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In Search of the Isles of the Blest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. Gwyn Griffiths
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Extract

‘Crete, for religion, as for civilization generally, was the stepping-stone from Egypt to Greece.’ This statement of Miss Jane Harrison is far from being the belief of the orthodox classical scholar, and it is not the aim of this paper to claim its truth except in relation to one aspect of religion.

The Haghia Triada sarcophagus shows that the Minoans were probably familiar with the Egyptian conception of the Isles of the Blest, and that this figured in their cult of the dead in the model of a ship which is being carried to the dead man, to facilitate his journey to that blessed region. It seems that it was this conception that survived in Greek religion.

Pindar in his Second Olympian Ode (lines 76–84) describes such a region. Virtue, he says, brings its reward, and the good are allowed after death to live a life free from toil of any kind, in the company of the Gods. But a still greater reward awaits those who have undergone the threefold probation without taint of evil. ‘Whosoever have dared in either world to live three times a life pure from all evil, pass on the road of Zeus by the tower of Cronus, where the breezes of Ocean breathe around the Islands of the Blest, and flowers are radiant with gold, some on the shore from the shining trees, while the water fosters others. With wreaths of these and with crowns they entwine their hands, living the while by the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthus.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 16 , Issue 48 , October 1947 , pp. 122 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1947

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References

Page 122 note 1 The Religion of Ancient Greece (London, 1905), p. 51.Google Scholar

Page 122 note 2 Odyssey, iv. 561 ff.

Page 123 note 1 Hesiod, , ἒργα καi 'Hμέρατ, 167 ff.Google Scholar

Page 123 note 2 Sethe, , Pyramidentexte, 393a–414cGoogle Scholar. Gardiner, , The Attitude of the Ancient Egyptians to Death and the Dead, pp. 30–1Google Scholar, explains the multiplicity of their ideas about the hereafter by their ‘radical scepticism’.

Page 123 note 3 A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, trans. Griffiths, A. S., p. 91.Google Scholar

Page 123 note 4 See the representation ibid., p. 92; cf. ‘Paheri’: ‘Thy heart shall rejoice in thy tillage in thy portion of the Field of Earu.’

Page 123 note 5 Erman, op. cit., fig. 56.

Page 124 note 1 See further Reisner, , The Egyptian Conception of Immortality, p. 31Google Scholar; Mercer, , The Growth of Religious and Moral Ideas in Egypt, p. 71Google Scholar; Breasted, , The Down of Conscience, p. 73.Google Scholar

Page 124 note 2 ‘The Other World of Greek popular belief is to this day the old Hades’: Nilsson, , The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 540.Google Scholar

Page 124 note 3 Malten, L. ‘Elysion und Rhadamanthys’, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Arch. Inst., 1913, Band xxviii, p. 37.Google Scholar

Page 124 note 4 Iliad, xiv. 321 ff.

Page 124 note 5 Pausanias viii. 53. 5 … Gortys is mentioned previously as the son of Rhadamanthus. Malten, , Jahrb. d. D.A.I. xxvii, p. 264Google Scholar, wishes to emend to φαιστòς, since Hephaestus is not to be connected with Crete (cf. Plato, Cratyl. 407 c), and Phaestus was a town in the south of Crete (named after Phaestus, the son of Heracles according to Pausanias, ii. 6. 7).

Page 125 note 1 Schol. Eurip. Rhesus states that Lycastus and Ida were the parents of Rhadamanthus.

Page 125 note 2 v. 79.

Page 125 note 3 Apollodorus, ii. 70, iii. 6.

Page 125 note 4 Pausanias vii. 3. 7; cf. Diod. 79. 1; 84. 3.

Page 125 note 5 Malten points out (op. cit., p. 39) that ἔρχɛσθαι is not used for ἔρχɛσθαι ɛìς Άtαo, corresponding to the Latin (mortem) obire.

Page 125 note 6 The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 543.

Page 126 note 1 Pindar, fragm. 30

Page 126 note 2 Cook, A. B., Zeus, ii, fig. 76, p. 121.Google Scholar

Page 126 note 3 Op. cit., plates vi and vii, p. 124.

Page 126 note 4 Pyramid Texts, 390.

Page 126 note 5 Pyramid Texts, 1474 b. See Breasted, , Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 111, 112, 116, and 153Google Scholar, where other passages from the Pyramid Texts are quoted.

Page 126 note 6 Erman, (translated Griffiths, A. S.), A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, pp. 96, 145, fig. 69 eGoogle Scholar; Budge, E. A. W., The Mummy 2, p. 324.Google Scholar