Okay. So I’m not quite done reading Ariadne’s Threads (the book about the evolution of Minoan** clothing 2700 – 1500 BCE) but I have gotten far enough in it to feel confident that my initial theory about Minoan’s women’s garments (theory nicknamed “Boobies teeheehee”) was wrong.
Sir Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist (1851–1941), is credited with discovering the frescoes on the island of Crete. Evans commissioned Swiss artist Émile Gilliéron and his son (Gilliéron fils) to restore, reconstruct, and often repaint the heavily fragmented frescoes, establishing the popular image of Minoan art. Where “restore” here is code for picked up puzzle pieces of the frescoed off the ground, stuck them back onto the walls and then made up the rest of the image using their imagination and then made more paintings using these imagined frescoes as reference (see: https://www.rom.on.ca/blogs/evans-connection-part-2-minoans-created).
My theory “Boobies teeheehee” posits that Evans and Gilliéron*2 re-painted the frescoes with “tits-a-flailin'” because it makes for a more interesting story and attracts attention to these new finds and teeheehee boobies. So anyway, reading through Ariadne’s Threads I now believe there’s enough evidence outside of the frescoes to convince me that showing breasts is plausible for these impressions and not just something invented to ..um.. titillate.
** Coincidentally, Sir Arthur Evans also coined the term “Minoan” in the early 20th century. While excavating the ancient site of Knossos in Crete, he named the Bronze Age civilization after the legendary Cretan King Minos, who was associated with the labyrinth myth. We have -no- idea what they would have called them selves.. and Creten sound wrong.
