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The Korai of the Erechtheion Revisited Leonore L.M.E. Poldervaart

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The Korai of the Erechtheion Revisited Leonore L.M.E. Poldervaart IDENTIFYING MYTH The korai of the Erechtheion revisited Leonore L.M.E. Poldervaart 1 In fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Utrecht University RMA ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES thesis under the supervision of prof. dr. J.H. Blok | dr. F. van den Eijnde COVER IMAGE Julien-David Le Roy, Les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece, considérées du côté de ‘histoire et du côté de l’architecture. Paris (1770) pl. 30 (detail) (recoloured). IDENTIFYING MYTH The korai of the Erechtheion revisited Leonore L.M.E. Poldervaart Utrecht 2018 3 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 INTRODUCTION 9 CHAPTER ONE – THE KORAI 15 1.1 DETAILED DESCRIPTION 17 General remarks on the korai 17 Korê A 19 Korê B 20 Korê C 21 Korê D 22 Korê E 24 Korê F 25 1.2 ANALYSIS – ‘READING’ OF THE STATUES 26 Age 27 Body 29 Hairstyle 31 1.3 CONCLUSION 32 CHAPTER TWO – “AN EXCEPTIONALLY RICH JEWEL-BOX OF A TEMPLE” 33 2.1 DATING THE ERECHTHEION 33 2.2 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD 35 Exterior 36 Interior 41 2.3 THE CULTS 43 The altar of the thyêchoos 44 5 The altar of Zeus Hypatos 49 The altar of Poseidon-Erechtheus 52 The altar of Boutes and the paintings of the clan members on the wall 52 The altar of Hephaistos and the matter of autochthony 53 The man-made well 55 The agalma 56 The naos of Athena Polias and the issue of the opisthodomos 57 The alternative theories on the location of the Erechtheion 59 2.4 CONCLUSION 62 CHAPTER THREE – THE KORAI AS PART OF THE PATRIOTIC ATHENIAN MYTHOLOGICAL NARRATIVE 63 3.1 HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL INTERPRETATIONS 63 3.2 MYTHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATIONS 67 Temple decoration 67 The patriotic Athenian mythological narrative 70 3.3 THE KORAI REVISITED 71 4 CONCLUSION 76 LIST OF PLATES 79 PLATES 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY 123 APPENDIX I PAUSANIAS 133 APPENDIX II INSCRIPTIONS 137 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My quest for answers concerning the identity of the korai started some four years ago. Throughout these years, a lot of people have helped me, either by simply cheerleading me throughout the project or by providing helplines for information. In other words, I could not have done this on my own. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof. Dr. Josine Blok and Dr. Floris van den Eijnde, for both keeping me steady on my course and for encouraging me to persevere. Their own work and ideas have inspired me to make something more of this thesis than what I had originally planned. I have learned so much from the meetings with Prof. Dr. Blok and I will never forget the look she gave me after I unfolded my original plan for this thesis. She, rightfully, explained to me why that was not a good idea and how I might better go about it. Special thanks to Floris as well, for it is because of him that my enthusiasm for the Erechtheion sparked off, and I hold him responsible for the fact that this subject will never let me go wherever the future will take me. I would like to thank the Dutch Institute at Athens (NIA) for granting the scholarship gave me the opportunity to dig through the several libraries in Athens and find all the literature that the Dutch universities’ libraries could not provide me with. And lastly, my friends and family have contributed so much in many different ways. I would like to thank Lotte, Anna, Florien, and Alma for dragging me to the library each and every single day. Studying and discussing all our theses together gave me the energy I needed to make a good start. Florien and Alma also deserve special thanks for the endless cups of tea that helped us to overcome in our struggles. Harry, thank you for your help with the prodigious difficulties I encountered in the English language. Dr. Michel Buijs I would like to thank for his help with all matters Greek. Mom and Stephanie, thank you for your love and believing in me, even when I did not. But most of all, I would like to thank one person in particular. Arjan, thank you for reading everything over and over again, for the endless hours discussing the minor details of my thesis, for knowing exactly what I wanted to write and filling in these gaps when I could not find the words, for the comforting hugs when everything fell apart, for the way you cheered me up and gave me enough courage to still see the bright side. I am sorry that you now know so many details about things you did not even want to know about. It is fair to say that without you, your patience, and your love, I would not have been able to finish this work. 7 8 INTRODUCTION The Ionic temple on the Akropolis of Athens, generally known as the Erechtheion, is the last of a series of temples devoted to the goddess Athena Polias. Besides