Do the Earliest Carved Female "Nudes" Have Meaning?

Perhaps they do. Then again, perhaps they were carved by dudes away from the warmth of the caves out on long hunting expeditions, and they just missed their ladies and their warm cozy fur beds.  There must have been a lot of "frigging in the rigging" going on back then for mankind to spread all over the earth the way the did and cause the extinction of so many animals. 

I also wonder if the change to a very different type of representation of the female body about 16,000 years ago was a world-wide thing?  And - is there a contimuum of figures from the "Gonnersdorf" style down to say, about 4000 BCE and the "bird woman" figurines (that's what I call them) from Crete and one spectacular example from pre-Dynastic Egypt -- I think it's Naqada III (c. 3500 BCE)?  Connections?  Is anybody out there thinking outside their small little boxes?????

6000 year old "Lady of Villers-Carbonnel" France (2011)

20000 yer old ivory carving found at Garabaldi, Italy

One of the most beautiful female forms ever created -
pre-Dynastic Egypt, bird goddess, c. 3500 BCE
housed at the Brooklyn Museum

Seeking Meaning in the Earliest Female Nudes

byMichael Balter on 27 February 2013, 4:40 PM

 

LONDON—About 35,000 years ago, prehistoric artists across Europe suddenly discovered the female form—and the art world has never been the same. The explosion of voluptuous female figurines sculpted out of limestone, ivory, and clay directly inspired Picasso and Matisse. Researchers have debated the figurines' meaning for decades. Now, two scientists think they have the answer. Presenting their work here last week at the European Palaeolithic Conference, they claimed that the objects started off as celebrations of the female form, then later became symbols that tied together a growing human society.

 

The talk, part of a special exhibition on Ice Age art at London's British Museum, surveyed the more than 20,000 year-history of female figurines, which are found at dozens of archaeological sites from Russia to France. The earliest such objects, which include the famous Venus of Willendorf from Austria (see photo) and a statuette recently found in Germany that some have called the "earliest pornography," date from as early as 35,000 years ago and are generally called the "Willendorf style" of prehistoric art.

 

It's an overtly sexual, earthy style: Many of the intricately carved figurines share features such as large, pendulous breasts, huge buttocks, and chubby legs with no feet. They display "female nakedness in all its splendor," said presenter Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, who co-authored the work with archaeologist Olaf Jöris, both of the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre in Neuwied, Germany. Nevertheless, she pointed out, individual figurines differ in many aspects. They vary greatly in size; some are slim rather than fat; and some are hairless while others bear what appear to be elaborate headdresses, possibly reflecting clothing that prehistoric women actually wore. Moreover, during the Willendorf period, male figurines, many anatomically correct with penises and detailed facial features, also appear frequently, and occasional sculptures depict men and women side by side.

 

But beginning about 16,000 years ago, Gaudzinski-Windheuser told the audience, the Willendorf style gave way to a new type of image belonging to the so-called "Gönnersdorf style," named after a site in Germany that features both figurines and engravings of a much more schematic, stylized female form. The Gönnersdorf females, which are found throughout central and Western Europe, are headless and sport smaller breasts, although they usually have large, protruding buttocks. They were apparently meant to be viewed in profile, as their features are only clear when seen from the side. Engravings of these images on cave walls often depict scenes of a number of women together in groups, possibly dancing. Males are rarely depicted, either in sculptures or in engravings.

 

Gaudzinski-Windheuser and Jöris hypothesize that the Willendorf and Gönnersdorf styles express very different meanings. The Willendorf figurines, they argue, represent the overall idea of femaleness, but the emphasis is on individual women, represented by the many differences among the figurines. As a parallel, Gaudzinski-Windheuser suggested that the cute and chubby fictional stars of the children's TV show, Teletubbies—Tinky Winky, Po, Laa-Laa, and Dipsy—symbolize the common idea of a perfect, child-friendly world, and yet each Teletubby has their own individual personality. (For example, each is a different color and has a different symbol on its head.) Such a symbolic system, in which both individual and group identity were expressed simultaneously, might have been suitable for the earliest modern humans who colonized Europe about 40,000 years ago—and who probably lived in small, close-knit groups, especially as Ice Age glaciers spread across Europe and forced them to cluster together in warmer refugia, she said.

 

In contrast, the Gönnersdorf style arose near the end of the last Ice Age, about 16,000 years ago, when the glaciers were retreating and human populations grew and expanded, including into northern Europe. The new, abstract style of female figurine was much more standardized, with little individual variation, and could be made by nearly anyone, as opposed to the great artistic skill it took to make a Willendorf statuette, Gaudzinski-Windheuser told the meeting. These later depictions, which were unlikely to represent individual women, were used for communication of commonly held ideas of "femaleness" across far-flung social networks in Europe, which still needed to keep in touch to survive. In this way, she concluded, the images helped to solidify a "communal identity" among widely dispersed human populations.

Some researchers at the meeting, while cautioning that such interpretations are necessarily speculative, say that the pair's thesis has merit. "I rate it highly," says Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. The figurines helped cement the social networks of expanding populations "whose insurance policy was having friends and relations over as big an area as possible." The change in styles from voluptuous to schematic females, Gamble adds, shows that "it's not over" even after "the fat lady sings."

Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at the Durham University in the United Kingdom, agrees. "Sabine and Olaf remind us" that prehistoric art could have "dramatically different" functions as conditions changed for human societies, he says. But Randall White, an archaeologist at New York University in New York City, says that he is "not a fan" of the hypothesis, arguing that it oversimplifies the dichotomy between the two styles of female depictions, which he thinks were not as clear-cut as the MONREPOS archaeologists claim.

A Different View on Those Ancient "Venuses"

'Palaeo-porn': we've got it all wrong

• 13 November 2012 by Jude Isabella
• Magazine issue 2890

The idea that curvaceous figurines are prehistoric pornography is an excuse to legitimise modern behaviour as having ancient roots, says archaeologist April Nowell

 

"Lady of Villners-Carbonnel", 2011.

 

Which Palaeolithic images and artefacts have been described as pornography?

The Venus figurines of women, some with exaggerated anatomical features, and ancient rock art, like the image from the Abri Castanet site in France that is supposedly of female genitalia.

 

You take issue with this interpretation. Who is responsible for spreading it, journalists or scientists?

People are fascinated by prehistory, and the media want to write stories that attract readers - to use a cliché, sex sells. But when a New York Times headline reads "A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock", and Discover magazine asserts that man's obsession with pornography dates back to "Cro-Magnon days" based on "the famous 26,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette...[with] GG-cup breasts and a hippopotamal butt", I think a line is crossed. To be fair, archaeologists are partially responsible - we need to choose our words carefully.

 

Having studied Upper Palaeolithic figurines closely, what did you find?

They are incredibly varied beyond the few figurines seen over and over again: the Venus of Hohle Fels, the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus of Dolní Veˇstonice. Some are male, some are female; some are human, some are animals or fantastical creatures; some wear items of clothing, others do not. A recent study by my doctoral student Allison Tripp and her colleague Naomi Schmidt demonstrated that the body shapes of female figurines from around 25,000 years ago correspond to women at many different stages of life; they're a variety of shapes and sizes. All of this suggests that there are multiple interpretations.

 

Aren't other interpretations of palaeo-art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?

Yes, but when we interpret Palaeolithic art more broadly, we talk about "hunting magic" or "religion" or "fertility magic." I don't think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals - Nature for example - use terms such as "Prehistoric pin-up" and "35,000-year-old sex object", and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an "earth mother or pin-up girl" (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimise and naturalise contemporary western values and behaviours by tracing them back to the "mist of prehistory".

 

Will we ever understand what ancient art really means?

The French, in particular, are doing incredible work analysing paint recipes and tracing the movement of the ancient artists as they painted. We may never have the knowledge to say, "This painting of a bison meant this", but I am confident that a detailed study of the corpus of ice age imagery, including the figurines, will give us a window on to the "lived life" in the Palaeolithic.

