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Dedications in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Cyrene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

Susan Kane
Susan Kane*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Ohio, USA
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Extract

Yes, Asclepius, statues. Do you see how even you give way to doubt? I mean statues, but statues living and conscious, filled with the breath of life, and doing many mighty works; statues which have foreknowledge and predict future events by the drawing of lots, and by prophetic inspiration, and by dreams, and in many other ways; statues which inflict diseases and heal them, dispensing sorrow and joy according to men's deserts.

Asclepius 24a (3rd century AD Hermetic Dialogue, trans. W. Scott)

In the 1971 and 1978 seasons, the University Museum of Philadelphia Expedition to Cyrene excavated two fragmentary limestone statues of seated females in the extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone in the Wadi bel Gadir. One of these two life to over-life size statues (Statue I) was found within the early Imperial S8 Sacred House and the other (Statue II) was retrieved from the broken vaulted roof of Tunnel A, down the slope directly to the north of this house. Both statues may be dated, on grounds of style and archaeological context, to the first half of the first century AD. By virtue of their large size, findspots, and unusual construction, a case may be made that these statues were intended to represent one or both of the Sanctuary's two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, and used for special rituals, possibly associated with the thesmophoria festival known to be celebrated here.

Statue I (Fig. 1) is fragmentary, only the lower part of a draped female seated on an oval chest (carved in two joining blocks) is preserved, as well as some non-joining fragments of her veiled head and shoulders. The oval chest is entwined by a snake. One block of Statue II remains (Fig. 2), consisting of the right half of a female figure's lower body and part of the chair, possibly a backless one, on which she is seated. This figure holds a plate in her lap filled with fruits, breads, and a piglet's head. It seems reasonable to conjecture that the two statues represent Demeter and/or Persephone. Statue I is seated on an oval chest, probably the kiste, in which the sacred objects of the goddesses were kept. The sacral importance of the chest is underscored by the snake which wraps itself around it. Statue II holds a plate of offerings, among which is a piglet's head (the sacrificial victim used for the Thesmophoria).

Type
Roman Period and Late Antiquity
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 25 , January 1994 , pp. 159 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1994

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References

Notes

1. Hermetica vol. 1 (Boulder repr. 1982), 362Google Scholar.

2. Statue I (found within the S8 Sacred House: inv. nos 71–710/73–472, 71–831, and the non-joining, but associated 71–705, 73–279, 73–409, and 73–276): White, , Second Report 191 n. 95, pl. 83cGoogle Scholar; White, , Third Report 38–39 n. 13, pl. 4, fig. 11Google Scholar; White, , Final Reports I 108 n. 82Google Scholar; Statue II (found just to the south of the S8 Sacred House: inv. no 78–600): White, , Sixth Preliminary Report 184, pls. 57b and 58aGoogle Scholar; White, , Final Reports I 108 n. 83)Google Scholar; for a preliminary discussion of both statues within the context of the Sanctuary: Kane, Kore's Return: Statuary from the Sanctuary, , Expedition 34 (1992) 70–74Google Scholar; for the S8 Sacred House: White, , The Sanctuary's History and Architecture, Expedition 34 (1992) 6–15Google Scholar.

3. The idea of a ritual use for these two statues was originally suggested to me by Professor Michael Jameson of Stanford University; all of the information on Greek magic and ritual concerning this possibility was provided by Professor Christopher Faraone of the University of Chicago (both in personal communications and in the published works as cited below).

4. LIMC IV 1, 2 Demeter and Ceres, 844–908.

5. Fabbriconi, E., Divinità greche e divinità libie in rilievi di età ellenistica, QAL 12 (1987) 234–235Google Scholar; Peschlow-Bindokat, A., Demeter und Persephone in der attischen Kunst, JdI 187 (1972) 118 ffGoogle Scholar.

6. White, , Final Reports I, 108Google Scholar (notes 82–83) and 88 for a discussion of the post-AD 262 wall (W12) constructed over the T10 Retaining Wall backfill.

7. Some votives and works dedicated in the Sanctuary may not have been on display for very long before being ‘decommissioned’. A relief of a heroized horseman, Theudoros, son of Theudoros (inv. no. 77–377), was found in the constructional backfill of the T10 retaining wall, a deposit that has a terminus ante quern of the early first century AD. Since the letter forms of an inscription on the relief have been assigned a stylistic date in the late first century BC–early first century AD by the excavation's epigrapher, Joyce Reynolds, it would appear that the relief had a brief life span as a votive before being discarded in constructional backfill for this renovation project in the Sanctuary. Statue II may have had a similar fate.

