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Gorgo: Apotropaism and Liminality

An SS/HACU Division III by Alyssa Hagen

Robert Meagher, chair

Spring 2007
Table of Contents

List of Figures................................................................................................................ 1

Introduction.................................................................................................................... 3

Chapter 1: Gorgon and Gorgoneion.............................................................................. 5

Chapter 2: Gorgo as a Fertility Goddess....................................................................... 15

Chapter 3: Gorgo as the Guardian of Hades................................................................. 29

Chapter 4: Gorgo in Ecstatic Ritual............................................................................... 41

Chapter 5: Gorgo in the Sphere of Men......................................................................... 51

Bibliography................................................................................................................... 64
Alyssa Hagen 1

List of Figures
1.1 Attic black figure neck amphora. (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 86 AE77. Image 7
from [http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P23.12.html].)
1.2 Mistress of Animals amulet from Ulu Burun shipwreck. (Bochum, Deutsches 9
Bergbau-Museums 104. Image from [http://minervamagazine.com/issue1704/
news.html].)
1.3 Egyptian amulet of Pataikos. (Image from Virtual Egyptian Museum 10
[http://www.virtual-egyptian-museum.org].)
1.4 Etruscan roof antefix with gorgoneion. (Image from Beazley Pottery Archive 11
[http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk].)
1.5 Attic red figure Stamnos by the Siren Painter. (London, British Museum E440. 14
Image from [http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/O21.3.html].)
2.1 Detail of handle on Francois Vase, showing Artemis as Mistress of Animals. 17
(Florence, Museo Archeologico 4209. Image from Perseus Vase Catalog
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu].)
2.2 West pediment central group, Temple of Artemis at Corfu. (Corfu, 18
Archaeological Museum.)
2.3 Attic black figure pinax by Lydos. (Munich, Antikensammlungen 8760. Image 19
from Beazley Pottery Archive.)
2.4 Seated goddess with leopards, Catal Huyuk, Turkey. (Image from 20
[http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images1/catallady.jpg].)
2.5 Etrurian chariot plaque, Perugia, Italy. (Image from I. Krauskopf, LIMC (1988) 20
IV:2 no. 89.)
2.6 Laconian black-figure hydria with gorgoneion. (London, British Museum B58.) 22
2.7 Plate showing Gorgon as Mistress of Animals, Rhodes. (London, British Museum 23
A748. Image from I. Krauskopf, LIMC (1988) IV:2 no. 280.)
2.8 Perseus slaying the horse-bodied Gorgon. Boeotia, early 7th c. B.C.E. (Paris, 25
Louvre CA795. Image from [http://www.utl- auch.asso.fr/html/page%20htm/
Art_Grec/ Art_Grec_Cours2_VII.htm].)
3.1 Caeretan black figure hydria showing Herakles and Cerberos. (Paris, Louvre 34
E701. Image from [http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/M12.1.html].)
3.2 Coin from Kamarina, Sicily. (Image from [http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sg/ 35
sg1062.html].)
3.3 Bronze plate from northern Iraq showing Pazuzu overlooking healing ceremony 37
to dispel Lamashtu, c. 650 B.C.E. (Paris, Louvre. Image from [http://www.ezida
.com/cats/pazuzu%20louvre6.jpg].)
3.4 Impression of Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal. (Image from [http://classics.uc.edu/ 39
~johnson/epic/gilgamesh_images/humbaba.jpg].)
3.5 Attic black-figure jar depicting Perseus beheading Medusa. (London, British 39
Museum B471.)
4.1a Old Babylonian relief of Humbaba’s head. (Paris, Louvre 12460. Carter, p. 356 44
fig. 1.)
4.1b Mask from Temple of Artemis Ortheia, Sparta. (Archaeological Museum of 44
Sparta, photo by Robert Meagher.)
Alyssa Hagen 2

4.2a Etrurian chariot plaque, Perugia, Italy. 45


4.2b Detail of Attic black figure eye-cup by Nikosthenes. (Munich, Antiken- 45
sammlungen 2088. Image from [http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/T60.4.html])
4.3 Tondo of Attic black figure kylix, Etruria. (Tampa, Museum of Art 86.51. Image 47
from Perseus Vase Catalog.)
4.4 Proto-Attic amphora showing early Gorgons, Eleusis. (Eleusis Museum. Image 49
from [http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images3/eleusisbody.jpg].)
5.1 Bronze shield-strap panel and drawing from Olympia. (Berlin, Archaeological 53
Institute B1687.)
5.2 Bronze volute krater from Vix, France. (Châtillion sur-Seine, Musèe 54
Archéologique. Image from Perseus Vase Catalog.)
5.3 Seated Athena statue wearing aegis by Endoios. (Athens, Acropolis Museum 625. 55
Image by David Gill from [http://www.davidgill.co.uk/attica/akr_athena625.htm])
5.4 Corner detail of pediment on Temple of Artemis at Corfu. 59
5.5 Attic red figure pelike. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 45.11.1. Image 62
from [http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P23.6.html].)
Alyssa Hagen 3

Introduction
This thesis began in an archaeology class, in a lecture on temples – the Doric and Ionic orders,

peristyle counts, the endless details which make up an introduction to ancient Greek

architecture. A slide came up showing a reconstructed front view of a temple to Artemis on

the Ionian island of Corfu. The west pediment, my professor explained, featured a captivating

relief sculpture of the Gorgon Medusa, flanked by lions. Now why, he asked, turning from the

screen to face the class, would a Gorgon adorn the entrance to Artemis’ temple instead of the

goddess herself? Would it not be more logical to display a sculpture of Artemis on her own

temple? The Gorgon’s presence belies a more complex motive behind the decoration of this

sacred space, and I set myself the task of discovering what it was. How is it that a Gorgon

could be an acceptable choice? In other words, is there a deeper meaning associated with this

bogey? I have attempted to plumb the depths of this question, to explore the network of

meaning which created and fostered its use.

There were two paths for me to take from the starting point of this temple pediment.

First, that the Gorgon was used as a decoration over temple entrances in general. This is true;

her image appears on temples around Magna Graecia, to other deities like Apollo and Hera. In

that case, there had to be a significance to the entryway itself. In fact, the Gorgon was an

apotropaion – a symbol meant literally to “turn away,” to deflect harm from its bearer. The

significance of this apotropaic role, though, only became clear to me when I incorporated

what I learned from investigating the second path: that the Gorgon decorated the temple of

Artemis because she shared a special thematic connection to this goddess. These two paths led

me further back in time, past the Archaic age which fostered the Gorgon to the Bronze Age

and earlier, and across the sea past Greece to Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Alyssa Hagen 4

The research itself posed problems, both from primary and secondary sources. Most of

the primary literature I cite is later than the images I use, dating from after the fifth century

B.C.E. until well into the Roman period. Since there is a dearth of early literature on the

Gorgon – Homer and Hesiod provide the bulk of this – I have had to rely heavily on the

images of the monster for my interpretations. Having little background in art history, I was

apprehensive about my skill in “reading” this evidence for artistic and anthropological

significance. But the archaeological record is at least as valuable as the literary, and gives us

more insight into daily life, in this case, the religious lives of Greeks. Their world was awash

with symbols, which in a largely illiterate society provided guidance and stability and

reinforced the connections and roles that kept social order. In following the clues of these

symbols, I discovered more and more layers of meaning around the Gorgon going much

deeper than I had originally thought. My research led me far away from Greece to Egypt,

Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and even India. I was forced to limit my scope considerably for this

project because I realized that the Gorgon embodies fundamental concepts which recur in

cultures across the world – the interplay between creative and destructive, masculine and

feminine, mortal and immortal which humans are constantly seeking to define and

understand. In the course of this exploration, we will see more clearly how the Gorgon

addressed these issues in the roles she plays, and how these roles complement and follow

upon one another to create a more cohesive picture of her place and purpose in ancient Greek

religious belief.
Alyssa Hagen 5

Chapter 1:
Gorgon and Gorgoneion

Gorgoneia, or gorgon-head symbols, appeared in a wide variety of places and contexts in

ancient Greece. Archaeologists have found them on the pediments of temples and other public

monuments, houses, ships, furniture, jewelry, and weapons. The face of the Gorgon was

thought to be necessary, then, to protect an individual in any type of situation, indoors and

outdoors, public and private. But what hazards were thought of as so threatening that this

protection was deemed necessary? What exactly does an apotropaion repel?

The answer to these questions can be found when we gain a greater understanding of

the Archaic worldview. The Gorgon appears in art and literature of the middle Archaic era,

around 700-600 B.C.E., and is a product of the new pessimistic Zeitgeist that characterized

this time. This was the fallen age, Hesiod’s “age of iron,” and life was unpredictable. Humans

lived in fear of the jealousy (nemesis) of the gods, of Zeus’ harsh justice, of unalterable Fate.

This attitude permeated all levels of daily life, down to the causes of everyday accidents,

which were often attributed to the interference of daimons. These daimons, called Keres, were

“based on the sense of man’s helpless dependence upon capricious Power.” 1 They could be

blamed for anything from a broken pot to the death of a child. 2 According to myth, Ker was

the name of the daughter of Nyx (Night), and she carried men off the battlefield to the

underworld. Keres could assail one at any time, but were repelled by the face of the Gorgon.

1
E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1968), 45.
2
Dodds 41.
Alyssa Hagen 6

The Evil Eye

One of the mediums by which ill luck or keres were invoked was the evil eye, a belief

which persists to this day in many parts of the world. The eye was the image of fear of

damage from powers outside one’s control. It brought bad fortune, manifested as anything

from physical maladies, like disease or infertility, to accidents, like a broken dish or crop

blight. 3 It was widely believed at this time that vision worked when light was shed from the

eye onto the object it beheld; in Sophocles’ Ajax, Athena tells Odysseus that she will “turn

away the light of [Ajax’s] eyes” so that the angered man will not notice Odysseus observing

him. 4 The gaze itself was thought to have the power to affect that which it fell upon, and in

myth this power was exemplified by Medusa and her petrifying stare. The earliest literary

evidence of Medusa’s power comes to us from Pherecydes and Pindar, who wrote of Perseus

brandishing the head to “strike stony death to the islanders.” 5 Evidence of the Gorgon’s

apotropaic power against the evil eye goes further back, however, to the earliest visual

representations of the monster as a disembodied face, the gorgoneion. In some cases, the

gorgoneion or full-bodied Gorgon was used in conjunction with a pair of large eyes [Figure

1.1]. 6 Hazel Barnes equates the two images, writing that “the Gorgon was but the purest and

most common form of a variety of staring faces used interchangeably with the simple

representation of the eye by itself.” 7 It is very likely that the eye alone was a simple way of

expressing the idea of gorgoneion when space constraints or other considerations prevented

3
Marie-Louise Thomsen, “The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51:1 (Jan.
1992), 22.
4
Sophocles Ajax 69-70: “e)gw\ ga\r o)mma/twn a)postro/fouj* au)ga\j a)pei/rcw* sh\n pro/soyin
ei)sidei=n.”
5
Pindar Pythian 10; Pherecydes, schol. Argonautica.
6
See also I. Krauskopf, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich 1988) IV.2, “Gorgo,
Gorgones,” (referred to hereafter as LIMC) nos. 41 and 43.
7
Hazel Barnes, The Meddling Gods (Nebraska 1974), 7.
Alyssa Hagen 7

the artist from depicting the whole face. However the custom began, the Gorgon and the eye

became inextricably linked as symbols in the Greek religious consciousness.

1.1: Detail of Attic black figure neck amphora showing running gorgon painted between two eyes, c.
530 B.C.E.

Paradoxically, then, the evil eye is repelled by another representation of an eye, that of

the Gorgon. 8 As the symbol of the Gorgon, the eye embodies two conflicting qualities: the

eye as the source of misfortune and malaise and the eye as a watchful guardian. The Gorgon

itself embodies these qualities, in relation to the eye and to other concepts which we will

discover later. It is the nature of the Gorgon to take this paradox and solidify it by

symbolizing it, expressing a conscious contradiction that forms one of the pillars of the Greek

worldview, namely, that those things which seem at first to be opposite and mutually

exclusive are actually one and the same.

