Re: [tied] Artemis and the Bear (long)

----- Original Message -----

From: Rex H. McTyeire

To: Cybalist@...

Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2000 3:06 AM

Subject: [tied] Artemis and the Bear (long)

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:

 

http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/gallery/greek/artemis.html

 

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:

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/classics/HYMNART.HTML

 

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;

Rex H. McTyeire
Bucharest, Romania
<rexbo@...>