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ikhet_sekhmetEnded up at the library today by accident. Hunting (as it were) for a reference on Artemis represented with the head of a Gorgon, I came across a pithy introduction to the goddess in Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. (My knowledge of Classical myth is woefully scattershot.)
Briefly, Artemis is the protectress of both young girls and young animals. There are multiple parallels between these two groups: the blood of menstruation and childbirth and the blood of a slain animal; the sexual maturity of a bride and the physical maturity of an animal old enough to be hunted; courtship (pretty much synonymous with rape) and the hunt. "The parallel between a girl's marriage and sacrificial death has often been noted", remarks the article. Surrounded by a band of virginal women, Artemis "directed the intense energy of their celibacy" into the hunt, but punished those who "explored their sexuality, willingly or unwillingly" - turning them into animals and shooting them. (That's a really vicious strand of Greek myth - goddesses punishing mortal women for being raped.)
Artemis is both "a goddess of a world outside civilization and of its margins", but also "a supporter of community life and civic institutions" - both a virgin goddess and a goddess of childbirth. I think there's a parallel between that and the ambiguity of childbirth for the Greeks - obviously crucial to civilisation and expected of every woman, but also "a biological process rather than one of man-made institutions" and thus "a manifestation of woman's feral side".
Pretty much coincidentally, the other day I bookmarked this beautiful Artemis with a fawn.
ETA: "she herself is wild and uncanny and is even shown with a Gorgon head." - Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, p 149.
"among the votive masks dedicated to the goddess... there are many that reproduce the monstrous and terrifying face of Gorgo." - Jean Pierre Vernant, Mortals and immortals, p 111
__
Reeder, Ellen D. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. Baltimore MD, Trustees of The Walters Art Gallery in association with Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1995.
Briefly, Artemis is the protectress of both young girls and young animals. There are multiple parallels between these two groups: the blood of menstruation and childbirth and the blood of a slain animal; the sexual maturity of a bride and the physical maturity of an animal old enough to be hunted; courtship (pretty much synonymous with rape) and the hunt. "The parallel between a girl's marriage and sacrificial death has often been noted", remarks the article. Surrounded by a band of virginal women, Artemis "directed the intense energy of their celibacy" into the hunt, but punished those who "explored their sexuality, willingly or unwillingly" - turning them into animals and shooting them. (That's a really vicious strand of Greek myth - goddesses punishing mortal women for being raped.)
Artemis is both "a goddess of a world outside civilization and of its margins", but also "a supporter of community life and civic institutions" - both a virgin goddess and a goddess of childbirth. I think there's a parallel between that and the ambiguity of childbirth for the Greeks - obviously crucial to civilisation and expected of every woman, but also "a biological process rather than one of man-made institutions" and thus "a manifestation of woman's feral side".
Pretty much coincidentally, the other day I bookmarked this beautiful Artemis with a fawn.
ETA: "she herself is wild and uncanny and is even shown with a Gorgon head." - Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, p 149.
"among the votive masks dedicated to the goddess... there are many that reproduce the monstrous and terrifying face of Gorgo." - Jean Pierre Vernant, Mortals and immortals, p 111
__
Reeder, Ellen D. Pandora: Women in Classical Greece. Baltimore MD, Trustees of The Walters Art Gallery in association with Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1995.
