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Animal Worship in the Mycenaean Age Animal ANIMAL WORSHIP IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE 81 ANIMAL WOESHIP IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE. I.—THE CULT OF THE ASS. fjv apa xal icdvOwai rvyr\ re zeal Anthol. Pal. II. xi. 383. AMONG the many discoveries made by the Greek Archaeological Society at Mycenae in 1886 there is one which, for the student of primitive religion, possesses a quite exceptional interest—I refer to the strange fresco here reproduced (Fig. 1). It was recovered at the excavation of a chamber belonging to the oldest period. The fresco itself was found on a wall somewhat to the south of this chamber, but evidently connected with the FIG. 1. same group of buildings. M. Tsountas, the able director of the operations, describes1 it as evpedev Kara TTXTJO-IOV TOV O'IKOV—ov)(l ev avrm—trapd re dyyelov ex /j,o\v/3Sov eypv (r^rj/xa XovTrjpos. It may be well to quote further his own account of the find. ' It represents/ he says, ' three figures 'ApxaioXoytidi, 1887, pp. 160-161, PI. X. H.S.—VOL. XIV. 82 ANIMAL WORSHIP IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE. bearing on their shoulders a pole, which they grasp with their right hands— the left in each case not being shown. On the head of the central figure may still be seen an excrescence of some sort, which probably denoted a tassel of the creature's hair: the ears slope backwards, and from their roots depends the rest of the animal's long tresses, which are plaited; at least, this I take to be the meaning of the colours employed: they also wear a girdle about their loins. The bodies, including that of the central figure, are not preserved sufficiently to enable us to decide whether they are the bodies of beasts or of men. About the pole is wound a fillet; though its extremities, from which a pair of corresponding objects was probably hung, are now lost. The heads are not those of horses but of asses, as is evident from the long ears and the general outline of the mouth with its lips and nostrils.' As to the precise significance of these curious figures no very satis- factory conclusion has yet been reached. M. Tsountas himself, and indeed the majority of archaeologists, is content to refer to Dr. Milchhofer's work Die Anfdnge der Kunst in Griechenland as containing a sufficient explanation of the scene. The chapter in question deals with the so-called ' Island stones'; and in it the author seeks to prove that a large proportion of the subordinate Greek divinities,—including the Harpies, Winds, Gorgons, Centaurs, Satyrs and Sileni, as well as Demeter, Erinys, Pegasus, Areion, Iris, the Minotaur and the Dioscuri—all group themselves around the central figure of the Horse, and are in fact differentiations of that same primitive cult. Whether this is so or not, I shall endeavour to determine later on. For the present it is enough to point out that Dr. Milchhofer's essay deals only with the Horse,—he does not so much as mention the Ass ;— and therefore he can hardly be said to have provided a satisfactory solution of the picture before us. Since the discovery of this stucco-painting at Mycenae a very different explanation has been offered by Dr. Winter,2 who regards such figures as ' mistaken copies of the sacred Hippopotamus, the Egyptian goddess Thueris.'3 With this interpretation Dr. Walter Leaf1 was formerly disposed to agree. But I would urge against it two objections. In the first place it is hard to see why her figure should have been thus repeated three times in a single scene. And in the second place we have direct evidence that Mycenaean art was much better acquainted with the shape of the hippopo- tamus than this theory would lead us to suppose. For among the terra- cotta vases found at Hissarlik in the debris of the second city (the Homeric Troy) were several in the form of animals, one of them giving a very fair idea of the hippopotamus.6 In short, though a single figure within the 2 Jahrbuch des K. d. Instituts, 1890, j). 