The gate of the year

Black-figure painting on an amphora dating to 540-530 B.C., now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany. The figure at the centre represents Io transformed into a cow. Daughter of the king of Argos and priestess of the goddess Hera, Io was loved by Zeus and consequently turned into a heifer by the anger of the goddess to whom she had consecrated herself. Hera put the maiden under the custody of Argus, a one-hundred-eyes giant, who was killed by Hermes, under Zeus’s order, thus permitting the union of the girl with the god. The implacable Hera haunted Io with the stings of a horsefly, compelling the girl, in cow’s shape, to wander on the earth pursued by the insect, until she reached Egypt, where she was able to acquire her human aspect again. Here the maiden gave birth to a child, Epaphus. This was the name with which the Greeks called the Egyptian god Apis, represented in the shape of a bull, while Io herself was identified with the Egyptian goddess Isis, frequently represented with bovine horns on her head.
It is possible to hypothesize that this myth was a kind of prototype of a ritual performance which took place in the sanctuary of Hera in Argos, a goddess who was frequently called with the epithet of Boópis, “with cow eyes” (e.g. Iliad, I, 551). Here, one or more selected maidens spent an initiatory seclusion period within the temple, before marriageable age. During this time, the girls were assimilated to white cows, animals sacred to the goddess, and showed an abnormal, “foolish” behaviour, produced by the contact with the deity. The period of the passage was regarded as a dangerous period, represented in the myth by the “wrath of the goddess” motif (Dowden 1989).

[Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_Io_Argos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_585.jpg]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Black-figure painting on an amphora dating to 540-530 B.C., now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany. The figure at the centre represents Io transformed into a cow. Daughter of the king of Argos and priestess of the goddess Hera, Io was loved by Zeus and consequently turned into a heifer by the anger of the goddess to whom she had consecrated herself. Hera put the maiden under the custody of Argus, a one-hundred-eyes giant, who was killed by Hermes, under Zeus’s order, thus permitting the union of the girl with the god. The implacable Hera haunted Io with the stings of a horsefly, compelling the girl, in cow’s shape, to wander on the earth pursued by the insect, until she reached Egypt, where she was able to acquire her human aspect again. Here the maiden gave birth to a child, Epaphus. This was the name with which the Greeks called the Egyptian god Apis, represented in the shape of a bull, while Io herself was identified with the Egyptian goddess Isis, frequently represented with bovine horns on her head. It is possible to hypothesize that this myth was a kind of prototype of a ritual performance which took place in the sanctuary of Hera in Argos, a goddess who was frequently called with the epithet of Boópis, “with cow eyes” (e.g. Iliad, I, 551). Here, one or more selected maidens spent an initiatory seclusion period within the temple, before marriageable age. During this time, the girls were assimilated to white cows, animals sacred to the goddess, and showed an abnormal, “foolish” behaviour, produced by the contact with the deity. The period of the passage was regarded as a dangerous period, represented in the myth by the “wrath of the goddess” motif (Dowden 1989). [Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermes_Io_Argos_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_585.jpg]