8
Tobin Siebers, “Medusa as Double,” in The Medusa Reader, ed. Marjorie Garber and Nancy J.
Vickers (New York: Routledge, 2003), 196-197.
Alyssa Hagen 8

The Gorgon and Amuletic Magic

The function of Gorgo as a protector was tied to a larger body in the Greek cosmology

of goddesses or female daimons who “carry things out,” that is to say, maintain the place of

humans in between the gods and beasts. These are female enforcers of justice and natural law,

often conflated with each other in myth and cult because of their overlapping power over

human destiny, “sometimes stronger even than Zeus” 9 when the world order is concerned.

They were often tripartite, like the Gorgons themselves, and known by many names across

Greece: the Moirai, the Erinyes, the Eumenides, the Semnai, and the Praxidikai. These deities,

though powerful and terrible, were not completely inaccessible to mortals, and could be

invoked to fulfill prophecies and promises in various situations for human supplicants. The

Erinyes were known for avenging crimes against kin and other transgressions of natural law,

but also presided over oath-taking, as did the Praxidikai. Pausanias writes of a sanctuary in

Haliartus where the Praxidikai, “exacters of punishment,” were worshiped, and adds that men

did not swear oaths rashly in this vicinity. 10 In addition to being interchanged with each other,

these goddesses bore similarities to the Gorgon in that they were chthonic, born from the

darkness of the earth’s inner recesses, daughters of Nyx or primordial Ge. 11 The Erinyes were

also said to have serpentine hair. 12 Praxidike, in singular form, was depicted as a disembodied

head; according to Harrison, the ritual function of the Praxidikai were as “mask goddesses,”

9
B. C. Dietrich, Death, Fate, and the Gods (London: Athlone Press, 1965), 95, 104.
10
Pausanias, Description of Greece ix.33.3: “e)ntau=qa o)mnu/ousi me/n, poiou=ntai de\ ou)k e)pi/dromon
to\n o(/rkon.” See also Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903; repr., New
York: Meridian Books, 1955), 188 and J. H. Croon, “The Mask of the Underworld Daemon,” Journal
of Hellenic Studies 75 (1955): 13.
11
Dietrich 91-92.
12
Joseph Fontenrose, Python: The Delphic Myth and its Origins (Berkeley 1959), 287.
Alyssa Hagen 9

just as some scholars argue the Gorgon was a mask in early ritual, an issue which we will

return to later. 13

The Gorgon is associated with Artemis as a protective force, sharing with her the

attributes of a kourotrophos, or caretaker of the young, a role we shall explore later. Artemis

herself, and occasionally Gorgo, were conflated in iconography and in cult with the Mistress

of Animals, a Near Eastern deity of diffuse origin. 14 The Mistress, too, was a caretaker and

feminine enforcer of natural order; moreover, her image was often used to bring good

fortune. 15 She appeared on cosmetic jars, mirror-handles, amulets and plaques in Bronze Age

Syria, standing naked and grasping two animals in her hands. Similar items have been found

in contemporary Greece and Italy, attesting to the popularity of the image across Magna

Graecia. 16 A gold amulet recovered from the Ulu Burun shipwreck shows the Mistress as a

naked goddess holding up two deer by the ankles [Figure 1.2].

1.2: Gold Mistress of Animals amulet from Ulu Burun wreck, c. 1300 B.C.E.

13
Harrison 188-191; Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 104;
Chapter 4 below.
14
Martin S. Thompson, “The Asiatic or Winged Artemis,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 29 (1909):
286ff. Dietrich (142-143) also connects the Mistress to the Erinyes and the Gorgon.
15
Nanno Marinatos, The Goddess and the Warrior (New York: Routledge, 2000), 51; Barnes 9.
16
Marinatos 13-14, 26-27, 56, and figs. 1.24, 1.25, 3.3, and 3.6.
Alyssa Hagen 10

Usually made of clay or bronze and worn around the neck, amulets like this one

brought the power of a symbol into direct contact with the body. Seal rings could also be

used. The Gorgon’s prophylactic power against the evil eye made it a popular subject, and

numerous examples survive. 17 On some, the Gorgon is depicted in conflict with another

monster, who may be a daemon or fierce animal, indicating her ability to literally vanquish

malicious forces. Others show her grasping snakes coiled around her waist in a pose similar to

the Egyptian Pataikos, a hirsute god often represented on amulets with the same animals,

holding the snakes’ heads in his hands [Figure 1.3].

1.3: Egyptian amulet of Pataikos. Note the snakes in his hands and protruding tongue.

Marinatos points out that Bes, another protective demon of Egyptian origin, was also a figure

on cosmetic jars and amulets, and may have been conflated with the Mistress of Animals in

the Near East. 18 All four figures – the Mistress of Animals, Pataikos, Bes, and Gorgo – are

17
See LIMC nos. 14, 15, 54, 58, 250, 261, 284, and 285.
18
Marinatos 52-56 and figs. 3.7, 3.10.
Alyssa Hagen 11

shown handling dangerous animals, snakes or lions, which suggest control over the

unpredictable and threatening aspects of nature. The role of demonic figures specifically as

guardians is a subject we will examine later; clearly, though, there was a belief across the

Mediterranean of danger averting danger, and of protectors who also harm.

Public Gorgoneia

Now that we have an understanding of supernatural protection against harm for an

individual, we may see how apotropaic symbols functioned on a larger scale. Protection of the

home was a concern for all, and Gorgons were some of the apotropaic devices which

decorated homes on rooftops and above doors. Gorgoneia were often painted on roof

antefixes, tiles which were attached to the eaves of roofs to conceal the rough edges, or

akroteria, decorated roof tableaux [Figure 1.4]. 19

1.4: Etruscan roof antefix with gorgoneion.

The face in this figure is meant to be either terrifying or comical. It may be meant to frighten

away keres and human ill-wishers by its ghastly countenance. Stephen Wilk has suggested

19
See LIMC nos. 60, 64, 65, 67, and 70; Fontenrose 290.
Alyssa Hagen 12

that the faces were designed to scare nesting birds, but this rationalistic interpretation is

unlikely. 20 On the other hand, the Gorgon faces’ exaggerated features at times look almost

clownish. It could be that they were meant as an embarrassing image of sexuality, known as

geloia (laughter-inducing). 21 These were believed to turn away ill will by their very absurdity,

as the girl Baubo brought a smile to Demeter’s grieving face by exposing her genitals to the

goddess. Joan Marler argues that Gorgo’s protruding tongue and bearded mouth are a

suggestion of the phallus and vagina, noting that Medusa also gives birth from her neck,

implying a conflation of head and womb. 22 Gorgons were not the only sexual images used on

antefixes; satyrs and maenads were also popular subjects, and these were undeniably geloia,

images of the licentious sides of the male and female personality.

Similar baskania, or evil eye charms, were used by potters, smiths, and bakers to

protect their wares. Gorgoneia, and sometimes satyr faces, were placed over the opening of a

kiln or oven as over a doorway. 23 The function was the same as that of the gorgoneia on

buildings, to repel ill-wishers and accidents by a comical or frightening sexual countenance.

Pottery production was certainly a difficult process, and the tools available were imprecise,

leaving ample room for mishaps in firing. Harrison explains that “fire was a natural terror to

primitive man and all operations of baking beset by possible Keres. Therefore on his ovens he

thought it well to set a Gorgon mask.” 24 Owls were occasionally substituted for gorgoneia as

vanquishers of the evil eye. Their wide eyes were similarly prominent, and both the owl and

20
Stephen R. Wilk, Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon (Oxford 2000), 170.
21
Harrison 190-191.
22
Joan Marler, “An Archaeomythological Investigation of the Gorgon,” ReVision 25:1 (Summer
2002): 18-19; Marinatos 56-57. According to Dietrich (342), Baubo was not a nymph but a bogey.
23
Harrison 189, figs. 27-30.
24
Ibid. 188.
Alyssa Hagen 13

the Gorgon were symbols of Athena, the goddess of metis (technical skill) and patroness of

craftsmen. 25

The Gorgon was also at work when navigating between settlements. Travel was

dangerous, since it put one at the mercy of the elements, without law or protection from the

polis. The sea was the realm of the pre-Olympian Poseidon, god of unpredictable nature; as

Poseidon Taraxippos he was also the patron of horses, which the Greeks thought of as wild,

since they could throw a rider with little provocation. 26 Both of these realms, that of the sea

and that of horses, are also domains of the Gorgon. 27 The liminal space of the sea, an

inhospitable place populated with monsters like the Gorgon’s mythical mother Keto, and the

Gorgon’s protection was invoked as a method of exerting control, real or imagined, over the

unpredictable water. Once again, sailors used the eye as a symbol of the Gorgon to protect

their ships against the elements and ensure safe navigation. Large eyes, called ophthalmoi,

were affixed to the prows of ships, literally watching ahead for danger as the vessel sailed

[Figure 1.5]. 28 Interestingly, similar eyes were also painted on the outside of drinking cups,

suggesting a connection between the ideas of sailing and drinking, which we will explore

later. 29

25
Robert Luyster, “Symbolic Elements in Cult of Athena,” History of Religions 5:1 (Summer 1965):
158.
26
Marcel Detienne, “Athena and the Mastery of the Horse,” History of Religions 11:2 (November
1971): 168-9. Detienne points out that the word gorgos was used by Xenophon to describe the nervous
quality of a horse.
27
See below, Chapter 2.
28
Harrison 198 and 202, fig. 37. R. T. Williams (“Ships in Greek Vase Painting,” Greece & Rome
18:54 [1949]) states that the tradition of eyes on ships dates back as far as the Mycenaean period (see
p. 131). If this is so, then it is possible that an earlier idea of the apotropaic eye conflated with the
Gorgon myth after developing independently.
29
For more on this concept, see Williams 133 and Chapter 4 below.
Alyssa Hagen 14

1.5: Attic red figure Stamnos by the Siren Painter, showing Odysseus on his ship, c. 480 B.C.E.

Conclusions

Whether it is crossing the threshold of a house, crossing the ocean, or firing pottery to

sell, the Gorgon presides over the liminal spaces in life, literal or metaphorical. Even simple

acts put one at risk of keres’ interference, and in a time when cities and empires could rise or

fall seemingly in the blink of an eye, the supernatural power of objects was a way for an

individual to exercise some control over his or her destiny.

The eye is a pervasive symbol against such evils. To this day in the Mediterranean

area, pendants made of blue glass with a painted iris and pupil are worn against the evil eye,

and children wear blue beads to ward off harm. 30 The Gorgon was a sort of living eye, the

idea of the evil eye personified in a monster terrifying enough to cast it but who uses this

power for protection. Her fierce visage “protect[s] the owner of the object she decorates and

destroy[s] his enemy.” 31 In the next chapter, we will explore the reasons behind the use of the

Gorgon as a guardian with regard her connections to an older tradition of goddess-hood.

30
Barnes 31.
31
Marinatos 56.
Alyssa Hagen 15

Chapter 2:
Gorgo as a Fertility Goddess

It is significant that the Gorgon, unlike the majority of monsters in Greek mythology, is

female. As far as the Perseus myth is concerned, there is no reason why Medusa and her

sisters should not be male, like the Cyclopes or the Minotaur – it would be all the same to the

hero. We must look deeper than this to understand the significance of Gorgo’s femininity. The

theory put forth by Harrison, Gimbutas, and others holds that a Great Goddess was worshiped

in Greece throughout the Neolithic era in a tripartite form – as maiden, mother, and crone –

corresponding to the major stages in a woman’s life cycle, “encompassing the archetypal

unity and multiplicity of feminine nature.” 32 The Greek goddesses are all in different ways

manifestations of this concept; the most apparent, for example, are goddesses closely linked to

the earth like Gaia, Persephone, Demeter, and Cybele. Likewise, Artemis and Athena are both

virginal goddesses in later Classical Greek religion, but they also fulfill important fertility

roles.

