di Barbara Lucrezia Paganelli
Adapted from Marija Gimbutas - Twenty years of Goddess study - Proceedings of the conference of the same name – Rome 9-10 May 2014 – Laima Editorial Project – Turin
During the third millennium PEC a group of new cultures (of roped pottery and individual tumulus tombs) spread in Europe, moving from the east, associated with an ideology that entrusted an eminent role to the warrior, archaeologically testified by the diffusion of axes from battle. In the past, the appearance of these elements had been associated with the arrival in Europe of a new people, the Indo-Europeans, and with a model of conquest through force, which would have imposed the supremacy of the new warrior elite on the indigenous people.
The most suitable culture to represent the Indo-European people seemed to be the one called 'of the battle axe', originally from Eastern Europe. Today, however, the existence of a homogeneous people identifiable with the Indo-Europeans has been questioned. Some authors argue that the first phase of the diffusion of the Indo-European populations dates back to the Neolithic colonization of the Danubian farmers. A second wave, which reached the territories not touched by the first migration of Danubian farmers, seems to have actually spread during the third millennium.
While reducing the 'invasionist' theories, the archaeological picture demonstrates the rapid movement of groups of warrior nomads, which caused the violent destruction of centers such as Troy II, Tiryns, Lerna, and stimulated the creation of fortified walls even outside the area Aegean, for example in southern France and in Spain at Los Millares. The military threat also contributed to the spread of metallurgy, due to the greater need for more effective weapons (…)
The importance of a glass
During the third millennium, what archaeologists call 'the beaker complex' spread, formed in the lower Rhine valley, around 2700 PEC within certain groups of the 'corded pottery' (or battle axe) and from there it reached the British Isles, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, up to northern Africa. The 'people' of the bell-shaped glass was identified with the last wave of propagation of the Indo-Europeans.
Again, one no longer thinks of a real people, but of small, highly mobile groups who shared a 'complex' of cultural values. In particular, it is believed that the diffusion of the 'glass', especially in funeral contexts, is due to the propagation of a new male ideology of drinking and fighting. The Campaniforme is also contemporary with the maximum diffusion of megalithism. From this moment some megalithic burials begin to be treated in a special way, a fact which testifies to the emergence of social inequalities: the power of the new warrior elites led to a significant change in the cult of ancestors, linking it to the dominance of a few lineages or people 'chosen'.
Rinaldone. Before the Etruscans
Towards the end of the third millennium, the Rinaldone culture flourished along the central Tyrrhenian coast. Archaeologists have ruled out a warlike connotation; it is the main element that clearly distinguishes this culture from the Campaniforme, widespread in a large part of the peninsula. The other element of distinction are the multiple burials; they tell us that for these communities the lineage had a pre-dominant position over the single individual. The lineages possessed power and wealth thanks to the exploitation of metal deposits and their favorable geographical position in the center of the peninsula which ensured them control of trade.
Bell-shaped elements do not appear in the culture of Rinaldone, and this means that this culture was powerful enough and rooted in its own habitat not to allow excessive external influences. And if, as some scholars have done, we associate the diffusion of the Indo-European languages with the presence of the Campaniform, we can note that the culture of Rinaldone developed in the same places where the Etruscan culture would later develop, and it could be the substrate from which the Etruscan people originated who, as is well known, did not speak an Indo-European language.
The divine child, Ariadne's labyrinth and Mount Soratte
In Crete caves have been used as sanctuaries since the Paleolithic. Some temples of the Minoan civilization retain their original cave sanctuary: Knossos used the caves of Skoteino and Ilizia; in them were found altars, containers for offerings, figurines of the goddess, double-headed axes, sacred horns and seals depicting a tree-god. As many representations show, the tree and sun symbols were interchangeable in Crete as elsewhere, and they appeared alternately above the boats which allude to the otherworldly journey and which, in some cases, also present the representation of a hierogamy. According to myth, Zeus was born in a cave on Mount Ida in Crete. However, the Cretans were not satisfied with showing the place where Zeus was born, but also showed the 'tomb of the god', which was incomprehensible to the Greek mythographers for whom Zeus was immortal. The cults once celebrated in the caves were perpetuated in Crete in the palatial chapels.
