John Croft
includes (re Arthurian links to the east):
>...and "Arth" is seen
as linked to the word for Bear in a number of IE
> tongues.
Rex (me) adds:
> "Artemis" shares a bear link
early (even in mainland Greece), before stags
> and bulls occupy her
symbology. She was also a "female slaughteress".
> What better animal
symbol for a slaughteress (in Europe) that is also
> affiliated with
childbirth..than a she bear protecting cubs.
C. Gwinn:
> I believe that the only other
language which presents a root Art- perhaps
> meaning "bear" is the Greek
(or Anatolian?) dialect which gave us Artemis.
Joao SL:
> There's also a Gaulish goddess
ARTIO, a bear-goddess.
> Was Artemis name surely linked
to bear or just a folk etymology?
cj:
> Early Artemis myths link her
to bears, and Ursa Major and Ursa Minor fit
> into her mythology - that's
why they are bears. I will look for the myth
> this
week.
Trying to initiate discussion to
Joao's question, the following thoughts are offered.
There was an unusual and extended
thread on ane list about two years ago, (Miguel tossed in a few comments I
think) on the same point. It may have been a near record thread in
length and participants. Most of the Input was classically based, even including
the assumption that the Ephesean Artemis was an Import from mainland
Greece into an Anatolia with no previous experience with her. (The
inquiry that initiated that thread was based on yet another attempt to identify
the bulbous items on the chest of the known Artemis statue from the Temple at
Ephesus.)
The Callisto/Kallisto story, as it
survives, comes to us as follows: (To save cj the posting)
(The first variant is used because of the obvious gender questions ignored.
The stories of Kallisto were known in the Renaissance through Ovid's
Metamorphoses and were popular subjects for artists.)
Artemis gathered about her a number of young nymphs.
Reflecting her own vows on chastity, she also required complete fidelity from
these young women (girls actually, who would grow into womanhood). One of these
was Callisto. While engaged as one of Artemis' nymphs (consorts,
assistants, priestesses, selected virgins) whom Zeus made love to (or
seduces, or rapes) disguised as Artemis herself. Later, Artemis asked
Callisto why her belly was swollen. Callisto answered that she was
pregnant and why did she have to ask, as she was the cause of the
pregnancy. Artemis was outraged and reached for her bow and
arrow. Just as Artemis was about to kill the girl, Zeus changed Callisto
into a bear and set her up in heaven as the constellation of Ursa
Major. Callisto's son was born (in the sky) and named "Arkas" and
he became the constellation of Ursa Minor. Zeus' wife Hera found out Zeus
had cheated on her with Callisto. To avenge herself, Hera ordered the ocean to
forever keep the constellations from water, therefore the constellations of "Big
and Little Bear" never set below the horizon.
Variants (my summaries)
:
1) Kallisto offended the goddess by becoming pregnant by Zeus and was
banished. The jealous Hera then further punished her by turning her into a bear.
( the transformation by Hera: Ovid, Metamorphoses, 2)
2) Artemis transformed Callisto into a bear when she discovered that
Callisto was pregnant as revenge for her unchaste behavior before the
appropriate time and the Goddesses release. Artemis loved to hunt; she
would take her revenge in the chase, and killed her (or had her killed by
hunters) but Zeus manages to get her installed as a constellation anyway.
3) Callisto was a daughter of Lykaon (lycaon), a regional King.
4) Zeus transforms her in an attempt to conceal her from Hera. Hera learns
of it, and persuades Artemis to shoot the bear. Zeus saves the unborn "Arkas"
and then he changed Kallisto into a constellation. (Apollodoros, Bibliotheca, 3,
8 )
5) Artemis's plan was to have Callisto, as a bear, hunted down and killed.
But Zeus took pity, and sent Callisto to the heavens, keeping the same form of a
bear. Her son Arcas would grow up to be the ancestral founder of the Arcadians,
before he too joined his mother in the heavens as Ursa Minor.
This is about all that is left of the "bearness" as it
gets to us, but it as resilient small piece of the earlier identities and much
more specific bear focus.
There are other hints, however: The Iphigeneia
(Iphimede, Iphemedeia, Iphianassa) sacrifice story has many variants (and as
Mark pointed out months ago: her parantage is not even certain, and in one story
she is the daughter of Helen adopted by Agamemnon's wife.) In some, she is
sacrificed, others rescued by Artemis herself, or Achilles, who (both)
substitute animals to be sacrificed in her stead. Most classical
variants have a stag or deer used here: one though, by Nicander applies a
bull, and another by Phanodemos: a bear.
Note that Kallisto may have been an earlier deity of
the same function (and origin) in Brauron, that manages to survive
syncretization (as did Cretan Britomartis for similar reasons) by
(1) inclusion in the pantheon as an assistant Artemis, (2) banishment to the
heavens as a Bear constellation. Later Iphigeneia is also added as a true
immortal deity receiving sacrifices of blooded midwife wrappings and
clothing.
Brauron seems to be the center of the "Artemization" of
mainland Greece, and the gradual de bearing of Artemis. It is where Ipigeneia
(is mostly) credited with returning from Tauropolis, as a priestess of Artemis
to found her following there.
