Towards the end of the second millenium BC bronze-age Minoan culture flourished on the south-Aegean island of Crete. The Minoans were not Greek speakers (we do not know what their language was) and they seem to have possessed a very different mythology from the one that the Greeks would introduce. One of their chief divinities seesm to have been a goddess whose sexuality is as evident as that of the Mother Goddess of Catal Huyuk but whose power is expressed in more dynamic and dramatic fashion. This goddess appears dressed in royal garb but bare-breasted, and she typically brandishes a writhing snake in each hand. Two particularly beautiful examples include a chryselaphantine statuette and a faience statuette, both from the great Minoan palace in the chief city of Knossos, both dating from around 1600-1500 BC. The "Great Goddess" of the Minoans is also depicted on a The clay seal from about the same period -- about 700-800 years before the poems of Hesiod are thought to have been composed.
Between about 1100 and 800 BC the eastern Mediterranean experiences a cultural decline. So little is known about this period that it is known conventionally as a "dark age". What emerges from it, however, is recognizably Greek; and the material remains of the culture that develops from 800 BC onwards differ sharply from what we have seen in earlier Aegean cultures.
Consider for instance the treatment of the female form in art. One of the characteristic forms of sculpture in the Archaic Period (800-480 BC) of Greek culture is the kore or "young woman". In contrast to the powerful and highly sexualized female figures of Minoan religion, these young women are always clothed, usually quite modestly, and are rendered in a realistic way with lifelike proportions and quiet poses. This example is from the island of Chios and dates to about 525 BC and is one of the more elaborate examples; with it may be contrasted the "peplos kore" from Athens.
Alongside the kore type is a masculine counterpart, the kouros or Òyoung manÓ. These statues, in contrast to the female ones, are always nude and show a marked interest in portraying an ideal image of strength and restraint. Examples include the so-called "New York Kouros", which was discovered in Athens and dates from the 7th c. BC; the Kouros from Tenea (c. 570 BC); and the Kouros from Anavysos (540-520 BC). These three kouroi span well over a century of stylistic development, which shows in the progreesively more realistic rendering of musculature, proportion, and texture; but they all maintain the characteristic focus of the genre on male beauty and athleticism expressed in a pose of self-containment that is also suggestive of dynamism and strength.
Zeus himself is not often represented in action. His most famous cult was at Olympia, where games thought to have been founded by his son Heracles were held every four years in honor of the god. The site of a now-ruined temple has been identified and from its plan and the surviving ruins a reconstruction has been made. We know that the temple was decorated with bas-relief placques called metopes that depicted the labors of ZeusÕ son Heracles. The two pediments of the temple depicted Zeus officiating at the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaus at the east end and ZeusÕ son Apollo restoring order to the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs on the west end. ApolloÕs right arm is extended in a gesture of authority; otherwise his pose is basically that of a kouros and the treatment of his body is much the same. His facial expression, like that of the Zeus hurling his thunderbolt, is stern, but calm. The scene in which Apollo appears -- a wedding party that got out of hand -- is significant as well. The Centaurs who attended the wedding got drunk and attempted sexual violence against the bride and other women who were present (as the sculpture of the west pediment depicts). Apollo, who in contrast to the human figures in this scene, appears nude represents not sexual energy but sexual restraint. This is perhaps paradoxical, but it is also characteristic of the values that the Olympian religion represents.
Zeus appears in a position parallel to that of Apollo in the east pediment of the temple, but the most impressive and in many ways the most important image of Zeus that was produced in antiquity was to be found inside the temple. The cult-statue of Zeus was several times larger than life. It was made of gold and ivory and depicted the king of the gods semi-nude, enthroned, and holding his scepter. We may compare this image with that of the the Mother goddess from Catal Huyuk, another nude, enthroned, but female figure. In the difference between the gender of the two divinities some have seen one of the essential distinctions between Greek mythology and religion and that of some earlier cultures; and in the image of the powerful father of the gods seated upon his throne, subsequent Western artists have found inspiration for their own portrayals of masculine political authority.
(more images and texts relating to Olympia and to Zeus)