Athenian "Snake Goddess" Now Identified As Demeter, Not Athena

Athenian 'Snake Goddess' Gets New Identity

By Stephanie Pappas | LiveScience.com – 11 hrs ago

 

 

SEATTLE - A mysterious "snake goddess" painted on terracotta and discovered in Athens may actually be Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest.

Once linked to the worship of the dead, the goddess is flanked by two snakes on a slab of terracotta about the size of a piece of notebook paper. She has her hands up above her head, which has given her the nickname "the touchdown goddess" thanks to the resemblance of the pose to a referee's signal. The goddess is painted in red, yellow and blue-green on a tile, with only her head molded outward in three dimensions. This unusual piece of art was found amid a jumble of gravel and other terracotta fragments in 1932 in what was once the Athenian agora, or public square.

The catch, however, is that the snake goddess isn't originally from the agora. The gravel and figurine fragments were fill material, brought in from an unknown second location to build a path or road in the seventh century B.C.

"Not only is our snake goddess unidentified, but she's homeless," said study researcher Michael Laughy of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. "She got mixed up in that road gravel, presumably obtained near the site of her original shrine."

Forgotten offering

Along with the snake goddess plaque, the road fill contains small terracotta figurines, or votives, of humans, chariots, shields, loom weights, portions of spindles and pottery disks, most of which individually could fit in the palm of a hand. The terracotta figurines were used during this time period as offerings at the sanctuaries of gods and goddesses, Laughy told LiveScience after presenting his findings here at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Normally, he said, the votive offerings were considered somewhat sacred, and once cleared from sanctuaries would be buried and left undisturbed in a pit. Thus, although it's typical to see artifacts out of place in Athens, which has been built over for thousands of years, it's strange to see votives used as road fill, Laughy said.

Tracing the source of this fill is a difficult task. Previously, archaeologists have assumed the figurines originated from the worship of the dead, linking the items found in Athens to ones found at a Bronze Age tomb outside the city. But the items at that tomb don't match all those found in the Athens agora, Laughy said.

Displaced goddess

More Likely, according to Laughy's analysis, the snake-flanked woman is both a representation of and an offering to a goddess. Votive deposits from the shrines of goddesses include pottery disks, terracotta horses, plaques and shields, as well as female figurines. These votives match the finds uncovered in Athens.

In particular, shrines devoted to Demeter and Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, show the closest matches to the types of figurines found, Laughy said.

Demeter is a strong candidate, as there was a shrine built in her name in the seventh century mere minutes-long walk from the Athens agora, he said. It's the only sanctuary where ancient Greeks are known to have left loom weights and spindle whorls, which are disks that weigh down spindles used for spinning thread and which are found in the Athens fill debris. What's more, Laughy said, the spot was graded in the seventh century, which could have produced a debris pile that was then carted away to make paths in the agora.

Finally, the goddess' serpentine companions also point to Demeter, who was particularly associated with snake iconography, Laughy said.

"Snakes and Demeter are happy together in imagery in the seventh century," he said.

Laughy warned that the evidence linking the snake goddess and Demeter is circumstantial. However, he said, the evidence is strong that the woman is not a figure associated with death, but a goddess. If she were Demeter, the snake goddess plaque would be one of the oldest images ever found of that particular deity.

Either way, the snake goddess is "striking," Laughy said. It's one of the earliest multicolor paintings found in Athens.

"It's an amazing piece of work," he said.

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She is a beautiful piece of work.  Maybe she is Athena.  Athena was long associated with serpents/snakes and in her archaic Greek depictions was often seen wearing a cape of serpents; later, she carried a shield made of serpent skin or denoted with serpents around it's border, and the hem of her gown or cloak was trimmed in serpents.  This figure seems to be dressed in a sort of shield-fronted gown.  Have I ever seen Demeter dressed like that?  Not that I recall.

Notice too the give-away that this figure's roots are in the bird-goddess/eye-goddess tradition, just as Athena's -- look at the eyes of the figure on both sides of the plaque!  Those are classic bird-or-eye-goddess brows and eyes. 

