There was a god as well as a goddess in Minoan religion, but he was of relatively little importance. Velchanos, the Cretan Zeus--if we may assume that the Minoan god was the original of this figure of the Greek legends--was represented as both the son and the husband of Mother Nature. He was suckled, so the tradition ran, by Amalthea the goat in the cave of Dikte, and brought up by his mother Rhea on the slopes of Mount Ida. His insignificance in comparison with the goddess appears from the fact that he was drawn on a smaller scale whenever represented in her company. The two deities probably constituted, as Mr. Hogarth has suggested, a “Double Monotheism”--a double godhead, that is, worshipped to the exclusion of all minor deities. If this was the case, the various Cretan prototypes of later Greek divinities must be regarded as variant forms of the Mother Goddess herself. Aphrodite, for instance, the goddess of Love, was worshipped generally in the Levant, being known in Canaan as Ashtaroth-Astarte, and in Egypt as Hathor; her Cretan name is unknown. The Greek Artemis, goddess of the Wild Beasts, was foreshadowed in the Cretan Dictynna. One great difference between the Cretan and the Hellenic Zeus was that the Cretan Zeus was mortal, and was said to have died on Mount Juktas. The mortality of their gods was one of the striking conceptions which differentiated the Southern peoples of the Near East from the later Greeks, who came from the North. The Egyptian Osiris, for instance, could die, but not any of the Greek gods. The Cretan Mother Goddess is depicted on seal stones and rings dressed like an earthly queen, while Velchanos is seen descending from the heavens to the earth, a young warrior with a spear and an enormous shield. Another difference between Cretan and classical Greek religion was that, as far as one can see, Cretan religion did not give rise to any great temples, nor left behind any more substantial traces of its activity than the small figures of the Earth Goddess to whom I have referred. It may be sound to regard the palace of Knossos as itself a temple, and it is true that legend makes of Minos a High Priest as well as a King. There seems, however, to be little room for doubt that the only places set aside specifically for worship were small private shrines used for family worship. All the evidence tends to indicate that it was the family idea that predominated in Cretan worship. Private houses had their shrines, and the Knossian palace-temple itself had its lesser family shrines. These sanctuaries were always distinguished by a sort of sacred pillar, a sign which in Minoan art is often used as the only indication of a sacred place. There is an example of it on a fresco painting found at Knossos. Another emblem associated with the cult is that of sacred trees, which on rings and seal stones usually form the background for the “choros,” or dance. The actual dance, no doubt, would be performed in sacred groves.