Glen writes
> On the other hand, could it be possible that the "vulnerable heel"
story,
> that comes along with the Achilles package, was originally related
to *Yemos
> and *Manus, the Horse Twins? The way this scenario would go is the
> following:
>
> The Sun Maiden gives birth to Man and Twin. Man is a hunter and
Twin is a
> gatherer (cf. Cain/Abel). After their birth, the Sun Maiden being a
> protective mother implores all living creatures not to harm them.
What she
> doesn't take into account however is Man's own jealousy of Twin.
Although
> the two were protected from everything else, they weren't protected
from
> each other. Thus Twin (cf. Achilles) gets killed off by something
ironic and
> unconsiderable - in this case, his own twin brother. So Man kills
Twin with
> an arrow and Twin lies dead, becoming the earth and god of the
dead. Because
> of Man's devilish act, Man and his offspring are sentenced by the
gods to
> live limited mortal lives on earth telling silly little stories
about gods
> that never existed. The End.
This story of the origin of twins, with one killing the other seems
specificaly linked to the rise of the Sumerian concept of the Sacred
King. In earlier times the king was a priestly function. War
leaders (lugal) were temporarily chosen in times of crisis, where as
the king (ensi) or queen was seen as intermediary between the human
and divine realms. In Sumerian cities where the titulary divinity
was female (eg Inanna) the ensi was male, in cities where the chief
god was male the ensi was female.
It was the heros gamos, the sacred marriage of ensi and the
God/Goddess that would decree the fates for the following year. If
things went badly, the ensi was answerable to the gods for their
mismanagement.
By Early Dynastic times, the situation was changing. The
militaristic war leaders were not prepared to give up authority at
the time the crisis had passed, and various lugal were usurping the
supreme role of the ensi. In other cases, various ensi were assuming
the roles of lugal, and taking control away friom the temples, to
centre control in a palace. Nevertheless, the sacral functions of te
king were maintained, as was the Sacred Marriage rite. Also
maintained was the right to make the king answerable to the gods for
his management (or rather mismanagement) of his responsibilities.
The way the Lugal's coped in such circumstances was to appoint
a "twin king" on whom the responsibility for the kings mismanagement
could be "loaded", with that twin-king being sacrificed to the Gods
if things went especially badly. This was an especially early
feature, as the story of the king's dopelganger, his alter-ego or
twin is what lies behind the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The
death of Enkidu as payment for the sins of Gilgamesh is the reality
that made the Gilgamesh epic so relevant throughout those middle
eastern cultures that adopted such a "scape-goat" approach. (It is
interesting how this mythic element changed when human sacrifice
became abhorent to use an animal (the goat) in the place of a human
being. The idea of the goat-festival lies behind the Greek theatre
of the tragedy. The death of kings, now symbolically acted used to
be literal. Nevertheless human sacrifices of the Kings Twin were
still occurring as late as the reign of Ashurbanipal of Assyria).
The idea of the twin or tanist seems during the Bronze Age (again
after the split of Anatolian from IE cultures) to have had a huge
impact on the development of the IE mythos. Nevertheless the idea of
a king and his tanist underlies much of our understanding of Greek,
Roman, Indian, Germanic and Celtic myth. Romulus and Remus, Castor
and Pollux etc are found in various guises over and over again.
Later Judaic myth overlaid on this the story of Cain (=Gilgamesh) and
Abel (=Enkidu) and built an entirely different morale from the
(human) sacrifice that Abel suffered at the hands of Cain. Later
Christian writers also had difficulty with various stories of
brothers fighting and killing each other (eg. as in the Seven Against
Thebes where the tanist refused to give up the throne and expelled
his brother, who returned to Thebes with an Argive army, and in the
ensueing battle brother killed brother). Another similar Tanist
revenge story seems to underly the Arthurian tale. Here Arthur,
conceiving Mordred in incestuous union upon his sister, leaves
Mordred as his deputy. Mordred in some tales is supposed to have
seized Guenivere (a rape in place of a sacred marriage). The battle
results in mutual destruction of king and tanist.
These mythic and social elements continued into the Middle Ages with
the continuation of the crowning of a May King and May Queen for a
day (crowned as the lord and lady of misrule), during which normal
social custom was suspended, servants would be kings and kings would
be servants, and the world was given over to Carnival (from carnus =
bodily pleasures).
Thus when Glen writes
> Does everyone like that little story? :) In this case, Achilles
might have a
> bit of Underworld/Warrior in him but he may also have a bit
of "Man" in him
> as well. Hell, I'm starting to think that this so-called *Tritos
(Indic
> Trita Aptya) doesn't really exist in IE mythos. Perhaps he's in
reality
> *(Xeryo-)Manus, our great ancestor who after his naughty little
homocide,
> was forced or felt compelled to do "community service" in order to
re-attain
> immortality (cf Heracles).
I wonder if he is aware of the Tanist side of Heracles? Once again,
the imortal and his mortal brother.
Glen, these features only developed circa 3,500-3,000 BCE. Too late
for your 7,000 to 5,500 BCE time span. They also developed out of
Sumerian, not Semitish cultures, although Akkadians acted as
intermediaries to there spread elsewhere, throughout the Middle East
and on to the steppes.
Hope this helps
John