I have to agree, though, with one of the comments at the end of the article, which noted that this figurine looks very Minoan or Cretan and may have been a depiction of Hekate (Hecate).  Well, we know that the Greeks, as did the ancient Egyptians, never let go entirely of the most ancient virgin/mother/crone goddesses; they just merged their identities into other goddesses as well as goddesses adopted from other countries that featured similar attributes. Another one of the comments noted similarities to Inanna.  Very possible.  I'm thinking of images of Astarte I've seen, with arms raised in the "touchdown" position, holding a serpent in each hand, surrounded by animals, sometimes depicted standing on the back of an onager or horse.  Astarte, Ishtar, Inanna, all the same female diety in slightly different guises.

Is that a bird of prey painted on her skirt (left side)? 

Interestingly, I find the proportions of the head and face of the figure on the more damaged (washed-out) side of the plaque to be more attractive than the more colorful side.  I find her prettier, too.  The ladies are not identical, the heads are slightly different sizes, the eyes, although styled the same, and the noses, are definitely different, and the hair on the more colorful rendition of the lady is wider and fuller., particularly across the forehead area.  When looking at the other image, I get a more "Egyptian" feeling; in looking at the more colorful rendition of the lady, she looks more Cretan to me. 

The body proportions are, of course, all wrong, almost as if the ladies were dressed in body armor, like the medieval knights of much later times.  Remember Athena's magic cloak and magic serpent shield...  Most interesting of all is that she was discovered in 1932.  And it's taken this long for someone to take a second look to try and figure out who she may be?  Geez! 

Crossroads and The Key of Solomon

From Barbara G. Walker's The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:

Crossroads
In the Greco-Roman world, crossroads were sacred to the elder Diana under the name of Hecate Trevia (Hecate of the Three Ways), mother of the Lares compitales, "spirits of the crossroads."  Travelers made offerings to the Goddess' three-faced images, and regular festivals called Compitalia were celebrated at her roadside shrines.(1)

Four-way crossroads were sometimes dedicated to Hermes, whose ithyphallic herms stood beside them until replaced by Christians' roadside crosses.  However, the Christian sign of the cross was copied from Hermes' cult and traced his sacred numeral 4 on the worshipper's head and breast.  Hermetic crosses were left at the crossroads of 10th-century Ireland and simply re-interpreted as Christian symbols, though they plainly displayed the twin serpents of the pagan caduceus, another sign of the older deity.(2)

Cross, herm, and caduceus merged in northern symbolism with the gallows tree of Odin/Wotan, "God of the Hanged," which led to the Christian custom of erecting a gallows at crossroads as well as a crucifix. The god on the gallows once played the same role as Jesus on the cross: a dying-god image rendered the crossroads numimous.  Pre-Christian Europeans held waymeets, or moots, at crossroads to invoke their deities' attention to the proceedings; hence a moot point used to be one to be decided at a meet.  The Goddess as Mother Earth, dispenser of "natural law," and creatress of birth-and-death cycles, was always present where the dying god died - as the women long remembered.  the English monk Aelfric complained of female customs dedicating newborn infants to the ancient Mother.  Women would "go to the crossways and drag their children over the earth, and thereby give both themselves and the children to the Devil."(3)

The Key of Solomon. 

As the crossroads ceremonies and their deities became diabolized, the Goddess of the waymeet became the queen of witches, who still worked magic there.  The Key of Solomon* said crossroads were the best of all places for magical procedures "during the depth of silence of the night.(4)  Ghosts of the hanged, of the heathen, and of anicent oracles still haunted crossroads.  Bernard Ragner** said a spirit voice would foretell the future to anyone who went to a crossroad at the last hour of Christmas Eve.  As late as the 1920's, English farmers still believed witches' sabbats were held at crossroads.  Neocromantic superstitions were encouraged by the custom of burying criminals and suicides in unhallowed ground at crossroads; clergymen said anyone so buried would walk as a ghost.  Sometimes, such corpses were pinned down with a stake: "A stake was driven through them when deposited at the cross-roads in order to keep the ghost from wandering abroad,"(5)  Presumably, the ghost could be consulted in situ, just as spirits could be raised from their graves in the churchyard by any necromancer.

