Bronze Age Aegean Ritual Watercraft Imagery: An Iconographic Analysis

The importance of watercraft to the Bronze Age Aegeans is undeniable, especially in terms of subsistence and maritime exchange. A relatively understudied aspect, however, is their importance relating to religious rituals. The study of these ritual watercraft is limited to iconography, but that does not diminish their analytical potential. This research, therefore, aims to better understand a particular subset of Bronze Age Aegean watercraft imagery. Twelve linear and glyptic images from Crete, Akrotiri, and the Greek mainland dating from roughly 1700 to 1100 B.C. have been selected for this study. Utilizing prehistoric iconographical analysis, these images not only meet this study’s criteria of classifying attributes depicting ritual ship imagery, but also comprise a subcorpus of images depicting a unified iconographic theme of a female figure and tree in a boat. After comparing this subcorpus to Near Eastern Bronze Age imagery and textual evidence dating roughly 2300 to 1000 B.C., this study suggests that the referent in these Aegean images is an important Aegean deity with qualities similar to the Levantine goddess identified as Asherah in the Iron Age. The implications of this study lead to a more well-rounded understanding of the elites who promoted the iconography of this Aegean deity