In Knossos the famous labyrinth of Ariadne has been identified with a stone building, a sort of artificial cave. As reported on a Mycenaean tablet, an offering of honey was made to the Lady of the Labyrinth, called Ilitia of Amnisius. Honey and bees were associated with rebirth, it is said that the gods took a drink, mead, forbidden to men because it was able to give immortality. Karol Kerenyi hypothesizes that this drink was used during ecstatic rituals aimed at the attainment of eternal life, and had a role similar to that of wine in later Dionysian rituals.
In Crete, burials were collective within hypogean tombs, a legacy of the Neolithic hypogean burials spread throughout the Aegean area, and in general the Mediterranean. The shape of these underground and domed burials recalled the womb, the cave had both the function of tomb and womb of mother earth. In the Cretan necropolis there were also paved areas called 'dance floors'; this curious name is due to a passage in the Iliad which speaks of a 'dance floor' built in Knossos by Daedalus for Ariadne. Archaeologists imagine that these platforms were used to perform some form of ritual dance, more precisely the existence of a spiral dance has been assumed which represented the otherworldly journey towards rebirth and included an initiatory content.
A representation of the labyrinth is present in a wine jug, found in the necropolis of Tragliatella (in the Etruscan area, located north of Rome not far from Lake Bracciano). The vase depicts the myth of Theseus to Ariadne and the 'crane dance' (i.e. the spiral dance), performed by Theseus himself, but in the Etruscan version the Cretan princess is replaced by an Etruscan goddess of the dawn Thesan.
Even in central Italy, as in Crete, we find a cave cult that can be traced back to the Neolithic age. One can even speak of a neolithic 'underground religion'. This 'religion' involved sacrifices, fertility and healing rites, and the ritual collection of water practiced in caves. On Mount Soratte, not far from Bracciano, an underworld Apollo was still venerated in Roman times. Behind this Apollo, called Sorano by the Romans, the Etruscan underworld divinity Suri was recognized. Roman sources identify Sorano with Dis Pater (the equivalent of the Greek Hades). On the mountain lived a brotherhood of priests called Hirpi Sorani (the wolves of Sorano) who celebrated ecstatic ceremonies. The Roman sources also describe the cave in question as an entrance to the Otherworld.
To understand this cult we must keep in mind that the primitive figure of Apollo contained a shamanic nucleus and that the modern 'Apollinian' aspect is a late product of classical culture. At Delphi, near the temple of Apollo, was the 'tomb of Dionysus'. And both of these two divinities had a central role in Orphic practices, which today are recognized as having a shamanic origin.
The passage of the banners
As we have seen, a significant social transformation was taking place in Europe during the third millennium which placed a male warrior elite at the top of society, among whose symbols we find the axe. Also in Crete an ax, called double-headed because it was double, was an important symbol of power. According to Walter Burkert, it was originally from Mesopotamia, and identified the atmospheric god, who in the Neolithic cult was the fertilizing god, later identified, by virtue of his generating force, with the bull.
In Minoan contexts, however, the double feather is always depicted in the hands of a female deity. Burkert believes that a sacred kingdom existed in Crete, where a male ruler was invested with a superhuman, divine status, thanks to his relationship with a female deity. It seems possible that this aspect has a shamanic origin. The hypothesis belongs to Mircea Eliade, who compares this investiture by a Goddess with the power that some Siberian shamans acquired thanks to the relationship with a female spirit called ayami, with whom they had a sexual relationship. Many seal and ring carvings show a male figure to whom a goddess hands a staff or spear.
The new divine male figure, of oriental origin, enriched by the power of weapons, seemed forced to borrow his sovereignty from a Goddess. The goddess-priestess gives the god-king the insignia of her power.
Artemis and the Hyperboreans
The Mycenaeans (Indo-Europeans and warriors) when they conquered Crete, inherited much of their culture. The tablet we have mentioned was written in Mycenaean (ie Greek) but reflected the themes of the Minoan religion.
