ABSTRACT
The religion of Minoan Crete was dominated by the figure of a goddess. She is to be seen in figurines of the neolithic period, but her period of greatest authority was the Middle Minoan period of about 1800–1500 bc. The goddess needed a consort, but the male divinity is later in time (he does not appear in the neolithic period at all) and inferior in status. He is a young god, often armed, but for the hunt rather than for war. Among the religious symbols of the Minoan age the stone pillar and the tree are especially prominent. Evans thought them to be related to one another, and the pillar to be an aniconic image of the divine, without assigning any priority between the two symbols, but holding them rather to be associated. A neolithic pottery box from the cave of Eilithyia has a lid engraved with an eleven-pointed star in a circle.
