goddess. It is possible that the goddess is giving a greeting, or a blessing, or is praying, or it may symbolize her appearance in earth in human form. Poppies were mentioned in Greco-Roman myths as offerings to the dead. Robert Graves believed that a second meaning of the depiction and use of poppies in the Greco-Roman myths is the symbolism of the bright scarlet colour as signifying the promise of resurrection after death and that the poppy was the emblem of the goddess Demeter. According to Theocritus for the Greeks Demeter was a poppy goddess bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands (Idyll vii 157). Karl Kerenyi asserted that poppies were connected with a Cretan cult that was transmitted to the Eleusinian Mysteries in Classical Greece: "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis and it is almost certain that in the Cretan cult sphere opium was prepared from poppies." Fellow British classicist and scholar, Jane Ellen Harrison shares the view that the imagery of the gathered poppy reeds in the figurine's hands are associated with the Minoan/Cretan "Mother of the Gods". See also Great Goddess Poppy (botany) References Hood, Sinclair, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece, 1978, Penguin (Penguin/Yale History of Art), External links mekon (poppy): Theoi project 2nd-millennium BC sculptures Figurines Terracotta sculptures Archaeological discoveries in Greece Minoan archaeological artifacts Minoan art Minoan religion Sculptures of goddesses Votive offering Heraklion (regional unit) Poppy seeds Opium culture