desired. From childhood she had also been dedicated to the god and had been brought up in the house of bulls and lived there when she was not staying at the palace or with her old patron or some female friend, for the Cretans are as casual in their dwelling places as in their lives.
I was already curious to see the house of bulls, so that we went to the reception hall to say goodbye to Minea’s patron, who was greatly surprised to see me and asked politely had we met before for I appeared familiar to him. After that, Minea took me to the house of the bulls, which was a city in itself, with stalls, arenas, paddocks, school buildings and priests’ houses. We went from stall to stall, breathing the rank smell of the bulls, and Minea wearied not of calling the bulls by pet names and enticing them, though they tried to poke her between the posts of the partitions, bellowing and pawing the sand with their sharp hoofs.
She met there youths and girls whom she knew, although these dancers were in general not friends with each other, being jealous of their skill and unwilling to impart their tricks to one another. But the priests who trained both bulls and dancers received us warmly, and when they heard that I was a physician, they asked me many questions concerning the digestion of bulls and their diet and the gloss of their coats, although they must have known more of these matters than I. Minea stood high in their favour and was at once allotted a bull and a place in the program for the following day. She was eager to display to me her proficiency with the very best bulls.
Finally Minea took me to a little building where the chief priest of the Cretan god and bulls lived alone — for even if Minos was the nominal high priest, matters of trade and administration left him with no time for bulls except when betting like everyone else. Just as Minos was always named Minos, so was the chief priest always Minotaur, and for some reason he was the most venerated and dreaded man in Crete, and his name was not willingly mentioned and he was referred to as the man in the little bull house. Even Minea feared to visit him though she would not confess this to me but I saw it from her eyes, whose every shade I had learned to know.
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When we had been announced, he received us in a dim room, and at first I fancied that we beheld the god himself and believed all the tales I had been told, for I saw a man with the golden head of a bull. When we had bowed before him, he removed this head and revealed his own face. Despite his courteous smile, I did not like him, for there was in his expressionless face something of sternness and cruelty, but I could not define what it was, for he was a handsome man, very dark and born to command. Minea had no need to tell him anything for he already knew of her shipwreck and her travels and asked no unnecessary questions but thanked me for my good will to Minea and through her to all of Crete and its god, and he said that rich presents awaited me at my inn with which he fancied I should be well content.
“I am indifferent to presents,” I said, “for knowledge is of more value to me than gold, and to increase it I have journeyed in many countries so that I am now familiar with the gods of Babylon and of the Hittites. I hope to acquaint myself with the god of Crete, of whom I have heard much that is marvellous and who loves virgins and flawless boys in contrast to the gods of Syria, whose temples are pleasure houses and who are served by castrated priests.”
“We have a great number of gods whom the people worship,” he said. “In the harbour there are temples to the glory of foreign gods, where you may make sacrifice to Amun or the Baal of the port if you so desire. But I would not mislead you. I acknowledge that the might of Crete depends upon that god who has been worshiped in secret from as far back in time as our knowledge goes. Only the initiates alone may know him, and only when they meet him face to face, for no one has returned to tell us of his shape.”
“The gods of the Hittites are the sky and the rain that falls from the heavens and inseminates the earth,” I said. “The god of Crete I understand to be the god of the sea since the wealth and power of Crete derive from the sea.”
“Perhaps you are right, Sinuhe,” he said with a strange smile. “Know, however, that we Cretans worship a living god, differing herein from the people of the mainland who worship dead gods and images of wood. Our god is no image although bulls are accounted as his symbols, and as long as our god lives, so long endures the Cretan sovereignty of the seas. Thus it has been foretold, and we are assured of it though we also put great trust in our warships, with which no other seafaring nation can compete.”
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