cretan scripts John Chadwick translated tentatively as “initiation”¹⁶⁷.

Initiations were, according to the scholar of comparative mythology Mircea Eliade, “one of the most significant spiritual phenomena in the history of humanity” that have mostly disappeared from modern life but seem to have been most important in the earliest societies¹⁶⁸.

The function of these initiations was, as Eliade and also the psychologist Erich Neumann explain, to safeguard the individual against the power of the grave by anticipating the journey of the dead in the rites. This safely performed dry run proved that the initiate could stand up to the monsters of the underworld and emerge victoriously, without getting lost in the labyrinth that was a frequent component and pars-pro-toto symbol of those trials¹⁶⁹.

Traditionally, all initiations promised a spiritual rebirth, but they also required the aspirant to symbolically die beforehand.

This symbolism survives in the Christian baptism which was from its beginning conceived as an equivalent to initiation. The early Church Fathers emphasized this initiatory function of baptism by multiplying images of death and resurrection, comparing the baptismal font to both the tomb and also to the womb in which eternal life is born¹⁷⁰.

Initiations were also a major export item for ancient Crete which was famous for them. The rambling Roman historian Diodorus Siculus, who flourished around 44 BCE, reports that initiations similar to those of the Eleusinian mystery cult of Classical Greece were performed at Knossos, and that the Cretans claimed to have invented all such rites (v.77).

Cretans also had a long-standing reputation as inveterate liars in the mathematical paradox where the sixth-century BCE Cretan Epimenides asserted that "All Cretans are always liars". Deep thinkers have pondered ever since whether his statement could be true and therefore inherently false, but by claiming to have invented initiation rites, those Cretans making that claim deserve their reputation as liars at least in this case. The record shows clearly they did not invent their rites but had adapted them from Egypt. However, this does not diminish the importance of those initiation rites in Crete.

We know that at least one king there, around 1400 BCE, celebrated an initiation, and just as the pharaohs spared no expense for their festivals of renewal, so did this king party in lavish style. Chadwick mentioned a Linear B tablet from Knossos on which the key phrase seems to mean “on the initiation of the king”. That tablet lists impressive amounts of food and drink dispensed, including enough barley to feed 43 people for a month¹⁷¹.

This generosity supports the suggestion that initiations were central events in Crete, too. We should therefore not be surprised to find this life-defining mid-life transition and renewal reflected not only in the middle of the gameboard paths from Senet and “Twenty Squares”, but also in Phaistos field 31.

All these games appear to have reproduced their royal players’ passages through life according to the same schedule, just with different calendars.