Marker of Death a Note on the Swastika in Attic Geometric Art
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BABESCH 88 (2013), 1-12. doi: 10.2143/BAB.88.0.2987072 Marker of Death A Note on the Swastika in Attic Geometric Art Jeffrey M. Hurwit Abstract The swastika is a venerable motif found in the arts of diverse peoples, cultures, and periods, with a symbolism that is, overall, benign. In the vase-painting of Geometric Greece, however, it is usually regarded as mere ‘fill- ing ornament’ with no symbolic value. There have been two exceptions: one theory is that it is a solar sign, another that it is an ‘ideogram of motion’. There is, in all likelihood, no single, overarching symbolism for the motif in Geometric art. Still, on a series of Geometric vases (such as the Hirschfeld Krater, Athens NM 990), patterns emerge that suggest another explanation: the swastika can be a marker of violence and death. In the lower pictorial zone of the Hirschfeld Paint - a neat stack of zigzags and a vertical row of still er’s great krater in Athens,1 characteristically beak- more dots. Above, in the handle zone, there is a faced warriors carrying radically incurved Dipylon two-tiered, asymmetrical, but quintessential ek - shields drive teams of characteristically trumpet- phora.2 In the lower tier, on either side of the fu - muzzled horses left to right around the vase (fig. 1). nerary wagon, there are files of mourners (mostly Horizontal rows of dots stretch between the heads female, some male, some taller than others), all of the men and their horses. Also in the field are neatly separated by more stacks of zigzags and dot-rosettes - they hover below the heads of each rows of dots. In the higher tier there are, at upper team, in a careful allotment of one per chariot - and left and right, panels of concentric circles filled an occasional small bird perches above a vertical with star rosettes. To the left of the bier itself there column of dots. Beneath each team of horses are are three adult males, one of whom touchingly Fig. 1. Athens NM 990. LG I krater by the Hirschfeld Painter, detail (photo J. Hurwit). 1 holds a child by the hand (the child himself seems from more modern geometric vase-painters are to touch the bier); a box of five female mourners cautionary and instructive: according to one early appears at the far right. The corpse himself lies 20th-century study, some Pueblo artists knew that atop a four-legged bier, his fringed, checkered they had to paint certain motifs on their pots with- shroud suspended above him. There are zigzags out knowing why - tradition is powerful but mean - and birds below the couch and a bigger bird ing can be lost - while others concocted explana- (along with a few dot-rosettes) beneath the team; tions just to please inquiring archaeological minds.9 a curving row of dots mimics both the curves of Before the Nazis ruined it for everyone,10 the the horses and the frame of the wagon. And to the swastika was, of course, an ancient and venerable right of the corpse and couch, in a difficult area motif that was found in the arts and crafts of made irregular by the high arcs of the horses’ many peoples, cultures, and periods. Like its rec- necks but that might still have accommodated a tilinear relatives the battlement and meander - it, few more mourners,3 there are yet more zigzags, too, is nothing but right angles - it is a motif that dots, a bird, a dot-rosette, and, above all, three large is particularly natural and suited to the arts of hatched swastikas. They are the only swastikas weaving and basketry.11 It is this ease of produc- on the vase (as it is preserved), and their cluster- tion and reproduction - not the dissemination or ing just here, at the head of the corpse and no - diffusion of the motif from any single Ursprung, where else, seems significant. It is as if the swas - not the symbolic manifestation of some collective tikas have been substituted for mourners, as if the unconscious shared by all peoples everywhere - three adult mourners immediately to the left of that explains its appearance in distant and dis- the bier and the three great swastikas immedi- parate materials, places and times. It is found in ately to the right of it are visually equivalent. But the art of the Indus River Valley at least as early in any case the particularly close juxtaposition of as the mid-3rd millennium and, much later, in the the only corpse on the vase and the only swasti - ground plan of Sunga period burial mounds (stu- kas on the vase is not likely to be random or pas).12 Schliemann (who ominously cites the sym- meaningless. bol’s supposedly Aryan origins, concluding that Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and