Ariadne's Tribe: Minoan Spirituality for the Modern World

Walk the sacred labyrinth with Ariadne, the Minotaur, the Great Mothers, Dionysus, and the rest of the Minoan family of deities. Ariadne's Tribe is an independent spiritual tradition that brings the deities of the ancient Minoans alive in the modern world. We're a revivalist tradition, not a reconstructionist one. We rely heavily on shared gnosis and the practical realities of Paganism in the modern world. Ariadne's thread reaches across the millennia to connect us with the divine. Will you follow where it leads?

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A Minoan Grocery List, Sort Of

I've written a couple of times about Minoan food and cooking. It's a perennially popular subject, since food is one of the human universals: everyone has to eat. And learning about a culture's foodways is one of the easiest ways to connect with them.

Over the years, I've gathered up bits and pieces of information from research about Bronze Age Mediterranean food. I shared some lists of typical Minoan foodstuffs in Labrys & Horns. But I've collected up far more than I have published. So today, I thought I'd offer what you might think of as a comprehensive Minoan shopping list of the foods that the best-stocked kitchen in Bronze Age Crete might have included.

Obviously, many of these foods are seasonal, so they wouldn't have been available all at once. And which foods any given person had access to would have depended not just on their location (near the sea for fresh fish and seafood, for instance) but also their socioeconomic status. The Minoans appear to have been a gender-egalitarian society, but they definitely had social stratification, i.e., social class. So wealthy people would have eaten a far more varied diet, probably with more meat and imported foods than poorer people, whose mainstays would likely have been bread and porridge and whatever wild foods they could gather or hunt.

So herewith, the list:

GRAINS
barley
millet
rye
wheat, emmer, einkorn

MEAT
beef
beef liver
deer
goat (domesticated from indigenous wild varieties)
grouse
mutton/lamb (domesticated from indigenous wild varieties - sheep bones make up about 90% of the meat remains found at archaeological sites, so this was definitely a major protein source)
peacock (possibly – it’s possible that just the feathers and not the birds were imported)
pork (domesticated from indigenous wild varieties)
rabbit

SEAFOOD
fish (roasted, grilled, salted)
limpets
octopus
snails
squid

VEGETABLES
chickpeas
chicory
endive
fava beans
fennel (bulb type, a.k.a. finocchio)
hyacinth bulbs
lentils
okra
onions
peas
purslane
radish
sow thistle
vetch
wild artichoke
wild asparagus
wild greens (horta) including dandelion leaves
wild leek
wild mustard

FRUIT
dates
elderberries
figs
grapes
Mediterranean hackberry
mulberries
olives (trees were imported, first olive groves on Crete ca. 4000 BCE)
pomegranates
quinces
raisins
terebinth fruit
wild pears

MISCELLANEOUS
acorn
almonds
almond oil
castor oil
chestnuts
farmer/pot cheese from cow, sheep, and/or goat milk
honey (especially prized was thyme honey)
olive oil (for food, medicine, lamps, and as a cosmetic base)
sesame oil
tiger nut, a.k.a. nutsedge: Cyperus esculentus (actually a root, not a nut)

SEASONINGS
anise
bay laurel
coriander
cumin
dill
dittany of Crete
fennel seed
garlic
lavender
marjoram
myrtle
onion
oregano
parsley
poppyseed
rosemary
rue
saffron
sage
sea salt
sesame seeds
thyme
tilia (linden flowers)
verbena
wine vinegar
wormwood

BEVERAGES
beer
herb tea
mead
milk (cow, goat, sheep)
retsina (resinated wine). Wine was resinated with copal from Africa and terebinth from the Near East.
wine

As you can see, this isn't a whole lot different from the modern Mediterranean diet, though obviously foods from the Americas like potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, hadn't reached Crete back in the Bronze Age.

Would you have enjoyed the variety of foods the Minoans ate? What might a meal look like if you had to cook it from this "grocery list"?

As a polytheist, animist society, the Minoans would have viewed the food they ate as gifts from their deities, perhaps from the Mothers or the Horned Ones, depending on the food. How might you offer a blessing for a meal of Minoan foods? To whom would you offer thanks?

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Laura Perry is a priestess and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. She's the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne's Tribe, an inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. When she's not busy drawing and writing, you can find her in the garden or giving living history demonstrations at local historic sites.

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