Varia

note on the sexual symbolism of the cretan snake goddess. — One of the recent acquirements of the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston is a statuette of the Cretan snake goddess in ivory and gold, dating from the sixteenth century B. C, a period at which Minoan art reached its highest development. According to the archeologists, this statuette has a profound religious significance and is regarded either as a particular priestess who is the central figure of the cult of the Minoan religious belief, or as a temple snake charmer. It seems more reasonable to suppose, however, that this statuette represents the snake goddess of the early Minoan belief, the great goddess whose care embraced all creatures of the sea and land, and, in a special sense, all those who had gone to the under-world.

A brief description of this statuette will show that from the psychoanalytic viewpoint it has an interesting sexual significance. Briefly the statue was reconstructed from the fragments, although no detail of the discovery could be ascertained. The statue is carved in ivory and richly decorated with gold. It measures 0.161 m. (6half inches) in height. In the Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the statuette is described as follows: “The goddess stands proudly with her arms held out to the front and each hand vigorously grasping a gold snake which coils itself about the forearm. She is crowned with an elaborate tiara, whose edge curves up in semi-circular form at the front, back and sides, while a small cylindrical piece rises in the center. Each of the four semicircular plaques is pierced near the top for the attachment of an ornament, and a drill-hole at the back shows that the headdress was encircled by a gold band. Above the forehead is a row of seven deeply drilled holes which, on the analogy of other ivory heads found at Knossos, held the ends of gold curls. A number of frescoes show that such loose tendrils floating about the forehead were a feature of the Minoan lady's coiffure