Idle Expectations

ancientpeoples:

Bacab is the generic Yucatec name for each of the four pre-Spanish, aged Maya deities of the interior of the earth and its water deposits. The Bacabs have more recent counterparts in the lecherous, drunken old thunder deities of the Gulf Coast regions. The Bacabs are also referred to as ‘Pauahtuns’.

The Bacabs “were four brothers whom God placed, when he created the world, at the four points of it, holding up the sky so that it should not fall. […] They escaped when the world was destroyed by the deluge.” Their names were Hobnil, Cantzicnal, Saccimi, and Hosanek. Each ruled one of the directions and the associated Year Bearer day (one of four New Year days). The four brothers were intimately associated with the four Chaacs, or rain deities, and the Pauahtuns, or wind deities, who were equally associated with the four directions. The Maya of Chan Kom referred to the four skybearers as the four Chacs (Redfield and Villa Rojas).

According to Francisco Hernández (quoted by Las Casas and Diego López de Cogolludo), Bacab was the son of the creator god, Itzamna, and of the goddess Ixchebelyax; he had once been humbled, killed, and revived. The Bacabs played an important role in the cosmological upheaval associated with Katun 11 Ahau, when Oxlahuntiku ‘Thirteen-god’ was humbled by Bolontiku ‘Nine-god’. According to the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, “then the sky would fall, it would fall down, it would fall down upon the earth, when the four gods, the four Bacabs, were set up, who brought about the destruction of the world.”

Since they were Year Bearer patrons, the Bacabs were important in divination ceremonies. They were approached with questions about crops, weather, or the health of bees (Landa), and often invoked in curing rituals (which is the basic reason why the most important early-colonial collection of Yucatec curing texts, the Ritual of the Bacabs, has been named after them).

Of the ‘Grandfathers’ of the Gulf Coast corresponding to the Bacabs, the most powerful one is responsible for opening the rainy season. The four earth-carrying old men are sometimes conceived as drowned ancestors who are serving for one year; then, other drowned men are substituted for them. Together with this comes the concept that the powerful ‘Grandfather’ only grows old over the course of the year.

In earlier representations (which are not restricted to the Yucatán), the Bacabs who carry the sky are represented by old men carrying the sky-dragon. They can have the attributes of a conch, a turtle, a snail, a spider web, or a bee ‘armour’. In the rain almanacs of the Post-Classic Dresden Codex, the old man with the conch and the turtle is put on a par with Chaac. This old man corresponds to god N in the Schellhas-Zimmermann-Taube classification, a god of thunder, mountains, and the interior of the earth.

In Classic Maya iconography, the Bacab occurs in various stereotypical situations:

• Fourfold, the Bacabs are repeatedly shown carrying the slab of a throne or the roof of a building. In this, young, princely impersonators can substitute for them (see fig.), a fact suggestive of the Gulf Coast traditions about drowned ancestors mentioned above. On a damaged relief panel from Pomona, four of these young Bacab impersonators appear to have held the four Classic Year Bearer days in their hands.
• A Bacab inhabiting the Earth Turtle is part of the scenes with the resurrection of the Maya maize god.
• Still unexplained is a recurring scene in which the Bacab, half-hidden in his conch, is held by his wrist, about to be sacrificed with a knife.

The Bacab has a peculiar netted element as a distinguishing attribute serving as a headdress, which might conceivably belong to the sphere of the hunt or of beekeeping. It recurs as a superfix in his hieroglyphical names; its reading is uncertain. Hieroglyphically, one finds conflations of Itzamna (god D) and Bacab (god N), recalling the mythological filiation of the Bacab mentioned above.

ancientpeoples:

Gold Bangle with Gold and Silver amulets

Egypt

Middle Kingdom, 1991-1785 BC

Made of two bangles of beaten gold separated by alternating amulets of silver and gold. It is a very rare example, unique for this period. The amulets include animals figures: turtle, hare, snake, baboon and falcon, and symbols: ankh, wedjat eye, djed pillar, bat emblem and two-finger amulet.

