“I found myself confronted with an unfamiliar and disquieting female iconography of vulvas" or Baubo
I can’t do Baubo’s history and imagery justice, especially as most of it is fragmentary. Unfortunately, most of Baubo’s stories and rituals have been lost, perhaps deliberately, by Christian scholars who thought this gesture was obscene. If you need info about Baubo, please look at the books in sources.
Here goes nothing: Baubo is a midwife or nurse to Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. Her only surviving story tells of how Demeter, after her daughter Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, became extremely depressed and refused to drink or eat anything. To cheer her up, Baubo did a bawdy dance, lifting her skirts to reveal her genitalia to the goddess. On seeing this, Demeter started laughing and drank her drink.
The only images we have identified as Baubo show her as a woman with her legs spread, her vulva emphasized, like the clay form in the figure from the Glyptotek Museum in Denmark:
And these figures in Kunsthistorisches Museum Wein:
Baubo is also part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, secret religious rites practiced in the cult of Demeter and Persephone in ancient Greece.
While it’s possible to see a connection between Baubo’s spread legs and the Scythian goddess’ spread tails, and are sometimes mentioned in books theorising about the siren’s origins, I don’t think they’re related.
While the Scythian goddess is certainly two tailed, what’s distinct about her— is her lack of sexuality, how demure she usually is. Her lower limbs aren’t legs, but rather vegetation or tails; her vagina is never shown, or even hinted at. Baubo is a vulva personified, as some researchers have noted; the Scythian goddess takes her style from Artemis as Potnia Theron or Mistress of Animals, a more chaste type of fertility goddess.
I’m not judging Baubo. I find her imagery compelling, despite how little we know about it. The world needs more female nudity that isn't intended to arouse— just show women's bodies existing without clothes.
Ok, except for these Priene statues. I have questions. Though I bought a modern take on Etsy, I still have questions.
Votive Offerings from the Sanctuary of Demeter in Priene. Altes Museum, Berlin.
Museum info: “One of the special features of the clay votives are the peculiar female statuettes, whereby the head is placed immediately above the legs or genitals, Known as Baubo figurines, there are likely depictions of fertility daemons which had a particular connection with the cult of Demeter. They are purely a local phenomenon, hardly ever found outside of Priene.”
I took all the photos. The pic on the top right is from the Archeology Museum in Florence. The title of this post is a quote from Lubell.
Lubell, Winifred. The Metamorphosis of Baubo : Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994.
Bonfante, Larissa. "Some Thoughts on the Baubo Gesture in Classical Art." New Perspectives on Etruria and Early Rome: In Honor of Richard Daniel De Puma. Ed. Nagy, Sinclair Bell and Helen. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. 158-70.
