Midwives of Eileithyia Tracing a female healing tradition in prehistoric Crete

Abstract

The health issues associated with birthing notoriously large and helpless infants have sweeping but barely acknowledged implications in the shaping of early medical systems. Treading uncharted territory, this thesis theorizes such systems as archaic midwifery complexes, structured female medico-religious responses to the reproductive flaws derived from adaptation to bipedalism. Through anthropological and comparative approaches to the primeval expertise of midwifery, the research develops a much needed conceptual and methodological framework for the study of these overlooked healing systems linked to the cult of supernatural midwives fostering (re)birth. The devised framework is then applied to the analysis of the evidence for one such healing complex in prehistoric Crete and its connections with the ancestral cult of Eileithyia, the earliest midwife goddess documented on the island. As the thesis reassesses her role within the broader context of Minoan religion, it brings to light a native female therapeutic tradition long predating Hippocratic medicine, which challenges dominant narratives of the beginnings of Western medical practice as a primarily male epistemological achievement. The thesis thus opens new research avenues within and beyond Aegean (pre)history, offering useful parameters to forward the study of women's neglected but paramount contribution to the foundations of medical knowledge.