EUSEBEIA

Minerva

From antique Roman relief, ca. 117/138, plaster, 45,7x35 cm

Thorvaldsens Museum                         Inv. L263

Isis unveiling herself

Isis se dévoilant - Isis unveiling herself

artemis and aphrodite are the classic madonna (virgin) and the whore

athena is deliberately stripped of her femininity in order to be goddess of wisdom, springing fully formed from zeus’ head instead of being born from a woman

hera is the jealous, vindictive ball and chain, etc etc.

and the kicker? pandora was a revamped character from an older myth, in which she created every single thing in the universe, good and bad. she didn’t just open a box and ruin everything by not being able to follow orders. pandora literally means “all-giving”. and in the greek mythology we know today, she’s the first woman on earth and manages to fuck things up for everyone. sound familiar? like eve, maybe?

Things that this post gets entirely right:

Greek mythology is deliberately patriarchal (which should be obvious, because it was written by people living in a patriarchal culture, so of course it reflects their values)

myths changed with time

Pandora had another, more positive role

Ancient Greece is given more attention than other, equally deserving cultures

the OP doesn’t have sources

That’s it. That’s literally it. As for the things that this post gets wrong, let’s take it step by step:

1. Pre-Greek matriarchal religion, “nearly all traces of which were systematically erased”

This pre-Greek matriarchy is usually identified with the Minoans of Crete, who depicted many women in prominent positions in their art. Unfortunately, as I’ve outlined before, this isn’t enough to prove that the Minoans had a matriarchal society and religion. What’s more, the Minoan script (Linear A) remains undeciphered to this day. So until the Minoans can tell us about their myths, beliefs, and social hierarchy in their own voices, I’ll be very skeptical about anyone who claims they were definitely matriarchal (or patriarchal, for that matter).

As for their traces being “systematically erased”, I can only laugh. The Minoans (like the Pelasgians, i.e. the pre-Greek people of the Greek mainland) weren’t erased. The Mycenaean Greeks eventually took over Crete, but Minoan civilisation continued to exist, and many cultural and religious elements were incorporated into Mycenaean society - including writing. From an article about an early Mycenaean tomb:

The griffin warrior’s grave at Pylos offers a radical new perspective on the relationship between the two societies and thus on Europe’s cultural origins. As in previously discovered shaft graves, the objects themselves are a cross-cultural mix. For instance, the boar tusk helmet is typically Mycenaean, but the gold rings, which are rich with Minoan religious imagery and are on their own a hugely significant find for scholars, says Davis, reflect artifacts previously found on Crete.

(…) This has led Davis and Stocker to favor the idea that the two cultures became entwined at a very early stage. It’s a conclusion that fits recent suggestions that regime change on Crete around the time the mainland palaces went up, which traditionally corresponds to the decline of Minoan civilization, may not have resulted from the aggressive invasion that historians have assumed. The later period on Knossos might represent something more like “an EU in the Aegean,” says Bennet, of the British School at Athens. Minoans and Mycenaean Greeks would surely have spoken each other’s languages, may have intermarried and likely adopted and refashioned one another’s customs. And they may not have seen themselves with the rigid identities we moderns have tended to impose on them.

TL;DR: The Mycenaeans didn’t erase Minoan religion. They liked it, and syncretised it with their own.

The only reason many of these Minoan beliefs vanished was due to the Late Bronze Age collapse, which saw the end of Mycenaean Greece and Minoan-Mycenaean Crete. Many elements of early Greek civilisation were lost, or preserved in fragments thanks to mythology and epic poetry. This collapse was obviously not a systematic erasure, but a widespread destruction of civilisations, caused by foreign invasion, drought and famine, internal revolts, earthquakes, or a combination of the above. Eric Cline’s book 1177 BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed (2014) is an excellent discussion of the topic.

2. Earlier versions of Greek myths

Any time someone mentions the “pre-patriarchal” or “original” version of a myth, be skeptical. Be very skeptical.

The problem with these “original” myths is that we have little to nothing to base them on. Their reconstruction is a theory - often a modern feminist theory - not a certainty. I should also point out, as @rembrandtswife​ did, that Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece is “basically AU fanfic of the Greek mythology we have”. It’s retellings and speculation, not earlier myths that we can confirm existed.

You know what are earlier myths that we can confirm existed? Mesopotamian and Anatolian myths. These have been extensively studied, and it’s been shown time and time again that they influenced Greek mythology - especially Homer and Hesiod. Martin West’s The East Face of Helicon (1997) and Mary Bachvarova’s From Hittite to Homer (2016) are good introductions to the topic. Here’s a recording I made which shows obvious parallels between the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Hurrian-Hittite Song of Kumarbi, and Hesiod’s Theogony. Looks pretty different from the modern speculative retellings, doesn’t it?

This isn’t to say that there weren’t earlier myths in which women had different, more influential and positive roles. Pandora does in fact fit into this category: her names (Pandora, “all-giving”, and Anesidora, “sending up gifts”), as well as ancient sources (scholia on Aristophanes’ Birds being one example), attest to her originally being an earth deity. Hesiod is well-known for his misogyny, so him transforming her into a mortal woman and giving her a negative role makes sense. However, I would advise against applying this theory more broadly, and taking it as proof that there was a widespread revamping of female deities to make them fit patriarchal ideals. I would especially advise against taking any of this as confirmed fact, when the “original” myths themselves are lost.

