Mysteries of the Snake Goddess by Kenneth Lapatin

Indeed, his multivolume 'The Palace of Minos' reveals his motives. Lapatin accuses him of creating a false context for everything Minoan. This mystery has one major suspect: Sir John Evans (1851-1941), a wealthy English archaeologist and mastermind behind the excavation of the Palace of Minos in the late-19th century at Knossos in Crete.

do not appear in ancient statuary before the second century AD.' to make them more appealing to contemporary viewers and buyers.' After all, 'eyes with drilled pupils and canthi. Yet, Lapatin writes, these facial features are important clues that point to, if not a forged piece of art, perhaps 'something in between, pastiches of ancient artifacts reworked. The lips pout, the eyes are deep-set with drilled pupils, and her countenance is summarized as 'modern,' that is, as independent of the restrictive patriarchal bondage of the ancient world. a tight-fitting short-sleeved bodice or jacket cut so low as to expose her ample breasts, one of which retains a golden nipple.'īut it's her face damaged on the left side either by centuries of wear or a forger's acid bath to create the impression of wear that captures art historians' hearts.

Tongue-flickering serpents entwine around her outstretched arms, while she cuts a sensuous figure in a 'wide skirt with multiple flounces or tiers, a belt encircling her narrow waist. With the publication of this thorough and devastating deconstruction by Kenneth Lapatin, president of the Boston Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, one must conclude that the Bronze Age beauty is not only a fake, but, more revealing, has been used to perpetuate an 'idealized past.'Ĭonsensus has been reached, however, as to the Snake Goddess's beauty: In her chryselephantine elegance of delicately carved gold and ivory, the lady is a looker. Questions over her origin commenced almost from the beginning in 1914 when curator Lacey Caskey announced the statue's arrival from Crete in either a cigar box or a soap tin for a bargain price of $950. But the snake-handling goddess's origin her archaeological 'findspot' remains unverified. Long regarded as the most precious artifact of 16th-century BC Minoan art, she has minded her own business for the past 84 years in hallowed residence at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Everything that is wrong and right about archeological interpretation and its often subjective motives rests within a 16-centimeter-tall statuette called the Snake Goddess.

Mysteries of the Snake Goddess by Kenneth Lapatin