Property of Sekhmet

Discussing Artemis, Bodil Hjerrild notes the apparent contradiction between her virginity and her role as protectress of women in childbirth, children, and young wild animals. Echoing an idea I think I've encountered somewhere else, "Her virginity has to be understood rather as a conservation of power and maybe a concentration of fertile energy that may be spread instead to nature and the people who worship her."

My brain being what it is, I connected this to come stuff I've been reading about the significance of shared childcare in human evolution, in particular a recent New Scientist article about middle age, and I quote: "Research suggests that a human child requires resources to be provided by multiple adults - almost certainly more than two young parents.' One study of hunter-gatherers found that "each couple requires the help of an additional 1.3 non-reproducing adults to provide for their children."

The article's idea was that the need for extra caregivers could explain why humans keep going strong after the age of menopause, but it struck me that it could also explain the persistence of many other categories of "non-reproducing adults" amongst human populations. Perhaps, for example, Artemis is the patroness of batty old aunties like myself. :)

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Bainbridge, David. Marvellous Middle Age. New Scientist 2855, 8 March 2012, pp 49-51.
Hjerrild, Bodil. Near Eastern Equivalents to Artemis. Acta Hyperborea 12 2009, pp 41-49.

Ended 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

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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.