Profile

April Nowell is a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her paper "Pornography is in the eye of the beholder: Sex, sexuality and sexism in the study of Upper Paleolithic figurines", co-authored with Melanie Chang, will appear next year.

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Well, she may well be correct with respect to some of the figurines and representations found over the years; but then again, it's hard to dismiss the so-called of "Lady of Villners-Carbonnel" (photograph from a 2011 article) as something other than a representation of a very impressive woman, indeed.  Now, was she a fertility figure?  Was she meant to be a Mother Goddess?  Was she an icon of a powerful female shamanic figure?  Was she a representation of a female clan leader?  Who knows?  I do not agree with calling this kind of art "pornographic" but certainly it was a very important part of prehistoric humans' legacy to us today and until we can uncover thousands of  figurines such as this one, as well as male and animal representations, I think the lady dost protest a wee bit too much. 

Let's wait and see what we find in the future, what dating tells us, what our own eyes tell us, what context tells us (if anything), and for now, let's just enjoy and marvel at the unique and wonderful beauty of each and every one of these pieces that have been found.  Imagine surviving 5,000 years?  Imagine surviving 25,000 years?  Maybe I'm being totally lame-o here, but I do not think that so many figurines of female figures survived BY ACCIDENT.  Just saying...

Earliest Mother Goddess Image Found - In India???

I confess to being totally confused by the headline of this article!  But this "Mother Goddess" --regardless of her putative age (or lack thereof), she's a real beauty.  Looked at face on, I was immediately reminded of the ancient image of another "Mother Goddess" - She of Catal Hoyuk - large breasts, big bellied (possibly pregnant), seated upon a throne, her hands resting on the heads of two felines flanking either side of her throne.  She is not very large, although I have always gotten the impression that she is gigantic!  No, she is a carefully carved votive figure, apparently, for she was found inside what was a grain storage bin!

Here She is, one of the most iconic images in the world!  Discovered in 1961 by archaeologist
James Mellaart, She rests now in a museum in Ankara, Turkey.  Interestingly, the caption under this
photograph says that She is from 6th century BCE -- which would mean sometime between 700 - 600 BCE.
Oh please!  Everyone knows She's at least 7,000 years old, which means 5,000 - 4000 BCE!

Am I mistaken?  Does not this much larger Indian version of the Mother Goddess look like she has large breasts, a large belly, and two arms resting on - something.  Her legs, perhaps?  Which means she is either seated on something or squatting...  You can see from the photo on the right that this is not a three-dimensionally carved standing statue, but looks more like a wall plaque.  Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. 

Statue of mother Goddess dating back to 3rd Century B.C. discovered by Archaeological Survey of India at Sri Chalukya Kumara Bheemeswara Swamy temple at Samarlakota in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh near Kakinada

From The Hindu Online
Earliest image of Mother Goddess found
VIJAYAWADA,February 16, 2012
Ramesh Susarla

The first-ever ‘Mother Goddess' image carved in sandstone rock — representing the earliest perception of idolising woman as Goddess dating back to 3 Century BC — has been found close to the Sri Chalukya Kumara Bheemeswara Swamy temple at Samarlakota near Kakinada in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. [Do they mean between 400 and 300 BCE, or do they mean 4000 to 3000 BCE?  Big difference!]

Archaeological Survey of India's Superintending Archaeologist R. Krishnaiah, told The Hindu that while conducting an exploration around the Bheemeswara Swamy temple to ascertain its origin and antiquity, their Deputy Superintending Archaeologist D. Kanna Babu discovered the stunning and unique image of a seated mother goddess (Yakshini), in a remote corner outside the temple.

The centuries old temple is revered as one of the ‘Pancharama Kshetras.' From the archaeological research point of view, the ‘mother goddess' sculpture was a rare discovery, said Mr. Krishnaiah. This find would be vital for reconstructing the cultural life of ancient Andhra, the origin and evolution of early cultural art. This idol was believed to be from the Ashoka period in 3 Century BC.

Samarlakota might have played a vital role with prominent cultural activity from the early times dating back to the 11 century Chalukya period, he added. “We will conduct more explorations in the near future to bring out archaeological richness of the ancient Godavari Valley,” he said.

The archaeologist Mr. Babu, who made the discovery, said that such an early image of Mother Goddess had not been found so far in entire South India in stone media. The highly eroded sandstone sculpture is 150 cm tall, 67 cm wide and 28 cm thick life-size form of a Mother Goddess seated on a broad pedestal.

“Her facial physiognomic feature is roundish, dignified with chubby cheeks, wide open eyes, a broad heavy nose, and close cut tender pair of lips. She is potbellied, her arms and wrists are embellished with a series of big bangles and she is wearing earrings. The head is covered with a beautiful head-dress, but it is in a deeply eroded state.”

The drapery covers her waist, hanging down between her legs and bears folds. Hands rest on her thighs and hold something which the ASI presumes are foodgrain. Mr. Babu says these features have striking similarities with the unique Yaksha, Yakshini images unearthed at important cultural sites like Beta, Patna, Deedarganj, Lauria, Nandanagarh, and Amaravathi of the Mauryan period.

The ASI team included K. Veeranjaneyulu, senior archaeologist, and KVSSN Murthy, caretaker.

"Earth Mother of the Somme"

As mother goddesses go, she is relatively young -- a mere 6,000 or so years old.  What is unique about her is that she is made of fired clay, and managed to survive, thanks to breaking apart during the firing process!  She also looks rather 'cyclidic', doesn't she...

From the independent.co.uk

The earth mother of all neolithic discoveries
John Lichfield

Paris

Saturday 10 December 2011

"Earth Mother of the Somme" or the "Lady of Villers-Carbonnel"

French archaeologists have discovered an extremely rare example of a neolithic "earth mother" figurine on the banks of the river Somme.

The 6,000-year-old statuette is 8in high, with imposing buttocks and hips but stubby arms and a cone-like head. Similar figures have been found before in Europe but rarely so far north and seldom in such a complete and well-preserved condition.

The "lady of Villers-Carbonnel", as she has been named, can make two claims to be an "earth mother". She was fired from local earth or clay and closely resembles figurines with similar, stylised female bodies found around the Mediterranean.

Although neolithic experts are revising their opinions, the figures have long believed to have been connected with the existence of a cult which worshipped a goddess of the hearth or of fertility.

The Somme "earth mother" appears to have broken into five or six parts while she was being fired between 4300 and 3600 BC. She was found in the ruins of a neolithic kiln at a French government "preventive" archaeological dig near Villers-Carbonnel on the banks of the river Somme in the département of the same name.

The figurine may be just the beginning of a vast archaeological harvest in Northern France in the next few years, stretching from palaeolithic times to the First World War. The French government's "preventive archaeology" agency, Inrap, has been given permission and the funds to explore 77 sites along the 60-mile course of the new 50m-wide Seine-Nord Europe canal for ocean-going barges linking the river Seine to Belgium and the Rhine.

The archaeologist in charge of the Villers-Carbonnel dig, Françoise Bostyn, told The Independent: "The statuette is very beautiful and remarkably preserved. We sometimes find fragments of such statuettes but rarely the whole figure."

The "earth mother of the Somme" may owe her survival, paradoxically, to the fact that she was broken while being made. Her various pieces were discovered in a collapsed kiln or oven.

Ms Bostyn said that the stylised figure, with inflated buttocks and thighs and rudimentary head and arms, closely resembled similar figures from the period found as far away as the Middle East.

Could the "lady of Villers-Carbonnel" represent the neolithic ideal of female beauty, long before the coming of fashion magazines, airbrushes and Photoshop?

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A big booty is still sought after by many women today...

Fake doctor arrested for illegal cosmetic surgeries, November 21, 2011,
ABC News. This is the doctor with "surgically" altered buttocks.

