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Unveiling Baubo: the Making of an Ancient Myth for the Degree Field Of NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Unveiling Baubo: The Making of an Ancient Myth A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Comparative Literary Studies By Frederika Tevebring EVANSTON, ILLINOIS December 2017 2 © Copyright by Frederika Tevebring 2017 All Rights Reserved 3 Abstract “Unveiling Baubo” describes how the mythical figure Baubo was constructed in nineteenth-century German. Associated with the act of exposing herself to the goddess Demeter, Baubo came to epitomize questions about concealment and unveiling in the budding fields of archaeology, philology, psychoanalysis and literary theory. As I show in my dissertation, Baubo did not exist as a coherent mythical figure in antiquity. Rather, the nineteenth-century notion of Baubo was mediated through a disparate array of ancient and contemporary sources centered on the notion of sexual vulgarity. Baubo emerged as a modern amalgam of ancient parts, a myth of a myth invested with the question of what modernity can and should know about ancient Greece. The dissertation centers on the 1989 excavation of the so-called Baubo statuettes, a group of Hellenistic votive figurines discovered at Priene, in modern-day Turkey. The group adheres to a consistent and unique iconography: the face of the female figures is placed directly onto their torso, giving the impression that the vulva and chin merge. Based on the statuettes’ “grotesque- obscene” appearance, archaeologist concluded that they depicted Baubo, the woman who greeted Demeter at Eleusis when the goddess was searching for her abducted daughter Persephone. According to late antique Church Fathers, Demeter refused the locals’ offerings of food and drink until Baubo cheered her up by lifting her skirt, exposing herself to the goddess. Hellenistic inscriptions confirm that the name Baubo was associated with Demeter in antiquity, but there is no evidence of an association between Baubo and any obscene act in the period preceding these Christian writers, whose reception of Baubo is geared clearly towards exemplifying the vulgarity of pagan traditions. Following the excavation, however, Baubo solidified into an obscene ancient figure described as a grotesque personification of the vulva. As 4 I demonstrate, at the turn to the twentieth century, the name Baubo had taken on connotations beyond the ancient sources that mention the name. The mythical figure that the Priene archaeologists recognized in the statuettes had been influenced by a wide range of sources, including Hellenistic statuettes from Egypt, a hapax legomenon from Herondas and Goethe’s Faust. Contemporary scholarship has been focused on the question of whether Baubo is properly Greek. This question is a continuation of the nineteenth-century debates from which Baubo emerged. Defining Greece was particularly charged in Germany in this century, as Ancient Greece came to be held up as a foil for German national identity. As ancient studies came into its own as an academic discipline, German scholars reexamined, and often distanced themselves from the idealizing notion of Ancient Greece prevalent at the turn to the century. This shifting approach to Ancient Greece was both figurative and literal in character, as increased German archaeological activity made the ancient world present in Germany to an unprecedented degree after the 1870s. Baubo was both a result of these changes, as the Baubo statuettes were discovered as a result of new methods in archaeological field work. At the same time, Baubo also developed into a figure that questioned the image of Ancient Greece. Goethe and Nietzsche used Baubo to critique the methods and aims of Ancient Studies in their respective generations, connecting her obscene act of exposure with the indecent investigations of scholars. “Unveiling Baubo” describes the processes by which facts about the ancient world are produced. That Baubo’s obscenity is still considered an issue that needs to be solved, or that she is held up as a reclaimed figure from an ignored aspect of the ancient past, reveals the continued investments in defining Ancient Greece. 5 Acknowledgements My most heartfelt thanks go to my dissertation co-advisors Marianne Hopman and Peter Fenves, as well as my third committee member, Ann Gunter. Marianne’s intellectual rigor and innovative approach to ancient texts will continue to set an example for my future scholarly work. Peter’s knowledge and insights helped me to formulate some of the crucial points of the project. I also thank Ann for her intellectual generosity and attentive reading. Our conversations always opened new view-points for my project. It has been an honor to bring together these three scholars in a committee, and to craft a project that puts their expertise into conversation. One of the great joys that this project has brought me has been the opportunity to build an intellectual community of colleagues and friends that bridges disciplines and countries. The generous support of the Social Science Research Council allowed me to begin my work in Berlin, close to the Baubo statuettes and the archival materials pertaining to the Priene excavation. I thank the staff of the Zentralarchive der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and the Altes Museum for granting me access to their archives and offering their time and knowledge as guidance. A grant from the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul allowed me to travel to Turkey, where I visited Priene and worked in the Ottoman State Archives. My third chapter came to fruition in the Institute’s beautiful library at Istiklal Cadessi and is a reminder of my time with the supportive, interdisciplinary group that met each Friday for Turkish tea and Swedish fika. The final chapter took shape in the equally beautiful surrounding of the Kunsthistorisches Institut Max-Planck in Florence. I thank Eva-Maria Troelenberg for bringing me into the research group Objects in the Contact Zone. I was delighted to introduce Baubo to new friends and colleagues at the KHI, equally curious about the cross-cultural life of things. 6 Throughout my work, I have enjoyed the continued support of many friends, people and programs at Northwestern University. I have greatly enjoyed being part of the communities around the Program for Comparative Literary Studies, the Classical Receptions Cluster, the Department of German, and the Department of Classics. I thank Sarah Peters, Tara Sadera, and Denise Meuser for helping me navigating the final stages of the dissertation project and my transition from graduate student to junior scholar. Special thanks to Julia Oswald for tirelessly reading summaries of my work in every possible length and format, and for providing me with comments that always made my language sharper and more compelling. I also extend my thanks to Alex Wolfson, Maïté Marciano, Katie Hartsock, Beatrice Choi, and my CLS cohort for their thoughts and conversations, for introducing me to their own work, and for their friendship. Finally, when I risked forgetting about everything but Baubo, my husband, David Thomas, together with our dog, Eli, would remind me of the joy and importance of play, food, and regular walks. My final thank goes to this little family. I thank you with all my heart. 7 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................ 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................ 7 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 9 THE MYTH OF BAUBO .............................................................................................................................. 11 GENDER AND SEMIOTICS .......................................................................................................................... 17 METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .......................................................................................... 20 THE FIGURE BAUBO AND THE BAUBO COMPLEX ................................................................................................... 20 CHAPTERS AND SOURCES .......................................................................................................................... 25 CONTRIBUTION ...................................................................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER ONE. ETYMOLOGY AND PHILOLOGY .................................................................................... 35 ANCIENT SOURCES .................................................................................................................................. 37 THE INSCRIPTIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 37 LITERARY SOURCES .......................................................................................................................................... 42 THE CHURCH FATHERS ..................................................................................................................................... 45 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................
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