Thus Hermes and Hecate, who led the souls of the dead in antiquity, became dread spirits of "witchcraft" in the same places that they once benevolently ruled.

Notes:
(1)  Hyde, 137.
(2)  Campbell, M.I., 337.
(3)  Briffault 3, 58.
(4)  Wedeck 153.
(5)  Summers, V., 154-57.

* Key of Solomon
(Clavicule de Salomon)
A popular "Black Book" or magic book much used between the 11th and 13th centuries A.D.

** Bernard Ragner
Author of Legends and Customs of Christmas, 1925.

Goddess: Baba Yaga

Ohmygoddess! I posted this photograph here on 6/24/09 because of my comment, which you'll be able to read below, about "babushkas." This is a photo from around 1960, and I remember that coat (it had brown velvet-covered buttons and brown velvet corded trim), so it was winter and very cold! That is my three younger sisters and me (I'm on the right, second row, my taller cousin Cookie is to my left, slightly behind), and two of my cousins - Cookie and Tootsie, daughters of one of my mother's sisters, Aunt Diane a/k/a Aunt Christine. Five of us are wearing babushkas. Notice the old television set to the far left and the very contemporary 1950's style drapes, LOL! Juliette Frette is back at Examiner.com with an article about the Goddess Baba Yaga, "Wild Woman:" Baba Yaga (pronounced bah-bye yegg-ah) is known as the Slavic "wild woman," a sacred old hag who is otherwise considered a goddess of birth and death. Although many goddesses cross-culturally seem to have some sort of reign over the beginnings and endings of life, this one has a unique image all her own. . . . Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" does not have an entry under "Baba Yaga," "babau" or "Wild Woman." However, she does have an entry under HAG: Originally "Holy Woman," the Hag was a cognate of Egyptian heq, a predynastic matriachal ruler who knew the words of power, or hekau.(1) In Greek she became Hecate, the Crone or Hag as queen of the dead, incarnate on earth in a series of wise-women or high priestesses. Hebrew "wisdom" in Proverbs 8 is Hokhmah, from Egyptian heq-maa or Heka-Maat, the underworld Mother of widsom, law, and words of power.(2) Greek and Roman cognate hagia meant holy, especially as applied to the principle of female widsom, Hagia Sophia (see Sophia, Saint). Similarly in Israel, a haggiah was a holy day. Certain Jewish religious literature dating back to Israel's matriarchal period was probably written by wise-women, since it was called the Haggadah. Later patriarchal rabbis declared this material "not legal."(3) In northern Europe, the Hag was the death-goddess corresponding to Hecate, like the Hag of the Iron Wood whose daughter or virgin form was Hel.(4) Old Norse hagi meant a sacred grove, the Iron Wood, a place of sacrifice. Haggen meant to chop in pieces, which is what happened to sacrificial victims dismembered for a feast. [EEK! This gives entirely new meaning to Robert Graves' discussions about "king sacrifice" and the maenads I was reading about yesterday who participated in the Dionysian "orgies" where men were literally torn apart. Compare also the horse-Valkyries or horse-masked priestesses of Freya, known as volvas, who tore part the acient kings of Sweden in ritual sacrifice.] "Hags" may have been priestesses of sacrifice, like the Scythian matriarchs who butchered for their sacred cauldrons and read omens in entrails.(5) Northmen colonized Scotland, where a haggis or "hag's dish" was made of internal organs. Until the 19th century, people kept the New Year festival of Hagmena, Hag's Moon, going in disguise from house to house, begging cakes. A chronicler said: "On the last night of the old year (pecularliarly called Hagmenai), the visitors and company made a point of not separating till after the clock struck twelve, when they rose, and mutually kissing, wished each other a happy New Year." This is still the custom. But a contemproary clergyman said the Hagmena meant the Devil was in the house.(6) Devilish qualities were attributed to stone idols of the Hag, such as the famous Stone of Scone, still used at each British monarch's coronation. This stone once represented the Hag and her spinning wheel - i.e., Arianrhod, Goddess of the Wheel of Fate. A danish ballad said the Hag of Scone led the "swarthy Elves;" but she was turned to stone by an incantation of the missionary St. Olave: "Thou Hag of Scone, stand there and turn to granite stone."(7) Helvetian converts to Christianity were compelled to batter to pieces sacred stones in which their Goddess dwelt, reciting her formula, "Once I was the Goddess and now I am nothing at all."(8) In the 16th century, "hag" was synonymous with "fairy."(9) Old High German called a wise-woman Hagazussa, that is, a moon-priestess.(10) Though "hagiology" still means the study of holy matters and saints, the root word hag declined in its meanings. Shakespeare's verb hagged meant to be bewitched. His noun haggard meant a hawk, a harpy, or an intractable woman.(11) The Hag as death-goddess, her face veiled to imply that no man can know the manner of his death, was sometimes re-interpreted as a nun. Christianized legends were invented for these veiled figures.(12) Notes: (1) Book of the Dead, 351. (2) Budge, G.E. 1, 296. (3) Encyc. Brit. "Haggdah." (4) Sturlson, 39. (5) Wendt, 137. (6) Hazlitt, 296. (7) Wimberly, 36. (8) Thorsten, 336. (9) Scot, 550. (10) J.B. Russell, 16. (11) Potter & Sargent, 70. (12) Graves, W.G., 409.