35,000 Year Old "Venus" Figurine

I don't know how I missed - but it seems I did! Better late than never. This is a very important discovery. I found the original article with photo here. Here is the press release from Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubigen: A Venus figurine from the Swabian Jura rewrites prehistory 13 May 2009 Universitaet Tuebingen Under embargo until 13 May 2009 19:00 GMT The 2008 excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany recovered a female figurine carved from mammoth ivory from the basal Aurignacian deposit. This figurine, which is the earliest depiction of a human, and one of the oldest known examples of figurative art worldwide, was made at least 35,000 years ago. This discovery radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art. Between September 5 and 15, 2008 excavators at Hohle Fels near the town of Schelklingen recovered the six fragments of carved ivory that form the Venus. The importance of the discovery became apparent on September 9 when an excavator recovered the main piece of the sculpture that represents the majority of the torso. The figurine lay about 3 meters below the current surface of the cave in an area about 20 meters from the cave’s entrance. The finds come from a single quarter meter and were recovered from within 8 cm in the vertical dimension. The Venus from Hohle Fels is nearly complete with only the left arm and shoulder missing. The excellent preservation and the close stratigraphic association of the pieces of the figurine indicate that the Venus experienced little disturbance after deposition. The figurine originates from a red-brown, clayey silt at the base of about one meter of Aurignacian deposits.The Venus lay in pieces next to a number of limestone blocks with dimension of several decimeters. The find density in the area of the Venus is moderately high with much flint knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, bones of horse, reindeer, cave bear, mammoth, ibex, as well as burnt bone. Radiocarbon dates from this horizon span the entire range from 31,000 – 40,000 years ago. The fact that the venus is overlain by five Aurignacian horizons that contain a dozen stratigraphically intact anthropogenic features with a total thickness of 70 – 120 cm, suggests that figurine is indeed of an age corresponding to the start of the Aurignacian around 40,000 years ago. Although much ivory working debris has been recovered from the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels and the nearby site of Geißenklösterle, this sculpture is the first example of figurative art recovered from the basal Aurignacian in Swabia. The discovery of the Venus of Hohle Fels refutes claims that figurative representations and other symbolic artifacts first appear the later phases of the Swabian Aurignacian. The Venus shows a range of entirely unique features as well as a number of characteristics present in later female figurines. The Venus of Hohle Fels lacks a head. Instead an off-centered, but carefully carved ring is located above the broad shoulders of the figurine. This ring, despite being weathered, preserves polish suggesting that the figurine was worn as a pendant. Beneath the shoulders, which are roughly as thick as they are wide, large breasts project forward. The figurine has two short arms with two carefully carved hands with visible fingers resting on the upper part of the stomach below the breasts. The Venus has a short and squat form with a waist that is slightly narrower than the broad shoulders and wide hips. Multiple deeply incised horizontal lines cover the abdomen from the area below the breast to the pubic triangle. Several of these horizontal lines extend to the back of the figurine and are suggestive of clothing or a wrap of some sort. Microscopic images show that these incisions were created by repeatedly cutting along the same lines with sharp stone tools. The legs of the Venus are short and pointy. The buttocks and genitals are depicted in more details. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continues without interruption to the front of the figurine where the vulva is visible between the open legs. There can be no doubt that the depiction of oversized breast, exentuated buttocks and genetalia result from the deliberate exaggeration of the sexual features of the figurine. In addition to the many carefully depicted anatomical features, the surface of the Venus preserves numerous lines and deliberate markings. Many of the features, including the emphasis on sexual attributes and lack of emphasis on the head, face and arms and legs, call to mind aspects of the numerous Venus figurines well known from the European Gravettien, which typically date between 22 and 27 ka BP. The careful depiction of the hands is reminiscent of those of Venuses including that of archetypal Venus of Willendorf, which was discovered 100 years earlier in summer of 1908. Despite the far greater age of the Venus of Hohle Fels, many of its attributes occur in various forms throughout the rich tradition of Paleolithic female representations. The new figurine from Hohle Fels radically changes our view of origins of Paleolithic art. Prior to this discovery, animals and therianthropic imagry dominated the over two dozen figurines from the Swabian Aurignacian. Female imagry was entirely unknown. With this discovery, the notion that three dimensional female imagry developed in the Gravettian can be rejected. Also the interpretations suggesting that strong, aggressive animals or shamanic depictions dominate the Aurignacian art of Swabia, or even Europe as a whole, need to be reconsidered. Although there is a long history of debate over the meaning of Paleolithic Venuses, their clear sexual attributes suggest that they are a direct or indirect expression of fertility. The Venus of Hohle Fels provides an entirely new view of the art from the early Upper Paleolithic and reinforces the arguments that have been made for innovative cultural manifestations accompanying the rise of the Swabian Aurignacian. While many researchers, including Nicholas Conard, assume that the Aurignacian artworks were made by early modern humans shortly after their migration into Europe, this assumption can neither be confirmed or refuted based on the available skeletal data from the Swabian caves. The Venus of Hohle Fels forms a center piece for a major exhibit in Stuttgart entitled Ice Age Art and Culture, which will run from September 18, 2009 – January 10, 2010. The author of the paper: A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian deposits of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany is Nicholas J. Conard. Full bibliographic information Nature, Vol. 459, Nr. 7244

Yeah, Right!

This is the sort of ridiculous article with absolutely no scientific merit that millions of people will end up believing. So sad. Shame on you Mr. David Derbyshire - if that is your real name. Shame, shame on you for putting your name to this drek! (Image: The 9000-year-old figurines dug up in Turkey are thought to have been used as educational toys - from article. Do these look like dudes to you?) Ancient figurines were toys not mother goddess statues, say experts as 9,000-year-old artefacts are discovered By David Derbyshire Last updated at 12:57 AM on 10th September 2009 They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation. Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world's first educational toys. Nearly 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Catalhoyuk in Turkey - the world's oldest known town - over the last few decades. The most recent were found just last week. Made by Neolithic farmers thousands of years before the creation of the pyramids or Stonehenge, they depict tiny cattle, crude sheep and flabby people. In the 1960s, some researchers claimed the more rotund figures were of a mysterious large breasted and big bellied "mother goddess", prompting a feminist tourism industry that thrives today. But modern day experts disagree. They say the "mother goddess" figures - which were buried among the rubbish of the Stone Age town - are unlikely to be have been religious icons. Many of the figures thought to have been women in the 1960s, are just as likely to be men. Archaeologist Prof Lynn Meskell, of Stanford University, said: "The majority are cattle or sheep and goats. They could be representatives of animals they were dealing with - and they could have been teaching aides. "All were found in the trash - and they were not in niches or platforms or placed in burials." Out of the 2,000 figurines dug up at the site, less than five per cent are female, she told the British science Festival in Surrey University, Guildford. [And how many were male???] "These are things that were made and used on a daily basis," she said. "People carried them around and discarded them." Catalhoyuk is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. Established around 7,000 BC, it was home to 5,000 people living in mud brick and plaster houses. Their buildings were crammed so tightly together, the inhabitants clambered over the roofs and used ladders to get into their homes. The town dwellers were early farmers who had domesticated a handful of plants and kept wild cattle for meat and milk. Cattle horns were incorporated into the walls of their homes. The town contains the oldest murals - paintings on plastered walls. Unlike later towns, there is no obvious hierarchy - no homes for priests or leaders, no temples and no public spaces. The dead were buried in spaces under homes, rather than in cemeteries. Some researchers believe it was an equalitarian society. The town survived for around 2,000 years. It is not known what happened to its inhabitants, but they may have been killed by invaders or driven away by the loss of nearby farmland. ************************************************************************************* Ahem - so what if the "majority" of the little clay artifacts found were of sheep and cattle? What has THAT to say about the female figurines that were discovered at Catalhoyuk? Short answer: Nothing. It is well known to anyone who has read practically anything about the excavations at Catalhoyuk that both male and female figurines were excavated there, something the article does NOT mention, but I understand the findings were the ratio of female to male figures was much greater, also something the article does NOT mention. It is also well established that not only at Catalhoyuk, but at many sites excavated in the Middle East and in Greece (and perhaps elsewhere in the world, I just cannot think of them at the moment, but it's late and I'm not a professor of archaeology so these facts do not come as readily to my mind as pawn to e4) thousands of figurines were "sacrificed" as votive offerings to goddesses (and gods, too), often (but not always) smashed and thrown into pits that were conveniently situated at central places of worship. Catalhoyuk people worshipped within their homes. It makes sense that such sacrificed offerings would be found in the middens and garbage pits of the homes! This isn't anything new. In looking at the figurines in the image in the article, my inexpert eyes - and common sense - say at least three of the four are females, for these reasons: -- Three of the four are holding their hands under their breasts - a well-known pose that travelled down through the millennia to depictions of Astarte, Asherah and Aphrodite, to name just a few goddesses who struck similar poses. The fourth figure, on the far left, is either resting its arms along its sides or could, perhaps, be supporting its stomach (very much like a heavily pregnant woman does), but the hands are not visible, and so it is inconclusive. I would like to see a photo of that figurine from the side - to see whether there is a baby-bulge. -- There are no penises on any of the figurines shown in the image. Men have penises. No penis - not a man. Unless someone wants to argue that these were "instructional toys" about eunuchs? -- Why use flabby models? Weren't there any buff 20-somethings around if "instructional toys" were the goal? It is well known, however (I could teach a college course on this) that women who were heretofore buff start to "spread" once menopause hits. It then becomes a losing battle against "pinch an inch." -- Surely no one in his or her right mind is going to suggest that the figurine excavated at Catalhoyuk of a quite buxom and hefty female figure sitting upon a throne flanked by two felines (some say the figurine is in the process of giving birth) is a MAN. Just take a look at her, and compare the figurines shown in the photo in the article, and draw your own conclusions as to their femaleness. I could go on - but you get the idea. One final thought for the night -- who are the other archaeologists mentioned in the article who support this er, reinterpretation of the archeological evidence? Are there any? If so, why weren't they named? Is this just puffery?