The turtle was a symbol of evil, rendered harmless by being shown immobilized. The hare, noted for its fertility and survival skills symbolised life. The snake represented new life. The baboon, the herald of the rising sun, was also a manifestation of the god Thoth. The ankh was the heiroglyph for life. The wedjat was the powerfully protective healed eye of the falcon-god Horus. The djed pillar was the hieroglyph for stability. The Bat emblem was the face of the protective cow-eared goddess. The two-finger amulets may represent the fingers of the embalmer, giving extra protection.

ancientpeoples:

Statue of Ptah

Made of Bronze and Gold

26th Dynasty

This masterpiece statuette depicts standing Path, the main deity of Memphis. His body is enveloped by a tightly fitting robe leaving exposed only his hands with bracelets on wrists holding a was-scepter and an ankh-sign; he wears a scull-cap, a broad collar and a pleated artificial beard. The eyes, collar, bracelets, beard and the eye and the ear of the finial of the scepter are inlayed with gold. The statuette had originally been held up by a long tenon.

ancientpeoples:

Enthroned Goddess (probably Astarte)

First half of the 6th Century BC

Cyprus

Astarte was the Phoenician goddess of fertility, love and death. She is often shown in this manner sitting on a throne.

ancientpeoples:

Bronze Figure of Nike, Goddess of Victory

Greek c.550 BC

Made in South Italy

Probably a from a large bowl

Nike is shown running forwards with her right foot placed delicately on a rising scroll. It may have been one of a series that ran around a bowl.

Her wings are intricately worked into an out stretched arch enhancing the feeling of movement. Her hair sweeps backwards and she pulls her dress up with her left hand.

ancientpeoples:

Amun, reconstructed Egyptian imn (imun) (also spelled Amon, Amoun, Amen, Zeus Amun, and rarely Imen or Yamun, Greek Ἄμμων Ammon, and Ἅμμων Hammon), was a god in Egyptian and Berber mythology who in the form of Amun-Ra became the focus of the most complex system of theology in Ancient Egypt. Whilst remaining hypostatic, Amun represented the essential and hidden, whilst in Ra he represented revealed divinity. As the creator deity “par excellence”, he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.

Amun was self-created, without mother and father, and during the New Kingdom he became the greatest expression of transcendental deity in Egyptian theology. He was not considered to be immanent within creation nor was creation seen as an extension of himself. Amun-Ra did not physically engender the universe. His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods. He was also widely worshipped in the neighboring regions of Ancient Libya and Nubia.

Amun created himself alone. His first wife was Wosret, but he later married Amunet and Mut. Along with Mut he is a father of the moon god Khonsu and the three of them become what is known as the Theban triad.

When the army of the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty expelled the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, the victor’s city of origin, Thebes, became the most important city in Egypt, the capital of a new dynasty. The local patron deity of Thebes, Amun, therefore became nationally important. The pharaohs of that new dynasty attributed all their successful enterprises to Amun and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of temples dedicated to Amun.

As the Egyptians considered themselves oppressed during the period of the Hyksos rule, the victory accomplished by pharaohs who worshipped Amun, brought him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate. Consequently, Amun was viewed as upholding the rights of justice for the poor. By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Ma’at (truth, justice, and goodness), those who prayed to Amun were required, first, to demonstrate that they were worthy by confessing their sins. Votive stelae from the artisans’ village at Deir el-Medina record:

“[Amun] who comes at the voice of the poor in distress, who gives breath to him who is wretched..You are Amun, the Lord of the silent, who comes at the voice of the poor; when I call to you in my distress You come and rescue me…Though the servant was disposed to do evil, the Lord is disposed to forgive. The Lord of Thebes spends not a whole day in anger; His wrath passes in a moment; none remains. His breath comes back to us in mercy..May your ka be kind; may you forgive; It shall not happen again.”

