The Sanctuary Rhyton

Abstract

<p>The Sanctuary Rhyton, found in 1963 during the excavation of the palatial structure at Kato Zakros, exerts a fascination unique among Minoan artifacts. Less famous than the bull-leaping fresco at Knossos, less human than La Parisienne, less baffling than the Phaistos disk, it nonetheless draws us into a mysterious and compelling world, a world in which an elaborate and commanding structure melds with a mountain landscape populated only by goats and birds.</p><p>What is this structure, with its hieratic spirals, its crowning horns of consecration, its mazelike walls? What landscape is this, where birds and shy wild goats cavort and take possession of a manmade edifice? Whose place does this depict, and why?</p><p>What, indeed, does this ritual vessel tell us of the Minoan world?</p>