6th-7th Century CE Stone Goddess Found in Kashmir

(Image: Gajalakshmi From Bharhut and Sanchi, 3rd - 2nd Century B.C. The article is a fascinating history of the lotus in India. This is not the Gajalakshmi in the article. Notice, however, the dual elephants arising out of the center of dual lotuses - an allusion to a very old Indian creation myth. Out of the midst of endless waters, the lotuses appeared, and opened. Out of the center of their flowers appeared the elephants, which I assume represent an allusion to earth or land mass - something big and solid out of the midst of the waters. The Egyptian creation myth is remarkably similar, with a primeval mound of earth arising out of the midst of the waters, as is the description of how land came to "arise" out of the midst of the waters in the Biblical account in Genesis. See Pavel Bidev's article for some interesting analysis of the water element in the ancestor of chess. ) Story at Taragana.com Sixth century stone sculpture of Hindu goddess discovered in Kashmir September 4th, 2009 SRINAGAR - An ancient sculpture of Hindu Goddess of wealth Gajalakshmi has recently been discovered at Nagbal Lesser village in Jammu and Kashmir. The sculpture, carved out of brownish limestone, is now kept for further examination at the office of Archives Archaeology and Museum in Srinagar. It will be shifted to Sri Pratap Singh Museum for public display later. “As far as the object (sculpture) is concerned it is very important. According to our earlier examination, the statue dates back to the 6th or 7th century. It’s of brownish colour and from the perspective of craftsmanship, it is finely chiselled out,” said Khurshid Ahmad Qadri, Director, Archives Archaeology and Museums of Jammu and Kashmir. The statue, measuring nine inches in height and five inches in width, is seated on the lotus throne placed between two lions. The main sculpture is enclosed in a stone frame, the top of which projects the shape of elephant motifs towards the head of the deity. The idol holds a lotus in her right hand and cornucopia in her left hand. The other end of the drapery covering the lower body of the sculpture does not go behind its shoulder but is wrapped around in pleats beneath the chest of the deity. The carving and costumes of the sculpture speak volumes about skilled craftsmanship of the ancient Kashmiri art. “As far as its art is concerned, this art form connects it to the Gandhara School of Art. The Gandhara School of Art was founded in the first century BC. The theme cultivated by Gandhara artists later reached Kashmir. The costume we get to see in this sculpture shows a confluence of Greek and Indian art forms,” said Iqbal Ahmad, a historian. This is the only sculpture found from the Lesser Kokernag area of Kashmir so far. However, the presence of pottery in an around the Lesser village reveals presence of some ancient settlements. By Afzal Bhat (ANI) I would love to see a photograph of this little goddess. The tip off that she might have something to do with an elephant was the "gaja" at the front of "Lakshmi," who is the goddess for good luck, wealth and good fortune. The clothing she wears definitely links her to the Gandhara tradition - so I'm wondering if this tentative dating is too late,or the Gandhara influence lasted longer that I'm aware (I'm sure no expert!) Notice the lotus - used twice. First, as a throne, and then as a emblem in her right hand. The lotus tradition is very ancient and links Egypt and India in a unique way. And even more intriguing, the goddess is seated on the lotus/throne between two lions! Shades of the Mother Goddess from Catalhoyuk (dates to some 9,000 years ago), who is seated on her throne between two felines! The feline throne for the goddess was a recurring theme from Catalhoyuk onward, across many cultures. Did it spread through cross-cultural contact and exchange, and thence absorbed into local legends, myths and religious iconography as time went on? Or was it independently invented again and again as an iconic image of the Mother Goddess over thousands of years, with no reference to the usage in other cultures? Here's a final thought as I drift off to la-la land - could the name Catalhoyuk (pronounced Chatal--), the place where we first see the Mother Goddess on a throne flanked by twin felines, possibly be related to Caturanga (prounced Chatur--) and the land where a new image of Gajalakshmi seated on a throne flanked by two lions was discovered?

16,000 Year Old Goddess Figurine Discovered in Turkey

A very important find in Turkey Archaeologists Unearth 16,000-Year-Old Goddess Figurine in Turkey BalkanTravellers.com 20 August 2009 A 16,000-year-old clay figurine of a female was found by archaeologists during excavations in southern-eastern Turkey. The mother goddess sculpture was discovered in the Direklu Cave in the Kahramanmaraş Province, which archaeologists have been excavating since July 15, Gazi University Archaeology Department lecturer Cevdet Merih Erek told national media. The find suggests that women had a high social status in the region at the time the figurine was made, Erek explained. In addition, it challenged archaeologists’ previous knowledge by suggesting that the method of using fired clay to make figurines was much older than previously thought. Before this recent discovery, the oldest fired clay god or goddess figurines unearthed in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and other Near East regions were made in 5,000 BC. The information on the discovery appeared in Today's Zaman, August 17, 2009. I was not able to locate a photograph of the figurine - drat!

Goddess: Maize Goddess Chicomecoatl - Follow-up

Prior post. Following-up on my comment to Carlos in response to his comment under the original post, I am not able to post images in a comment, so I thought I would post some images here, to show the remarkable coincidence of imagery between the old world and the new. When I first saw Chicomecoatl, I was very much struck by the "tower"-like crown she wears. It reminded me of other Goddesses I've seen wearing similar headdresses/crowns. Here is an image of the Goddess Cybele (which may be from Pergamum) - I was wrong in the information in my post - this is NOT the image of Cybele sent to Rome in c. 204 BCE. That Cybele was a sacred Black Stone that fell from the sky (a meterorite), similar to many other sacred Black Stones from Heaven worshipped as the Goddess -- Diana of Ephesus, for instance, and the sacred Black Stone in the Kabala at Mecca, which pre-dates the foundation of Islam. I do not have a date on this Cybele. By the way, Diana of Ephesus was also often depicted with a tower-like crown, many-breasted, and with cornucopias of fruit and grains. There are many sculptures and icons, going back as far as Catyl Hoyuk, showing a Goddess seated on a throne flanked by two lions, often wearing a towering crown or an actual tower as a crown. Here is an image of the Syrian goddess Atargatis, also known as Dea Syria by the Romans: Goddess wearing an impressive mural crown and flanked by doves, probably Artargatis identified with Aphrodite/Venus. Relief from the temple of Adonis at Duro-Europos. Dated to around the 1st century BCE. (Bilde attributes it to Khirbet Et-Tannur.)Drawing © S. Beaulieu, after Bilde 1990: 175, fig. 7. More tomorrow - got to show down now - another severe thunderstorm with a lot of lightning is rolling through now. I can see this is going to be a sleepless night. Time to pull out a good book.

