The Minoans were great artists, including beautiful plants and animals in their work. I've written before about their depictions of lilies - perhaps the most well-known botanical figure in Minoan art - and papyrus.

Today, I'd like to talk about an unnatural flower, one that doesn't exist in the real world but that appears in Minoan art: the waz lily. You can see two of them on the teacup above (the looped handle is facing away from the camera, so it's not visible). The waz lily is a stylized lily with a pronounced double curl, combined with a stylized papyrus bloom head.

Sir Arthur Evans gave the name waz lily to the Minoan artists' combination of lily-plus-papyrus-bloom, because waz is the ancient Egyptian word for papyrus. I've often wondered whether the waz lily is a botanical version of the mythical "combo animals" such as the griffin (lion-plus-eagle) and sphinx (lion-plus-human) that also appear in Minoan art.

Here's one on a fragment of a ceramic vessel from Crete, with a lovely fuzzy edge on the papyrus blossom:

And there's this Minoan-made krater, found in Enkomi, Cyprus, with a bold waz lily between two stylized long-necked birds (perhaps geese):

Waz lilies also show up on larnaxes, the rectangular sarcophaguses the Minoans used for secondary burial of their loved ones' remains. This one, interestingly, has two regular papyrus stems and one (the one on the far right) that's a waz lily:

Here's another larnax, with waz lilies on the left-hand panel and a fabulous griffin (those are wings, not a tutu!) on the right:

What did waz lilies symbolize in Minoan iconography? Honestly, we don't really know. We've interpreted the double-curl that's so prominent on Minoan lilies to be breast-symbolic, a reminder of the nurturing and nourishing aspects of the Great Mothers. And we associated red and white lilies with Ariadne's Underworld and World Above aspects. So there are positive, Divine Feminine type connections there.

But we aren't sure how the Minoans viewed papyrus, except that they saw it in a positive light. The Egyptians saw it, among other things, as a symbol of flourishing life, and it's possible the Minoans drew on this symbolism as well. But we don't know for sure. It's rare for one culture to borrow a symbol from another without changing its meaning in some way.

So for now, the waz lily is a beautiful enigma, one the Minoans were clearly quite fond of.