*At Brauron, the killing of an animal sacred to Artemis
(bear) is followed by plague , famine or misfortune: expiation requiring the
sacrifice of a young virgin. (In later stories, and in the Agamemnon
story, the bear has become a Stag that he kills in a grove sacred to Artemis.)
* The "arkteia" is established for Attic girls, as a
part of the Cult of Artemis: Artemis presides over the ritual young girl's
"playing the bear" (Arktos) amid priestesses in saffron (bee/flower linked)
dresses. The ceremony is a "substitution" associated with the
foundation myth of the killing of a sacred bear, which required the
sacrifice of a young girl (sister of the killers) for the colony to
survive. The other survival requirement: institute and continue the
'arkteia" . The Iphigeneia story is also told as part of the ritual, with the
bear substituted in her stead in the Attic version. It is a double debt to the
bear, with homage in this manner substituting for additional sacrifice, as well
as displaying pubescent maidens' commitment to follow the path of Artemis
(chastity) until marriage. In exchange: Artemis presides over births, with the
ability to bring swift and painless death to true devotees who experience birth
difficulties. (By shooting them with arrows of moonlight from her moon bow
of silver.)
* Mounichia:
another foundation myth tells again of the death of a bear, ensuing calamity,
and the demand for the sacrifice of a daughter.
* Later in Thessaly, the exact same ceremony is
performed, but with a different name, and animal: Stag.
By the time of Sappho:
"Artemis swore an oath of the gods, Swore by the beard of her father: "I
shall always be a virgin And live on summits of the great Sierras, Hunting in
the forests: O grant me this!" Her father nodded in approval. Now gods And
mortals call her by her thrilling name, The deer-slaying-hunter, And she is pure
of marriage or erotic love." --Sappho
But she was just a (minor) Greek goddess, twin of
Apollo, and not a lot of Bears there. Begin to look east and north. She
was born on Delos? (but that story rather late). One legend:
Artemis was born one day before her brother Apollo.
Her mother gave birth to her on the island of Ortygia, then, almost immediately
after her birth, she helped her mother to cross the straits over to Delos, where
she then delivered Apollo. This was the beginnings of her role as guardian of
young children and patron of women in childbirth.
(See Ron Leadbetter on that story, also for a good one
pager on the Later Greek view:
Also from his page:
*Artemis was worshiped in most Greek cities but only as a secondary
deity.
*However, to the Greeks in (Anatolia) she was a prominent deity.
*The cult statues of the Ephesian Artemis differ greatly from those of
mainland Greece.
Now in Ephesus, we assume she is brought by the
Greeks. But archeology tells us hat Croesus' structure was only the fourth
of five significant buildings . (Don't have the arch data for a comparison of
dates here with Ionian colonization). Legend tells us that all that was late,
and that the site occupied by the series of temples was for even longer a sacred
grove to: Artemis. One legend has Queen Hippo herself adding a wooden
statue of (Guess who?) Artemis, brought from the North East, to place in the
Grove.
Anatolian legends only? Nope. Enter
Callimachus, Hymm III: To Artemis
Some teasing excerpts (slanted by selection to my
conclusion, of course :-)
A full text in English is available here:
We seem to find (restated "I" seem to find) a
counter clockwise trail of association, the reverse of a clockwise movement of
influence (that included Artemis) in the translation: N. Pontic, Anatolia,Crete,
Aegean Islands, Brauron. From Callimachus (parentheticals
mine):
*...and I want to have as many names as my brother Phoibus. (Apollo)
*The girl (The young Artemis) walked upon the white Cretan mountain,
*"Cyclopes, make me a Cretan bow..."
*Artemis, Virgin, Killer of Tityos, in golden armor and belt, you yoked a
golden chariot, bridled deer in gold.
*From where did the horned team (the deer team above) begin its first run?
Thracian Haimos, where Boreas's hurricane blows ill frost on the
cloakless.
*Where did you cut pine for torches, lit by what flame? Mysian
Olympos
*or in Alai Araphenides after you left Skythia denouncing the custom of the
Tauri.
*Oupis, my Queen, shining eyed Light Bringer, the Cretans even name you
after that nymph (Britomartis !!).
*Amazons, lovers of battle, set up a wooden image under an oak, in seaside
Ephesos and Hippo offered a holy sacrifice to you;
* Afterward around that wooden image, wide foundations were
built....Dawn sees nothing richer or more divine; it easily surpasses
Pytho.
* Lygdamis, violent and psychotic, threatened to raze it..He led an
army of mare-milking Kimmerians numerous as sand, who live near the Bosporos,
passage of Io, daughter of Inachos. Vile King! His transgression meant that
neither he not his men whose wagons stood in the Kaystrian meadow would return
to Skythia;
*...your bow always lies before Ephesos.
(me again)
The EBA Bear Goddess that was Artemis, and replaced
Neolithic Hannahanna, and Ma, had been resting at Ephesus long before the first
Ionian landing, and she was there before she was in Brauron; and she came from
the North. Do you really think Croesus was eager to finance a new
structure to a foreign Goddess?
La Revedere;