Youth and Age in the Thera Frescoes

Abstract

The Thera frescoes present a set of pictorial conventions that distinguish six stages of maturity from youth to old age. These conventions apply to female figures and, at the early stages, to males as well. Four stages of youth are indicated by variations in hairstyle. Children at the earliest stage have shaved heads, except for locks growing from the back of the head at the top and the forehead. Somewhat older children have additional locks growing from the top and the right side of the head. Girls in the frescoes from Xeste 3 have recently ceased to shave their heads, and have shed the locks of later childhood at what appears to have been a rite of passage marking their entry into adulthood. Two maidens painted in the adyton of Xeste 3 have grown full heads of hair, but have shed their forehead locks. One maiden is in the process of losing her final lock, that growing from the back of the head at the top, which had been bound up in a loop and fastened with a hairpin. These young women appear to be engaged in activities that refer to a nuptial ritual enacted in the adyton. Additional figures from Xeste 3 represent mature women, and those from the House of the Ladies represent old women, their age indicated by sagging breasts and red strokes in the whites of their eyes. Evidence that these artistic conventions, and perhaps the social practices and religious rituals implied by them, extended beyond Thera is furnished by works from Crete and the Greek mainland.