Goddess Alive!

At last.... Oh, Miss Etta James, sing it for us, lady! Here's a magazine dedicated only to the Goddess: GODDESS ALIVE! Oops! Mea culpa! I see from the copyright notice at the bottom of this magazine that it's been available since at least 2002. Er. Well, better late than never, darlings. Well - knock me off my chair with a feather! The current issue (Issue No. 15 - Spring/Summer 2009) starts with a short piece (online) featuring what sure looks like a rock carving of a fecund female, popularly known as a "Venus": The Acheulian Ancient Mother: The Oldest Goddess in the World. Take a look! The thing is, "[T]he figurine was found between two layers of volcanic ash, the upper one 232,000 and the lower one 800,000 years old." Okay - so you're thinking this HAS to be wrong. And so did I - except earlier today (one of those synchronicity things that regularly crops up in my life), I just happened to briefly read at Science Daily (don't have a url) that so-called "modern man" dates back to about 200,000 years ago. So much for Cro-Magnon Man appearing 35,000 years ago like I was taught in high school years ago. Ha! So, it is entirely possible that this little "Venus," beautifully shaped using the natural properties of the stone on which she was carved, is as old as "modern man," and possibly even older - much older. What is even more intriguing is that this discovery raises the possibility that the "hominids" who lived in this area where the Venus was found had enough cognitive abilities to create art that predated by far, the oldest representations of "art" of which we are aware; this was something of which the experts say only "modern man" was capable. I need to do more research on this intriguing find from the Golan Heights in 1981.

Further Explorations of the Word MA

From Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets: Tiamat Sumero-Babylonian "Goddess Mother" (Dia Mater), from whose formless body the universe was born at creation; personification of The Deep, or Tohu Bohu. Babylonians later claimed their municipal god Marduk, Tiamat's son, divided her into heavens above and earth below, as did Marduk's imitator, the biblical God. But the original division was made by the Mother herself, as in the ancient Pelasgian myth of her Aegean counterpart, Eurynome.(1) In derivative Hebrew myths, Tiamat became Tehom, The Deep; and this is how she appears in the Bible (Genesis 1:2). [Gen. 1:2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. -- King James Version. And from the Living Bible, which is a paraphrase of the Bible in modern English, Gen. 1:1-2: When God began creating the heavens and the earth, (2) the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors".] Patriarchal writers forgot that "The Deep" was a personified womb, a Middle-Eastern version of Kali whose being before creation was "formless." [I visualize it as the center "dot" in the "bindu." In Hindu mythology, although it may have older roots, it is from the bindu that all what we know as creation/universes sprung, rather like the "Big Bang" theory, KA-BOOM.] Most creation myths incorporated the idea of formlessness, in the darkness before the birth that brought "light" and the splitting of the Mother's body, so she became both heaven and earth. The Bible's account is based on the same archetype. In Egypt, Tiamat was Temu or Te-Mut, oldest of deities, mother of the archaic Ennead of four female elements: Water, Darkness, Night, and Eternity.(2) [The Ennead consisted of four paired goddesses and gods, each sister and brother, representing the earliest "Netjer" who were - I'm working from memory here so I hope this is right! - the offspring of that primeval creative force, akin to The Great Goddess or, in biblical terms, that Spirit of "God" roving about the face of the waters. Here is an interesting translation of Gen. 1:2 from the Bible used by the Jehovah's Witnesses, which is called The New World Translation: Gen. 1:2: Now the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of the water deep; and God's active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters. I have many different Bibles in my collection :)] She was also Nun, Naunet, or Ma-Nu, the great fish who gave birth to the universe and the gods. [Cf. Jonah inside the great fish's belly for "three" days, only to be "reborn" again by regurgitation]. In repeated cycles of becoming, she periodically swallowed up both gods and universes and gave them rebirth - like Kali.(3) Tiamat's firstborn child seems to have been a duplicate of herself, Mummu, translated either "churning" or "mother." The combination recalled the ancient notion that solid earth was made from "churning" the primordial fluid, like making butter from milk.(4) [Cf. Axis Mundi]. Some myths gave Tiamat a male consort, Apsu, similar to Jupiter Pluvius: a Father Heaven whose job it was to fertilize the Mother's abyss with seminal rain. But he was not her superior, not even her equal. Even in the chaotic conditions before creation, Tiamat was the true source of life. Her consort was subordinate, not even necessary.(5) Various myths said Tiamat alone produced the fluid of creation, which was not semen but her menstrual blood, flowing continuously for three years and three months.(6) Its great reservoir was the Red Sea - comparable to Kali's "ocean of blood"- the eastern shore of which is still called Tihamat by the Arabs. Babylonians said their god Marduk divided his mother Tiamat into two parts, upper waters and lower waters. Likewise, the Jewish God "divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which wre above the firmament" (Genesis 1:7). The Jewish god also divided the Red Sea, which was likened to Tiamat herself. The idea of dividing waters was not original with the Jews. Goddesses did it before gods. The Hindu Goddess Bindumati, "Mother of Life," divided the waters of the Ganges.(7) The Goddess Isis divided the waters of the river Phaedrus, to cross dry-shod.(8) Even an insignificant Egyptian wizard named Zazamonkh divided the waters of a lake to retrieve a courtesan's lost pendant.(9) Yahweh's miracle on behalf of the Israelites was fairly common in contemporary lore. By dividing Tiamat, Marduk established the Diameter (horizon), which was the Greek version of Tiamat's name, meaning Goddess-Mother [Dia Mater]. We still say a diameter divides a whole circle. Though Marduk was supposed to have slain his mother, the Ocean of Blood, he still maintained the menstrual calendar in Babylon, celebrating sabbaths and months of the year according ot the moom's phases.(10) Modern scholars tend to ignore Tiamat's maternal Creatress nature, describing her as nothing more than a "dragon of chaos" slain by Marduk. It is seldom emphasized that this was a myth of matricide, or that the Goddess was the one who created the world. Some traditions indicate that Marduk's murder of his mother may have been motivated by jealousy, like Cain's murder of Abel. Mother Tiamat had overlooked Marduk and chosen another of her sons, Kingu, to be her consort and the king of the universe. [She] exalted among the gods, her sons, that she had borne, Kingu, and made him greatest among them all . . . .placed him on a throne, saying, "By my charm and incantation I have raised thee to power among the gods. The dominion over all the gods I intrusted [sic] to thee. Lofty thou shalt be, thou my chosen spouse; great be thy name in all the world." She then gave him the Tablets of Destiny, and laid them on his breast.(11) Jealous Marduk not only killed Tiamat; he also deposed, castrated, and killed Kingu, and made the first man on earth out of Kingu's blood - which tends to show that Kingu was once the name of the sacrificed god-king, whose blood had the "feminine" power to make life.(12) [Cf. the Christian doctrines related to the sacrifice of Christ's life (blood) and the benefits of "Life's Water" flowing from the resurrected Christ/God.] Kingu was identified with the moon. Chaldeans called him Sin, the Moon-god of Mount Sinai. Apparently he still had the tablets of the Law given him by Tiamat (as Mother Rhea gave sacred tablets of the Law to Minos on Mt. Dicte), for the Old Testament claims he passed them on to Moses. In Southern Arabia, the Goddess was assimilated to Ishtar. The eyes of her idol Tehama wwere said to flow with tears each year as she bewailed the death of Tammuz.(13) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 1, 27. (2) Budge, D.N., 211. (3) Neumann, G.M., pl. 91; Erman, 252. (4) Brandon, 22. (5) Stone, 26. (6) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 301. (7) Rawson, A.T., 74. (8) Budge, G.E., 2, 191. (9) Erman, 40. (10) Hooke, M.E.M., 45. (11) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 287. (12) Larousse, 54. (13) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 279.

