Mycenaean fresco showing female figure (a Goddess/priestess?) carrying grain 1250-1180 BCE

February 15, 2020

Mycenaean fresco showing female figure (a Goddess/priestess?) carrying grain 1250-1180 BCE

"Demeter and her daughter Persephone, the Goddesses of the Eleusinian mysteries, were usually referred to as "the two Goddesses" or "the mistresses" in historical times. Inscriptions in Linear B found at Pylos, mention the Goddesses Pe-re-swa, who may be related with Persephone, and Si-to po-ti-ni-ja, who is an agricultural Goddess. A cult title of Demeter is "Sito" (σίτος: wheat). The mysteries were established during the Mycenean period (1500 BC) at the city of Eleusis and it seems that they were based on a pre-Greek vegetation cult with Minoan elements. The cult was originally private and there is no information about it, but certain elements suggest that it could have similarities with the cult of Despoina ("the mistress")—the precursor Goddess of Persephone—in isolated Arcadia that survived up to classical times. In the primitive Arcadian myth, Poseidon, the river spirit of the underworld, appears as a horse (Poseidon Hippios). He pursues Demeter who becomes a mare and from the union she bears the fabulous horse Arion and a daughter, "Despoina", who obviously originally had the shape or the head of a mare. Pausanias mentions animal-headed statues of Demeter and of other Gods in Arcadia. At Lycosura on a marble relief, appear figures of women with the heads of different animals, obviously in a ritual dance. This could explain a Mycenaean fresco from 1400 BC that represents a procession with animal masks and the procession of "daemons" in front of a Goddess on a golden ring from Tiryns. The Greek myth of the Minotaur probably originated from a similar "daemon". In the cult of Despoina at Lycosura, the two Goddesses are closely connected with the springs and the animals, and especially with Poseidon and Artemis, the "mistress of the animals" who was the first nymph. The existence of the nymphs was bound to the trees or the waters which they haunted."

-taken from wikipedia