APPEARANCE AND DRESS
Although the Minoan civilization had its origins as long as five thousand years ago and had come to an end by 1000 BC, we nevertheless have a very clear idea what the Minoan people looked like. There was in the region of a hundred statuettes in stone, metal and clay, showing us ordinary Minoans worshipping. There are also representations of Minoans on sealstones and decorative metalwork, as well as in the best-known medium of all, the frescoes. Among these, there is plenty of evidence of the sort of clothes they wore and of their general appearance or, to be more precise, of the way in which the Minoans liked to see themselves.
The Minoans depicted themselves as straight-nosed (often with a high bridge), and with large almond-shaped eyes. They had conspicuous eyebrows and long, wavy black fair falling in curling locks to their shoulders and sometimes to their waists. Their tanned bodies were athletic and tense with nervous energy; their arms, shoulders and thighs were strong and muscular, their waists and lower legs slim and lithe. It is above all physically attractive type that we are shown, graceful whether in repose or engaged in energetic activity, and graceful in a rather self-conscious theatrical way: it is the grace of a matador or a ballet dancer.
Whether the majority of Minoans actually possessed these characteristics is another matter. Perhaps we should see them as goals or ideals against which individual Mnoans were measured. Perhaps, alternatively, it is only the young Minoans that are depicted. In Crete today, even millennia later, after many other races have passed through, the stereotypes of Minoan beauty can still be seen in young men and women in their teens and twenties with all the characteristics of the people in the frescoes. One of the bronze figurines of worshippers show a rather portly man in a loincloth, making the gesture of adoration, first to forehead: but this departure from the lithe, athletic and above all youthful norm is unusual.
In classical Greece too an ideal of human physical perfection was held up for admiration, and for a particular purpose: the city-state needed strong young men to defend and preserve it, so there was a strong practical need to encourage the development of strong, healthy male bodies. In Minoan Crete a similar impulse may have lain behind the perfect male figures, but the existence of ideals of female beauty must have had a different purpose: no mortal female warriors are shown. It may be that there was a religious motive; only perfect female (and perhaps male) forms could become the incarnation of a deity . . . Wherever possible, the Minoans’ fashions in clothes, jewellery and face-painting were designed to accentuate the bodily characteristics that were specially favoured. The very fact that the men often wore very skimpy clothes revealing as much of their physique indicates their intense love of physical beauty. (Rodney Castleden, Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete [London: Routledge, 1990], 9-11)
