Snake tube. What an odd name for a Bronze Age artifact from Minoan sites. That's what Sir Arthur Evans called these cylindrical ceramic objects that were decorated with wavy serpentine shapes running up and down them. You can see a few on the bottom row of the image at the top of this post.

Evans called them "snake tubes" because he thought the Minoans kept pet snakes in their temples and homes, and these tubes were their little houses. I mean, they're decorated with snakes, so why not?

It turns out, these are offering stands. The Minoans used all kinds of offering stands that raised the offering up above the level of the rest of the altar or shrine. That's symbolic, to show that the offering is no longer ordinary, but is something special being given to the gods - above everything else.

Some offering stands look like pedestal cake plates or Victorian-era fruit stands; in other words, they have a bowl or plate built in on the top of the pedestal. But in other cases, like with these snake tubes, the pedestal and the bowl were two separate pieces.

Now, the Minoans weren't the only people in the Bronze Age Mediterranean who made and used offering stands like these that were separate from the bowl or plate that held the offering. This was a widespread practice, with the earliest examples coming from Nubia and the Levant. So the Minoans didn't invent the separate offering stand, and they didn't even invent the idea of decorating them with snakes or snake-like shapes.

But they definitely put their own spin on them. And even if they didn't use them as pet carriers for their snakes, I think they're grand.

In the name of the bee,
And of the butterfly,
And of the breeze, amen.