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Ponderings:

As a totally irrelevant aside, I do believe that my given name, "Janet," which under traditional patriarchal interpretations is a derivative from "John," meaning something like "God's Gift [to men] ("Ja" = shortened name for God in Hebrew), is actually a derivative from the much older Naunet -- the "et" syllable denoted a female or the feminine in ancient Egyptian, much as "ette" denotes female or the feminine today in French). Perhaps the older name of "Nanette," which is out of style these days (as is my name, Janet), is an ancient carry-over from the times when the Goddess reigned supreme. Therefore, darlings, I am named after the Goddess of Creation, and not after "St. John." I always thought he was rather wimpy and - well, swishy. Oh, slap my face, I'm a bad girl for saying such a thing :)

Various myths said Tiamat alone produced the fluid of creation, which was not semen but her menstrual blood, flowing continuously for three years and three months.

Is this why the use of red ochre was so predominate in Neolithic times in sacred cave drawings and painted on stone, ivory and bone carvings -- to show life and a link to the Mother Goddess, from whom all life flowed through the sacred menstrual blood? Is this why the color "red" - as in "red blood" is associated with life and living? Is this why the mythical elixir of life, called "Soma" in Sanskrit and "Homa" in Pahlavi, was linked to menstrual blood? And is this why black (blood lacking oxygen from cessation of breathing, is a darkish, sort of black looking color = lack of life) is associated with funereal rites in many cultures to this day? I was going to put up an image of Tiamat with this post, but without exception those that I found were images of ugly beasts - sort of like Lizard-Dragons with huge claws and teeth -- ancestral memories of dinosaurs? Traditionalists would say I'm nuts for even thinking of such a thing, but based on the record -- actually lack thereof, to this point in time -- who's to really say? Wish I could live another 100 years to see what the archaeologists, paleontologists, anthropologists and historians come up with! Er - got sidetracked there for a second - back to finding an image of Tiamat: Since Tiamat is "formless" it occurred to me (duh, Jan!) that all images of her thus far discovered, without exception, were from much later times, after Marduk had "killed her off," and she was thereafter depicted as a monstrous being. As dondelion says, history is (re)written by the victors.

The Eternal Female: Worship of the Mother Goddess

Hola darlings! This is my final post for the time being, and perhaps for the night. I'm hungry and I have fixings downstairs for my infamous stick-to-your spoon, ribs, kidneys, liver and intestines cheeseburger casserole calling out to me. Tomorrow I am going shopping for a new bathroom light fixture for the upstairs bath and some area rugs for the upstairs bedrooms and hallway. If I am successful in finding a reasonably-priced light fixture, I will hunt for a reasonably-priced electrician (har!) to install it! Then it's on to painting. dondelion won't recognize the place when he arrives in May... (Image: Minoan snake goddess, circa 1600-1500 BCE) Talk about synchronicity. I recently posted about the importance of the vulture goddess and the snake goddess in ancient Egypt, and about the serpent goddes symbolism incorporated into one of the most ancient twenty squares game boards ever to be uncovered in the form of intertwined serpents forming the playing surface: the wooden game board from the Burnt City in the borders area of Iran/Afghanistan/Pakistan, dating to about 2400 BCE. Tonight I came across this post - it was a headline at The Independent, but I received an error message when searching for the article there. From sci.tech-archive.net. (Seems a rather strange place to have an article about the Mother Goddess, but as I've said before, what do I know?) The eternal female: Worship of the mother goddess From: Jack Linthicum Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 05:28:34 -0800 (PST) Stonehenge, Crete, Thera, pretty much a tourist's tour of the Bronze Age, and earlier, cultures that honored or featured women. But the author has missed the revelations about the Phaistos Disk. The eternal female: Worship of the mother goddess Thursday, 12 February 2009 Some experts believe megalithic societies were matrilineal, with womenplaced at the apex of the civilisation – not as rulers, but as birth-givers. Perhaps a line can be traced from the Natufian women of Lebanon, or even as far back as the 24,000-year-old Venus ofWillendorf . After all, women were the original seed-gatherers while men went out to hunt. It was they who probably developed the most intimate expertise in agriculture, using instinct and common sense to select the best seeds for the next year's crops, unwittingly instituting what we now call artificial selection. The mother goddess took a variety of different forms. Sometimes she was a snake, or a vulture, or the Moon. Each symbol represented a cycle of death, birth and regeneration: the snake hibernates, then wakes up and sheds her skin; the vulture recycles dead flesh by eating it; and the Moon dies and is reborn every 28 days, mirroring the feminine menstrual cycle. Moon worship was very highly advanced in megalithic times. It has recently been recognised that temples such as Stonehenge were originally built to glorify the Moon as well as the Sun. Every month, shafts of moonlight line up perfectly with gaps in the massive stones, the architects having positioned them precisely to accommodate the subtly shifting patterns of the Moon's rising and setting cycles, that repeat themselves exactly every 18.6 years. The full moon has had historic and religious significance going back thousands of years,since it was by the light of the full moon that many hunter-gathering tribes hunted, providing the best opportunities for a good catch. Matriarch island: The enigmatic civilisation of Minoan Crete Europe's mother goddess culture grew to its climax on the Mediterranean island of Crete in the second millennium BC. Here it also survived longest. Crete thrived on trade routes that linked the Mediterranean with the rest of megalithic Europe and North Africa. The flowering of the island's Minoan civilisation coincided with the growth of the Indus Valley civilisation, from c3300 to 1700 BCE. Homer, a Greek poet who wrote in the eighth century BCE, claimed there were as many as 90 cities on Crete, and archaeologists have found a number of "palaces", including the largest of all at the island's capital, Knossos. The discovery of this ancient island civilisation was chiefly the work of Sir Arthur Evans, an eccentric but meticulous Victorian archaeologist. As soon as he set foot on Crete in 1894, Evans rigorously pursued the mystery of the mythical King Minos, who, legend has it, ruled from a fabulous palace at Knossos which housed an appalling monster, the minotaur. Half-man, half-bull, this beast lived in an impenetrable maze and feasted off the flesh of still-living virgins. Minoan Crete was like a heart pumping at the centre of the Bronze Age trading system. Its trade links stretched as far as Mesopotamia in the east, to Spain in the west. Tin and copper were imported and exported for smelting into bronze, while luxury crops such as bright yellow saffron were grown in the island's fields and exported as flavouring for food. Evans discovered that the people of ancient Crete followed the megalithic tradition. Women and men had equal rights. Wall paintings from the palaces of Knossos and Phaistos show that women were able to express themselves freely. They are depicted as bare-breasted, wearing short-sleeved shirts open to the navel and long, flowing, layere dskirts. Statues, vases and wall paintings show images of sporting contests where women competed equally alongside men. The island's favourite sport was the impossible-sounding bull-vaulting. An acrobat (sometimes female) would grab the horns of a bull and somersault on to its back. Then, in a second somersault, she would leap off its back and land upright, with her feet back on the ground. No wonder Minoan women were the first people known to have worn fitted garments and bodices – essential prerequisites, you would think, for a sport like this. Women did not dominate society, but they did oversee it. Frescoes at the palace of Thera, on the island of Santorini,100km north of Crete, show women standing on balconies overseeing processions of young men who are carrying an animal for sacrifice. Most priests on Minoan Crete were female. In Minoan law, women retained full control of their property. They even had the right to divorce at pleasure. It was a tradition, too, that a mother's brother was responsible for bringing up her children. Customs such as these, which seem strange to us today [what is so strange about a woman having control of her own property and the right to divorce at will? In western civilization, these rights are taken for granted, they are the norm], lingered long in the Mediterranean mind. Minoan palaces were not mighty and dominant like those in Egypt or Sumeria. Rather, they functioned as the region's communal administrative and religious centres, providing a place of work for craftsmen, storage spaces for food and temples for goddess-worship. One look at a model reconstruction of the palace at Knossos and you can understand why Greek invaders might later imagine that the corridors and irrigation channels resembled an impenetrable maze. Like the traders of the Indus Valley and other European megalithic people, the Minoans had their own form of symbolism which shows that their civilisation was culturally and technologically advanced. In 1903, archaeologists excavating the palace of Phaistos, on the southern side of the island, made a discovery which has had historians baffled ever since. The Phaistos Disc, currently on display at the archaeological museumin Herakleion, Crete, is thought to date from some time between 1850 and 1600 BCE. It contains 45 unique symbols arranged in a spiral shape, resembling the swirls found on vases at Knossos, or even in European megalithic tombs such as that at Newgrange in Ireland. No one really knows who made the disc, or what the symbols mean, but it does show that the people of Minoan Crete were artistic, prosperous and highly ingenious. Following excavations at a site called Akrotiri in 1967, the Minoans are now known to have spread to the island of Santorini. There, archaeologists have discovered the remains of a vast, ancient island city which had been buried for thousands of years under thick layers of volcanic ash. Although only the southern tip of the town has so far been examined, houses three storeys high have been unearthed with fine wall paintings, stone staircases, columns and large ceramic storage jars, mills and pottery. Minoan Akrotiri even boasted a highly developed drainage system, featuring the world's first known claypipes with separate channels for hot and cold water supplies. A distinct pattern is discernible from the evidence that has been left by these early civilisations. Stretching from the ancient Indus Valley, right across the mountains of Anatolia, to the islands of the Mediterranean and as far as the topmost island of Orkney in Scotland,what emerges is a series of like-minded civilisations whose temples and graves bear witness to a lifestyle of peace and a veneration for mother nature. Their common belief in the continuous cycle of birth, death and regeneration is personified by their worship of a mother goddess in all her forms: snake, vulture, pregnant woman or moon. Excellence in craftwork, technical skill and exquisite art are some of their legacies, along with a spirit of natural equality. This was not to continue. During the second millennium BC, the last of these early civilisations fell. New power in the form of military might was sweeping across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. [made possible, in no small part, by the invention of the eight-spoked wheel that enabled the invention of a light-weight and swift war chariot, I posted about a day or two ago.] Warriors had worked out how to prey off the profits of others, ushering in an age when human elitism, ruthlessness and terror had their true beginnings.