Arthur Frothingham was one of the first scholars to suggest that the Gorgon was a

manifestation of a fertility deity. “Medusa was not an evil demon or bogey,” he writes, “but

primarily a nature goddess or earth-spirit of prehistoric times identical with or cognate to the

Great Mother, to Rhea, Cybele, Demeter, and the ‘Mother’ Artemis.” 33 Several scholars have

linked the name Medusa to the Greek participle medousa, meaning queen or guardian, 34 a title

32
Gimbutas, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (Berkeley 1982), 152.
33
A. L. Frothingham, “Medusa, Apollo, and the Great Mother,” American Journal of Archaeology 15
(1911): 349. Frothingham’s outdated conclusion that the Gorgon is a solar or nature goddess should
not eclipse the importance of his recognition that she embodies a conflation of influences from Crete,
Egypt, Assyria, and Anatolia.
34
Barnes 8.
Alyssa Hagen 16

which was occasionally applied to Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite. 35 We saw earlier, though,

that Gorgo was also supposed to be evil and apotropaic, her mother goddess aspect

incorporates the so-called “Terrible Mother” goddess traits, to be “demonically negative” and

“lustfully cruel.” 36

Iconography of Fertility

The number of elements which connote fertility in figural representations of the

Gorgon is staggering. She has been depicted with a variety of widely used natural symbols

like snakes, horses, plants, lions, deer, birds, wolves, sphinxes, and beehives. I will touch on

the main symbols which contextualize the Gorgon in relation to outside cultural influences as

well as to the other Greek goddesses.

The Mistress of Animals

In many examples of early full-body Gorgon figures, the monster is standing or

kneeling between two birds, snakes, or lions, usually holding them with her hands.37 This

general arrangement of characters, a female flanked by twin animals, is most typical of Near

Eastern depictions of goddesses of a type known as the potnia therōn, or Mistress of Animals.

Although known in Greece since the second millennium B.C.E., the Mistress theme was

“given a new lease on life” in the early Archaic era as Greek art and religious ideas were

influenced by an influx of cultural contact with the east. 38

35
Luyster 136, 158. The Mycenaeans worshiped a goddess called “Athena Potnia.”
36
Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton
1974), 146. He later (166) explains, “to be rigid is to be dead… The Gorgon is the counterpart of the
life womb; she is the womb of death or the night sun.”
37
See LIMC nos. 155, 247, 255, 260, 261, 280, and 288.
38
Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution (Harvard 1992), 19. Marinatos (10) places the origin
Alyssa Hagen 17

2.1: Detail of handle on Francois Vase, showing Artemis as Mistress of Animals.

It is because of this orientalizing influence on artistic schema that Artemis was often

depicted in the same manner, accompanied by deer or panthers [Figure 2.1]. The Mistress of

Animals was a protectress and establisher of order, a kourotrophos connected to the birth and

protection of young animals, and in Greek cult shared these same features with Artemis.

Nanno Marinatos has postulated in her analysis of this phenomenon that the introduction of

hunting to the Artemis-Mistress figure by the sixth century B.C.E. marked the absorption of

the Mistress type into the Virgin Huntress figure. 39 Depictions of Gorgo in the same pose

emphasize her connection to both goddesses. 40 The Gorgon, then, is iconographically similar

of the Mistress of Animals in Syria, but her overconfident conclusion is suspect.


39
Marinatos 93-97.
40
Harrison 193-194, fig. 33.
Alyssa Hagen 18

to the Mistress of Animals along with Artemis, suggesting that the two Greek figures have a

close link to each other through this common paradigm.

2.2: West pediment central group, Temple of Artemis at Corfu, c. 580 B.C.E.

The Lion

The Temple of Artemis at Corfu which I mentioned earlier provides an interesting key

to the early Orientalizing influence of the Mistress of Animals type in Greek culture. Built

around 580 BCE, its west pediment is the earliest known example of monumental temple

decoration. 41 A Gorgon dominates the pediment relief, flanked by two snarling lions [Figure

2.2]. A snake coils around her hair and two more make up a belt around her waist. Her tongue

protrudes from a typical Archaic-style face. She appears to be running, her limbs spread in

what has been termed the knielaufen position. This pose, indicating action, either

41
J.L. Benson, “The Central Group of the Corfu Pediment,” in Gestalt und Geschichte, ed. Martha
Rohde-Liegle, Herbert A. Cahn, and H. Chr. Ackermann (Bern: Francke, 1967), 54.
Alyssa Hagen 19

preparedness for combat or violent defeat at the hands of a hero, is first seen in Assyrian art,

later migrating east to the Levant and finally Greece. 42

David Napier has theorized that the Gorgon was deliberately depicted with leonine

features – a broad nose, long fangs, wild mane-like hair, dots above the eyes – as an

Orientalizing adaptation of an Assyrian lion type [Figure 2.3]. 43 The lion was sacred to Ishtar,

the Assyrian goddess of war and fertility, known as the “lioness of the gods.” Iterations of this

connection are apparent in other fertility goddesses in the region, from the Semitic Astarte,

Ba’alat, and Anat to the Indian goddess Devi, who rides a lion in battle. 44

2.3: Attic black-figure pinax by Lydos.

In Anatolia and Mesopotamia, lions or leopards did not only accompany a fertility

goddess as guardians or consorts. Because of their predatory vitality, they were also known as

helpers in childbirth and occasionally representations of her wards in the form of cubs. 45 A

42
Clark Hopkins “Assyrian Elements in the Perseus-Gorgon Story,” American Journal of Archaeology
38 (1934): 345, 352; Bernard Goldman, “The Asiatic Ancestry of the Gorgon,” Berytus 14 (1961): 6.
43
A. David Napier, Masks, Transformation, and Paradox (Berkeley 1986), 109. For examples of
superciliary markings, see LIMC nos. 31, 37-39, 155, and 283. Hopkins attributes the fashion of
Assyrian art in Greece, especially Corinth, to the expansion of the Assyrian Empire under
Ashurbanipal in the mid-seventh century B.C.E. The “Corinthian” style of depicting the Gorgon
became codified in art across Greece around this time. See Hopkins 345.
44
Goldman 6.
45
Buffie Johnson, Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Images of the Goddess and Her Sacred Animals
Alyssa Hagen 20

Neolithic clay figure from Çatal Huyuk in Anatolia shows a goddess giving birth on a throne

flanked by leopards, her hands affectionately placed on their heads, indicating their

submission to her [Figure 2.4]. In a similar pose, six thousand years later, a Gorgon decorates

an Etrurian chariot plaque [Figure 2.5]. The scene is a bit more violent: the Gorgon’s hands

are clasped tight around the throats of the lions, who push against her arms and legs to support

her body. This decoration is a shining example of the persistence of symbols in human

memory spanning across cultures.

2.4, left: Seated goddess with leopards, Çatal Huyuk, 7100-6300 B.C.E.
2.5, right: Etrurian chariot plaque, Perugia, Italy, c. 500 B.C.E.

The androgynous Gorgon’s beard is explicable in the context of these eastern fertility

goddesses. Bernard Goldman has noted that in the Near East divine intersexuality was a

common motif. “Astarte, Ishtar, and Kybele sometimes adopt male characteristics; the

(Harper & Row: 1988), 101-103; Gimbutas 195.


Alyssa Hagen 21

Carthaginian Didon-Astarte wears a beard.” 46 Goldman speculates that in this case a beard

may emphasize the asexuality of the goddess through her absorption of a male counterpart, or

else her more masculine role as a “savage destroyer.” Given the nature of the Gorgon as a

figure who crosses social and natural boundaries, I would agree with the former explanation.

Neither fully female nor male, the Gorgon transcends gender, as did the Mesopotamian

goddesses before her.

The Snake

On the aforementioned pediment from Corfu, one can see that the Gorgon is entwined

with snakes. The presence of serpents on her head and curled around her body indicates her

chthonic connection. 47 According to Gimbutas, the snake was one of the primary animals

associated with the Neolithic mother goddess figure. “The snake characteristics [of the

goddess] were emphasized...most frequently, by snakes spiralling over the body and by a

‘snake-spiral’ coiffure.” 48 These characteristics were fertility, death, and rebirth, inspired by

the snake's autochthonous ability to shed a skin and be “reborn.” 49

The idea of such rebirth, and the juxtaposition of life-giving with death-giving was

carried over into new iterations of these goddesses, for instance, Athena. Neumann and others

have pointed out the snake as indication of Athena’s iconic connection to Mother Goddesses

in Crete, Egypt, and the Near East. 50 Reconstructions of Phidias' chryselephantine statue in

the Parthenon place a coiled snake behind her shield, which rests on the ground beside her.

46
Goldman 5.
47
For examples, see LIMC nos. 39, 41, 45, 58, 65-68, 79, 81, 156, 158, 247, 260, 289, and 326.
48
Gimbutas 66, 145.
49
Barnes 14. Neumann’s psychoanalytic argument that the snake is a fecundating power representative
of the Great Goddess’ male consort is outdated, although many scholars still work on this assumption.
50
Neumann 143 n. 79, 148; Barnes 14; Luyster 151.
Alyssa Hagen 22

Herodotus recorded a legend that a snake holy to Athena guarded the Erechtheion on the

Acropolis, a building dedicated to her half-serpent foster son Erechthonius. 51

Snakes and lizards were also sacred to Demeter, and thus Gorgo’s serpentine

adornments also reinforce her association with the chthonic goddess. A few depictions of

Gorgons include lizards; one vase shows a running Gorgon holding a snake in her right hand

and a plant, perhaps Demeter’s wheat, in the other. 52 Gorgo and Demeter are not only

connected through their fertility but also through their “Terrible Goddess” attributes, their

association with the underworld and the Demeter-Erinyes, which will be discussed in the next

chapter.

2.6: Laconian black figure hydria with gorgoneion, c. 540 B.C.E.

51
Jenifer Neils, “Athena, Alter Ego of Zeus,” in Deacy and Villing, eds. Athena in the Classical
World, (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 225-226; Herodotus Histories viii.41; Luyster 146.
52
See LIMC nos. 39, 272, 247, and fig. 2.8 below. Marinatos has put forth the interesting argument
that the snake and plant motif is borrowed from the Syro-Egyptian goddess of magic and fertility, Qu-
du-shu, another deity who displays the attributes of a Mistress of Animals (16-17 and 52, fig. 3.5).
Alyssa Hagen 23

The Bird

The Gorgon’s wings indicate the influence of both the Near Eastern goddesses through

Artemis and the Old European bird goddesses. 53 A Laconian hydria shows a gorgoneion

flanked by antithetical sphinxes and hawks [Figure 2.6]. Cranes make up the row of figures

underneath. According to Johnson, birds were thought to control or influence the weather

because of their place in the domain of the sky. A Rhodian plate from the late seventh century

B.C.E. in the British Museum shows a Gorgon holding the necks of two birds in the Mistress

of Animals pose [Figure 2.7].

2.7: Plate showing Gorgon as Mistress of Animals, Rhodes, c. 625-600 B.C.E.

Her dramatic wings dominate the upper half of the plate and she wears a headband with a

meander, a divine water symbol. 54 Her body is surrounded by swastikas, lozenges, and

53
See LIMC nos. 234-238, 249-252, 258, 260, 261, 269-271, 280-285, 293, 299-303, 314-315, 317,
320-325, 343, 346, and 350.
54
Gimbutas 124.
Alyssa Hagen 24

rosettes, all of which are symbols of plants. 55 Clearly the Gorgon is being conflated in this

case with a goddess who spans the realms of flora and fauna, perhaps as an avatar of Demeter.