Much later, because of the evidence of the adoration given to Amun in many regions during the height of his cult, Greek travellers to Egypt would report that Amun—who they determined to be the ruler of the Egyptian pantheon—was similar to the leader of the Classical Greek pantheon, Zeus, and therefore they became identified by the Greeks as the same deity. Likewise, Amun’s consort Mut became associated by these Greeks with Zeus’s consort in the Classical pantheon, Hera.

Praises of Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used in the reign of Akhenaton, in particular the Hymn to the Aten:

“When thou crossest the sky, all faces behold thee, but when thou departest, thou are hidden from their faces … When thou settest in the western mountain, then they sleep in the manner of death … The fashioner of that which the soil produces, … a mother of profit to gods and men; a patient craftsmen, greatly wearying himself as their maker..valiant herdsman, driving his cattle, their refuge and the making of their living..The sole Lord, who reaches the end of the lands every day, as one who sees them that tread thereon … Every land chatters at his rising every day, in order to praise him.”

Subsequently, when Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This Kush deity was depicted as ram-headed, more specifically a woolly ram with curved horns. So Amun became associated with the ram: indeed, due to the aged appearance of the Kush ram deity.

Since rams were considered a symbol of virility due to their rutting behavior, Amun also became thought of as a fertility deity, and so started to absorb the identity of Min, becoming Amun-Min. This association with virility led to Amun-Min gaining the epithet Kamutef, meaning Bull of his mother, in which form he was found depicted on the walls of Karnak, ithyphallic, and with a scourge, as Min was.

In areas outside of Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the cult of Amun his worship continued. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amane, he remained a national deity, with his priests, at Meroe and Nobatia, regulating the whole government of the country via an oracle, choosing the ruler, and directing military expeditions. According to Diodorus Siculus, these religious leaders even were able to compel kings to commit suicide, although this tradition stopped when Arkamane, in the 3rd century BC, slew them.

In Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the Libyan Desert at the oasis of Siwa. The worship of Ammon was introduced into Greece at an early period, probably through the medium of the Greek colony in Cyrene, which must have formed a connection with the great oracle of Ammon in the Oasis soon after its establishment. Ammon had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar, at Thebes, and another at Sparta, the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias says, consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Ammon was worshipped, from the time of Lysander, as zealously as in Ammonium. Pindar the poet honoured the god with a hymn. At Megalopolis the god was represented with the head of a ram (Paus. viii.32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Ammon.

Such was its reputation among the Classical Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt, where he was declared “the son of Amun” by the oracle. Alexander thereafter considered himself divine. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified by these Greeks as a form of Zeus, continued to be the principal local deity of Thebes. Iarbas, a mythological king of Libya, was also considered a son of Hammon.

ancientpeoples:

Necklace with the head of the Egyptian God Bes

6th-4th Century BC

Achaemenid Period 

In the 5th century B.C. a homogeneous style of Persian court art and architecture was created that derived from the practices of the peoples that the Achaemenid kings ruled over: Ionian Greeks, Lydians, Mesopotamians and Egyptians.

Rich in figural imagery, this necklace is made up of Achaemenid elements, with a head of Bes, an Egyptian god; plaques of a male figure with a horse; and lotus terminals. Depictions of a double-winged Ahura Mazda are rendered in cloisonné on a circular gold earring. Parallels for this jewelry come from the sites of Susa and Pasargadae in southern Iran.

ancientpeoples:

Pair of Gold Earrings with Ganymede and the Eagle

c. 300 BC

Source:The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Under a large honeysuckle palmette, hang the finely worked figures of the Trojan prince Ganymede and Zeus, in the for of an eagle. Ganymede was said to have been so beautiful that Zeus carried him off to Mt. Olympus and made him his immortal cup bearer. In return for taking Ganymede, Zeus gave the boys father Tros some of the divine horses of the gods.

