Abstract

For a relationship that is, by definition, prolific, and in human societies inevitable, motherhood was not a popular subject in the Bronze Age Aegean. Although motherhood obviously existed, references to it in either text or art are rare, especially in comparison to neighbors such as Egypt to the south or Cyprus to the east. As such, more data might be derived from the osteological and archaeological evidence about the physical realia of birth and maternity, while the (lack of) iconographic and much later textual data serve to highlight the importance (or not) that the Minoan and Mycenaean societies ascribed to the mother-child bond.