me level as the floor of the chamber,
her head is in a line with the roof beam which rests on the capital
of the sacred pillar. The remains of an actual shrine discovered
in 1907 close to the Central Court at Knossos show that the fresco
does not exaggerate the smallness of the sacred buildings. The
Gournia shrine, situated in the centre of the town, is about twelve
feet square, and its discoverer believes that the walls of the
sacred enclosure may never have stood more than eighteen inches
high. Here, again, were the horns of consecration, the doves, and
the snakes twined round the image of the goddess.

Of what sort were the acts of worship in connection with the Minoan
Religion? Sacrifice was certainly prominent, and the bull was probably
the chief victim offered to the goddess. In one of the scenes on
the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, a bull is being sacrificed, and his
blood is dripping into a vessel placed beneath his head. Behind is
the figure of a woman, whose hands are stretched out, presumably
to hold the cords with which the victim is bound. Two kids crouch
on the ground below the bull, perhaps to be offered in their turn.
Libation also formed part of the ceremonial, and on the same sarcophagus
there are two scenes in which it occurs. In the one instance (Plate
XXVIII.), the vessel into which the offering is being poured stands
between two sacred Double Axes with birds perched upon them; in
the other the libation-vessel stands upon an altar with a Double
Axe behind it. The three receptacles of the Dictaean Libation Table
suggest a threefold offering like that of mingled milk and honey,
sweet wine, and water, which, in the Homeric period, was made to
the Shades of the Dead and to the Nymphs.

As was perhaps natural in the cult of a goddess, the chief part
in the ritual seems to have been taken by priestesses. Men share
in the ceremonies also, but not so frequently, and apparently in
subordinate roles. Part of the ritual evidently consisted of dancing,
and music also had its place, as is evident from the figures of
the lyre and flute players on the sarcophagus of Hagia Triada.
The question of whether the Minoans had any worship of ancesters
or sacrifice to the dead is raised by several relics. Above the
Shaft-Graves at Mycenae stood a circular altar, where offerings
must have been made either to the Shades of the Dead or on behalf
of them, and the scenes on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus, resembling
so curiously t