108 of a red hippopotamus.' J. Bonwick, (Arch. Anzeiger). Belief, p. 227 fin. 3 'The hippopotamus Ta-ur stood for a 4 Schliemann's Excavations, Eng. ed. 1891, Typhonic or evil divinity, and was more an p. 292, n. 1. object to be prayed against than prayed to. 5 Schliemann's Excavations, p. 72. C]>. Its temple was at Papremis. Naville calls it Keller, Thiere des classischcn Alterthums, p. the emblem of impudence. Set took the body 205. ANIMAL WORSHIP IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE. 83 small compass of a lenticular gem might conceivably be accepted as a distortion of Thueris, a comparison of the three lively figures on our fresco either with the above-mentioned Mycenaean portrait of the hippopotamus, or with the Egyptian statues of Thueris herself,6 will make any such ex- planation appear arbitrary and improbable. Admitting then that these figures are neither horses nor river-horses, but simply asinine,7 we have to account for their peculiar appearance, and to offer some solution as to their significance. It will, I think, be well to remember two facts with regard to their provenance. They were discovered, as I have said, on the citadel of Mycenae; and connected with the spot where they were unearthed was a court-yard, which contained remains of an old sacrificial pit similar to the one disclosed at Tiryns by Dr. Dorpfeld. There is therefore a certain amount of d priori probability for attributing to them some religious meaning. Bearing this in mind, let us turn for a moment to another citadel of the Mycenaean civilization, the Akropolis at Athens. Here, in the days when ' the strong house of Erechtheus' was still standing, there was per- formed a ceremony which, thanks to scattered notices in the extant classics, can be partially reconstructed. It would appear that even in the time of Aristophanes girls between five and ten years of age were accustomed on certain occasions to celebrate a propitiatory rite in honour of Artemis Brauronia. This was done within the precinct of the Akropolis. Clad in saffron robes, which they afterwards presented to the goddess, they mimicked the action of bears (ap/crevecrffat): indeed they were themselves called ap/croi and their festival ra ap/creta. Further, it is possible that the saffron robes were the substitution of a more polished age for the rude bear-skins donned by less civilized worshippers.8 Applying this analogy to the case before us, we may maintain that there is no antecedent improbability against the prevalence of a similar ceremony at Mycenae. And if it could be shown that the ass was an animal 6 See the Gazette Archeologique, 1888, PI. I. Similarly Perrot and Chipiez, Hist, de I'Art No. 6 : Cesnola, Cyprus, p. 276 : Perrot ami dans V Antiquite, vol. vi. p. 885, ' Ceux-ci ont, Chipiez, History of Ancient Egyptian Art, Eng. sur un buste et avec des bras d'homme, des ed. vol. i. p. 63, Fig. 42. An Egyptian picture tetes d'ane.' of the ' Nilpferd' may be seen in Keller, op. 8 So A. Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, p. cit. p. 206, Fig. 41. Even the Bushmen of 213, n. 1: ' The bear-skin seems later to have S. Africa show greater skill in drawing this been exchanged for a saffron raiment.' This animal than Winter would allow the early derives dubious support from a fragment of the Greeks ; cp. a cave-painting in A. Lang, Custom figured peplos belonging to Damophon's group and Myth, p. 295, Fig. 9. of Demeter, Despoina, Artemis, and Anutos; 7 Mr. A. J, Evans writes to me that he is . a female with the head of a bear dances in collecting fresh evidence against Winter's theory. company with other animal forms. A parallel M. Cavvadias, Fouillcs de Lycosoura, Livr. i. case would be Catlin's picture of the Indian p. 12, n. 2, agrees with M. Tsountas in his in- bear-dance (pub. by Currier and Ives, New terpretation : ' Les figures monstrueuses, peintes York), which shows a ring of warriors crouching sur un fragment de stuc trouve dans le palais de like bears, some of them wearing bear-skin Mycenes, sont, a mon avis, des figures huniaines masks that conceal the whole head, and one a ;i tete d'dne, vetues d'uue tunique talaire.' complete skin covering back, arms, and legs. G 2 84 ANIMAL WORSHIP IN THE MYCENAEAN AGE. likely to be worshipped by the early dwellers on the citadel, the details of our fresco would receive a clear and simple solution. For I would suggest that we have here a representation of three worshippers, dressed in asses' heads and skins, engaged in some religious function. The colouring of the skins which they wear on their backs shows them to have been some such conventional substitute as the tcpo/caro? at Athens.9 The girdle round the waist was used to attach the skins to their bare bodies; and the human head was probably covered by an artificial mask—this is indicated both by the flesh-tint of the face and by the two semi-circular marks under the jaw.10 Lastly, just as the ap/croi were said11 fivo-rrfpiov dyeiv, so here we may find an explanation of that curious old proverb ovo<s ayet, fivcrrr^pia. This interpretation of the painting is to some extent strengthened by a consideration of certain Island stones. There are at least three gems on which, if I have read them aright, we have scenes from the same ritual.
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