The gate of the year

Figure above:

Oinochoe, pottery wine jug in the shape of a little barrel, from Vulci in the Etruscan country, dating back to about 725-700 B.C., and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Etruscan maker of this artefact was highly influenced by the Greek pottery artisanship and reproduced an iconographic motif originating from the Near East: the tree of life flanked by two goats. The goat is an animal frequently mentioned in the mythological tales, and employed as a symbol of fecundity and sexual energy. Goats and kids were often chosen as sacrificial victims offered to the gods. The kids were often sacrificed also in the Mystery cults, particularly in the Dionysian mysteries, where they were offered to the god by the Maenads, the followers of Dionysus, clad into goatskins.

[Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/255548]

Figure below:

Red-figure painted rhyton (container for libations) with an animal protome, dating to the IV century B.C., now in the City Archaeological Collections (Civiche Raccolte Archeologiche e Numismatiche) in Milan, Italy. In several mythological tales, the goat plays the role of a nurse for abandoned gods and heroes, who have been left to their fate in wild and inhabited regions. Beside the goat Amalthea, which acted as foster-mother for Zeus, the myth remember also the goats suckling the Phrygian god Attis and those which nursed Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s murderer, whose name itself contains a reference to the goat (Greek aix). In Greece, since the most ancient times, the goat is an attribute of the divinities of the hunt (like Artemis), that probably draw their main characteristics from the “Ladies of the Animals” of the Near East.

[Source:
http://mostreemusei.sns.it/index.php?page=_layout_mostra&id=996&lang=it&complete]




Animals

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Figure above: Oinochoe, pottery wine jug in the shape of a little barrel, from Vulci in the Etruscan country, dating back to about 725-700 B.C., and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Etruscan maker of this artefact was highly influenced by the Greek pottery artisanship and reproduced an iconographic motif originating from the Near East: the tree of life flanked by two goats. The goat is an animal frequently mentioned in the mythological tales, and employed as a symbol of fecundity and sexual energy. Goats and kids were often chosen as sacrificial victims offered to the gods. The kids were often sacrificed also in the Mystery cults, particularly in the Dionysian mysteries, where they were offered to the god by the Maenads, the followers of Dionysus, clad into goatskins. [Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/255548] Figure below: Red-figure painted rhyton (container for libations) with an animal protome, dating to the IV century B.C., now in the City Archaeological Collections (Civiche Raccolte Archeologiche e Numismatiche) in Milan, Italy. In several mythological tales, the goat plays the role of a nurse for abandoned gods and heroes, who have been left to their fate in wild and inhabited regions. Beside the goat Amalthea, which acted as foster-mother for Zeus, the myth remember also the goats suckling the Phrygian god Attis and those which nursed Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s murderer, whose name itself contains a reference to the goat (Greek aix). In Greece, since the most ancient times, the goat is an attribute of the divinities of the hunt (like Artemis), that probably draw their main characteristics from the “Ladies of the Animals” of the Near East. [Source: http://mostreemusei.sns.it/index.php?page=_layout_mostra&id=996&lang=it&complete]