The gate of the year

Painting on the handle of an Attic black-figure vase, from Chiusi (Siena, Italy), known as the François Vase (570 B.C.), now in the National Archaeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale), Florence, Italy. The image represents the goddess Artemis in the form of Lady of the Animals (Pótnia Therón), an iconographic motif deriving from the Ancient Near East. The features of Artemis recall, for many aspects, the Great Goddesses of Eastern origin, and Homer still attributes to her the epithet of “Queen of Wild Beasts” (Iliad, XXI, 470). Daughter of Zeus and Leto, Artemis is twin sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt, of the forest and of the wilderness (Graf 2005c). Indeed, outside the woodlands and the mountains, she frequents the places the Greeks called agros (the “countryside”), that is the regions not cultivated which extends beyond the borders of the world controlled by humans. She does not inhabit unattainable places or thoroughly wild areas, but rather confine zones where the wilderness and the domesticated nature are intertwined and overlying one with the other, as, for example, the places devoted to pasturage and hunting. The youths, who were approaching the hunt, thus initiating a process to enter into adult life, went into a space controlled by Artemis (Ellinger 1981). To the goddess was also attributed the title of Limnatis, emphasizing her linkage with the marshy and lacustrine areas. Her temples were frequently located in marginal zones, in a wild scenario, looking towards the mountains.

[Source: http://wps.ablongman.com/long_powell_cm_7/212/54493/13950214.cw/content/ index.html]




Female Symbols

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Painting on the handle of an Attic black-figure vase, from Chiusi (Siena, Italy), known as the François Vase (570 B.C.), now in the National Archaeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale), Florence, Italy. The image represents the goddess Artemis in the form of Lady of the Animals (Pótnia Therón), an iconographic motif deriving from the Ancient Near East. The features of Artemis recall, for many aspects, the Great Goddesses of Eastern origin, and Homer still attributes to her the epithet of “Queen of Wild Beasts” (Iliad, XXI, 470). Daughter of Zeus and Leto, Artemis is twin sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt, of the forest and of the wilderness (Graf 2005c). Indeed, outside the woodlands and the mountains, she frequents the places the Greeks called agros (the “countryside”), that is the regions not cultivated which extends beyond the borders of the world controlled by humans. She does not inhabit unattainable places or thoroughly wild areas, but rather confine zones where the wilderness and the domesticated nature are intertwined and overlying one with the other, as, for example, the places devoted to pasturage and hunting. The youths, who were approaching the hunt, thus initiating a process to enter into adult life, went into a space controlled by Artemis (Ellinger 1981). To the goddess was also attributed the title of Limnatis, emphasizing her linkage with the marshy and lacustrine areas. Her temples were frequently located in marginal zones, in a wild scenario, looking towards the mountains. [Source: http://wps.ablongman.com/long_powell_cm_7/212/54493/13950214.cw/content/ index.html]