Helen of Troy

Interesting information from Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" about Helen of Troy: Incarnation of the Virgin Moon-goddess, daughter of Queen Hecuba, or Hecate, who embodied the Crone. Helen was also called Helle or Selene. She was worshipped as an orgiastic deity at the Spartan festival Helenphoria, featuring sexual symbols carried in a special fetish-basket, the helene.(1). Trojan Helen married Menelaus, "Moon-king," who was promised immortality because he made a sacred marriage.(2) However, Helen left him and went home with her new Trojan lover Paris, so Menelaus lost both his immortality and the Trojan fiefs that Helen's "matrimony" brought. He sailed with his armies to get her back, and this was the start of the legendary Trojan War which pitted patriarchal Greeks against matriarchal Trojans.(3) [It was all about the money, darlings! Menelaus didn't give a rat's butt about Helen.] As Elen, Elaine, or Hel-Aine, the same Moon-virgin became the queen of pagan Britain, a "Lily Maid" who made the first alliances with emperors of Rome. (See Elaine.) The oldest British histories said the first British king was a Trojan named Brutus, Helen's relative.(4) After Troy fell, he sailed west to the island of Albion [probably meaning "white island", named for the white chalk cliffs of Dover] and founded a city, New Troy, later renamed Lugdunum (London) after his descendant, the god Lug.(5) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M. 1, 208-9. (2) Knight, S.L., 125. (3) Graves, G.M. 2, 276. (4) Briffault 3, 431. (5) Guerber, L.M.A., 309. Related is Helice: "Willow," a title of Hecate in her virgin form as the new moon and the Helicon or "willow-stream" surrounding the Mountain of the Muses. Like Artemis, Helice the Willow-maid was associated with both the moon and Ursa Major, eternally circling the pole, known as Helice's Axle.(1) Witches thought a willow wand a microcosmic axis mundi. See Willow. Notes: (1) Lindsay, O.A., 251. Following the lead: Willow Water and willows represented the Goddess Helice, "Willow," virgin form of Hecate with her willow-witye grain-basket.(1) Willow wants invoked the Muses, whose mountain was encircled by the Helicon, "Willow-stream." The Dionysian thyrsus, like the later withche's wand, was willow. As Dionysus was once a major god of Jerusalem, the willow figured prominently in municipal ceremonies there. A "Great Day" of the Feast of Tabernacles was known as the Day of Willows, with rites honoring fire and water.(2) Willow wands gave protectin in the underworld, where Orpheus carried one to show the way.(3) Willow wands were sacred to the Moon-goddess as late as the 17th century A.D., when an English herbal said the moon owns the willow. Witches used willow bark to treat rheumatism and fevers; i9t was the source of salicylic acid (aspirin), one of Hecate's cures. Some said wicca or "witchcraft" evolved from a word meaning willow, cognate with "wicher" (willow-withe weaving). Magic cats were supposed to grow from pussy-willows or "catkins," to become witches' malkins (familiars): hence the saying that all cats were gray in the beginning. The catkins were harbingers of spring, appearing on the willow as graymalkins. (See Cat.) Winding up for tonight, Elaine: (Var. Elen, Hel-Aine, Eileen) Britain's "Lily Maid," the virgin Moon-goddess bearing the same name as Helen of Troy; British tradition claimed the ilsand were colonized by Trojans. According to the bards, the Roman emperor acquired Britain only by marrying its queen, Elen. The people agreed to help build Roman roads because she ordered them, and the roads were called Roads of Elen of the Hosts: "The men of the Island of Britain would not have made those great hostings for any save for her."(1) Elen or Elaine became the mother-bride of Lancelot-Galahad in Arthurian romance. Lancelot the father begot on her his own reincarnation, Galahad the son [I believe this is just a retelling of the ancient legend of Seraimis, the Queen of the original city of Babylon, married to Nimrod, the first king and builder of cities according to the Bible]; but Lancelot in his youth had been named Galahad, and his mother was Queen Elaine. The Lily Maid gave Lancelot her sexual-symbolic charm to make him invicible: her pearl-bedewed sleeve of red silk. The womb-symbol of the Holy Grail was displayed in her castle, tendered by her dove-soul, Colombe. Galahad saw this vision again in his last moments, as he expired at the altar in ancient sacred-king style.(2) Notes: (1) Mabinogion, 85. (2) Malory 1, 377; 2, 268.