the shrine for Athena Polias, the Erechtheion also incorporated the altars of Poseidon-Erechtheus, Hephaistos, and Boutes, and the mythical tokens of the competition between Athena and Poseidon for the city, namely the olive tree and the salt sea well. However, the precise location of these various elements within the temple is still a subject of heated debate. Also, there is still no general agreement on the dating of the building, and on the more fundamental question of whether the Ionic temple is in fact “the building called Erechtheion” mentioned by Pausanias. The ancient evidence from literary, epigraphical, and archaeological sources is extremely ambiguous. A re-examination of the temple, its precursors, and the religious, social, and political context in which it was built are essential for laying the foundations for a comprehensive analysis of the primary focus of my thesis, namely the six maiden statues of the South Porch, the korai. Instead of referring to the statues of the Erechtheion’s South Porch as karyatides, the term by which they are generally known, I will refer to them as korai, for this is the term used for them in the building inscriptions of 409/8 BC.1 For more than two millennia the korai of the Erechtheion have been one of the primary eye-catchers of the Athenian Akropolis. However, their beauty and the gracefulness with which they carry the roof of the South Porch on their heads are not the only aspects that strike the modern viewer. Mystery continues to surround them as it is still unclear why they are there at all – beyond being mere architectural supports, why exactly there are six of them, and most of all what meaning are they supposed to convey. What did fifth-century Athenian eyes ‘read’ into them? In this thesis, I will attempt a ‘reading’ of these six maiden figures to provide an answer to this question. In Archaic and Classical Greece, the most common form of monumental architecture was the temple complex. Temples were not just sites for worship, but were also believed to be the actual dwelling-places of the gods, and by and of themselves represented dedications. As such their construction demanded special care and consideration, not to mention considerable resources.2 Greek temples share an aesthetic that is most often not merely 1 In Chapter Three, I will elaborate more on the Vitruvian term karyatides. For the building inscriptions, see Appendix II, page PAGENUMBERS, IG I³ 474. 2 WILSON JONES (2014). 9 decorative but is meant to convey a narrative, one that is intrinsically mythological. Whereas we now regard the myths represented on temple decoration as fictitious proto-history, the ancient Greeks believed that these narratives of the mythical beginnings of their cities, of (semi-divine) kings, heroes, and heroines, represented truth, whether in a historical or allegorical sense. These, often local, stories created, through continuous remembrance, the context of a great past, their so-called mythistory. Athens had a rich mythistory that tells us much about the makings of Athenian identity from the level of the individual citizen to that of the polis in its entirety. These narratives bound the community together and provided a foundation for its political traditions and claims to greatness. This is actually not that different from the way modern national myths, often as fictitious as the gods of the ancients, offer people something to identify with, help bridge internal divisions, and give legitimacy to our political structures. It is generally acknowledged that temple decorations at all the major sanctuaries derive from mythological narratives, and though such narratives may hold all kinds of cultural or political connotations they are first and foremost mythological.3 The Athenian Akropolis, however, holds several works of sculpture, that have been perceived as exceptions to this rule by modern scholars. Especially the Parthenon frieze and the six maiden statues of the Ionic temple have instead been placed in a purely historical and ritual context. It is worth noting at this point that Arnold Lawrence suggests that the Erechtheion, with its unconventional shape and lay-out, might be an exceptional deviation from the norms of Greek temples altogether.4 Nonetheless, the preposition that the decorations of the Erechtheion or of any temple created in the cultural context of Classical Greece, should be interpreted as holding purely historical and ritual meaning and that myth and mythistory can be discounted is up for debate. In the case of the Parthenon frieze, the prevalent historical interpretation was challenged by Joan Connelly, who persuasively argued that the Parthenon frieze is a place of remembrance of which the myth of Erechtheus, as told by Euripides, formed the basis.5 According to her, the Parthenon frieze does not show the Panathenaic procession but rather shows king Erechtheus preparing to sacrifice one of his three daughters, as the oracle had named it the price of victory in the war with Eumolpos.
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