But her potency as a weather goddess on the grounds of providing nourishment for vegetation

was soon eclipsed by her connection to the fecundity of beasts. 56 A more plausible

explanation for Gorgo’s bird wings is that they are vestiges of a Mother Goddess who was

characterized either as a bird or a primordial egg, symbol of the womb, which featured

prominently in Egyptian creation myths. 57 The bird was also associated with water, through

weather beliefs and water birds like the cranes in Figure 2.6, who represented the flowing

aspect of the Mother Goddess. 58 In Greece proper, Athena came to be a patroness of birds as

well as snakes, another vestige of her Mother Goddess origins, appearing with an owl in

iconography. A winged Gorgon on her aegis or shield would have conveyed the idea of

Athena’s protective owl succinctly. 59

The Horse

Horses were an important signifier of Gorgo’s fecundity early on. She was often

shown holding a colt in one arm, the young Pegasos. 60 On a Boeotian amphora from the early

seventh century, Perseus holds his sword to Medusa’s throat while she stands rigid, eyes

staring forward [Figure 2.8]. Oddly, an equine body extends out from under her skirt,

suggesting a conflation of the Gorgon with a female centaur. Frothingham has classified this

theriomorphic Gorgon as a separate type, possibly Cretan, arguing that her face bears none of

55
Johnson 8, 80.
56
For more on the Gorgon and weather magic, see Noel Robertson, “Athena as Weather Goddess: The
Aigis in Myth and Ritual,” from Athena in the Classical World op. cit.
57
Johnson 26.
58
Ibid. 36-40.
59
Gimbutas 147-149.
60
See LIMC nos. 271, 272, 283.
Alyssa Hagen 25

the apotropaic features typical to other representations, although her eyes are prominent

features. 61 The association with Crete is tentative, but it is certainly significant that the horse

was worshiped there and elsewhere as sacred to Mother Goddess figures, such as Astarte in

the Levant. In Greece itself, Demeter is closely associated with the horse; the citizens of

Phigalia in Arcadia worshiped an image of her comprised of the body of a woman and the

head of a horse. 62

2.8: Perseus slaying the horse-bodied Gorgon. Boeotia, early 7th c. B.C.E.

The theme of equiniform fertility runs through Medusa's interactions with Poseidon in

myth. The horse itself as a symbol of Poseidon represents male sexuality, and on a broader

scale male youth in general. 63 Since Poseidon is a pre-Olympian god, associated with

chthonic power – his title “Earth-Shaker” attests to this function – as well as with the ocean,

he filled the role of consort to fertility goddesses. 64 For instance, he copulates with Demeter in

61
Frothingham 373-374.
62
Pausanias Guide to Greece 8.42.1-13.
63
Napier 60.
64
Barnes 8.
Alyssa Hagen 26

the form of a horse, begetting the maiden Despoine and the horse Areion. 65 Medusa also

couples with Poseidon, according to some versions of the myth actually in a temple of

Athena, producing the monsters Pegasos and Chrysaor who spring from her corpse. 66 Her

connection to horses is clear. But Gorgo’s more specific ties to the male realm will be

explored later.

The Gorgon as Kourotrophos

After examining this ample evidence, the question remains: what function does the

Gorgon serve for the Greeks in the sphere of women? The answer lies in Gorgo’s connection

to Artemis. As the nurturer of youth, or to borrow Vernant’s phrase, the “Kourotrophos par

excellence,” Artemis guided human children through the liminal years when they had not yet

taken up a functional role in society. She initiated them into the world and established the

boundaries in their minds between male and female, child and adult, human and animal. The

Gorgon assisted Artemis in this task, since she, too, protects young and traverses transitional

spaces.

The act of childbirth has always been an uncertain time for mother and baby. The

woman is transformed by labor pains into a wild, screaming beast, the utter opposite of a

nurturer, while in the act of delivering the creature she is to mold into a member of society.

The juxtaposition of human and bestial attributes in the mother necessitates supernatural

protection in order to safely navigate the birth and the mother and child’s return to the realm

of society afterward. Artemis oversees childbirth, then, not as the better-known Classical

virgin goddess who rejects eroticism but as the goddess who maintains this boundary between

65
Pausanias Guide to Greece 8.25.5.
66
Hesiod Theogony 276-283. Athena and Poseidon were also worshiped jointly as horse gods at the
sanctuary at Colonos. See Luyster 159.
Alyssa Hagen 27

the wild and the civilized. 67 Likewise, Gorgo embodies the boundary herself, since she

displays the attributes of a woman and an animal at the same time. She is depicted with

combinations of wings, horns, fangs, a snarling snout, and even the entire body of a lion or

horse, but retains the human face. The bizarre conglomeration of zoological features

emphasize not associations with a specific animal but a more general impression of ferality.

There is evidence for the Gorgon as not only a mother but a protector of the young. As

I noted earlier, she is often depicted holding a horse and human child, Pegasos and Chrysaor,

archetypal images of youth. On the Temple of Athena at Syracuse she crouches in a modified

knielaufen pose and puts a solicitous arm around the small Pegasos. When depicted in this

manner, clutching her young to her, the Gorgon’s maternal role is emphasized. If Artemis

protects and guides children into adulthood, the Gorgon on Artemis’ temple at Corfu is a

symbolic extension of the goddess’ power into the Gorgon. In Euripides’ Ion, Creusa

mentions that she swaddled her son Ion in a cloth embroidered with “a Gorgon in the middle

threads of the robe… And, like an aegis, bordered with serpents.” 68 This decoration is clearly

a deliberate choice, not only to associate Ion with Athena from birth but to protect the infant

from the elements when Creusa is forced to abandon him in a cave. The Gorgon’s apotropaic

visage here is meant to ward off the innumerable threats, real or imagined, which would try to

harm a human in its most delicate stage of life.

Conclusions

The major Olympian goddesses all carry over older divine traditions in their

iconography and in ritual practice, but the Gorgon is the only figure who embodies all of these

at once. Athena has her snakes and owls, Artemis her status as Potnia Theron, Aphrodite her

67
Artemis’ skill in midwifery was well-known. “[Leto] finally reached Delos and gave birth to
Artemis, who thereupon [as a baby] helped her deliver Apollon” (Apollodorus Library 1.21).
68
Frothingham 354, Euripides Ion 1420-1423.
Alyssa Hagen 28

waterfowl, Demeter her plants. The Gorgon absorbs and displays all of these symbols at one

time or another, depending on the context of her image. Far from being a monstrous

instrument of chaos, the stuff of nightmares, the Gorgon aids Athena, protecting the citizens

of the polis, or Artemis, easing childbirth; and in playing these different roles, she becomes

the connection between the goddesses, as well as their connection to the past and the plethora

of foreign influences which underlie the façade of Greek religion.

We have now seen how the Gorgon bears traits in the iconographic record which

relate it to earlier Mother Goddesses, through animals like the snake and lion, poses either

standing or kneeling, with her young around her. But there is another side to consider, one

which is perhaps better known but meaningless without the context of fertility: her Terrible

Mother aspect. The Gorgon is not only a creator but a destroyer, putting her in the company of

major Eastern goddesses Ishtar and Kali and the Egyptian Sekmet. This tradition of dangerous

sexuality, exemplified by the stories of Aphrodite and Adonis or Cybele and Attis, is carried

on in the Gorgon.
Alyssa Hagen 29

Chapter 3:
Gorgo as the Guardian of Hades

In the last chapter we learned how the Gorgon was a guardian of boundaries: between wild

and civilized, male and female, child and adult. Her most important role, though, was as

guardian of the boundary between the living and the dead. Odysseus dreads her presence

when he journeys to the end of the world to speak to the spirit of Tiresias in the Odyssey:

“green fear took hold of me / with the thought that proud Persephone might send up against

me / some gorgonish head of a terrible monster up out of Hades.” 69 Guarding the gates to

Hades was the Gorgon’s most celebrated function long past the Classical era. She even

appears in this role in the ninth canto of Dante’s Inferno. It is her place in realm of Hades

which epitomizes Gorgo’s image as a terrifying monster – “the direct confrontation with death

itself” – in company with Cerberus, the Erinyes, the Keres, and other hellions. 70 The power to

scare interlopers away from the underworld with her frightening visage allows the Gorgon to

enforce this vital boundary and prevent the mingling of the dead with the living.

There are a number of divinities who may have contributed to the development of the

chthonic Gorgon, and they fall into two categories: fertility goddesses and demons. Because

of her lineage of influence stemming from Mother Goddesses, she delivers life and death in

turn, embracing the age-old paradox of concepts which appear to be in opposition and yet are

embodied harmoniously in one figure. The apotropaic demon beliefs of Babylonian, Assyrian,

Semitic and Egyptian cultures strongly influenced the use of the Gorgon’s image as a

69
Odyssey 11.633-35, Richmond Lattimore, trans. “e)me\ de\ xlwro\n de/oj h(/|rei, mh/ moi Gorgei/hn
kefalh\n deinoi=o pelw/rou e)c )Ai/dew pe/myeien a)gauh\ Persefo/neia.”
70
Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Feminine Figures of Death in Greece,” in Mortals and Immortals: Collected
Essays, ed. Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton 1991), 97.
Alyssa Hagen 30

protector against evil Keres as well as a display of evil itself. But first, to shed light on

Gorgo’s position in Greek cosmology, we must consider the role of female deities in the

larger idea of death in Archaic Greece.

The Greek View of Death

There was a positive and a negative way of conceiving of death in Archaic Greece. A

warrior’s death, exemplified in the Iliad, was idealized as the tragedy of a man cut down in

his prime, dying for his country. 71 In giving his life in battle, a man ensured that he would be

remembered in the future as a young man, like the great Homeric heroes who chose kleos

(glory) over longevity. The most distinguished heroes were granted eternal rest in the

paradisiacal Elysian fields. 72 This masculinized death was restricted to the privileged few who

achieved hero cult status; in other words, the great heroes of a bygone, semi-historical age

which men like Homer could only dream of. For most people, dying occurred outside the field

of battle and the realm of myth. It was a grim daily reality, and their outlook was pessimistic.

Death meant obliteration from memory; there was no concept of reward for a “moral” or

“just” life until later in the Classical era with the rising popularity of mystery cults. 73 The

realm of the underworld was a terrifying place where the essence (eidolon) of the dead person

wandered for eternity, no more tangible than a shadow, trying in vain to imitate the ways of

the living, feeding on libations (choai) poured on the ground by the living. 74 The deities who

controlled mortality also took positive and negative roles corresponding to the type of demise

they dealt out. Thanatos was the god of peaceful death, “whose role is not to kill but to

71
See Iliad 16.672, 682.
72
See Odyssey 4.561-5: “soi d' ou) qe/sfato/n e)sti… a)lla/ j' e)j )Hlu/sion pedi/on kai\ pei/rata
gai/hj a)qa/natoi pe/myousin… th=| per r(hi/sth bioth\ pe/lei a)nqrw/poisin.”
73
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 199.
74
Ibid. 195-197.
Alyssa Hagen 31

receive the dead, to transport the one who has lost his (or her) life.” 75 The Keres, on the other

hand, were daimons of death by violence or disease, who “represent death as a maleficent

force that sweeps down on humans to destroy them.” 76 The masculine death, Thanatos, was

most desirable, whereas the feminine death at the hands of the Keres was harsh and painful.

Females were associated with the messier side of life, the more “primitive” and less civilized

processes of birth and death.

Females as Guardians

Female daimons played a vital role in the structure of the cosmos. The Moirai, the

Erinyes, and the Keres, as well as the Gorgons, are terrifying to mortals, but they are not

merely bogeys. They fulfill an important duty in maintaining balance and order in the cosmos.

The Moirai, or Fates, determine the length of a person’s life, and the Keres enforce the end of

that life by carrying one’s eidolon off to the underworld. 77 The Erinyes, or Furies exact

revenge on behalf of the dead for unjust crimes. 78 In tending to the unsavory aspects of

human existence – the violent transgression of natural law or the arbitrary finality of death –

these deities belong to a class separate from the Olympian pantheon. Along with the Gorgon,

they attend to areas of human life which the Olympic gods consider beneath them and even

dangerous; an Olympian would abandon a mortally wounded human to avoid the pollution of

death. 79

75
Vernant, “Feminine Figures of Death in Greece,” in Mortals and Immortals op. cit., 95.
76
Ibid. 95-96.
77
For example, in Odyssey 3.410, “Neleus had been brought low by Ker and had gone on his way to
Haides’ house,” Ker acts as the agent of the Moirai.
78
These three groups of deities were often conflated with each other. See Aeschylus, Seven Against
Thebes 1060-1: “w)= mega/lauxoi kai\ fqersigenei=j Kh=rej+ )Erinu/ej;” Harrison 183-184; and Dietrich
67, 92-94.
79
In Euripides’ Alcestis (20-23), Apollo avoids the approaching Hades because of the pollution his
Alyssa Hagen 32

One of the only deities in the family of Zeus who can be said to cross into the world of

the dead is Artemis, in her conflated form of Artemis-Hekate. Hekate was a virgin goddess

and kourotrophos much like Artemis, and associated with dogs and snakes; the two were

often conflated in cult because of these intersections. 80 We learned in the last chapter how

Artemis is an enforcer of boundaries in the physical and mental worlds, and it is in this

capacity that she is involved with the underworld. The Gorgon guards the gates of Hades in

part because she is an agent of Artemis, keeping the living and the dead separate from each

other and overseeing the crossing point. She is a threat to humans, but only for their own

good: if the living were allowed to freely mingle with the dead, the natural order, Zeus’ order,

would be overturned.

