Among Women: From the Homosocial to the Homoerotic in the Ancient World

2. Imag(in)ing a Women’s World in Bronze Age Greece: The Frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri, Thera

34 c h a p t e r t w o Imag(in)ing a Women’s World in Bronze Age Greece The Frescoes from Xeste 3 at Akrotiri, Thera* Paul Rehak Although many images of women have survived from the Late Bronze Age Aegean world (ca. 1700–1100 bce), it has proved extremely difficult for us to recover information about how they constructed their own sexuality at the time.1 For in contrast to the other cultures of the eastern Mediterranean at the time, or the later cultures of Greece,2 Aegean art contains virtually no explicit depictions of sexual activity or even personal affection: there are no scenes of women or men engaged in sexual intercourse (or other natural bodily functions, for that matter), no individuals who embrace, kiss, hold hands, or show other signs of intimacy.3 In addition, we have no literary texts from the Aegean that might describe or discuss sexuality, in contrast to civilizations such as Egypt, which preserve large bodies of literature on the subject. This does not mean, however, that we have no hope of recovering women’s sexuality in prehistoric Greece but simply that the search is more difficult than for other periods and cultures. One potentially useful source of information in our search for female sexuality consists of the images preserved in Aegean fresco paintings, especially those from the earlier phase of the Late Bronze Age, when the Minoan culture on Crete exerted a powerful influence in the Aegean world. This era, the Neopalatial period (ca. 1700–1490 bce),4 saw the decoration of palaces and houses on Crete and important buildings at other Aegean sites with paintings executed in true fresco technique, painted on damp lime plaster, with occasional additions made after the wall surface had dried. The Cretan paintings have generally survived only in small pieces, but almost complete wall paintings have survived from Akrotiri on Thera, which was engulfed in a volcanic eruption ca. 1625 bce. I focus attention here on a series of paintings from room 3 in Xeste 3 at Akrotiri, a large freestanding structure of approximately thirty rooms, constructed on three levels and generally regarded as a public building (fig. 2.1).5 Imag(in)ing a Women’s World in Bronze Age Greece • 35 2.1. Plan of Xeste 3 at Akrotiri, Thera. Drawing: Author. Though several attempts have been made to interpret these important frescoes ,6 most discussions have minimized the sexual implications of the scenes that depict women in homosocial environments. In this essay, I shall attempt a more detailed reading of the compositions, concentrating on the activities, gestures, and costumes of the women and the landscape they inhabit, and I shall suggest that the main theme is female rites of passage at all stages of a woman’s life, centering around the medicinal use of saffron. If this is so, then it is possible, using Eva Cantarella’s hypothesis that rites of passage fostered same-sex relationships in early societies , to imagine a homoerotic element among women in prehistoric Greece.7 Conventions of Aegean Wall Painting Aegean art used a color convention to differentiate between women (who are shown with white flesh) and men (who are painted red).8 We must look to physiognomy, pose, scale, costume, hairstyles, jewelry, and the interactions among figures for additional visual clues. The Aegean frescoes pay particular attention to different age grades and body types as figures mature from childhood into adulthood. 36 • A m o n g Wo m e n Several analyses of hairstyles in the paintings, in conjunction with observations about body morphology and facial physiognomy, suggest that both sexes selectively cut and grew their hair in standard styles that mark specific age grades as they matured, a practice important in later Greece and one that has been documented in many other societies.9 Prepubescent girls wore a forelock and backlock but shaved the rest of their skulls; at the beginning of the pubescence, the cranial hair was allowed to grow in curls, and the fore- and backlocks grew even longer. By the end of puberty, girls had a full head of hair and may have cut their forelocks, as they did in Classical times, to mark the important transition to adulthood. Adult women wore their hair long or tied it in a kerchief like the Classical sakkos. A few female hairstyles depicted in the...