And you thought Pandora a mere woman and the root of all our troubles! It's called "smear campaign" -- as the following excerpts from Jane Ellen Harrison show: "Jane Ellen Harrison* turned to the repertory of vase-painters to shed light on aspects of myth that were left unaddressed or disguised in [Greek] literature. The story of Pandora was repeated on Greek ceramics.Go HERE for more.
"On a fifth-century amphora [vase] in the Ashmolean Museum ... the half-figure of Pandora emerges from the ground, her arms upraised in the epiphany gesture, to greet Epimetheus. A winged ker with a fillet hovers overhead: ‘Pandora rises from the earth; she is the Earth, giver of all gifts,’ Harrison observes.
"On another vase showing the fashioning of Pandora she is inscribed with her alternative name: [A]nesidora (‘who sends up gifts’). ‘Pandora is a form or title of the Earth-goddess in the Kore form, entirely humanized and vividly personified by mythology,’ Harrison notes (p. 281).
"[Harrison] quotes a scholium on a passage of Aristophanes mentioning a sacrificed white-fleeced ram to Pandora: ‘to Pandora, the earth, because she bestows all things necessary for life’.
"Thus Harrison concludes ‘in the patriarchal mythology of Hesiod her [Pandora's] great figure is strangely changed and minished. She is no longer Earth-Born, but the creature, the handiwork of Olympian Zeus’ (Harrison, p 284)."
_________________________
*Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion
__________________
No, the above pic isn't Pandora. I couldn't find a good pic of Pandora. The above is the Minoan Goddess found on a wall painting on the island of Santorini.
1 comment:
We at "The Gods Are Bored" endorse all efforts to resuscitate the reputation of the Goddess Pandora.
Post a Comment