Mount Lykaion Back in the News

Prior post. The headline reads: Surprise Finds on Wolf Mountain by Jarrett A. Lobell How long have pilgrims worshiped at the sanctuary of Zeus? From Archaeology Magazine Online, From the Trenches, Volume 61, Number 3, May/June 2008 On his second-century A.D. tour of the monuments of Greece, the writer Pausanias visited Mount Lykaion (Greek for "wolf") in Arcadia. He knew that for 1,000 years people had been coming to the site to worship Zeus, the supreme god of the Greek pantheon. In fact, when Pausanias arrived, an animal sacrifice was underway. But what he could not have known is that there may have been religious activity on Mount Lykaion as early as 3000 B.C. New archaeological discoveries are pushing back the chronology of this important sanctuary by 2,000 years. Excavations led by David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania, Michaelis Petropoulos of the Greek Archaeological Service, and Mary Voyatzis of the University of Arizona focus on the southeast section of the site's ash altar, a large area of the summit covered in the remains of dedicatory offerings. The team was surprised to find Early Helladic (ca. 3000-2100 B.C.) pottery mixed in with artifacts from later periods. "We were stunned to find this early material," says Voyatzis. Romano and Voyatzis are making the bold suggestion that the Early Helladic people who lived in the area before the Greeks arrived may have used Mount Lykaion's peak to worship a weather god. They think the deity might be a precursor to Zeus, god of sky and thunder, who is first mentioned in Linear B tablets around 1400 B.C. "Certainly we are not claiming anything like continuity of cult here," says Romano. "But what we are thinking now is that this was a place of worship at an early date." Along with the Early Helladic material, excavators found offerings from later periods--bronze tripods and rings, silver coins, and burned animal bones--confirming that the sanctuary flourished from the eighth century B.C. onward as a destination for pilgrims. Spectators and athletes were also drawn to the sanctuary's games, which rivaled those of nearby Olympia. Another tantalizing discovery was a rock-crystal seal with the image of a bull. Zeus is said to have two birthplaces, one at Mount Lykaion and the other on Crete, home of the Minoans. The seal, dating from 1500 to 1400 B.C., likely came from Crete, where bull iconography was popular, suggesting a connection between the worship of Zeus in both locations. Romano's team has yet to determine how the artifact came to the site, but together with the potential evidence for early rituals on the mountaintop, the bull seal is helping them understand the long tradition of worship on Zeus's sacred mountain. © 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of Americawww.archaeology.org/0805/trenches/zeus.html ******************************************************************************** Duh! It should have occurred to me that "Lykaion" was related to lykos - wolf. In my trusty Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the word "wolf" is described as having come into English from the Old High German "wolf," but the Latin word was "lupus" and the Greek "lykos." So - how did the mountain get named "Wolf Mountain" if a weather-god precursor of Zeus was supposedly worshipped on it - a god that was given animal sacrifices by the locals? Weather god my foot! It was probably a goddess originally worshipped on Wolf Mountain, the mountain being named after the goddess' canine companions, who were not only harbingers of death but also thought by the ancients to carry the souls of the deceased to heaven or hell. We know that Zeus expropriated other sites in Greece for his worship as "Father Heaven," including Mount Olympus, former shrine of Gaea Olympia, just as he expropriated attributes of the goddesses and holy priestesses from which he originally derived his office and powers through sacred marriage. Excerpted from Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" under the entry for Werewolf: Belief in the werewolf or "spirit-wolf" probably began with early medieval wolf clans who worshipped their totemic gods in wolf form, as did some people of the Greco-Roman world centuries earlier. Zeus Lycaeus, or Lycaeon, was a Pelasgian wolf-king who reigned in a nine-year cycle as spouse of the Ninefold Goddess, Nonacris.(1) Virgil said the first werewolf was Moeris, spouse of the trinitarian Fate-goddess (Moera), from whom he learned secrets of magic, including the necromantic knack of calling up the dead from their tombs.(2) Lycanthropy (werewolfism) was named for Apollo Lycaeus, "Wolfish Apollo," who used to be worshipped in the famous Lyceum or "Wolf-temple" where Socrates taught.(3) Apollo was mated to Artemis as a divine Wolf Bitch at Troezen, where she purified Orestes with the blood of nine sacrificial victims.(4) Pausanias said Apollo was originally an Egyptian deity, deriving his name from Up-Uat (Ap-ol), a very ancient name of Anubis.(5) (see Dog.) [Pausanias – Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century A.D. Living in a time of declining culture, he was inspired by a desire to describe the ancient sacred sites for posterity.] Another Roman version of the wolf god was Dis Pater [Note: Greek Zeus, from the Sanskrit Dyaus pitar], Soranus, or Feronius, consort of the Sabine underground Goddess Feronia, "Mother of Wolves." A certain Roman family claimed descent from her Sabine priestesses, and annually demonstrated her power by walking barefood over glowing coals during the festival of the Feronia.(6) She was also identified with Lupa the She-Wolf, whose spirit purified Palatine towns through the agency of young men in wolf skins, consecrated by participating in the Lupercalia or Festival of the She-Wolf.(7) The She-Wolf was another aspect of the Triple Goddess, as shown by her triadic motherhood. She gave three souls to her son, the legendary King Erulus or Herulus, so that when he was overthrown by Evander, he had to be killed three times.(8) The Amazons, who worshipped the Triple Goddess, incorporated a tribe called the Neuri, who "turned themselves into wolves" for a few days each year during their main religious festival, presumably by wearing wolf skins and makes.(9) The same story was told of a certain Irish tribe in Ossory, who became wolf-people when attending their Yuletide feast, devouring the flesh of cattle as wolves, and afterward regaining their human shape. "Giraldus Cambrensis relates this great wonder in detail, as in operation in his own time, and believed every word of it."(10) The heathens’ devotion to ancestral wolf gods in Teutonic Europe is evinced by the popularity of such names as Wolf, Wulf, Wolfram, Wolfburg, Aethelwulf, Wolfstein, etc. ""Beowulf son of Beowulf,""hero of the Anglo-Saxon epic, was called Scyld by the Danes, who said he came from the waters in a basket like Romulus and Remus, foster-sons of the She-Wolf.(11) Notes: (1) Graves, W.G., 406. (2) Lawson, 250. (3) Summers, W., 144. (4) Graves, G.M., 1, 201; 2, 66. (5) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 129. (6) Larousse, 210. (7) Wedeck, 174. (8) Dumezil, 244. (9) Herodotus, 244. (10) Joyce, 299. (11) Rank, 63.