Gorgon and Mother-Goddess Connection Revisited

However, the Gorgon’s role as guardian of Hades is only one aspect of her

overarching chthonic power. Control over life and death was traditionally the domain of the

Mother Goddesses we examined in the last chapter. Fertility and death were connected

conceptually in the earth, which delivers crops and water and then takes back the human dead

to nourish itself. The chthonic gods of the Greek pantheon like Demeter and Hades were

associated with both death and fecundity; in Hesiod’s Works and Days, he gives instructions

to pray to Hades “Zeus of the Earth” and Demeter when sowing the first seeds in

springtime. 81 Indeed, the shape of a round storage jar, one of the earliest symbols used to

designate a fertility goddess by its resemblance to the womb, was also widely used in burials

task carries: “mh\ mi/asma/ m' e)n do/moij ki/xh|.”


80
See Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco 1989), 208; Aristophanes Frogs 1358;
and Nonnus Dionysiaca 44.198.
81
Hesiod Works and Days 465, Burkert Greek Religion 200. For a thorough discussion of Demeter as
a chthonic goddess, see Dietrich 119-123.
Alyssa Hagen 33

in many cultures. From the Mycenaean tholos or beehive tombs to the burial pithoi of the

Classical era, the shape persists in Greece as a vehicle for interring the dead. Marija Gimbutas

equates the earth here to the body of a goddess “Mother of the Dead,” to whom the deceased

are entrusted as her children. “Burial in the womb is analogous to a seed being planted in the

earth, and it was therefore natural to expect new life to emerge from the old.” 82 This means

that Gorgo’s duty as a female divine guardian in the underworld is carried over from older

traditions of dedicating the dead to a Mother Goddess. The fact that Gorgo also exhibits the

traits of a fertility goddess, as we have seen above in Chapter 2, sheds light on why she would

be an appropriate divinity to watch over the dead as their gatekeeper.

A vivid example of the Gorgon’s power over life and death comes from literature. In

Euripides’ Ion, Creusa uses Medusa’s blood, passed down to her from Erichthonius to poison

her son. She explains that she possesses “two drops of blood from the Gorgon…one is deadly,

the other heals disease.” 83 That the blood of the Gorgon can both heal and kill belies the

duplicity of the chthonic goddess, and introduces liquidity as another important aspect of this

realm. If the earth is the body of the Goddess, water that flows under or up from the earth is

the flow of the Goddess: blood, milk, or amniotic fluid. “The cult of wells and thermal

springs…cannot be separated from the cult of the life-dispensing Goddess, single or triple.” 84

J. H. Croon has noted that Gorgon representations have been found on coins and monumental

architecture on the island of Seriphos and at other cult sites with springs, notably Selinus,

Thermon, and Methymna. 85 This association could also be related to the Gorgon’s

82
Gimbutas 151, 218-219.
83
Euripides, Ion (Robert Potter, trans.) 1004-1006: “dissou\j stalagmou\j ai(/matoj Gorgou=j
a)p/ o…to\n me\n qana/simon, to\n d' a)kesfo/ron no/swn.” See also Apollodorus Library 2.144.
84
Gimbutas 43.
85
Croon 11-12.
Alyssa Hagen 34

stewardship of the gate to Hades in that the spring is a point where the worlds below and

above ground meet, rather like the fissure in the ground at Delphi decorated with gorgoneia. 86

3.1: Detail of Caeretan black figure hydria showing Herakles and Cerberos, Cairea, c. 530 B.C.E.

Like the fertility goddesses they aid, the animals we looked at in the last chapter also

symbolize the beginning and end of the life cycle. Ground-dwelling animals like the snake

were associated with underground phenomena, and thus with the body of an earth goddess,

which was often identified as a cave or fissure in the earth. The snake was thought to hold

regenerative powers because of its ability to slough its skin; the Greek word gh=raj meant

both old age and the skin of a snake. 87 Indeed, Cerberos, Gorgo’s counterpart in policing the

border of Hades, was often depicted with a “mane” of snakes reminiscent of the Gorgon’s hair

[Figure 3.1]. Birds, particularly owls, were also seen as creatures who transcended the

boundaries of living and dying. Robert Luyster has argued that Athena fulfills a death goddess

role partly because of her association with snakes and owls. In the last chapter, we saw how

Athena displayed a chthonic aspect in myth with her relationship to Erichthonios, whose very

86
See, for instance, Euripides Ion 223-224: “Chorus: Does the temple of Phoebus really hold the
center of the earth? Ion: Yes, adorned with garlands, and gorgons all around.”
87
Gimbutas 135.
Alyssa Hagen 35

name provides a link – “He of the Very Underworld.” 88 The Gorgon, too, was paired with

owls, especially on coins; a bronze trias from Sicily shows a gorgoneion on the obverse and

on the reverse an owl clutching a snake or lizard in its claw [Figure 3.2]. The gorgoneion can

represent a “shorthand” symbol for Athena, and it is likely that the motif was meant to make

the coin a sort of amulet ensuring safe financial transactions.

3.2: Bronze trias from Kamarina, Sicily, c. 413-404 B.C.E.

Demons and the Influence of the Near East

It would be limiting our scope considerably to assume that Gorgo’s apotropaic

elements stem only from her relation to these mother goddess figures, however. Uses of

gorgoneia decorating amulets correspond to evidence from the Near East of demonic, non-

human spirits who both bring terror and protection on amulets, seals, or other devices of

apotropaic magic. Early scholars, swept away on a current of Orientalism, often overlooked

the sphere of the earth goddesses entirely in favor of comparing the Gorgon to these demons.

Clark Hopkins writes, “The full figure of the Gorgon…came over directly and with very

slight modification from an Assyrian-Babylonian type of demon.” 89 While this approach is

surely myopic, there is merit to the argument that some chthonic elements of the Gorgon

monster were borrowed from Mesopotamian cultures.

88
Luyster 146.
89
Hopkins 355.
Alyssa Hagen 36

A common fear was the loss of children, especially infants, and the belief in demons

who pray on the young during the early months of life was common in Greece and the Near

East. According to Walter Burkert, a daimon called Lamia appears in Greece as a baby-

snatcher: “grotesque, repulsive, and hideous beyond measure.” The Assyrian Lamashtu is

widely recognized to be cognate to Lamia in that she too brought death and ruin to pregnant

women and infants. 90 In pictorial representations she shares qualities with the Gorgon: on a

seventh-century plate found near Babylon, she holds two snakes in her hands and stands on a

horse or donkey in the knielaufen pose so characteristic of the Gorgon [Figure 3.3]. 91 Her

breasts hang low, allowing two dogs to suckle, and her head resembles that of a lion; we

learned how leonine features often occur on gorgoneia in the last chapter. Lamashtu, indeed,

resembles a fertility goddess in regard to her attributes, but her purpose is perverted: she

destroys the young which a Mother Goddess would protect, embodying a contradiction of

benevolence and maleficence which the Gorgon reflects.

There is, then, a visible trend of supernatural belief which runs between Mesopotamia

and Greece; Burkert cites Assyrian demon seals with Phoenician script as evidence of its

diffusion. 92 The Phoenicians certainly played a major role in the distribution of ideas and

material culture westward into Greece. Nanno Marinatos elaborates, saying that the

Phoenicians “visited Cyprus, Crete, and the South of the Peloponnese and brought with them

script, metallurgy, amulets and magical practices… Magic was always eagerly received,

especially if it had foreign origins.” 93 Images of the Gorgon following well-traveled trade

90
Burkert, Orientalizing Revolution 82.
91
For examples of the snake-wielding Gorgon, see LIMC nos. 251, 261.
92
Burkert, Orientalizing Revolution 83.
93
Marinatos 48.
Alyssa Hagen 37

routes, in cities like Corfu, Rhodes, and Syracuse, make a case for the popularity of “foreign”

notions and for the influence of Near Eastern demons on the Greek belief system. 94

3.3: Bronze plate showing Pazuzu presiding over a ceremony to dispel Lamashtu, c. 650 B.C.E.

Along with this trend came an important concept, perhaps not new to the Greeks, that

evil can be used to drive away evil. Spirits who cause harm can also be beneficent,

counteracting another threat with their own, just as the Gorgon does. Pazuzu, a bringer of

famine and disease, was used as an amuletic character to repel Lamashtu. The plate

mentioned above displays Pazuzu overseeing a ritual meant to cure an individual’s illness,

culminating in the expulsion of Lamashtu in the bottom panel. Like her, he is depicted with a

leonine face, as well as insect or bird wings, bird feet, and sometimes a snake-phallus. 95 A

94
For a more thorough discussion of Orientalizing influence in Greek art, see Napier 99-107.
95
Gimbutas (208) mentions that insect or bee wings and snakes were symbols of regeneration, and it is
possible that Pazuzu’s healing of the sick is a form of this power.
Alyssa Hagen 38

much more popular protector figure was the Egyptian Bes, who was worshiped as far north as

Syria and would have certainly been known in Greece. Heated academic debate about

whether Bes was a direct influence on the Gorgon has gone on for over a century, and their

similarity is worth noting. 96 Bes is depicted en face, an uncommon pose in Egyptian art, and

ithyphallic, with a beard and protruding tongue. 97 He too was thought to protect the young

and drive away evil and therefore keep order in the cosmos. Napier mentions that

“combinations of the Egyptian Bes with Gorgons and with Near Eastern winged monsters are

common,” 98 and therefore it is possible that elements of his role in Egypt were carried to

Greece by way of the Levant.

Humbaba, a Babylonian monster who appears in the Gilgamesh epic, has been

extensively analyzed as an origin of the Gorgon. Like Bes, he always appears in full face, and

like a gorgoneion, he is often represented by a disembodied head; in full-body depictions, he

is shown in the knielaufen pose. 99 Clark Hopkins, in his extensive discussion of Humbaba as

an influence on the Gorgon type, notes that the schema of a monster facing forward with one

knee bent between two victorious humans is an Assyrian-Babylonian convention. There are

ample examples of these scenes which depict the battle between Gilgamesh, Humbaba, and

Enkidu [Figure 3.4]. 100 This pose became common in representations of Perseus beheading

Medusa [Figure 3.5]. But as was the case with the other demons, Humbaba’s similarity to the

Gorgon is not limited to iconography. In the Gilgamesh myth, Humbaba guards the cedar

forest in the northern Levant, which would have seemed a wild and faraway place to a native

Mesopotamian, much like the land of the Hesperides beyond Oceanus where the Gorgons

96
See Adolf Furtwangler and W. H. Roscher, Lexikon der Mythologie; Hopkins 344.
97
Marinatos 51, 55; for a side-by-side comparison of Bes and Gorgo, see p. 55 figs. 3.10a and 3.10b.
98
Napier 92.
99
Hopkins 345-346, Napier 109.
100
Hopkins 350-352 and figs. 4-6.
Alyssa Hagen 39

were said to live. 101 He is in company with Pazuzu and Bes in that he can be a terrifying

destroyer and an apotropaion, “a tame demon whose face has a protective virtue.” 102 The

combination of protection and revulsion coupled with the disembodied head symbol may have

contributed to the use of gorgoneia in Greece, but Humbaba can only enhance our picture of

the Gorgon, not explain it.

3.4, left: Impression of Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal showing Gilgamesh and Enkidu attacking
Humbaba. 3.5, right: Attic black-figure jar depicting Perseus beheading Medusa with Hermes, c. 540
B.C.E.