Coming from the levels below the sanctuary of Artemis in Delos, and datable to the Mycenaean period, it is a gold plate which has a surprising affinity with two plates found in Italy (Gualdo Tadino and Roca). In these plates there is represented the schematized model of the solar boat. The stylized image depicts a boat with stern and prow in the shape of a bird's head (these are water birds, perhaps swans) and a solar disk in the center, instead of the solar divinity itself. It is significant that this sun disk at Delos was not found in the sanctuary of Apollo, but in that of Artemis. In the Bronze Age the solar boat was evidently attributed to a female divinity, who was called Artemis on Delos, but elsewhere she could be called by another name.
Migrant deities: the Boat of the Sun
Starting from the Middle Bronze Age (about half of the XNUMXnd millennium PEC) some motifs, artifacts and practices began to spread in Italy, which suggests the diffusion of a common ideology, and one of the main symbols of this ideology was precisely the theme of solar boat. The conception of the otherworldly journey carried out by means of a boat had spread from the Aegean environment towards the north, and the theme of the boat, as it also appears in Italy, is the result of a religious-cultural syncretism that took place in the Danube region.
Mycenae on the Baltic coast
The Great burial mound of Kivik in Sweden is a significant testimony of the presence of a religious ideology similar to the Mycenaean one also on the Baltic coasts. A series of slabs from the mound depict symbols associated with the sun, heroic prestige and otherworldly travel. There is also depicted a racing chariot similar to those described by Homer, perhaps used in games held during funeral ceremonies.
The aspect most worthy of attention is the representation of two female processions. One seems to be a scene of mourning, the other seems to reproduce a scene of sacrifice and resembles in an astonishing way a representation present in a Minoan sarcophagus, the famous sarcophagus of Agia Triada, dated to 1400 PEC The burial of Kivik probably dates back to the early of the Scandinavian Bronze Age (XNUMXth century PEC), when the Mycenaeans dominated the Aegean and had made their own many religious ideologies of Cretan origin. They became the intermediaries of these, spreading them to the rest of Europe, especially in the regions with which they had commercial relations such as the Baltic for amber, and Cornwall and Italy for metals. The Kivik slabs have recently been interpreted by Klaus Randsborg who read in them a complex symbolism referable to the three worlds known in shamanic cosmology, the one above, the middle and the one below, which the figure of the shaman has the power to connect They.
The swan and the bull
It is interesting to recall Apollo's relationship with the Hyperboreans. It was swans who brought Apollo 'to their country', to the shores of the Ocean beyond the homeland of the north wind, to the Hyperboreans. Apollo's epiphany at Delphi was presented as his 'return' from the land of the Hyperboreans.
As I said, in Delphi there was also the tomb of Dionysus, who was awakened every two years by a thiasus of women, the thiades. The epiphany of Dionysus in Attica took place instead on a ship, the god (played by a priest, perhaps the sacred king himself, the Basileus) at the beginning of spring arrived in Athens carried in procession on a boat and then celebrated the sacred wedding with the Basilinna. Starting from the Late Bronze Age, in the Italian peninsula, we find syncretic representations that combine the characteristics of the water bird with those of the bull: arms of the solar boat and bull's horns at the same time (and representations of the lunar goddess?). The phenomenon begins in the Late Bronze Age and continues until the Iron Age, in fact these so-called 'protomes' are a prelude to those that we will find on the hut-shaped urns of the first phase of the Etruscan civilization, both cinerary urns and miniature representations of temples.
In these syncretic images we find a synthesized aspect of the solar divinity that is far from evident, namely the identity between the solar divinity and the chthonic divinity, the swan and the bull, Apollo and Dionysus, the two faces of the 'shaman god' who world below to the world above, it accompanies the souls of the deceased (or at least some of the deceased) towards their divine abode. So writes Plutarch (The E of Delphi): “The wise men, to keep their thoughts hidden from the crowd, give the name of Apollo to the transformation of the god into fire because of his uniqueness, and that of Phoebus because of his incorruptible purity. Then when the transformation of the god gives rise to air, water, earth, the stars, the life of plants and animals, the wise men conceal this process under the symbols of laceration and dismemberment. They call him with the names of 'Dionysus', 'Zagreus'…”.