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The Lily and the Dove can be traced back to the ancient Middle East, and probably more specifically, to ancient Egypt. Both symbols figure prominently in the pages of the Bible, which borrowed much imagery (and prayers/paeons) from the Egyptians. The lily is most likely the Egyptian lotus (also prominent in Indian iconography), embodied in later versions of iconic art such as the fleur-de-lis and trefoil, which came to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit or Sophia (representing the hidden female aspect of creation - the fathers of the church did not want to give it a name or a sex, but everyone knew it was Sophia and, in later years, the Virgin Mary, the "Holy Mother of God.")

Lilith

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Lilith a/k/a Lilit Adam's first wife was a relic of an early rabbinical attempt to assimilate the Sumero-Babylonian Goddess Belit-ili, or Belili, to Jewish mythology. To the Canaanites, Lilit was Baalat, the "Divine Lady." On a tablet from Ur, c. 2000 BC, she was addressed as Lillake.(1) Hebraic tradition said Adam married Lilith because he grew tired of coupling with beasts, a common custom of Middle-Eastern herdsmen, though the Old Testament declard it a sin (Deut. 27:21). [Not the most auspicious of beginnings for a marriage...] Adam tried to force Lilith to lie beneath him in the "missionary position" favored by male-dominant societies. Moslems were so insistent on the male-superior sexual position that they said, "Accursed be the man who maketh woman heaven and himself earth."(2) Catholic authorities said any sexual position other than the male-superior one is sinful.(3) But Lilith was neither a Moslem nor a Catholic. She sneered at Adams's sexual crudity, cursed him, and flew away to make her home by the Red Sea. [Note the wings - an allusion to the ancient bird goddesses]. God sent angels to fetch Lilith back, but she cursed them too, ignored God's command, and spent her time coupling with "demons" (whose lovemaking evidently pleased her better) and giving birth to a hundred children every day. So God had to produce Eve as Lilith's more docile replacement. [Note: according to one of the biblical accounts of the creation of Eve, she was made out one of Adam's ribs; so, every time he made love to Eve, was he really making love to a clone of himself? Yechy!] Lilith's fecundity and sexual preferences show that she was a Great Mother of settled agricultural tribes, who resisted the invasions of nomadic herdsmen, represented by Adam [a/k/a man from the red earth - from the Bible, from dust you came and to the dust you shall return...]. Early Hebrews disliked the Great Mother who drank the blood of Abel the herdsman, after his slaying by the elder god of agriculture and smithcraft, Cain (Gen. 4:11) [Gen. 4:11: And now art thou {Cain} cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; - King James Version]. Lilith's Red Sea was another version of Kali Ma's Ocean of Blood, which gave brith to all things but needed periodic sacrificial replenishment. There may have been a connection between Lilith and the Etruscan divinity Leinth, who had no face and who waited at the gate of the underworld along with Eita and Persipnei (Hades and Persephone) to receive the souls of the dead.(4) The underworld gate was a yoni, and also a lily, which had "no face." Admission into the underworld was often mythologized as a sexual union. The lily or lilu (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower-yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name. The story of Lilith disappeared from the canonical Bible, but her daughters the lilim haunted men for over a thousand years. Well into the Middle Ages, the Jews were still manufacturing amulets to keep away the lilim, who were lustful she-demons given to copulating with men in their dreams, causing nocturnal emissions.