Anthesteria 93
posted 2nd Sep 2020, 4:49 PM

2nd Sep 2020, 4:49 PM
agnosis
Meet my version of Ariadne! She is dressed as a maenad here, but she is originally a goddess from Crete.
A Mycenaean inscription from Knossos mentions honey to be given to all the gods, among them da-pu-ri-to-jo po-ti-ni-ja, the Potnia (lady, mistress) of the Labyrinth. We don’t know anything more about this goddess, but Karl Kerenyi theorized that she maybe was the one who we later would know as Ariadne.
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2nd Sep 2020, 7:02 PM
jawbone
Graves reconstructed her as the high priestess who initiated Theseus into the inner mysteries, instead of his abandoned lover.
2nd Sep 2020, 10:09 PM
agnosis
3rd Sep 2020, 7:43 AM
jawbone
His premise was in the subtitle of _The White Goddess_ - a historical grammar of poetic myth. He had a sense of the deep history and pre-history of the early known world and of how cultures overlaid themselves and absorbed or replaced earlier cultures. I've seen enough anthropological and archaeological material that I can give his readings some credence, especially of the material from the eastern Mediterranean, based on the known waves of migration passing through. Classical Greek culture did indeed overlay earlier cultures, and therein lies a prime example of Nietzsche's "transvaluation of values"; Graves pivoted much of White Goddess around that point.
3rd Sep 2020, 9:10 PM
agnosis
I've only read the book The Greek Myths and that was many years ago, but I remember some of his personal interpretations as quite weird. Most classic scholars also seem to dislike them. But you are of course right that the ancient Greeks were influenced by other cultures.
20th Nov 2020, 5:51 PM
Johanna (Guest)
I love how Persephone just has this power to KNOW, like how she know her fetus was a boy and she can just tell that Ariadne is immortal too
23rd Mar 2021, 10:46 AM
WolfmanMcGee (Guest)
This is a snakes-allowed wedding. It's very fashionable this season. BYOS (Bring Your Own Snake)
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