CALENDAR   HOUSE

   




Clues to Minoan Time
    
  
from
Knossos Labyrinth


by

JACK  DEMPSEY


C
opyright 2010, 2015 Jack Dempsey.  All Rights Reserved.

Contact:
Dr. Jack Dempsey
30-021-694-918-8794
jpd37 (at) hotmail.com

AncientLights.org

All Kourai and Kouroi have a touch of the young sun.
(Greek proverb)

To

Angela, Cup-Bearer,
who wed me in our 13th year of friendship,

and for

DR. CHARLES F. HERBERGER
whose first demonstrations prompted these,
and who welcomed all questions.


  

Chapter 1
   
Matching Discoveries
    
Clues to a Knossos Calendric Cycle

  
 

Chapter 2
   
Into the Labyrinth
   
The Bull-Leap Fresco, & Elements of a Minoan Great Year Calendar


  

Chapter 3
 
Sign & Countersign
 

The Fresco Border’s Lunar/Solar Operations


Chapter 4
  
Forms of Time
   
Seasons, X, Great Year & Saros, Relatives


Chapter 5
  
Astronomy & Sacred Animals
  
Problems, Politics & Symbols of the Cycle


Chapter 6
  
Griffin & Labrys
   
Guides to the Journey Beyond


Chapter 7
  
Kinship & Cosmology
  
Great Year Signs & Festivals in New Palace Times


Chapter 8
  
Calendar & Kingship

   
A Labyrinth to Contain the Minotaur


Chapter 9
   
Continuities
  
From Crete & Cyprus to Palestine


Coda

Homer's Calendar, Classical Curiosities,

The Antikythera Mechanism

& Marshack’s Critical Review


Sources Cited & Suggested

    
    

Click Here to dialogue
with others about
these subjects.

 

 

***

ABSTRACT

 

Central mysteries have endured 100 years of science on Minoan Crete. What if any high calendar functioned there? What did their chief religious symbols mean? And did those questions connect to political power? Calendar House (in 9 chapters and a Coda) brings established research to bear on an overlooked 1972 discovery of answers that Alexander Marshack judged “valid and valuable”---pending more investigation.

With The Thread of Ariadne, C. F. Herberger proposed that patterns in the border of the Toreador or Bull-Leap Fresco from Knossos register a lunar/solar cycle of 8½ years; and, that this cycle and calendar illuminate signs of astronomy in the throne room, Crete’s sacred animals, Labrys the double axe and “horns of consecration.” Calendar House presents functional criteria, experiments and a range of contexts with which you can appraise this cycle, fresco, and Herberger’s discovery for yourself.

This nine years’ work by a dedicated amateur hopes to contribute to a field that was founded by one and enriched by many others. The basis for that hope is scientific method. So, these chapters form a first Question that leads to many more: Are there features, patterns and anomalies in the Bull-Leap Fresco that might find common explanation in demonstrable reference to a real lunar/solar cycle? The next steps of detailed Observation and Research range from Early to Late and Post-Minoan evidences, since a calendar would have to function according to Cretan ecology, evolve over time, and leave traces of its features and use across Minoan life and later media.

From numerous positive findings, this Hypothesis: If the Fresco border details a calendar for keeping Minoan agriculture, social life, ceremony and festival aligned with natural cycles, are its forms and characteristics also visible in Late Minoan sociopolitical order? The chapters Test and Experiment through close analysis of all their central icons and structures of authority (including the latest experts’ studies of them), to evaluate any consistencies between calendric, symbolic and political patterns. And, since features of a real and effective Minoan calendar could be expected to persist, this work’s Conclusions begin to emerge among the last three sections’ evidences, from Mycenaeans and Philistines to Classical times.

Below are brief details of each chapter. And I hope that readers feel truly welcome to offer their remarks (jpd37@hotmail.com).

Chapter 1 shows that the cycle does exist, and reviews many clues of an “8- or 9-year” Minoan period. The Knossos throne, aligned with Winter Solstice, presents a disc-and-crescent, which in comparative iconography suggests lunar/solar referents. And while a New Crescent Moon does appear on or near Winter Solstice every 8½ years within demonstrable cyclic limits, the throne room also features a Summer Solstice alignment.

So, while ahead we see consistent traits in Early and Middle-period designs, a central Late Minoan calendar might be investigated, anchored to an actual “doubled pair” of events---New Moon at Winter Solstice, and (6 months later) Full Moon at Summer Solstice.

Hence Chapter 2 evaluates the fresco’s contexts, dating, versions, and limitations: its forms, colors, patterns and unique irregularities. Features of its border (rows of crescents and “ticks” like a “1”) match lunar phases and Crete’s writing, and correlate with the above cycle. Also, the asymmetric features and color-variations present a further pattern---doubled pairings, a sign of significance in Minoan iconography. Chapter 3’s calendric anatomy of the fresco then shows how these features’ alternating colors, positions and relations guide daily and cyclic time through the labyrinthine border, including an intercalation-function crucial to a farming calendar.

Further chapters test these patterns in the fresco, and against a range of contexts: Crete’s ecology and recent calendric finds, Egyptian and Near Eastern systems, further astronomy, and remains including the often-wheeled X (a cycle round a doubled pair of points). Do Crete’s most iconic animals---the snake, bull, lion, and griffin---also have recognized aspects consistent with such a calendar? Herberger’s discovery, while much-qualified, holds up under thorough critique.

On these bases, new meanings become visible in the throne room---including relations between lunar/solar cycles and Saros eclipses, which (like the fresco’s operations) involve doubling. What then might be learned of Labrys, and its lunar, solar, stellar place between “horns”? In the midst of catastrophes, was this calendar visible as part of Knossos “propaganda”?

Chapter 9 and Coda explore post-Minoan traces of this astronomy---including the Antikythera Mechanism’s solar, lunar and eclipse cycles, which presently seem (according to the journal Nature) “to have come from nowhere.”

 

 


   
    



 


     
     


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