The gate of the year

Statue of the goddess Artemis, accompanied by a dancing young girl, dating to the V century B.C., from the island of Corfu and now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
According to a legend reported by the Suda, a byzantine lexicon of the X century A.D., the bear rituals of Brauron were instituted on indication of an oracle, consulted by the Athenians because of an epidemics ravaging the city. A bear lived with the community in the sanctuary of Brauron, but one day a girl mocked at the animal, which enraged and scratched her. The girl’s brothers avenged the insult killing the bear, an act which brought about the outbreak of a disease determined by Artemis’s wrath. The oracle established that the misfortunes should cease if the Athenians should have their girls performing the bear ritual (Arkteia) in honour of the goddess. No girl should go to wedding before having executed the ceremony for Artemis.
At Munychia, a hill near the Piraeus, the port of Athens, was located another temple of Artemis, where bear rituals (Arkteia) similar to the ones of Brauron were performed. The same source (Suda) reports an analogous legend: a she-bear appeared in the temple and was killed by the Athenians, causing a famine. An oracle established that the misfortune could come to an end only when a citizen should have sacrificed his own daughter. The only one who accepted was a certain Embaros, who however concealed the girl in the most secret part of the temple and, after having put his daughter’s clothes on a goat, sacrificed the animal to the goddess (Dowden 1989).
The two tales are very similar and, according to Brelich, are both characterized by the fact of telling of the ritual substitution of one or more girls instead of a killed she-bear (Brelich 1969, p. 255). The tale constitutes the foundation myth for the ritual seclusion of the girls, conceived as a kind of “initiatory death”, during which the young maidens transformed themselves into she-bears, as a preliminary and indispensable ceremony for their entering into adult life. Dance and masquerades should have been the instruments through which the girls identified themselves with the bears and became part of the world of Artemis, Mistress of the Animals, whose name seems to contain a reference to the bear (arktos).

[Source: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zürich, Artemis Verlag, 1984, vol. II, part 2 : fig. 723a, p. 504]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Statue of the goddess Artemis, accompanied by a dancing young girl, dating to the V century B.C., from the island of Corfu and now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. According to a legend reported by the Suda, a byzantine lexicon of the X century A.D., the bear rituals of Brauron were instituted on indication of an oracle, consulted by the Athenians because of an epidemics ravaging the city. A bear lived with the community in the sanctuary of Brauron, but one day a girl mocked at the animal, which enraged and scratched her. The girl’s brothers avenged the insult killing the bear, an act which brought about the outbreak of a disease determined by Artemis’s wrath. The oracle established that the misfortunes should cease if the Athenians should have their girls performing the bear ritual (Arkteia) in honour of the goddess. No girl should go to wedding before having executed the ceremony for Artemis. At Munychia, a hill near the Piraeus, the port of Athens, was located another temple of Artemis, where bear rituals (Arkteia) similar to the ones of Brauron were performed. The same source (Suda) reports an analogous legend: a she-bear appeared in the temple and was killed by the Athenians, causing a famine. An oracle established that the misfortune could come to an end only when a citizen should have sacrificed his own daughter. The only one who accepted was a certain Embaros, who however concealed the girl in the most secret part of the temple and, after having put his daughter’s clothes on a goat, sacrificed the animal to the goddess (Dowden 1989). The two tales are very similar and, according to Brelich, are both characterized by the fact of telling of the ritual substitution of one or more girls instead of a killed she-bear (Brelich 1969, p. 255). The tale constitutes the foundation myth for the ritual seclusion of the girls, conceived as a kind of “initiatory death”, during which the young maidens transformed themselves into she-bears, as a preliminary and indispensable ceremony for their entering into adult life. Dance and masquerades should have been the instruments through which the girls identified themselves with the bears and became part of the world of Artemis, Mistress of the Animals, whose name seems to contain a reference to the bear (arktos). [Source: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zürich, Artemis Verlag, 1984, vol. II, part 2 : fig. 723a, p. 504]