8. It is uncertain whether the limestone was local or imported; for a discussion of the types of stone used in Cyrene, see S. Kane, Sculpture from Cyrene in its Mediterranean context, 127–138 and for a discussion of the techniques of piecing stone, see Claridge, A., Roman Statuary and the Supply of Statuary Marble, 139–152, both in Fant, C., ed., Ancient Marble Quarrying and Trade, BAR 453(1988)Google Scholar.

9. For excellent discussions and extensive bibliography on this subject, see Faraone, C., Talismans, Voodoo Dolls and other Apotropaic Statues in Ancient Greece (Stanford University diss. 1988), ch. 5Google Scholar, The Lore of Talismanic Statues in Ritual, Later Greek, and Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual (Oxford 1992) by the same authorGoogle Scholar.

10. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951)Google Scholar Appendix II on Theurgy; Eitrem, S., La Theurgie chez les Neoplatoniciens et dans les papyrus magiques, SymbOslo 22 (1942) 49 ffGoogle Scholar.

11. Dodds (supra n. 10) Appendix II; Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5, notes 3–8; and Faraone, C., Hephaestus the Magician and Near Eastern Parallels for Alcinous' Workshop, GRBS 28 (1987) 264–265, notes 18–20Google Scholar.

12. Proclus, (Apud Psellum Epistle 187 [Sathas])Google Scholar; Greek text quoted by Dodds (supra n. 10) 292; also discussed in Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5, notes 4–5.

13. Betz, H., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, 2nd ed. (Chicago 1992)Google Scholar.

14. Athenodorus Fr. 4 FGH iii, pp. 487–488 = Protr 1.48.5–6 [Stalin]; discussed in Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5, notes 25–26.

15. Diodorus Siculus 4.51.1; discussed by Faraone, , Talismans and Trojan Horses supra n. 9) 100–101Google Scholar.

16. Eusebius, Praep Ev 5.12–13; see edition by Zink, O., Sources Chrétiennes no. 262 (Paris 1979) 312 ff (references and translations provided by C.Faraone in a personal communication)Google Scholar.

17. Getty Museum inv. no. 57. AA.19; Bieber, M., The Statue of Cybele in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu 1968)Google Scholar.

18. Eunapius, VS 475Google Scholar; discussed in Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5.

19. PGM XII 83, IV 1857–1859 and IV 1912–1926; discussed in Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5.

20. PGM VII 884,890; discussed in Faraone thesis (supra n. 9) ch. 5.

21. Lead defixio, found in an unknown context in the city: Reynolds, J., Cyrenaica 1962–1972, JHS-AR (1972) 46–47, note 208Google Scholar; also White, D., Cyrene's Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone: a Summary of a Decade of Excavation, AJA 85 (1981) 24, n. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hekate statuette (inv. no. 74–160).

22. Cybele statuettes found in Sanctuary (inv. nos. 78–490, 76–256, 71–434, 71–11, and 78–693); the two goddesses were worshipped together in a Sanctuary at Budrasc (Budareg): see the discussion in Fabbri–cotti (supra n. 5) 236, 241, 243; also White, D., Demeter Libyssa, Her Cyrenean Cult in Light of the Recent Excavations, QAL 12 (1987) 67–84Google Scholar.

23. Pausanias 4.26.7–8 and 8.15.1–2.

24. Kane (supra n. 3); also Winkler, J., The Laughter of the Oppressed: Demeter and the Gardens of Adonis, 188–209 in Winkler, J. ed., The Constraints of Desire: the Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York 1990)Google Scholar.

25. SEG 9.72.111–121; discussed in Faraone, Talismans and Trojan Horses (supra n. 9) 81–85.

26. Faraone, Talismans and Trojan Horses (supra n. 9) 82–83.

27. Herodotus IV. 156 ff and 180; Laronde, A., Greeks and Libyans in Cyrenaica, 169–180 in Descoeudres, J.-P., ed., Greek Colonists and Native Populations (Oxford 1990)Google Scholar; Compernolle, R. Van, Femmes indigènes et colonisateurs, 1044 in Modes de contacts et processus de transformation dans les sociétés anciennes, Coll. Ecole Fr. de Rome 76 (1983)Google Scholar.

28. White, Demeter Libyssa (supra n. 22) 67–84 and Fabbrcotti (supra n. 5) 234–235.