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have gone from the concrete to the speculative, from the Gorgon’s

role in the relatively well-ordered Greek cosmos to the cultural melting pot of the Eastern

Mediterranean. The underworld deities in Hades, including the Gorgon, were enforcers,

dealing with the unsavory aspects of life, the violence of death and the injustice of murder.

101
Napier 109; Hesiod Theogony 270ff.
102
Hopkins 346. Napier (130-132) postulates that Humbaba is also connected to the Indo-Iranian
tradition through the similarity of his name to that of an Elamite king, Khumbaba, who fought
protracted wars with the Babylonians, and the Sanskrit word kumbha, meaning container or womb.
Evidence for this association is purely circumstantial, however, and while the euhemerizing story of
Khumbaba may have provided some inspiration for Humbaba, there is no indication that he was a
fertility figure as the word kumbha would suggest.
Alyssa Hagen 40

Terrifying femininity as a concept evolved from the “Terrible Mother,” the dark side of the

older chthonic goddesses, the power of life and death expressed in burial rites meant to mirror

birth and the mythical use of the Gorgon’s blood. An affiliation with the underworld, with

chthonic deities like Demeter and the Delphic oracle, indicates the necessity of the Gorgon as

a protector against the unknown. Iconography connects the Gorgon to the underworld through

her bird and snake characteristics, and through similarities to the exorcising icons of the Near

East. It is possible that the pictorial schema of these Eastern demons was simply borrowed by

Greek artists searching for a way to express the function of the Gorgon as it had already

developed in Greece, but transmission and intermingling of culture is more complex than this

and we must keep in mind the functions of these demons in their places of origin. From the

place of Lamashtu or Bes in creating or dispelling fears surrounding child-rearing, it is not a

stretch to postulate that the role of the Gorgon as a kourotrophos is in part borrowed from

these traditions. At any rate, Gorgo’s connections to the basic “mysteries” of life, the

unpredictability and finality of death, and familiarity with the unknown and supernatural, will

lead us into the next stage of our exploration: ecstatic ritual and intoxication.
Alyssa Hagen 41

Chapter 4:
Gorgo in Ecstatic Ritual

Now that we have examined the function of the Gorgon in transcending boundaries between

life and death, we can understand her role in negotiating religious precincts. The altered states

of ecstatic ritual and intoxication constitute a liminality of the mind, in which the spiritual

state overpowers the celebrant and reality and imagination became indistinguishable. There

was necessity for protection in the undertaking of a ritual or symposium just as there was in

sailing across the Aegean or giving birth, i.e. in any precarious situation. Protection early on

took the form of masks, and the Gorgon’s apotropaic face may have been used in fertility

rituals, since the cults of chthonic gods particularly used masks in their worship. 103 The

Gorgon joins the Satyr and other bestial monsters in being an apotropaion and guide in the

form of ritual masks and decorations on drinking cups and sacred items.

The Gorgon as Mask

A much-discussed issue in early studies of the Gorgon was the inception of the

disembodied head as a symbol, and whether it might have originated from a mask worn in

rituals. 104 Indeed, the Gorgon seems to have been linked at least with rituals of initiation, and

103
Both Dionysos and Demeter have been connected to mask cults. Croon (13) mentions the cult of
Demeter Kidaria at Pheneus, a locale noted for its mythical association with Hades and the Styx.
Pausanias here recorded a rite in which a priest donned a mask of Demeter and beat the ground to
drive away daemons. Napier includes Dionysos in the category of fertility deities, and cites a cup
depicting maenads dancing around a mask of the god mounted on a post (52, pl. 14).
104
Furtwangler (Roscher’s Lexicon, 1695-1727) and Jane Harrison (190) assumed that the gorgoneion
was a stylized mask. Recently, Wilk (35) and Callois (“The Gorgon Mask,” in The Medusa Reader op.
cit. 104-5) have agreed, while Marinatos (60) dismisses the theory on lack of evidence. Napier gives a
very reasonable explanation of the inherent difficulties in dissecting the uses of pre-Classical masks,
pointing out that one cannot categorically distinguish masks used for votive, dramatic, ritual, or
Alyssa Hagen 42

it is entirely possible that its face was worn in re-enactments of Perseus’ adventure or for

more general purposes. Marinatos cites an inscription from Mycenae that mentions Perseus

“in connection with ‘parents’ and a state function in which the recorders for sacred matters

(hieromnemones) are to serve as judges,” indicating a ritual for young men patterned on

Perseus’ initiation. 105 The Gorgon is closely connected to initiation ritual through her

patronage of youths like Perseus, as we will see in the next chapter. Our material evidence,

however, is scant: terracotta heads from sanctuaries of Hera at Tiryns in the Argolid and

Gortyn on Crete, and the Temple of Artemis Ortheia at Sparta. It would be logical to wear a

Gorgon mask in a rite in Artemis’ precinct, since we have seen that the two divinities are

closely connected. The association of Gorgon with Artemis and Hekate, protective and

dangerous goddesses, can help us understand what role the Gorgon may have played in ritual.

Artemis, like the Mistress of Animals, is an initiatrix, and in her conflated Hekate form she is

the “hag” goddess. In imitating the power of these chthonic goddesses through the Gorgon’s

mask, the worshiper becomes an apotropaion himself and rid the temple precinct of any ill

intentions from human or daemon, any trace of the evil eye.

But the question remains: are these masks actually Gorgon faces? Krauskopf includes

them in his entry on Gorgons under the heading “Preliminary stages and development of firm

types.” 106 The masks from Tiryns certainly do not resemble the fully developed Gorgon very

closely, with their large ears and indistinct heavy features, showing no tongue but an open

mouth and boar’s tusks. They also date from near the time that the Gorgon type developed in

funerary purposes, as even cumbersome votive masks could be used in ritual, funerary masks as
votives, and so forth (46-51).
105
Marinatos 59. See also M. Jameson, “Perseus, the Hero of Mykenai,” in R. Hagg and G. Nordquist
(eds) Celebrations of Death and Divinity in Bronze Age Argolid (Stockholm 1990), which Marinatos
cites extensively for her argument.
106
LIMC nos. 1 and 2.
Alyssa Hagen 43

Greece, around 750 to 650 B.C.E., and would reasonably reflect the regional variation found

in early depictions. 107 Looking at these variations, before the Gorgon was solidified and

normalized as an image, allows us to examine the diverse ideas and influences which went

into constructing it. The masks from both Sparta and Tiryns which have been identified as

Gorgons at some time fall into two character types: frightening crones and beastly demons.

The crone type reveals an association with Artemis-Hekate, the crone goddess. The Gorgon

sisters were crones too, like their cousins the Graiae (“old women”), protective –

paradoxically – precisely because of their association with death. The demonic masks follow

the pattern of Babylonian and Assyrian depictions like that of Humbaba, which, as we saw in

the previous chapter, was an influence on the Gorgon in artistic representation as well as in

concept. The “furrowed, grimacing masks” from Sparta have pronounced curves running from

nose to jowl, sometimes merging with a beard [Figure 4.1]. Jane Carter points out that similar

masks have been found, along with masks of unbearded youths, in Mesopotamia in the second

millennium B.C.E., around the time that Humbaba emerged as a popular artistic subject. She

traces the movement of mask production in this style to the Levant in the late second

millennium, then through Cyprus to Sparta on the ships of Phoenician traders. 108 “The

furrowed masks may have preserved Humbaba’s functional identity – the demonic adversary

of a semi-divine hero.” 109 If this is so, the masks of Artemis are the strongest evidence we

have of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic on Greek myth and of young men’s initiation

rituals associated with the Gorgon and Artemis as protectresses. Although the masks may not

portray “gorgons” as they came to be known later, they illustrate a key association between

107
Jane Carter, “The Masks of Ortheia,” American Journal of Archaeology 91:3 (1987): 360.
108
Ibid. 362-364, figs. 7-11.
109
Ibid. 366.
Alyssa Hagen 44

the ideas of the dual protective characters, hag-goddess and monster-demon, which soon

conflate in the body of the Gorgon.

4.1. a) Old Babylonian mask of Humbaba’s head. b) Terracotta mask from the Temple of Artemis
Ortheia, Sparta.

Gorgon and Satyr

The Gorgon’s significance and purpose in ritual is tied to her relationship with other

daimons like the ones portrayed on the demonic masks, and the Satyr type in particular.

Gorgons share their prophylactic role with Satyrs as baskania (evil eye repellents) on non-

sacred items: kilns, building decorations, amulets, pottery, and drinking cups. 110 Both have

grotesque, twisted, beastlike facial features; Gorgons often sport unkempt, Satyr-like beards.

Both are often shown in motion and en face, Satyrs dancing, Gorgons chasing, suggesting the

frenetic element of ritual dance or possession. They can be crouching or otherwise exposing

themselves, sticking out their tongues in obscene gestures meant to deflect evil intentions with

threatening sexuality [Figure 4.2]. Satyrs’ sexual potency is similar to the fecundity of the

goddesses to whom I compared the Gorgon earlier; they dwell in the wilderness, in mountains

sacred to Artemis, cavorting with nymphs and guarding the secrets of those mysterious drinks

110
See above Ch. 3, Harrison 190.
Alyssa Hagen 45

which change men’s behavior. The Satyr Aristaios was reputedly the first beekeeper – linking

him to the bee iconography of older goddesses – and an accomplished hunter in the tradition

of Artemis. 111 Like Gorgons, Satyrs can also be associated with civilized behavior in

situations when they help to define humanity’s separation from beasts and gods. The same

Aristaios was also a pioneer in cheese making and olive husbandry, which along with honey

production were staples of Mediterranean agriculture and trade that supported the Greek way

of life. 112 Once again, creatures with strong feral qualities show that they also serve an

important purpose in keeping order in the human world.

4.2. a) Etrurian chariot plaque with Gorgon splaying legs, c. 500 B.C.E. b) Detail of Attic black figure
eye-cup showing a Satyr in a similar position, seated between the two eyes. Nikosthenes, c. 530
B.C.E.

The Satyr’s love of cacophonous celebration is also echoed in the howl of the Gorgon.

Hopkins and Howe have suggested that the Greek word gorg- is derived from the Sanskrit

root garj- meaning shriek or piercing noise, but this justification is a tenuous argument for a

111
Nonnus Dionysiaca 5.212.
112
Diodorus Siculus Library 4.81.1 and Oppian Cynegetica 4.265.
Alyssa Hagen 46

simpler concept. 113 The monster’s open mouth itself indicates its screaming, and the sisters of

Medusa are described as screaming after Perseus. Athena was said to have invented the flute

to imitate the Gorgon’s cry, “weaving in music's rich refrain the ghoulish dirge of the fierce-

hearted Gorgones.” 114 When a Satyr, Marsyas, mocked the goddess’ puffed cheeks as she was

playing, she cast the flute down to him in disgust and he took it up as his own. We have here a

direct mythological connection between the Gorgon and the Satyr, one (though not the only)

explanation for their overlapping uses. They are disruptive, making wild sounds very different

from Apollo’s genteel lyre, flaunting their sexuality. 115

Symbolism on Eye-Cups

Satyrs are best known, of course, as members of Dionysos’ entourage, and they

provide a conceptual bridge between Gorgo and Dionysos in their ambivalent nature,

hovering between man and beast. The tradition of drinking wine, usually at symposia, brings

Satyrs and Gorgons into conflation on drinking cups (kylikes). Most of these drinking cups

feature a pair of eyes on the outside with a figure in between them, a motif we saw earlier in

connection with apotropaia against the evil eye [Figure 1.1]. 116 The painted subjects of these

eye-cups follow two general themes. First, there is that of revelry, depictions of mythical and

actual events, from cavorting satyrs and maenads to Dionysos carrying a wine skin to

reclining komasts. Then there is the apotropaic theme, which includes not only images of

113
Hopkins 341 and Thalia Howe, “The Origin and Function of the Gorgon-Head,” American Journal
of Archaeology 58 (1954), 210-211. Vernant (117) rejects the Sanskrit root.
114
Pindar Pythian XII.8-9. See also Ovid Fasti 6.697; Vernant 118, 126. Nonnus (Dionysiaca 40.227)
describes a man playing a flute who “droned a gruesome Libyan lament, one which long ago both
Sthenno and Euryale with one many-throated voice sounded hissing and weeping over Medousa newly
gashed, while their snakes gave out voice from two hundred heads, and from the lamentations of their
curling and hissing hairs they uttered the ‘manyheaded dirge of Medousa.’”
115
Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770) locates Medusa and Poseidon’s affair in the very temple of Athena.
116
See also LIMC nos. 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, and 43.
Alyssa Hagen 47

gorgons and gorgoneia but also Pegasos and even Athena, who appear occasionally as a

variation to indicate the Gorgon’s presence. These categories are certainly not exclusive;

Gorgons often appear running like Satyrs, and it can be difficult to differentiate between the

Satyr’s grin and the Gorgon’s grimace. In Figure 4.3, the only indication that the image is a

Gorgon and not a Satyr is the protruding tongue. We have seen that the Satyr’s lasciviousness

is apotropaic, and so the symbols are almost interchangeable.