Redefining the Goddess

Salt Lake Community College Redefining the goddess Dominique Snow Issue date: 11/24/08 Section: Campus On Wednesday evening, Dr. Margaret Toscano, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Utah, spoke at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts about images of the female body. Utah artist Shauna Cook Clinger introduced Toscano while promoting her own exhibition. Clinger's exhibit is currently showing at the UMFA. Her exhibition is called "An Innermost Journey." It explores the female body. "I know for certain that the paintings and drawings would love to meet you," Clinger said to her audience. Clinger and Toscano met in 1989 at a symposium. Clinger said that the power of Toscano's ideas and intellect soaked into the deepest part of her being. Toscano has taught since 1996, and has received two teaching awards at the U of U. Gender, mythology and religion are her focuses for study. She has written an article titled "The eyes have it," which explores the sexual desires of ancient Greek women. She ignores assumptions that are made of women. She thinks that Clinger's work rejects prisoners of biological destiny. "We live in a material world where we perceive ourselves as our bodies," Toscano said. The great power in visual and spoken images became realistic for us. They reflect a world where the universe is seen as organic and alive. In the Paleolithic period depictions of the human body have an emphasis on fertility. Scholars believe that these deities are goddesses. Inanna was the first goddess representing fertility, dignity, and strength. She was the queen of seven temples in ancient Sumar. Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis were goddesses that controlled the vital aspects of life. Females depicting goddesses were prevalent in religion until the Judeo-Christian times. The Western world speaks of God in male terms. Some see the return of the goddess in the Virgin Mary. She has a divine status - incorporating nurturing and compassionate qualities. Toscano said that Mormons also believe in a heavenly mother. Many people search for the female face of God. The Native American religion has Buffalo Woman, Spider Woman and the Corn Mothers. Pictures are able to change the way we see the world, so we no longer see women as objects. We have to be able to view everything from multiple points of view. There are both essentialist and constructivist views that define our definition of reality. Bodies and shapes change to fit the ideal in culture. Toscano sees this as society writing codes on our bodies. Throughout time, art depicting the female body has shown females differently. In 30,000 BCE, women held Venus of Willendorf during childbirth. The deity emphasized breasts and genitalia. Titian's Venus of Urbino showed the goddess humanized, exhibiting appropriate female behaviors. Manet's Olympia sexualized the female showing an even greater decline in the female deity. Olympia was seen as a prostitute and encompassed with shame. Toscano takes offense to the exclusive male control of female sexuality. Clinger uses her own body to convey her own truth. She reworks dark and light as important aspects of reality. According to Toscano, women cannot be defined by generalizations. Contradicting this, portraits will have a universal appeal. Stereotypes control and dismiss, while archetypes liberate and understand. There are many metaphors that deal with female power. "We experience life through our bodies, we see our bodies as conduit to a beautiful physical world we're a part of," Toscano said. Traditionally women have been given limited choices. Women are now being resexualized, breaking the simplistic pattern. Toscano has seen Eve be redeemed as a powerful symbol of feminism, instead of the depiction of a shameful temptress. Toscano finds one of the most powerful female images to be the birth of the goddess. She lifts her arms as the forgotten yet significant women of the past lift her out of the water. Mother earth and father sky need to unite to complete the myth of sacred marriage. This unites rationalism and intuitiveness. Toscano believes that mutual healing and blessings will be bestowed to those women who accept the masculine and men who accept the feminine.

Goddess Tanit

From Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets."

Tanit
Carthaginian name of the Phoenician Great Goddess, Astarte - the biblical Ashtoreth or Asherah. Her temple in Carthage was called the Shrine of the Heavenly Virgin. Greek and Roman writers called it a temple of the moon.(1)

Another of her titles was Astroarche, Queen of the Stars. Her priestesses were famous astrologers, whose prophecies were circulated throughout the Roman empire and even rivaled the pronouncements of the Cumaean sybils.(2)

Though Romans destroyed Carthage in the Punic Wars, Roman legend traced the very origin of Rome to the Carthanginian mother-city, as shown by the story of Aeneas, who came directly across the Mediterranean from there, to found Rome.(3) The primitive Roman queen Tanaquil, who conferred sovereignty on the "fatherless" Latin kings, the Tarquins, was none other than the Lybyan Goddess Tanit. She was also known as Libera, Goddess of Libya, whose festival the Liberalia was celebrated each year in Rome during the Ides of March.(4) An alternative name for the festival was Bacchanalis, dramatizing the love-death and resurrection of Bacchus Liber, or Dionysus, or Consus, which were various names for the same fertility god.(5)

The distinctive symbol of Tanit was a pyramidal shape, like a woman in a very full skirt, topped by a dis-shaped full-moon head, with upraised arms in the manner of the Egyptian ka.(6) Similar smbols represented such goddesses as Aphrodite, Athene, Venus, and Juno.

