Mysteries Of The Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, And The Forging Of History

by Kenneth Lapatin

Overview

Not only is one of the most famous pieces of ancient Greek art-the celebrated gold and ivory statuette of the Snake Goddess-almost certainly modern, but Minoan civilization as it has been popularly imagined is largely an invention of the early twentieth century. This is Kenneth Lapatin's startling conclusion in Mysteries of the Snake Goddess-a brilliant investigation into the true origins of the celebrated Bronze Age artifact, and into the fascinating world of archaeologists, adventurers, and artisans that converged in Crete at the turn of the twentieth century. Including characters from Sir Arthur Evans, legendary excavator of the Palace of Minos at Knossos, who was driven to discover a sophisticated early European civilization to rival that of the Orient, to his principal restorer Swiss painter Emil Gillieron, who out of handfuls of fragments fashioned a picture of Minoan life that conformed to contemporary taste, this is a riveting tale of archeological discovery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306813283
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	12/25/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,096,110
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kenneth Lapatin is Assistant Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.

Editorial Reviews

"An archaeological detective story and, on a far deeper level, an inquiry into the uses of the past. "Mysteries of the Snake Goddess is, indeed a mystery.... Suffice to say, as [Lapatin] does at the end, that 'she has provided a canvas on which archaeologists and curators, looters and smugglers, dealers and forgers, art patrons and museum goers, feminists and spiritualists, have painted their preconceptions, desires and preoccupations for an idealized past.'"

From the Publisher

For those who enjoy stories of fakes, forgeries, and questionable historical restorations, Arthur Evans, creator of ancient Minoan civilization, is here revealed to be as imaginative in his ambition as Heinrich Schliemann, creator of ancient Troy. Lapatin (a retired archaeologist) expands on Evans' recreation of the mythical King Minos and his court in ancient Crete to build a case that Evans invented wholesale the famous snake goddess figurines long identified as "Minoan." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Archeologist and art historian Lapatin (president of the Boston society of the Archaeological Institute of America) looks into the history of one of the most celebrated archeological finds of the 20th century and declares the work a modern forgery. A prized possession of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts since 1914, the six-inch ivory-and-gold statue known as the Snake Goddess was of doubtful provenance from the start. Supposedly excavated from the palace of Knossos in Crete, it was presented to the museum by Henrietta Fitz, a wealthy Boston Brahmin who had heard of the statue's discovery from the museum's director, Arthur Fairbanks, and provided the funds needed to acquire it. But precisely how Fairbanks obtained the statue is far from clear. The museum maintained it had been brought to America in fragments by a Greek peasant who immigrated to the U.S. in 1913, but the account sounds intentionally vague and with good reason, says Lapatin. The great mania for Greek antiquities that swept through Europe and America in the 19th century spawned a brisk trade throughout the Aegean and led to severe laws restricting the export of antiquities from Greece. This, in turn, created choice opportunities for smuggling, bribery and forgery. Lapatin presents both historical and artistic evidence to call the statue's authenticity into question, but he admits that a definite verdict will probably never be possible. He spends as much time examining the prevailing assumptions of antiquarians and archeologists of the period and speculates that the reconstructions of the ancient world by such figures as Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans owed as much to the contemporary imagination as to the science of archeology. Although somewhat minute, this study will interest any reader with a taste for antiquities or classical history. Illus. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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