Female Worshipper

This statuette of a standing woman wears a hollow skirt with an oval cavity that extends from the bottom partially into the interior. There are no feet; the figure rests on the bottom of the skirt. The long oval skirt is marked by pairs of grooves on both sides and a pair of incised grooves in the center of the front. A pair of rope-like belts encircles the top of the skirt below her narrow waist. She wears a long-sleeved open-breasted jacket similar to others that are seen in bronze statuettes as well as in wall paintings from Cretan sites and from Akrotiri on Thera (1). Her hair hangs down the back of her neck in a knotted curl. Her face is rounded with fairly indistinct features. She raises her right hand, fist clenched, to her forehead; her left arm hangs down by her side to below the belts. There are two raised grooves on both wrists, denoting either bracelets or the cuffs of her jacket. This statuette belongs to an important category of cast-bronze figures of women produced in workshops on the island of Crete between c. 1650 and 1400 BCE (2). They range from crude miniatures to figures c. 15 cm in height, such as the impressive statuette of a woman in Berlin who also holds her right fist to her forehead (3). However, she folds her left hand across her breast and bends slightly forward, producing a feeling of tense power that is lacking in the vertical stance of the Harvard statuette. The meaning of the fist-to-forehead gesture remains unclear. Most scholars have interpreted it as a ritual gesture of prayer or adoration, but there is no conclusive evidence to prove this. While it seems likely that statuettes with this gesture represent mortal women, perhaps devotees of a particular cult or priestesses, there is the possibility that at least some of them might portray goddesses. This statuette likely dates to c. 1600 to 1500 BCE, and it must come from one of the bronze-casting workshops on Crete active at this time. Where the contexts are known, these statuettes occur both in cave sanctuaries and in palace or villa sites. Other contexts will undoubtedly emerge with further excavation. NOTES: 1. See S. Hemingway, “The Minoan Bronze Votive Statue of a Woman at the Harvard Museum,” Teaching with Objects: The Curatorial Legacy of David Gordon Mitten, ed. A. Brauer (Cambridge, MA, 2010) 138-39. 2. For other bronze statuettes from Crete, see C. Verlinden, Les statuettes anthropomorphes crétoises en bronze et en plomb, du IIIe millénaire au VII siècle av. J.-C., Archaeologia Transatlantica 4 (Providence, 1984). 3. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. no. Misc. 8092; see Verlinden 1984 (supra 2) no. 33, pl. 16. David G. Mitten