some- the Trojans themselves were Aryans) found swas - times Greek Geometric filling ornaments are just tikas by the hundreds incised on Early Bronze filling ornaments. But sometimes they are not Age terracotta spindle whorls from Hissarlik.13 and, as John Boardman has advised, ‘we surely Swastikas are painted on Neolithic pottery from dismiss too much as mere “filling”‘ and ‘where China or woven into rank insignia from the Qing special patterns recur in special places we must Dynasty (18th century CE),14 and they are found think again.’4 Boardman himself has convincingly on the floors of Susa A bowls from 4th-millennium argued that multiple zigzags in Argive pottery Mesopotamia.15 Swastikas (manji) adorn Japanese can represent water or the sea. Triangular motifs, porcelain and the bases of bronze Japanese Bud - when found in purely abstract panels or bands, dhas,16 and they are found on the toes and soles are just triangular motifs, but when they rise from of East Asian ‘Buddha footprints’ or on the chest the baseline in representations of warriors march- and palms of the Buddha himself.17 Swastikas are ing or animals grazing or birds perching, they embroidered into 6th-century BCE Hallstatt gar- acquire the character of landscape elements.5 So, ments from southwest Germany.18 Native Ameri - too, it has sometimes been assumed that the wide cans - the Pueblo and Navajo of the American variety of circles in Geometric art, including the Southwest, for example, or the Sac of Kansas - Attic ‘Dipylon wheel’ (a circle with interior cross), once painted them on pottery, wove them into represent the disk of the sun and that the birds baskets and blankets, incorporated them into sand frequently attending them are symbols of the paintings, and strung them on ceremonial beaded heavens,6 while fish (especially Argive fish) have garters.19 A single great swastika occupies the been considered ‘determinatives’ of Poseidon.7 center of a black-and-white mosaic floor in the Now, we are probably wrong to seek complete late Roman/early Byzantine synagogue at Ein- consistency in or universal explanations for such Gedi on the west shore of the Dead Sea (which is signs and symbols. A motif may not in every case ironic only in hindsight).20 Swastikas decorate the mean the same thing, not even on the same vase: mosaic of the entrance court of the Byzantine Late Geometric representation and ornament are Museum in Athens; they adorn (often below he - more subtle and flexible - and the Late Geometric raldic sphinxes) the bronze railings of Neo-Clas - temperament less doctrinaire - than has often sical Athenian mansions (including Schliemann’s been thought.8 At the same time, lessons learned own, the Iliou Melathron - now the Numismatic 2 Fig. 3. Agora P 4784. LG I Horse pyxis (photo J. Hurwit). icans, the sign meant ‘luck’; in Navajo myth it is the mythic whirling log of happiness, a sign of healing, or a symbol of the four winds.23 The swas - tika had been, then, an overwhelmingly good, be - nign thing before the rise of the Third Reich. But we are here interested in the swastika as a common motif in the vase-painting of Geometric Greece (900-700 BCE),24 where it is usually regar - Fig. 2. Athens NM 18062. LG I amphora by the ded as a mere filling ornament with no symbolic Hirschfeld Painter (photo J. Hurwit). value whatsoever: like other filling ornaments, it is thought to be there simply to take up otherwise Museum); and one decorates the brick entrance empty space, to assuage some primal horror vacui. to McMorran House, the home of the president of The motif is most often drawn with single solid the University of Oregon (built in 1925). lines, and such ‘linear swastikas’ are always found Attempts at interpreting the motif universally floating freely in the field around or beside ani- or assigning to it some single, overarching sym- mals or human figures (fig. 2). There are also dou- bolism common to all cultures everywhere at all ble-walled hatched and cross-hatched swastikas times are not likely to succeed. But although the (figs 1, 3) and, rarely, swastikas filled with dots swastika means many things, its symbolism and (fig. 4), and these motifs are usually (though not associations are, overall, remarkably auspicious always) found in panels that are arranged in or- and consistently positive. The swastika - the word namental friezes or that are suspended singly in itself derives from the Sanskrit sv (‘good’) and asti the black-glazed field (‘metopal’ or ‘boxed’ swas - (‘to be’), hence sv-asti (‘well-being’) - is in the tikas). There are also swastikas with extra hooks Vedic tradition a solar sign or a sacred sign for or limbs on their arms.