Artemis & mermaids nursing lions
Boeotian vase painting, ca 680 BCE, and English church carving, ca 1420 CE.
I’m not arguing that Artemis, the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, evolved into a mermaid, or is connected with fish-tailed imagery. But I’ve been researching a post about sirens and mermaids nursing snakes in church art, came across a couple of footnotes that suggest an incredibly tentative— and I do mean tentative— connection with Artemis and mermaids. So, let’s take a look at it.
Let’s start with some facts. In ancient art, Artemis was sometimes connected to Potnia Theron, or the Mistress of Animals, which I’ve talked about in different posts. One part of that imagery is her with wild animals, sometimes lions, at her side:
Winged Artemis with lions, Glyptotek in Copenhagen. My photo.
Second fact, unrelated to the first: in medieval English church art, there are examples of mermaids nursing lions:
Mermaid nursing a lion, Norwich Cathedral, England, misiercord. Ca 1400s.
With the facts out of the way, let’s dive into rampant, wild speculation. Once, in ancient Greece, there was an image of the oceanid Eurynome with a fish tail, and the guy writing about this fish-tailed oceanid said she was identified with Artemis: [Dietrich 1962]
So, if you squint, there was one possible time that Artemis was maybe identified as having a fish tail. (No, the sculpture hasn’t survived.)
Next, there is one surviving image of Artemis as Potnia Theron with a fish on her dress:
Artemis as Potnia theron. Boeotian, neck-amphora, 680-670 BCE. National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Photo by Zde, via Wikipedia.
Now, we’re going to casually jump ahead about a 1000 years to medieval England. Misericords are carved of wood, and attached to pews so church goers could get some relief from standing, without having to actually lower the seat and sit. (Apparently medieval Christian pastors were as cranky about people sitting, as managers at minimum wage jobs.)
Since misericords were added after the church was built, the designs tended to be more varied and not always connected with religious imagery: domestic scenes; folktales; travellers’ tales; mythical animals; instead of the lives of saints or scenes from the Bible.
So: perhaps the carvings of mermaids nursing lions relate to a forgotten folktale… or, as one writer suggests, an ancient holdover from Greek myth?
[Burnell 1949]
To be honest, I’m leaning more towards “this is just weird medieval art and/or this is someone’s fetish that got made into art” than “medieval artisans were super well versed in obscure facts about Artemis.” Like I said, this connection is so tentative that it barely exists. Medieval art is full of weird stuff that doesn’t have a clear explanation. Like this lion from the Ashmole Bestiary that’s afraid of a rooster:
I'm going to wrap this up with the rest of the images of mermaids nursing lions in English church art I've found:
From Remnant 1969.
If anyone knows an obscure English folktale, or something else, that explains why there's mermaids nursing lions in church art, leave a comment.
Sources
Lawler, Lillian B. "A Lion among Ladies (Theocritus Ii, 66-68)." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 78 (1947): 88-98.
Dietrich, Bernard C. “Demeter, Erinys, Artemis.” Hermes, vol. 90, no. 2, 1962, pp. 129–48.
Burnell, F.S. "Ino and Her Veil." Folklore 60 1 (1949): 201-07.
Remnant, G.L. A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Bennett, Florence M. “Primitive Wooden Statues Which Pausanias Saw in Greece.” The Classical Weekly, vol. 10, no. 11, 1917, pp. 82–86.
