Minoan Snake Goddess: Knossos and Meaning

October 25, 2026

Ceramic sculpture Snake Goddess by RHEAsilvia

In 1903, Arthur Evans’s excavators at Knossos on Crete found a group of stone-lined, lidded pits in the palace. Evans called them the Temple Repositories. Among broken objects of faience, gold and ivory lay the fragments of female figures handling snakes. Two of them were restored and are now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. They date to around 1600 BCE.

The faience figures from Knossos

The figures are made of faience, a crushed quartz paste that takes on a glossy, glass-like surface when it is fired. The larger one, about 34 centimetres tall as restored, has snakes crawling over her arms and up to her tall crown. The smaller figure, about 29 centimetres tall as restored, holds objects Evans interpreted as snakes. Much of what we see today is restoration: the larger figure lacked the body below the waist and one arm, and the smaller one lacked her head and part of her left arm. The Danish artist Halvor Bagge restored the figures together with Evans.

Snake Goddess or priestess?

Evans called the larger figure a Snake Goddess and the smaller one a Snake Priestess. Scholars still debate whether they show goddesses or priestesses. What the Snake Goddess meant to the Minoans who made her is, as Senta German writes for Smarthistory, “not very well understood”. Her fame also had a darker side: it quickly led to fakes. An ivory figure with gold snakes reached Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1914. A review of Kenneth Lapatin’s 2002 book describes it as very likely a forgery.

The familiar title is already an interpretation. In his 1903 excavation report, Evans writes of a Snake Goddess and her votaries. Those words record the excavator’s proposed religious identities, not names recovered from a readable Minoan dedication. His report is therefore a primary source for the history of the discovery and its interpretation. It has to be read differently from a primary Minoan text explaining the figure, which it is not. The modern name can remain useful while its status stays visible.

Minoan palace rituals

The setting belongs to a wider world of palace ritual. The Metropolitan Museum describes the Minoan palaces as centres of political and economic power as well as artistic activity, with archaeological evidence for ritual functions. Writing occurs on administrative tablets, but also on ritual objects, including stone libation tables and miniature double axes. This context helps prevent the snake figures from becoming isolated emblems: their makers worked within institutions, crafts and practices whose surviving evidence extends beyond a single female image.

The cat and the restored headdress

The little feline above the smaller figure’s head needs especially careful treatment. Senta German explains that the hat and cat were separate pieces from the deposit, placed on the reconstructed head by Evans and Bagge. Finding the pieces together does not establish their original arrangement or securely document an ancient feline crown. The restored grouping also belongs to the image’s later reception.

Syrian influences on Minoan art

A different scholarly approach asks where the surviving motifs came from. Emily Miller Bonney re-examines the original fragments and argues that their clothing, hair and gestures draw on Syrian artistic traditions. She interprets this borrowing in relation to Knossian elites and their access to distant knowledge and trade. This is a modern research argument, not a recovered Minoan explanation. Its value here lies in opening the comparison beyond Crete while keeping the proposed social meaning visibly attached to its author.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Minoan Snake Goddess really a goddess?

No one knows for certain. Arthur Evans called the larger figure a Snake Goddess and the smaller one a Snake Priestess. Since then, scholars have debated whether both show priestesses, the same goddess or two different deities. Minoan texts cannot settle the question, because the Linear A script is still undeciphered.

Why did Minoans show their breasts?

We do not know. The Knossos figures wear elaborate clothes that leave the breasts completely bare. Scholarly overviews read this either as the dress fashion of Minoan women or as a possible sign of mourning, a custom that Homer and Herodotus describe. Because the breasts of the larger figure are emphasised, some scholars see her as a fertility figure.

Were the Minoans Greek?

Not in language, as far as we know. Their Linear A script has never been deciphered, and its language is thought to be distinct from early Greek. The Mycenaeans wrote an early form of Greek in Linear B, a script adapted from Linear A. A 2017 ancient DNA study in Nature found that Minoans and Mycenaeans were very closely related, and that modern Greeks are closely related to the Mycenaeans.

Which female goddesses are associated with snakes?

In Greek tradition, Athena. Herodotus reports that the Athenians said “a great snake lives in the sacred precinct guarding the acropolis”, and gave it a honey-cake every month. Some scholars see the Minoan figures as a forerunner of Athena Parthenos, who is also associated with snakes. For Minoan religion, scholarly overviews cite Martin P. Nilsson’s view that the snake was the protector of the house.

Does the Minoan Snake Goddess have an ancient personal name?

The name used here comes from Evans’s identification of the figures. His excavation report calls them a goddess and votaries. It does not provide a readable Minoan inscription naming this figure. For this page, Snake Goddess is a descriptive modern title, not a recovered personal name.

Is the cat on the smaller Knossos figure original?

The cat is a separate find from the deposit. Its placement on the figure’s reconstructed head was part of Evans and Bagge’s restoration. The surviving piece does not establish an intact ancient composition.

See the sculpture: Snake Goddess