(5) Naturally, the lilim squatted on top of their victims in the position favored by ancient matriarchs. [No doubt thereby triggering lots of control issues and deep psychological wounds in their male "victims."] Greeks adopted the lilim and called them Lamiae, Empusae (Forcers-In), or Daughters of Hecate. [The ancient Greek men would have hated and dreaded these Forcers-In because of their cultural preference at the time for homosexuality, copulating with females usually only to produce children.] Christians also adopted them and called them harlots of hell, or succubae, the female counterparts of incubi. Celebate monks tried to fend them off by sleeping with their hands crossed over their genitals, clutching a crucifix. It was said that every time a pious Christian had a wet dream, Lilith laughed. Even if a male child laughed in his sleep, people said Lilith was fondling him. To protect baby boys against her, chalk circles were drawn around cradles with the written names of the three angeles God sent to fetch Lilith back to Adam - even though these angels had proved incapable of dealing with her. Some said men and babies should not be left alone in a house or Lilith might seize them.(6) Another common name for the Daughters of Lilith was Night-Hag. This term didn't imply that they were ugly; on the contrary, they were supposed to be very beautiful.(7) As with their brothers the incubi, they were presumed so expert at lovemaking that after an experience with a Night-Hag, a man couldn't be satisfied with the love of a mortal woman. Notes: (1) Graves & Patai, 68. (2) Edwardes, 157. (3) Graves & Patai, 67. (4) Hays, 183. (5) Graves, G.M. 1, 190. (6) Cavendish, P.E., 99. (7) Scot, 512.

Female Burial and Dogs-Head Earrings Discovered

This is a very interesting burial, dating to about 300 BCE. This woman must have been of very high status - buried with four golden wreaths (!!!!) plus dog-head, gem-encrusted earrings!!!! (Unfortunately, no photos of the earrings, I would love to see what they look like). The dog-head earrings provide a possible clue; maybe she was a priestess of the Great Goddess in her aspect of Hecate, whose totemic companions were dogs (guardians of the gates to the after-world and, in some religions, accompanied the souls of the deceased into the after-world). Story from PhysOrg.com Published: 11:25 EST, June 07, 2008 Ancient Greek grave found during subway work Photos: In this undated handout photo provided by the Greek Culture Ministry on Friday, June 6, 2008, a 2,300-year-old gold wreath is seen beside two ancient clay pots in a newly-discovered grave in Thessaloniki, northern Greece. The grave, found during work for a new subway, contained four gold wreaths, earrings, as well as clay and copper vases. (AP Photo/Greek Culture Ministry) The 2,300-year old grave contained a female skeleton, accompanied by four gold wreaths and gold earrings in the shape of dogs' heads set with semiprecious stones. A Culture Ministry statement said Friday that the grave goods included a bronze mirror, a bronze vase and six clay pots. The woman had been buried in a wooden coffin, traces of which survived. The ministry said part of the grave had been destroyed by a modern sewage pipe. The Thessaloniki subway is scheduled for completion in 2012. ©2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.