Gouves, Greece and partially restored Knossos in the early 20th century. A more comprehensive exploration was done by French and Greek archaeologists in the 1960s. They found a considerable number of bronze and ceramic votive offerings, the oldest of them dating from the earliest Minoan periods, suggesting the cave was an important sacred shrine dedicated to a female fertility deity, presumably Britomartis. The cave was still used in Classical Greek and Roman eras, when the fertility goddess Artemis or her Roman equivalent Diana replaced the Minoan deity. Gouves, Greece Gouves () is a town and former municipality in the Heraklion regional unit,
Dali (goddess) and the Greeks, noting that the Svan homeland is close to the ancient Georgian kingdom of Colchis, a region with close trading connections to Greece. Some sources have noted a similarity to the Greek goddess Artemis, who was also a patron of wild animals and hunting, although unlike Dali she was known for prudishness rather than promiscuity. Both were associated with transitions and boundaries, especially between civilization and the wilderness. Writing in the 1940s, the Georgian author Demna Shengelaya examined Dali as an equivalent of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, identifying themes of matriarchy struggling against patriarchal values reflected in the