The gate of the year

Figure above:

Black-figure vase painting, attributed to the Antimenes Painter (about 520 B.C.) and now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. The scene shows Dionysus riding a donkey facing the god Hephaestus. The donkey was particularly linked to the Dionysus cult, so much so that during the Dionysian mysteries the animal brought on its back the coffer serving as the god’s cradle. This linkage between the donkey and the Dionysian ritual folly could explain some of the attributes which, in Medieval iconography, were associated with the Fool, often represented wearing a headdress with long donkey’s ears.

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antimenes_Painter_-_Black-figure_Amphora_with_Herakles_and_Apollo_Fighting_Over_the_Tripod_-_Walters_4821_-_Detail_B.jpg]

Figure below:

Rhyton (container for ritual offerings) from Athens, dating to about 470-460 B.C. and now in the Louvre Museum. The object reproduces a donkey’s head and shows on the neck a scene in which a dancer and a flute player are represented, probably recalling the Dionysian rituals. The image of the donkey probably conceals also an initiatory symbolism: in the novel the Metamorphoses by Apuleius (II century A.D.), the main character, Lucius, is transformed into an ass and acquires again his human features only by the intervention of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donkey_head_rhyton_Louvre_Cp3561.jpg]




Animals

Back

Figure above: Black-figure vase painting, attributed to the Antimenes Painter (about 520 B.C.) and now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, USA. The scene shows Dionysus riding a donkey facing the god Hephaestus. The donkey was particularly linked to the Dionysus cult, so much so that during the Dionysian mysteries the animal brought on its back the coffer serving as the god’s cradle. This linkage between the donkey and the Dionysian ritual folly could explain some of the attributes which, in Medieval iconography, were associated with the Fool, often represented wearing a headdress with long donkey’s ears. [Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antimenes_Painter_-_Black-figure_Amphora_with_Herakles_and_Apollo_Fighting_Over_the_Tripod_-_Walters_4821_-_Detail_B.jpg] Figure below: Rhyton (container for ritual offerings) from Athens, dating to about 470-460 B.C. and now in the Louvre Museum. The object reproduces a donkey’s head and shows on the neck a scene in which a dancer and a flute player are represented, probably recalling the Dionysian rituals. The image of the donkey probably conceals also an initiatory symbolism: in the novel the Metamorphoses by Apuleius (II century A.D.), the main character, Lucius, is transformed into an ass and acquires again his human features only by the intervention of the Egyptian goddess Isis. [Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donkey_head_rhyton_Louvre_Cp3561.jpg]