Minos Taurus The Bull Of Knossos
I am the bull of Knossos, where rich Minoans live amidst painted splendour. On the island of Crete I am surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, by mountains and plains, by bronze, by plaster, by amphorae of wine. On the extensive fresco painted upon a wall of the Central Court at Knossos I am light brown in hue, my long horns pointing forward, my neck a solid arc of muscle. My hooves are yellow, my tail whisking high in the air. They wish to tame me through such perilous sports, but I am a wild animal.
Bull Leaping
They approach me as I charge at them, youths all of them, male and female, walking, though not at speed. Their faces bear a variety of expressions, some excited, some exhilarated, some showing signs of fear. At the last moment before impact, they reach out with both hands, grabbing my horns and leaping up, using their momentum and my horns to perform a somersault over my back and land behind me.
Fresco depicting the audience at Knossos (Image: Courtesy Micki Pistorius)
The watching crowd roar in approval and clap their hands, for this is a public display. Waving at friends in the crowd, the youths gasp for breath, jogging this way and that as mild winds off the Aegean Sea ruffle their hair. It is their custom, this bull-leaping, in which I am forced to participate. The athletes are all young, each of them at the boundary between child and adult, for this is a rite of passage essential to community life. Both male and female wear loincloths, their hair knotted and curled upon their crowns, longer locks falling down behind them. Their muscles are delineated with dust and sweat in the bright Mediterranean sun.
The rulers of Knossos use the bull-leaping ceremony to strengthen their claim to sovereignty. Though I am fierce and dangerous, they raise me and my kin in special locations, some of us to be led into the bull-leaping arena, some of us intended for more mundane uses. Thus, the rulers direct how Minoans right across Crete view both myself and the Knossos elite. I am the vehicle of their ambitions. Though other palaces contain bull-leaping courts, it is at Knossos where the most experienced priests live, where the best athletes are trained, where I and my kin are raised and where the most spectacular ceremonies are held. I am complicit in the rites in which I participate, to the benefit and continuance of the rulers of Knossos. But to leap over me is dangerous indeed. I charge at them with all my strength, my head lowered so that I can use my horns to gore them and toss them away. Dust scatters in clouds from my hooves as I charge, and I snort and groan. But peril is important to them. That their young lives are threatened by me is part of the ritual, a metaphor of the role of chance in their lives or of the will of the deities they believe in. They see me not only as a real bull but also as a symbol of the wildness of the natural world. I am their external danger, pushed outdoors throughout their age of bronze.
North arena at Knossos (Image: Courtesy Micki Pistorius)
To leap over me is also a public act. These youths live in tightly knit communities, some with high status, some with low. But theirs is a communal life whatever their social standing, with events such as bull-leaping part of an intense public ritual. Not only must these youths cross the boundary between child and adult, they must be seen to pass it. I validate that passage. To leap over me symbolises the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Bull-leaping is a metaphorical door into a perilous new world, where many new feelings, rites, deeds and responsibilities must be managed.