4.3: Tondo of Attic black figure kylix showing Gorgoneion or joking Satyr, Etruria, c. 525-500 B.C.E.

The act of drinking and reveling, then, was thought to be a time during which one was

vulnerable to keres or ill intentions. The combination of large eyes and scenes of sexuality,

real or implied by lewd displays, constitutes a powerful, twofold protective image. Perhaps

these were devices simply to ensure that one’s cup did not spill, or to avoid a hangover in the

morning. There were plenty of opportunities for accidents during the impairment of

drunkenness. Sailing was often compared to intoxication in that it was a mental journey in

which one was at the mercy of a capricious body of liquid, whether it be the Aegean or the
Alyssa Hagen 48

wine in a psykter. 117 Dionysos, as the deity of wine and intoxication, was a liminal god as

much as Artemis, and his appearance on eye-cups indicates his protection along with that of

Satyr and Gorgon. The liminality of drinking brings the Gorgon into the realm of Dionysos, a

god who shares the same ambiguity of character and identity.

The realm of Dionysos coincides with that of the fertility goddesses in that he is a god

of to vegetation and reproduction, and the liquids wine and honey illustrate this association as

symbols of divine fertility. In terms of ritual, wine (and sometimes honey-mead) was used to

create an effect in the mind of alterity, of losing one’s identity and taking on another, such as

that of a Gorgon. The Gorgon’s head is the mask of the celebrant, and eyes painted on the

outside of a cup imply the presence of a whole head. Many kylikes have noses between the

eyes, and some feature ears, either human or Satyr-like, on the sides. 118 John Boardman went

so far as to claim the eye-cup was meant to look like a mask. “Consider one raised to the lips

of a drinker: the eyes cover his eyes, the handles his ears, the gaping underfoot his mouth.” 119

Regardless, the head was an implied motif on the cup early on, which suggests that the

intoxicant in the cup will soon take over the mind. An amphora from Eleusis fuses the idea of

the eye-cup and the Gorgon head into one [Figure 4.4]. The artistic representation of the

Gorgons is still in its earliest stages here, and these already show the characteristic snakes

around the head, open mouth displaying teeth and tongue, and wide eyes. In between the eyes,

though, which are unusually wide-set, there is what appears to be a stream of liquid. These

117
Williams 133. Drinking cups have been found with ships and ocean waves painted on them, like
the famous kylix of Exekias depicting Dionysos sailing in the tondo (Munich 2044). An Attic cup in
Leipzig has ship prows flanking the eyes. See Leipzig, University T 472, Corpus Vasorum
Antiquorum Leipzig 2, DDR 2, 1973, pl. 33.2.
118
G. Ferrari, “Eye-Cup,” Revue Archeologique 1 (1986): 12, 14, and figs. 10-12.
119
Ferrari 11 n. 27, 14-20. Ferrari concludes that the eye-cup represented a Dionysiac mask, since the
appearance of this type around 540-530 B.C.E. coincides with the beginning of the use of masks in
dramatic presentations. See also David Napier, Foreign Bodies: Performance, Art, and Symbolic
Anthropology (Berkeley 1992) 103.
Alyssa Hagen 49

head markings are reminiscent of a type of cup molded to resemble a head, usually that of an

animal, and the snakes curling up from the neck may be the handles. Napier calls this a “bowl

of sacred water,” and relates it to the marks on the foreheads of later Gorgons which have

been reduced to a dot or line pattern as on Figure 4.3. 120 Though it is difficult to make a case

from one anomalistic example, the representation of sacred fluid – it does not matter what the

fluid is, as water, wine, and honey were all signs of the fertility of the earth – connects the

Gorgon to the rituals of Dionysos and Demeter as some manifestation of the protective power

of fecundity and monstrosity.

4.4: Proto-Attic amphora showing early Gorgons, Eleusis, c. 670 B.C.E.

Conclusions

The functions of Gorgons and Satyrs commingle in their roles as apotropaic symbols

in ritual. Grotesque, grimacing faces of old men or women were worn to scare off keres or

120
Napier 167-178.
Alyssa Hagen 50

other evil influences from the god’s precinct, and these patterns may have solidified later into

the face of the Satyr or Silen and the crone Gorgon. The Gorgon may also have played an

initiatory role in rituals based on the Perseus myth, and her function as an initiatrix would

have been acknowledged at the sanctuary of Artemis Ortheia, a goddess already connected

with rites of passage. The path of interpretation leads us to conclude that the fertility image of

the Gorgon was a part of ritual in the precincts of Dionysos, Demeter, and Artemis,

augmenting with her presence the protection offered by these deities.


Alyssa Hagen 51

Chapter 5:
Gorgo in the Sphere of Men

Now that we have a better understanding of the way the Gorgon helped negotiate dangerous

ritual situations, it remains to be seen how her protective power applies in martial life. Since

men and women had different priorities and concerns in life, deities and symbols held gender-

dependent meanings for the worshiper. The Gorgon’s face can represent the terrible face of

one’s foe in the violent confrontation of war or hunting, two arenas in which men

distinguished themselves from women and from one another. Therefore, a man confronted

with the image of a Gorgon head would likely be reminded of Perseus’ chase, the thrill of the

hunt, or a shield, perhaps borne by Athena as she rides her chariot into battle.

But this terrifying visage also carries protection. In association with Athena, the

gorgoneion emphasizes the goddess’s stewardship of Athens and the young male citizens,

known as ephebes, who when grown would have fought to defend their homes. In Artemis’

realm, the Gorgon protects the ephebes during their initiation, often by hunting, into the

sphere of citizenship. These two broader areas of influence necessarily blur into each other,

since a man’s life was taken up in war, politics, hunting and religion in turn. The flexibility of

the Gorgon as a symbol suits these variants, though, by protecting a man during the liminal

times of initiation, the first hunt or the first battle, in perilous conditions when the line

between life and death becomes thin.

The Gorgon as a Martial Symbol

We have seen in an earlier chapter how the lion was associated with fertility goddesses

in Asia Minor. But the lion was also a martial animal: in Assyria and Egypt lions protected
Alyssa Hagen 52

the king under the command of the goddesses Ishtar and Sekhmet/Bast, respectively. The

example of this leontocephalic Egyptian war goddess can help us understand why the Gorgon

is a protective element for the Greeks. The concepts of a lion’s ferocity both in hunting and

defense of its young and the warlike goddess protecting her troops combine in the gorgoneion,

especially when employed on representations of Athena. The Gorgon’s snarling, leontine

expression reinforces Athena’s power and, in turn, draws its protective power in battle from

association with her.

Gorgoneia on Armor

One of the purposes of the gorgoneion decoration appearing on armor is well-

illustrated in a description of Agamemnon's shield. “And circled in the midst of all was the

blank-eyed face of the Gorgon / with her stare of horror, and Fear was inscribed upon it, and

Terror.” 121 Fear and Terror aid the shield’s bearer, directing their power to strike terror in his

opponent. Stephen Wilk postulates that the Gorgon's face was a particularly distracting

pattern to put on a shield because of its wide eyes, and that therefore “in single combat the

shield can function very effectively as an attention-grabbing device.” 122 This slight practical

advantage is hardly the only reason to put such an elaborate insignia on a shield. Symbolic

significance also plays a part in armor ornamentation. The style of the face, with its grimacing

sneer, teeth bared and eyes wide, suggests the expression of a berserker, and thus, as Vernant

has explained, “the face and eyes somehow concentrate the power of death that radiates from

the body of the warrior.” 123 The psychological impact would have been important to the

121
Iliad 11.36ff, Richmond Lattimore, trans. For examples, see LIMC nos. 148, 173, 176, 177, 181,
and 184.
122
Wilk 158.
123
Vernant, “Death in the Eyes: Gorgo, Figure of the Other,” in Mortals and Immortals op. cit., 117.
Alyssa Hagen 53

warrior and his opponent.

Most crucially, though, the gorgoneion is a protective device for the individual, a

good-luck charm for combat. Pausanias writes of a shield decorated with a gorgoneion that he

saw dedicated at Olympia under a statue of Nike. The inscription reads: “The temple has a

golden shield; from Tanagra / The Lacedaemonians and their allies dedicated it, / A gift taken

from the Argives, Athenians and Ionians, / The tithe offered for victory in war.” 124 The

Gorgon provides an appropriate image for this shield as a quintessential symbol of war and as

a symbol of the Gorgon’s protective invoked over the city of Sparta in its campaigning in

Boeotia.

5.1 Bronze shield-strap panel and drawing, Olympia, c. 600 B.C.E.

This shield strap, another dedication from Olympia, shows Medusa in a modified

knielaufen pose, with Chrysaor and Pegasos in her arms [Figure 5.1]. We learned in Chapter 2

how the anachronistic schema of Medusa with her offspring emphasizes the Gorgon’s

protection of young people and animals. This strap, because of its place on a shield, indicates

protection for young soldiers in battle. The Vix krater, for instance, features handles worked

124
Pausanias Guide to Greece 5.10.4. The battle referenced is likely that of 457 B.C.E.
Alyssa Hagen 54

in the shape of Gorgons and a line of armed warriors and horses in relief around the rim

[Figure 5.2]. But we will return later to Gorgo’s relationship with young men.

5.2 Bronze volute krater from Vix, Burgundy, France, c. 500 B.C.E.

A gorgoneion’s appearance on the shield of Athena, then, relates her more closely to a

human soldier. Indeed, the goddess is commonly classified by scholars as one of the Greek

deities who is “present at hand,” meaning that she would personally interfere in battle to aid a

fighter; this quality is opposed to Artemis or Apollo, who were called “shooters-from-afar.”

The gorgon seems to have first appeared on Athena's shield on pottery decorations around 600

B.C.E. 125 Perhaps this was a stylistic choice, since the way in which the aegis was initially

drawn restricted prominent display of the gorgoneion. 126 In any case, the shield served to

characterize Athena as a martial goddess in a general sense and also began to tie the Gorgon

specifically to the concept of Athena’s protection, a quality which was exemplified in her

aegis.

125
Patricia Marx, “Introduction of the Gorgoneion to the Shield/Aegis of Athena,” Revue
Archeologique (1993): 233.
126
ibid. 234-235. Marx argues that an early version of the Perseus myth in which Athena fixes
Medusa’s head to her shield may have inspired this trend.
Alyssa Hagen 55

Athena’s Aegis and Civic Protection

The most easily visible link between Athena and Gorgo is the gorgoneion adorning

Athena’s aegis. The nature of this item – the aegis – is somewhat cloudy to scholars. Noel

Robertson has argued that it was an “instrument of weather magic,” 127 used by Zeus to

summon his storms; possibly a wand, judging from textual evidence which describes Zeus as

“brandishing” or “wielding” the aegis. Athena was said to wear it as a garment, originally

perhaps a goatskin whose head would rest on her breast. 128 In earlier depictions beginning

around 575 B.C.E. it was worn on the back and later altered to cover her torso, providing

more visibility for the gorgoneion in its center [Figure 5.3]. 129

5.3 Seated Athena statue wearing aegis by Endoios, Athens, c. 525 B.C.E.

Because its invention also attributed to Zeus, the aegis represented Athena's Olympian

power and her devotion to Zeus' law. Dionysios Skytobrachion, writing in the second century

127
Robertson 31.
128
This notion may have originated from Herodotus' observations of a Libyan festival in which a
woman dresses as a warrior goddess with a goatskin aegis. See Robertson’s article and Fontenrose
244-5. Robertson (54) also notes that goats were sacrificed to calm the autumn rains.
129
Marx 240-241; Kim Hartswick, “The Gorgoneion on Aegis of Athena,” Revue Archeologique
(1993): 276-278. For more examples, see LIMC nos. 196, 197, 202, 206, 207, 212, 214, and 216.
Alyssa Hagen 56

B.C.E., relates a story of a chthonic monster called Aigis who is killed by Athena after

ravaging the countryside with fire.