3. The Gods as archetypes

I am personally very against interpreting the Gods as archetypes (i.e. Artemis as madonna, Aphrodite as whore, etc). There are far, far more aspects to them than these, and reducing them to single-word descriptions erases the complex reality of Greek mythology (and religion, while we’re at it).

What’s more, these archetypal interpretations are incredibly modern and don’t reflect Ancient Greek perceptions. The idea that Athena is “deliberately stripped of her femininity” because she is not born from a woman, for one, sounds very much like late 20th century radical feminism. (I’d also love to know if Typhon, who was born from Hera alone (see the Homeric Hymn to Apollon), was “stripped of his masculinity” for the same reason.) But more broadly, these Jungian-like archetypes correspond perfectly to 19th century views, which liked to fit the Gods into neat categories. Most notoriously, Apollon, who represented order and enlightenment, was opposed to Dionysos, who represented chaos and madness. Thanks Nietzsche.

I’ve said this before, but to interpret Greek mythology, we need to look for Greek sources. Not the theories of a 19th century philosopher. Not the speculation of a 20th century feminist. If the Gods were viewed as complex figures in Ancient Greece, then we need to study them as complex figures. Simple as that.

4. Why we are taught Greek mythology, aka “the reason the modern West is so obsessed with Greek mythology specifically is that it aligns so closely with our own patriarchal values”

Actually, no. If you think Greek mythology aligns closely with our own values, then you’ve been reading retellings and Mythology 101 books, not the original texts. (Or, alternatively, you’re very confused about what modern society’s values are.) Here is an abridged list of gender-related values from Ancient Greece that we don’t share:

female identity is tied to weaving

rape can only happen in the countryside or in deserted places

men who cry openly are still manly

marriage is between a 15-year-old girl and a 30-year-old man

funerals are women’s business

it’s okay to have gay sex if you’re a top

wearing boots and being a shopkeeper is unmanly

and more

The more you study Ancient Greece and read the texts themselves (preferably in the original language, so as to avoid as much modern bias as possible), the more you realise how different the Ancient Greeks were from us. This is a foreign culture with foreign values. Yes, a lot of it is familiar, too - much of European civilisation has its roots in Ancient Greece, hence why it aligns with a certain number of our values. But claiming that the ideas promoted in Greek mythology are virtually identical to our own is doing a disservice to the rich, unique culture that was Ancient Greece.

So why do we focus on it so much, as opposed to other cultures? Unfortunately, this is because of how history played out. Ancient Greece highly influenced Rome, which went on to conquer most of Europe; many countries went on to claim it as their ancestor, from the Ottoman Empire to the Napoleonic Empire to Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, other cultures which had influenced Ancient Greece itself (and therefore modern Western culture) disappeared: the Hittites of Anatolia had been virtually forgotten since the Late Bronze Age, Mesopotamia was on its way out by the first century AD, and Ancient Egypt by the beginning of the Middle Ages.

As a result, a lot of emphasis is put on Ancient Greek (and Roman) culture when in reality, we don’t owe much more to it than to the Sumerians. I absolutely think that we should study other cultures more. I also absolutely think that the fact we don’t has nothing to with patriarchal values.

5. Sources, aka “I don’t have sources because I learned this in a college class like 3 years ago”

Okay, so I have nothing against people taking electives in college and posting about what they learnt. By all means, do so. But it becomes a problem when people start reblogging without fact-checking or thinking twice about information that is presented without sources, by someone with very little experience in the field, and lathered in rhetoric.

Speaking of rhetoric, other people have pointed it out in the comments, but the person who shared the Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece book is a TERF. This obviously doesn’t mean OP is a TERF as well (I had a look through their blog and they seem not to be), but you may want to think about what ideas the LGoAG person is encouraging here, as well as what could appeal to a TERF in this post, and consider whether that’s something you want to align yourself with.

Mythology in secondary school and undergraduate courses is often taught from modern translations and secondary sources burdened with 2000 years of Christian bias with a veneer of secularism and modern political theory.

Christine Spretnak was one of the modern founders, along with Carol P. Christ and others, of Goddess Spirituality, a feminist neopagan movement with roots in the 19th century. Goddess spirituality interprets mythology in the light of feminist theory and analytical psychology. Adherents of Goddess Spirituality blend worship of goddesses from different cultures and times, often fitting them into the maiden-mother-crone paradigm, and their rituals are modern creations. 

In her Acknowledgements to Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Spretnak describes how she re-imagined the myth of Demeter and Persephone for her daughter, who expressed an interest in mythology. Spretnak felt that the stories told by Hesiod and Homer “did not seem the best way to introduce an impressionable four-year-old girl to the riches of mythology” (Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Acknowledgements, page 10), so she composed her own version of some myths “in the interest of mental health and a positive self-concept” (ibid.)

There’s nothing “wrong” with Goddess Spirituality, but if you’re a serious student of mythology and ancient religion, you should read myths as close to the source as you’re able, study what ancient people who worshiped the deities thought of them, and how the myths reflected details of the culture that told the myths.

Of possible interest to readers of this post:

Early sources on the myth of Medusa 

The Youth of Bacchus, William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Medium: oil,canvas

Homeric Hymn IX: To Artemis

Bacchante and child satyr

Italian, Rome; ca. 1833–1838

Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844)

Marble

Cupid

Jules-Félix Coutan (1848–1939)

Bronze, brown patinated