A History of the World in 100 Objects - Dr Neil MacGregor [49]
Out in the middle of the wine-dark sea, there is a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land washed by the sea on every side; and in it are many peoples and ninety cities. There, one language mingles with another … Among the cities is Knossos, a great city; and there Minos was nine years king, the boon companion of mighty Zeus.
In Greek myth, Minos, ruler of Crete, had a complex relationship with bulls. He was the son of the beautiful Europa by Zeus, king of the gods, but in order to father him and abduct Europa, Zeus had turned himself into a bull. Minos’s wife in turn had conceived an unnatural passion for a very beautiful bull, and the fruit of that obsession was the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull. Minos was so ashamed of his monstrous stepson that he had him imprisoned in an underground labyrinth, and there the Minotaur devoured a regular supply of maidens and youths sent every year by Athens – until, that is, the Greek hero Theseus succeeded in killing him. The story of Theseus and the Minotaur, of man first burying then confronting and slaying his monstrous demons, has been told and retold for centuries, by Ovid, Plutarch, Virgil and others. It’s part of the high canon of Greek myth, of Freudian psychology and of European art.
Archaeologists were captivated by these tales. Just over a hundred years ago, when Arthur Evans explored the island and decided to dig at Knossos, the bulls and monsters, palaces and labyrinths of Crete were very much in his mind. So although we have no idea what the people of this rich civilization around 1700 BC actually called themselves, Evans, believing he was uncovering the world of Minos, called them quite simply Minoans, and they’ve remained Minoans to archaeologists ever since. In his extensive excavations, Evans uncovered the remains of a vast building complex, finding pottery and jewellery, carved stone seals, ivory, gold and bronze, and colourful frescoes, often depicting bulls; and he sought to interpret these finds in the light of the familiar myths. He was eager to reconstruct the role that the bulls might have played in the island’s economic and ceremonial life, so he was particularly interested in the discovery, some distance from Knossos, of the ‘Minoan’ bull-leaper.
It’s thought to have come from Rethymnon, a town on the north coast of the island, and it was probably originally deposited as an offering in a mountain shrine or in a cave sanctuary. Objects like this are often found in these holy places of Crete, suggesting that cattle played an important role in local religious rituals. Many scholars since Evans have tried to explain why these images were so important. They’ve asked what bull-leaping was for, and even if it was actually possible. Evans thought it was part of a festival in honour of a mother goddess. Others disagree, but bull-leaping has often been seen as a religious performance, possibly involving the sacrifice of the animal, and even occasionally the death of the leaper. Certainly, in this sculpture, both bull and human are engaged in a highly dangerous exercise. Being able to vault the animals would have taken months of training. We can say this with confidence, because the sport still survives today in parts of France and Spain. Sergio Delgado, a leading modern-day bull-leaper – or, to use the proper Spanish term, recortador – explains:
There has always been a kind of game between men and bulls, always. There is not a proper school for recortadores. You just learn how to understand the animal and how he will react to the arena. You only get this knowledge with experience.
There are three main techniques we had to learn: first the recorte de riñón [the ‘kidney cut’]; second it’s the quiebro [the ‘break’ or the ‘swing’]; the third one is the salto [or ‘leap’], which