The earth being thus all in a flame, and the inhabitants partly
consumed, and partly through fear, having forsaken their
country, Minerva…killed this monster; and wore its skin upon
her breast, to be both as a breast-plate and a coat of mail against
future encounters, and likewise as a memorial of her valour and
glorious victory. 130

Fontenrose equates this account with Zeus' acquisition of the thunderbolt, since both

are “talisman[s], giving Athena or Zeus marvelous power to ward off evil.” 131 In this case, the

description of the people's plight puts Athena's actions in perspective. She is acting in her

capacity as defender of home and country to rid the land of a dangerous threat to law and

order. The tradition of Athena as a civic goddess is then linked to the aegis as an emblem of

that protection. The gorgoneion on the aegis serves to solidify this image by adding an extra

protective element to Athena's outfit. 132

Some of the earliest literary evidence of Athena wearing the aegis comes to us from

the Iliad, in a scene in which the goddess is dressing for battle:

And across her shoulders she threw the betasselled, terrible


aegis, all about which Terror hangs like a garland,
and Hatred is there, and Battle Strength, and heart-freezing
Onslaught
and thereon is set the head of the grim gigantic Gorgon,
a thing of fear and horror, portent of Zeus of the aegis. 133

130
Diodorus Siculus Library of History, ed. George Booth (London: McDowall, 1814), 210.
131
Fontenrose 244. In this perspective, the thunderbolt is Zeus' aegis.
132
Euripides' references to the Athena-aegis myth lends evidence to Dionysios Skytobrachion's
version. He describes how “Gorgo/n' e)/teke Gh=, deino\n te/raj...h)= paisi\n au(th=j su/mmaxon, qew=n
po/non.” The later story seems to me to be a confusion of this earlier myth, in which the vaguely
defined monster Aigis was actually the Gorgon itself. Athena, according to Euripides, slew the Gorgon
and wore its hide, which came to be known as the aegis.
133
Iliad 5.738-742, Richmond Lattimore, trans. The legitimacy of this passage, however, is under
debate by scholars. Hartswick postulates that the description of the aegis was most likely added by an
editor under Peisistratos in the sixth or fifth century. See Hartswick 275, 278 n.36; Marx 260.
Alyssa Hagen 57

The aegis is meant to be apotropaic, augmenting the terrible might of Athena while also

aiding the soldiers she is fighting for by encouraging them with her dramatic display of

power. In later times, the image of Athena with an aegis was used as a charm to bring good

fortune in war. During a battle in Achaea, the Palladium bearing the aegis was carried out

onto the battlefield, since it “heartens the citizens and terrifies the enemy;” another account of

this battle alleges that a priestess appeared dressed as Athena. The battle site was

appropriately named Pellene after the Achaean victory.134 The Gorgon by itself could have the

power to protect an entire city. Pausanias records a legend of the city of Tegea in which

Athena gave a lock of the Gorgon’s hair to Cepheus “so that Tegea should never be captured

while time shall endure.” 135 The token illustrates the extension of Athena’s power through the

Gorgon symbol. Athena, then, is connected to Gorgo through the iconography of protection,

to the individual or army in battle (as Athena Promachos) and in the defense of the city and its

inhabitants as (Athena Polias).

Artemis and Warfare

The Gorgon’s relationship with Artemis functions in much the same way as her

relationship with Athena. Rather than being simply a goddess who rules over wild things,

Artemis is characterized by Jean-Pierre Vernant as the guardian of the boundaries between

civilization and wilderness, “where the wild and the cultivated exist side by side -- in

opposition, of course, but where they may also interpenetrate one with another.”136 Though

134
Robertson 36; Luyster 158. For more anecdotes on the aegis and Palladium protecting a city, see
Luyster 160-161.
135
Pausanias Description of Greece 8.47.5.
136
Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Figure and Function of Artemis in Myth and Cult,” in Mortals and Immortals
op. cit. 198.
Alyssa Hagen 58

not traditionally a martial goddess, Artemis operated on the battlefield by maintaining the

laws of civilized pitched battle. She enforced the boundary between warfare, where “each

combatant has his place and is expected to play the role he has been taught in the gymnasium”

and the slaughter “found among the wild beasts who know neither rule nor justice.” 137 She

was invoked at the beginning of a battle by sacrifice to discourage excessive violence, or

during a rout to stave off the losing side’s complete destruction. As the martial Mistress of

Animals, she patronized ephebes, represented by beardless horsemen. Evidence from Cretan

pottery show an Artemis-like potnia theron figure on items dedicated by athletes for victory

in contests, the war-games of aristocratic men. 138

Hunting and Initiation of Youths

The relationship of a citizen-soldier to Artemis and to Gorgo began earlier than the

battlefield. These ephebes were wards of the goddess from birth until they developed into

mature men, just as she guided female parthenoi toward marriage. In Sparta, Artemis’ control

was violently illustrated when once a year the young men of a certain age were brought to the

temple of Artemis Orthia and flogged over the altar to give their blood to the goddess. 139 The

ordeal was meant to desensitize the victim and perhaps to test his devotion to his city as

represented by the altar, giving it his blood as he will give his life defending Sparta one day.

In this sense, the domains of Artemis and Athena coincide in that both goddesses aid city-

defenders. The Gorgon, as an emphatic symbol of these two goddesses and a vessel for their

power, protects young men in battle as well as in athletics and the hunt, more contained

martial practices which prepared men for wartime.

137
Ibid. 203-204.
138
Marinatos 84-85, 97-98.
139
Vernant 205.
Alyssa Hagen 59

5.4 Corner detail of pediment on Temple of Artemis at Corfu, c. 580 B.C.E.

We have seen above how early representations of the Gorgon show her grasping

smaller figures of horses and beardless men, as on the Olympian shield strap [Figure 5.1]. 140

Her initiatory aspects are more specifically evident in a series of shield straps cited by Nanno

Marinatos. 141 Assuming the content of the different panels in these straps were meant to form

a cohesive theme, the juxtaposition of Gorgons with depictions of youths grappling with

older, bearded men. These adversaries may be giants, gods, or simply mature human men; the

meaning in any case is a rite of passage for the young man, an obstacle he must overcome for

heroic status. An example tying this theme to Artemis’ protectorate is the pediment of the

Temple of Artemis at Corfu which we examined earlier. The decoration in one corner is a

scene of a standing youth aiming at a crouching man [Figure 5.4]. It is unclear what the youth

140
For more examples, see LIMC nos. 271-275, 283.
141
Marinatos 101-103, figs. 5.8-5.14.
Alyssa Hagen 60

is holding, but his striking pose and the older man’s Gorgon-like knielaufen stance indicate

the triumph of a young man over his foe. 142

This type of dueling was the stuff of myth, however, and real men had other ways of

marking the passage to adulthood. The first hunt brings young men from the world of the

child to that of the provider and soldier, acquainting them with violence and bloodshed.

Artemis’ domain is the physical space of the Greek borderlands where people and beasts

coexist and the mental space in a human's brain between citizen and wild animal. “Artemis

sacralizes the intangibility of a frontier whose extreme fragility is emphasized by the hunt to

the extent that it may challenge that frontier at any moment.” 143 Artemis, aided by the Gorgon,

provides protection for safe navigation of this space just as she does on the battlefield.

The Hunting Motif in the Perseus Myth

The hunt is a key part of the myth of Perseus and Medusa. By pursuing the Gorgon

and retrieving her head as a prize, the young Perseus makes a name for himself and asserts his

new status as a hero. Medusa serves a function similar to that of Artemis, but taken to an

extreme: rather than being simply the guide on a young man's first hunt, she herself becomes

his prey, sacrificing herself for his glory.

But Medusa is not the only example of a monster who is also an initiator of heroes.

The centaur Chiron served as mentor to a string of mythic heroes: Heracles, Theseus, Jason,

and Achilles. His is a more peaceful example, but he taught these youths the art of combat,

and even if he did not go as far as to fight against them, the underlying role is the same. The

centaurs had a reputation of being savage and unpredictable; Chiron was the exception to the

142
In Marinatos’ interpretation (98) the weapon is a lightning bolt, identifying the youth as Zeus and
the other man as Kronos.
143
Vernant 197.
Alyssa Hagen 61

rule of a race more closely resembling the Gorgons in temperament than himself. It is possible

that the examples we have of Gorgons with horse bodies, such as Figure 2.7, indicate an early

identification of Gorgons with centaurs. 144

Scholars have often noted the similarities between the Perseus myth and the

Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh slays the demon Humbaba. While the

Gilgamesh epic is much earlier, first written down in the third millennium B.C.E., it was

popular during the “Orientalizing” period in Greece. Humbaba is only represented in

iconography en face, often in the knielaufen pose or as a disembodied head, and was

characterized as an apotropaion against evil. The similarities to the Gorgon are hard to

ignore. 145 More importantly, the story itself parallels that of Perseus. Gilgamesh sets off on his

quest aided by his semi-human companion Enkidu who, like Athena, helps him defeat the

monster. Both Perseus and Gilgamesh go on from their ordeals to establish royal dynasties in

their cities, and both men travel to the ends of the earth during their quests. Both heroes also

use magic to accomplish their goals, an uncommon tactic for a male hero in the body of Greek

mythology which glorified physical prowess. 146

In the myth of Perseus, Athena also plays her part in helping the youth accomplish his

goal and become a city-founding hero. Pseudo-Apollodorus says that Athena “guided his

hand.” 147 In depictions of his quest on Attic pottery, Athena often stands nearby, watching

over him with her helmet on and spear at the ready [Figure 5.5]. She is wearing her aegis,

again anachronistically, showing her protection of the hero as Athena Promachos. Perseus is

144
See LIMC nos. 285, 346, and 350; Marinatos 59 n.62.
145
Napier 109, Hopkins 346.
146
Napier 85-87, 109-111. We must be wary of assuming that the Perseus myth is directly borrowed
from that of Gilgamesh, though, since there are many aspects of the Perseus myth which cannot be
explained by this story.
147
Psuedo-Apollodorus Library 2.4.2.
Alyssa Hagen 62

facing her, showing his obedience, while using the magical tools she gave him to slay

Medusa. He embodies the divinely sanctioned hunter.

5.5 Athena watches over Perseus as he grabs the sleeping Medusa on an Attic Pelike, c. 450 B.C.E.

Curiously, Perseus acts alternately as predator and prey. He hunts down Medusa, but

as soon as he captures his prize – her monstrous head – the two surviving Gorgons attack and

chase him away. “Perseus himself, the son of Danae, was at full stretch, like one who hurries

and shudders with horror. And after him rushed the Gorgons, unapproachable and

unspeakable, longing to seize him.” 148 Marinatos speculates that Perseus’ escape may be

related to an initiation ceremony separating a young boy from his mother, personified by the

monstrous females, a plausible explanation if we take into account the use of Gorgon masks

in ritual. 149

148
Hesiod Shield 229-230.
149
Marinatos 60.
Alyssa Hagen 63

Conclusions

Once again, the uses of the Gorgon shift according to its surrounding associations

while remaining around a central locus of meaning. Both Athena and Artemis are concerned

with defense of the city, Athena as champion of Zeus’ law and the realm of men and Artemis

as the keeper of the boundary between the city and the wilderness. Concern with the well-

being of the city logically translates to a concern with bringing up the male citizens who will

fight to defend their home, and who need divine protection when they carry out this crucial

duty. The Gorgon, as a symbol conflated with both goddesses, protects men and helps them

navigate through initiation and battle, enabling them to carry out their prescribed duties and

strengthening the social order.


Alyssa Hagen 64

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