Minoan Bull Leaper

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neil MacGregor's retelling of the history of humanity, using objects from the British Museum's own collection, arrives in Crete around 1700BC. The programme tells the story of man's fascination with bulls and the emergence of one of most cosmopolitan and prosperous civilisations in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean - the Minoans. The Minoans of Crete were more powerful than the mainland and enjoyed a complex and still largely unknown culture. They enjoyed a ritual connection with bulls as well as with a rich bronze making tradition. To consider the Minoans and the role of the bull in myth and legend, Neil MacGregor introduces us to a small bronze sculpture of a man leaping over a bull, one of the highlights of the British Museum's Minoan collection. He explores the vast network of trade routes in the Mediterranean of the time, encounters an ancient shipwreck and tracks down a modern day bull leaper to try and figure out the attraction!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	Taking the Bull by the horns.
0:15.0	It's a terrifying metaphor.
0:20.0	It's a terrifying metaphor. It's how politicians are meant to tackle crises is what we're all meant to do with
0:27.5	the big moral problems of life.
0:29.5	There most of us I suspect hope to avoid doing anything of the sort.
0:37.0	But about 4,000 years ago, we have serious archaeological evidence of a whole civilization that seems to have been collectively
0:44.4	fascinated by the idea of confronting the bull.
0:49.6	I have seen many paintings of people leaping or cutting the bulls.
0:54.0	There always has been a kind of game between men and bulls always.
0:58.2	It's one of the many mysteries of a society at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe that played a key role in shaping what we now call the Middle East.
1:07.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. Minoan bull and bull and acrobat a small bronze statue around 3.5,000 years old,
1:31.8	discovered in Crete.
1:37.0	Out in the middle of the Windark Sea there is a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land washed by the sea on every side.
1:50.0	And in it are many peoples and 90 cities.
1:54.0	There one language mingles with another.
1:57.0	Among the cities is Kinos, a great city.
2:01.0	And there Minos was nine years king the boon companion of mighty Zeus
2:08.1	That was Homer singing the praises of Crete prosperous and cosmopolitan and of its great king, Minus.
2:15.9	Now in Greek myth, Minus had a very complex relationship with bulls.
2:21.2	He was the son of Zeus, king of the Gods, but in order to father him, Zeus had turned
2:26.2	himself into a bull. Minus's wife, in turn, had conceived an unnatural passion for a very
	...

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