Blue Monkeys
As she turned to go, Dusani appeared to remember something. “Oh, Lady Shammat wants us to be her guests for the Festival of the Vines.” Rusa’s immediate reaction was to refuse. “Now, I know what you’re going to say, Rusa, but she sent an amphora of her best vintage to apologize for the other night’s damage.”
“That wretched beast,” he muttered. Shammat’s obnoxious blue-dyed monkey had screeched, broken, and hurled objects, terrifying the children and reinforcing Rusa’s natural loathing for the creatures. Shammat had professed herself astonished by her “baby’s” bad behavior. “What has him so riled?” She had clutched her ample bosom while making the comment, as if she thought Rusa might forgive the damages on account of her perfumed cleavage. “He never behaves this way.”
Rusa had had half a mind to seize the monkey by his scruff, take him outside, and strangle him. At least his daughters had stopped pestering him to give them their very own monkey.
“Shammat’s messenger assured me she sold Baby Blue just this morning.” Dusani stroked Rusa’s cheek. “I told her to expect us, dear. Now go wash. Our guests are waiting for you.”
--Excerpt from Knossos.
A common but less frequently commented-upon feature of the Minoan frescoes are the blue monkeys. They cavort about the walls of Akrotiri and the rooms of Knossos when frescoes were first introduced after the earthquake of 1700 B.C. No doubt monkeys were kept as pets by the Minoan elite, but in Minoan iconography they also serve the purpose of gathering flowers and other vegetation to present to the seated deity, as in the fragmentary panel from the Saffron Gatherer Fresco from Akrotiri.
Fragmentary monkey with offering to the goddess from Xeste House, Akrotiri.
More monkeys from Akrotiri.
A blue monkey from Knossos.