Statue of Ancient Greek Goddess unearthed close to Knossos - but who is she?'

We believe the statue is of the goddess Mnemosyne. One of the titans and the second wife of Zeus, king of the gods. Mnemosyne's mythology is a fascinating one. She was the goddess of memory and language. The ancients believed that at the end of life, each soul has the choice of either swimming in the stream of the Leith and forgetting their entire existence so they could come back to earth clean and fresh and ready to start again, or they could swim in Mnemosyne’s pool and remember everything that ever happened to them. The story goes that Zeus was so crazed with lust for her that he came down to earth and pretended to be a shepherd so he could sleep with her. Somehow she didn’t see through this and fell for him too. Apparently Zeus made love to her every night for nine nights and then…who knows what happened? The myth goes that sometime later, the goddess gave birth to nine little girls, one a month for nine months and they became the famous Muses; the goddesses who inspire all artistic endeavours on earth.