Zeus put Ganymede in the stars as the constellation of Aquarius who is associated with that of the eagle Aquila.

ancientpeoples:

Aphrodite 

Aphrodite was one of the 12 great Olympian deities. She was the goddess of erotic love, the giver of beauty and sexual attraction, and was identified as Venus by the Romans. The planet Venus was named after her and is the only planet named after a goddess (the rest are gods). 

There are two myths surrounding Aphrodite’s birth which are commonly cited by ancient writers. To Homer she was simply the daughter of Zeus, the king of the Gods, and Dione, whose name literally means “the goddess”. According to Hesiod, Aphrodite has a much more interesting birth, she was created when Cronos, son of Uranus and Gaia, hacked off his father’s genitals (on his mother’s orders) with a sickle and threw them into the swirling ocean. The genitals floated around in the waves, eventually becoming surrounded by foam. It was from this foam, “aphros”, that Aphrodite was born.

She washed ashore, either on Cythera or Cyprus (depending on which Greek tradition you are following). She emerged already in the form of a beautiful woman and was immediately attended to by the Hours and Graces who adorned her with fine jewels and took her to Olympus. 

The gods immediately began to quarrel which of them would marry her, when they saw the beautiful goddess. Zeus, fearing a war between the gods, gave her to the lame smith-god Hephaestus. However, being the goddess of sexual desire, was not a faithful wife. 

Her most regular lover was Ares, the god of War. Hephaestus found out about this affair from the sun-god Helios who sees all things. Hephaestus made a golden net and set it up above the bed. He told his wife he was going to the Lemnos and naturally Aphrodite decided to use this opportunity to meet with Ares. The net descended on them both. Hephaestus then called in all of the other gods in order to shame the pair (the goddesses stayed away out of modesty). Hermes confessed to Apollo that to be in bed with Aphrodite was worth a far greater penalty.

Aphrodite and Ares had two children, a daughter Harmonia and son Eros (though in some traditions Eros was born at the beginning of time out of nothing). She had many other children from other lovers too. These include Priapus to Dionysus and Hermaphroditus to Hermes (I guess he got to her bed eventually). 

She wore an enchanted girdle which made her so overwhelming attractive that men could not resist their desire for her. She lent this to Hera during the Trojan War so she could distract Zeus’ attention from the battlefield.

In literature, Aphrodite was celebrated for the power of love and extent of her dominion. The only living beings immune to her influence were the three virgin goddesses: Athena, Artemis and Hestia. Every other living thing, mortal and immortal alike, were open to the power and pain of love. She often inflicted helpless love on her fellow immortals, so Zeus made her fall in love with the Trojan prince, Anchises, so she would know what it was like to be tormented by love for a mortal. She bore him a son called Aeneas. 

She adored another mortal, a huntsman called Adonis. She was so infatuated with him that she took up hunting herself. She pulled up her skirt to her knees and ran through the woods like Artemis. Tragically Adonis was killed by a wild boar and Aphrodite created the blood red anemone from his blood as a token of her grief.

She was often involved in mortal concerns by aiding lovers and punishing those who rejected love. She helped Hippomenes win Atalanta’s love (in a footrace by dropping shiny apples to distract the girl), and made Dido fall in love with Aeneas and shelter him in Carthage. Most famously she gave Helen’s love to Paris and so started the Trojan War. However, Hippolytus rejected love in honour of the virgin goddess Artemis. So Aphrodite made his step mother Phaedra fall in love with him. This lead to Theseus, his father, to curse him and Poseidon sent a bull to spook Hippolytus’ horses and he was dragged to death when his chariot overturned. The women of Lemnia were said to have neglected Aphrodite so she inflicted them with a terrible smell.

Her concerns even spread to the animal world. An individual called Glaucus kept his prize winning mares from mating to improve their performance on the race course. This upset Aphrodite so she made the mares mad, they tore Glaucus to pieces and then ate his remains.

ancientpeoples:

Pottery Kernos (multiple vessel)

Phylakopi I Culture

2300BC-2000BC

Kernos with twenty narrow cups around central bowl. Painted with black zigzag lines on cups and stand. Traces of white paint on supports between cups.