Notes:
(1) Reinach, 42.
(2) Lindsay, O.A., 327.
(3) Reinach, 106.
(4) G.R. Scott, 165.
(5) Graves, W.G., 399.
(6) Larousse, 84.
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Some personal observations: Tanit is on the order of the "Hannah/Anna" goddesses, great mother goddesses, previously posted about - I've got to get some kind of search engine installed at this blog! Think of the ka shape as a referee's arms signalling "touchdown!" That's the form.

Was Car the goddess of Carthage - that is, the same as the goddess Tanit?

The Goddess Anahita

Related to some information contained in the post below, about the traditional (i.e., pre-Islamic) Persian celebration of the New Year. From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:"

Anahid
This and its variations Anahita and Anitis were the Persian and Armenian names for Venus, the star of Ishtar and Astarte, Mother Goddess of the Zend-Avesta; ruler of waters, stars, and Fate. The Mithraic Mysteries, though strongly male-oriented, retained Anahita as the necessary female principle of creation.(1)

Notes:
(1) Cumont, M.M., 180.

Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the Earth

From The Seattle Times Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist The inn at the top of the world Tuesday, January 15, 2008 There was another Hillary in the news last week. It was Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer who in 1953 became the first human to reach the top of Mount Everest — alongside his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay. The New Zealander had died at 88. A climber who attempted Everest in 1924 and lost his life doing so offered the most famous line about the endeavor. Asked by reporters why he wanted to climb Everest, George Mallory answered, "Because it is there." The mountain is sacred to the indigenous people of the Himalayas, but to Mallory the peak was an "it" to be conquered. Hillary had a lot more soul than that, but upon climbing Mount Everest, he did remark, "Well, we knocked the bastard off!" Taking the test is why many of today's "adventurers" make the trek. The climb has become an extreme sport for which the mountain could as well be a giant rock climbing wall with bad weather. For the super fit with money, Everest is now an item on the checklist of life's exploits. Several climbers have posted YouTube video clips of themselves atop Mount Everest, one set to the music of James Blunt's "You're beautiful." Those who treat it merely as an icon to vanquish don't see anything. They don't appreciate anything. They just go up the hill to prove they can do it. You sometimes wonder why these folk — if they want to perform a spectacular feat — don't simply run two marathons back-to-back, instead. Snarky comments aside, one must still note the grit, strength and courage of people who do scale the mountain, which rises to 29,029 feet above sea level. Most intimidating is the high-altitude "death zone," where a lack of oxygen causes hallucinations. More than 200 climbers have died on Everest. The best-selling book and movie "Into Thin Air" recounted a tragic 1996 expedition during which eight members died. But rather than deter others, the story has apparently increased the desire to beat the mountain. Since Hillary's famous climb, more than 2,000 men and women have taken up the challenge, including a 70-year-old, a blind person and a man with one arm. Wealthy people pay guide companies as much as $70,000 to organize expeditions up the celebrated peak. It's amazing to think that Hillary's once astounding feat has been performed by socialites and doctors, and at least one Sherpa has done it 14 times. The lust for Mount Everest has never seemed to be much about Nepal, the country in which it partly resides (sharing it with Tibet) — or the local Sherpa who have a name for the mountain, and it's not Everest. They call it Chomolungma, which means "goddess mother of the Earth." The British named the mountain after Sir George Everest, who had been their surveyor general in the mid-19th century. For the Sherpa guides, the job of carrying stuff up pays a lot more than growing potatoes or herding yaks. Facilitating new bragging rights for wealthy Westerners is a good living in this poor part of the world, even though these Buddhist Tibetans are often treated as beasts of burden. Let it be said for Hillary that he dedicated his post-climb life to helping the Sherpa build schools, hospitals and bridges for the locals. Hillary was a good man, and brave. He also understood that mountains are more than recreational facilities. They are also spiritual places. That's why it's often painful to see the sides of mountains scraped clean of trees to make paths for ski runs and motorized lifts. Everest has not yet suffered the fate of being turned into a mass sports resort, but the goddess probably wouldn't mind if more people left her alone.

First Calendar in Mesoamerica Was Goddess Centered

From MySAcom

Ancient Mexican city raises questions about Mesoamerica's Mother Culture

Web Posted: 10/11/2007 05:17 PM CDT
Tracy L. BarnettExpress-News Travel Editor

TAMUIN, Mexico — Deep in the Huastec jungle the enormous carved stone monolith stands, suspended over the pool of water where a team of archaeologists discovered it. A powerful woman stands at the center of the carving, flanked by two smaller decapitated women. A stream of liquid flows from the headless women toward the woman in the center.

The women on each side are thought to represent priestesses, and the liquid represents the life force, while the woman at the center represents Mother Earth; so the priestesses seem to be nurturing the Earth with their life force. The truth is, however, nobody knows for sure what these stones mean.

One thing is fairly certain — because of the recurrence of the number 13, the monolith seems to be a lunar calendar of some sort. That's why it set the archaeological world abuzz with discussion when it was unveiled last November. It is believed to have been created around 600 B.C. — 2,000 years before what was previously the oldest discovered calendar in the Americas, the Aztec Calendar, which dates to A.D. 1400.

"What this discovery did was to force us to stop, turn around and dig deeper into the history of the Huastecan groups to re-evaluate them," said Guillermo Ahuja, the lead archaeologist at Tamtoc who discovered the stone tablet, or Monolith 32, as it's called. "The problem is that there's been so little investigation into the Huastec cultures that we really lack a complete vision."

The discovery was especially surprising given that the Huastec people were thought to be a relatively recent culture. Now archaeologists are wondering whether the Huastecs — or their predecessors, the Proto-Huastecs — might have played a bigger role in the development of Mesoamerica than previously thought. It has also raised questions about whether the Olmecs might have had an influence in the region, since there are cultural similarities, or whether there might have been a third group of people, the so-called Mother Culture, that dominated the area first.

What is known is that Tamtoc was inhabited by a sophisticated people who enjoyed a high standard of living for the time, with one of the most sophisticated hydraulic systems in Mesoamerica. It was first excavated by a group of French archaeologists in the 1960s, but their project was short-lived, and work did not begin on the site in earnest until 2001. It's the only major Huastec archaeological site, and like the Huastec people themselves, it is shrouded in mystery.

The intricate carvings the Huastecs left on the stones leave clues to a culture in which women clearly played a strong role as governors, priestesses and warriors.

"Not just in Tamtoc, but throughout the Potosí region, we have found representations of women dressed as warriors," Ahuja says. "We have a very constant presence of women in the ceramic figurines that have been found, as well as in the stone monuments, which makes me think that the women were participating politically in the decisions of the group. They were an important part of the political life of this society."

The monolith was discovered in a graveyard surrounded by the remains of 84 women — 90 percent of all the remains discovered there. Ahuja has pieced together a story that might explain why.

The monolith seems to have been toppled from its original location, broken into pieces and covered with mud. Ahuja estimates the time period at about the same time that several coastal cities were flooded, probably by a tsunami-type surge, around 300 B.C.

Ahuja believes the sacred tablet was impossible to resurrect, and the people decided to let it lie and create a sacred site where it was buried. The most honored and sacred members of that society were permitted to be buried there. Women became goddesses when they gave birth, and those who died in childbirth were deified, and so they were allowed to be buried along with the Great Mother.

An important item backing this theory was another find: a headless woman's naked figure, carved of limestone and polished to a high sheen. The figure, found in a pool that once stood at the feet of the monolith, was believed to be an offering to the gods. The raised dots on her arms and legs correspond with the number of days in the lunar calendar, according to archaeologist Ricardo Muñoz, while the width of her hips and the fullness of her breasts indicate a woman at the height of her fertility.

With only six years of excavation and analysis behind them, there are many secrets yet to be unearthed, and Ahuja and his team are enormously excited at the possibilities — discoveries that might contradict much of what historians think they already know about ancient Mexican history.

"It really surprised me to learn how little is known about the Huasteca," he said. "It's really the ideal thing for any archaeologist to discover a civilization that nobody knows."