According to Burkert, in Linear B there is no evidence of Apollo, while there is of Dionysus. And as we have seen, in Delos, in the Mycenaean era the true lady of the sanctuary was Artemis. Burkert argues that the Uranian sun deity came from the Anatolian-Semitic area. In Greece she inherited the characteristics of a Goddess connected to the otherworldly sphere and to the symbolism of waterfowl, and became complementary to the saving god of vegetation, already identified with the sun and her annual and diurnal/nocturnal journey aboard a boat (as show the Cretan representations mentioned).
The Fields of Urns
Between 1200 and 1000 PEC another great upheaval hit the European world, a new funerary rite developed from central Europe expanding northwards and southwards: the incineration of the deceased. After the stake, the ashes were placed in urns and grouped into 'cemeteries', hence the name 'urn fields'. Some, in the past, have identified the diffusion of the urnfields with the migration of a people in which they wanted to recognize the first Celts. However, today it is believed that it was an ideology that spread, not a people. The cultural tradition of the Urnfields was characterized above all by the omnipresent image of the sun accompanied by waterfowl. Among the materials that it produced there are numerous objects of prestige, above all weapons and banquet services, fundamental elements of the lifestyle of the warrior elites, communities of peers, and at the same time of the elect.
The first Etruscans
At the origin of the Etruscan civilization is what archaeologists have called 'proto-Villanovan culture'. This culture which included linguistically distinct ethnic groups was spread from the Po Valley to Sicily. A widespread mistake made by archaeologists of the past, which has caused great confusion, has been to identify a certain language, religion or even cultural fashion with a given ethnos. Such an assumption is without foundation from a historical point of view, because a certain civilization or religious ideology can incorporate various linguistic groupings within it. Whenever we talk about Etruscans, Celts, and so on we have to keep this fact in mind. The proto-Villanovan culture, uniform with the European complex of urnfields, included within it a mosaic of ethnic groups in nuce, including the Etruscans, no doubt, but also the Latins and others.
We can imagine various movements of people from north to south, mainly itinerant 'metallurgists-merchants' who managed the exchange of materials and technologies between Italy and transalpine Europe. Arriving first in Veneto and then in Etruria, these men met people from the Aegean (we are at the time of the Trojan War), and the multitude of cultural exchanges created fertile ground for the propagation and integration of ideas. A pair of greaves from the necropolis of Desmontà, in Frattesina (Veneto), a settlement that we can ascribe to the proto-Villanovan culture, perhaps the most important, are comparable to three other similar ones from a storeroom in Malpensa, pertaining to the faces proto-Golasecchiana (very first phase of Celtic culture in Italy), and also to many others coming from the trans-Alpine area, as proof of the cultural homogeneity of these regions.
To give an idea, a greave (or greave) with the solar motif of the spoked wheel, identical to one found in Lombardy and belonging to the faces proto-Golasecchian, certainly of Danubian production, it was discovered in Athens, in a tomb of the acropolis.
If you can really focus on the Europe I'm talking about, suddenly the whole discussion of the origin of the Etruscan people will seem idle.
The area of origin of the symbolic system of the Urnfields has been sought. Some scholars hypothesize a Mycenaean influence on the Urnfield and Halstatt culture (first phase of European Celtic culture). The solar boat motif was already present on some vases from Hungary and similar products, referable to the contemporary Halstatt period of the later phases of our Final Bronze Age. These products were exported both to Germany and to Istria, which acted as a medium for the introduction of the motif into the Italian peninsula.
The final hypothesis is that of the existence, during the Bronze Age, of a European cultural and religious koinè, centered on the cult of a female divinity, one of whose purposes was to lead the elect to a life of eternal bliss , aboard a boat pulled by swans. This was also one of the central themes of the cult practiced in proto-Villanovan and Villanovan Etruria.
This article is taken from The roots of the Etruscan religion, of Barbara Lucrezia Paganelli
Barbara Lucrezia Paganelli
Adapted from Marija Gimbutas - Twenty years of Goddess study - Proceedings of the conference of the same name – Rome 9-10 May 2014 – Laima Editorial Project – Turin
