Iphigénie en Tauride.

I forget the titles and dates, but if you go back a few months, we had a discussion of Helen, the Sun-Maid, her brothers the divine twin stallions of the chariot of the sun, Aurora/Eos/Ausra/Ausrine the IE Dawn-Goddess, and the IE Earth Goddess (etymologically = Semele).

There is a LOT going on with Leda's children and grandchildren. Leto also had twins, Apollo and Artemis, one solar the other lunar, just as Leda can be seen to have solar Helen and a Tithonus-like lunar figure of a hubby, Menelaos (Graves translates his name to 'might of the people' but 'moon-folk' is also possible); Dawn abandons her husband of the night, to either directly accompany the chariot of the sun, or to travel ahead in her own chariot to herald its coming. One possible gloss of 'Helen' is 'torch'. Homer tells us that Hecuba's kid Paris/Alexandros is 'a firebrand'. It's usual nowadays to call Helen a representation of the IE sun-maiden, but it's just as easy to see her as as a version of Dawn herself. As for Menelaos and Agamemnon, well they are a pair of brothers too!

The Divine Twins rescue their sister Helen from Theseus, who is said by some to have raped her, fathering poor Iphigeneia, with poor Iphi being dumped on her Aunt Clytemnestra. And then we read of the festival of Mater Matuta in Rome, a women's festival of obscure origins and even more obscure documentation that's involved somehow with fosterage of children.

As for poor Iphi living up there on the Tauric Chersonese, well, Rex McTyeire has enlivened the discussion with more mythic mysteries. If Leto has Apollo/Artemis, why not see the same pair in Helen/Iphigeneia? Iphi as Artemis, Helen as feminine version of Apollo.

I forget where it is in Herodotus, but he mentions the 1000 or so year custom of sending priestesses of Artemis (I think it is) from one Greek city (Tyrens?) to Troy, where the priestesses have to steal into the city and reach the altar undetected, and remain as priestesses until relieved by the next set of girls. The Trojans treated the girls abominably, but respected their status. I vaguely remember of something similar (am I misremembering?) about a not-quite-so-dramatic, but ever more distant exchange of priestesses from the Amber Road, apparently priestesses from the Gulf of Venice (or even further inland) being sent to someplace in Greece to attend a temple.

As for Iphigeneia in Taurus, you wonder if some ancient priestess college is being remembered. Perhaps the proto-Greeks brought such priestesses with them when they moved into central and southern Greece, or perhaps such a cult was introduced by Thracians or the sort. We sometimes forget the power of religion. In the Dark Ages at their darkest, Western bishops still frequently made the perilous journey to Rome to obtain their pallium. In the case of the Ethiopians, they got their primate from Alexandria, and nearly 100 years might pass before an expedition could successfully complete the round trip (which lead to the king having infants ordained as priests, much to the horror of the Portuguese Jesuits). There is also the relationship of the Mongols to the Dalai Lama!

The point is that there is ample precedent for extraordinarily distant, very long-lived religious connections in the past. As for Greek connections to the Black Sea, these must have been reasonably continuous from earliest times, from the time we can safely speak of 'Greek' itself. From the Thracian Chersonese, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to the Black Sea, easily walked in a couple days, or managed by a simple canoe.

I'm not suprised Herodotus was confused by it all. I'm confused! But there is obviously something here, something lost, but potentially recoverable in some small degree.

Mark.