Mycenaean religion

The religious element is difficult to identify in Mycenaean Greece (c. 1600–1100 BC), especially as regards archaeological sites, where it remains very problematic to pick out a place of worship with certainty.

John Chadwick points out that at least six centuries lie between the earliest presence of Proto-Greek speakers in Hellas and the earliest inscriptions in the Mycenaean script known as Linear B, during which concepts and practices will have fused with indigenous Pre-Greek beliefs, and—if cultural influences in material culture reflect influences in religious beliefs—with Minoan religion.

[1] As for these texts, the few lists of offerings that give names of gods as recipients of goods reveal little about religious practices, and there is no other surviving literature.

He was a chthonic deity, connected with the earthquakes (E-ne-si-da-o-ne: "earth shaker"), but it seems that he also represented the river spirit of the underworld as it often happens in Northern European folklore.

On a number of tablets from Pylos, we find Po-ti-ni-ja (Potnia, "lady" or "mistress") without any accompanying word.

In a Linear B tablet found at Pylos, the "two queens and the king" (wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te) are mentioned, and John Chadwick relates these with the precursor goddesses of Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.

[15] The mysteries were established during the Mycenean period (1500 BC) at the city of Eleusis[16] and it seems that they were based on a pre-Greek vegetation cult with Minoan elements.

[18] At Lycosura on a marble relief, appear figures of women with the heads of different animals, obviously in a ritual dance.

[23] The earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek a-te-mi-to and a-ti-mi-te, written in Linear B at Pylos.

In her temple at Sparta, wooden masks representing human faces have been found that were used by dancers in the vegetation-cult.

[30] In a Mycenaean fresco, there is a composition of two women extending their hands towards a central figure who is covered by an enormous figure-eight shield.

Similar myths appear in the cults of Hyakinthos (Amyklai), Erichthonios (Athens), and Ploutos (Eleusis).