Bronze Age Mediterranean: 15th century BC
Mycenaean Greece: goddesses
15th—16th century BC, Mycenaean culture, southern Aegean.
A girl or female attendant seems to be venerating this seated lady against the backdrop of a double-axe.
'Ladies with bare bosoms wearing flounced skirts,' said Miranda. 'I have five of them on these two Mycenaean rings here, all in similar skirts, all with bare bosoms. Not a man to be seen anywhere. Two of them seem to be venerating something phallic in a shrine. Another two are speaking with a lady who is sitting beneath a tree, with a girl or a female attendant behind them who seems to be venerating this seated lady against the backdrop of a double-axe.'
All over South-west Asia,
she read, early farming communities seem to have focused their worship upon fertility and the life-creating forces expressed through a maternal figure in human form... It was accepted among the stone-using farmers all the way from the Levant to Britain.