The aim of this paper is to present and try to interpret an interesting Late Minoan clay model from Lastros, Siteia. It is a miniature bathtub, in the interior of which two small figurines, one male and one female, facing each other, have been attached. N. Platon, in a brief report, dated the find to the LMIIIB period and considered that the human figures represent two children taking a bath. However, the item comes from a small, completely destroyed chamber tomb, in which it is said that a few bones and clay vessels were also found. This fact, in combination with some observations on the morphology of the clay group itself, suggests that the latter was meant from the beginning to be used in a special rite, a symbolic religious function being more probable than the simple rendering of a scene connected with the everyday life of the prehistoric inhabitants.

In this context, it is interesting that clay models of bathtubs, and also full-size occur in religious and burial contexts, in Cyprus and other areas of the east Mediterranean, as early as the end of the Bronze Age. As direct interconnections between eastern Crete and Cyprus have been confirmed as far back as the Neopalatial Period, the question arises whether the “bathtub rite” constituted a more widespread religious practice throughout the east Mediterranean, originating from a common belief, already completely formed at the end of the second millennium B.C.