The gate of the year

Figure on the left:

The “Lykosura Veil”, stone sculpture which was part of a great statue of a female deity, discovered in 1889 during the excavations in the temple of Despoina at Lykosura, in Arcadia. The object is datable to the II century B.C. and is now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
The goddess Despoina (whose name signifies “the Lady”) was a divinity of the Underworld, regarded as daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, and later became identified with Persephone. Her real name was however revealed only to initiates to her mysteries and has remained unknown until nowadays. Pausanias, in the II century A.D., described the sanctuary (VIII, 37) and reported how it had been founded by Lykaon, the mythical king of Arcadia, to whom also the foundation of the Zeus Lykaios cult was owed, and who was transformed into a wolf by Zeus himself. According to certain traditions, he was the father of Kallisto, the maiden transformed into a she-bear by Artemis. All these myths dealing with animal metamorphoses were presumably associated with rituals which contemplated an animal “transformation”, through masquerades and ecstatic ceremonies.

Figure on the right:

The detail of the frieze shows a series of female individuals in an attitude of dance, with animal heads, perhaps a representation of ritual masquerades.

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycosura#mediaviewer/File:Lykosoura-veil-2.jpg]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Figure on the left: The “Lykosura Veil”, stone sculpture which was part of a great statue of a female deity, discovered in 1889 during the excavations in the temple of Despoina at Lykosura, in Arcadia. The object is datable to the II century B.C. and is now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. The goddess Despoina (whose name signifies “the Lady”) was a divinity of the Underworld, regarded as daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, and later became identified with Persephone. Her real name was however revealed only to initiates to her mysteries and has remained unknown until nowadays. Pausanias, in the II century A.D., described the sanctuary (VIII, 37) and reported how it had been founded by Lykaon, the mythical king of Arcadia, to whom also the foundation of the Zeus Lykaios cult was owed, and who was transformed into a wolf by Zeus himself. According to certain traditions, he was the father of Kallisto, the maiden transformed into a she-bear by Artemis. All these myths dealing with animal metamorphoses were presumably associated with rituals which contemplated an animal “transformation”, through masquerades and ecstatic ceremonies. Figure on the right: The detail of the frieze shows a series of female individuals in an attitude of dance, with animal heads, perhaps a representation of ritual masquerades. [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycosura#mediaviewer/File:Lykosoura-veil-2.jpg]