A Bull, A Boy, and an Archaeologist Meet in Minoa
A small bronze sculpture of a bull with a boy leaping over it is now one of the highlights of the
British Museum’s Minoan collection. It comes from the Mediterranean island of Crete, where it was
made around 3,700 years ago.
The bull and the leaper are made of bronze, and together they’re about 5 centimeters long and
between 10 and 13 centimeters high. The bull is in full gallop – legs outstretched and head raised –
and the person is leaping over it is in a full somersault. It’s probably a young man or a boy. He has
grasped the bull’s horns and thrown his body right over it, so that we see him at the point where his
body has completely flipped. The two arching figures visually reflect each other – the outward
curve of the boy’s body being answered by the inward curve of the bull’s spine. It’s a dynamic and
beautiful piece of sculpture and it carries us at once into the reality – and the myth of Ancient Crete.
The image reminds us of the common phrase – ‘taking the bull by the horns,’ which is what we are
all meant to do when confronted with the big moral problems of life. But archaeologist think that
about 4,000 years ago a whole civilization may have been have been fascinated by both the
common phrase as well as the act of physically confronting an actual bull.
In Greek mythology, Minos, ruler of Crete, had a complicated relationship with bulls. He was the
son of a legendarily beautiful woman named Europa and the god Zeus. To make a long story short,
Zeus had to turn himself into a bull in order to win Europa’s heart and eventually father Minos. The
story continues a generation later when, before meeting Minos, Minos’s wife Pasiphae fell in love
with a bull and gave birth to a half-bull half-human son known as the Minotaur. When Minos and
Pasiphae married, Minos was ashamed of his monstrous stepson and imprisoned him in an
underground labyrinth where the Minotaur devoured a regular supply of maidens and youths sent
every year from Athens…until the Greek hero Theseus famously succeeded in killing him.
While we only learned of the history of Crete in the past 100 years, archaeologists have been
fascinated by the tales of King Minos for much longer. Just over a hundred years ago, Sir Arthur
Evans explored the island and decided to do an archaeological dig at Knossos. As he and his large
team of archaeologists dug, the bulls and monsters, palaces and labyrinths of Greek mythology
were on his mind. So, although we have no idea of what the people in this rich civilization around
1700 BCE actually called themselves, Evans believed he was uncovering the world of King Minos
and simply called them Minoans, and this name has stuck ever since. In his excavations, Evans
uncovered the remains of a vast building complex, finding pottery and jewellery, carved stone seals,
ivory, gold and bronze, and colorful frescoes, often showing bulls; and he tried to interpret these
finds with the famous myths in mind. He was eager to reconstruct the role that the bylls might have
played in the islands’s economic and ceremonial life, so he was particularly in the discovery of this
bronze sculpture which was found a short distance from Knossos.
Adapted from: A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (2010)