The unveiling goddess and the Scythian snake legged goddess
So I've spent the last several weeks looking at various depictions of ancient goddesses, and I want to share them.
To really understand and appreciate the Scythian snake legged goddess, I think we need to put her in proper context. She didn’t evolve in a vacuum, and looking at earlier goddess images really helps contextualise her: she’s not just a strange goddess with snake legs who appeared out of nowhere, but rather, she evolved from other goddess imagery, and was influenced in particular by the Mistress of Animals motif.
First, we’re going to look at some examples of a group of female figures from the ancient area of Canaan, and usually identified as the goddesses Anat, Astarte, or Qedeshet. These ancient female deities are always shown nude, facing forward, and usually holding something in both hands:
Fertility goddess, gold pendant, 1400-1200 BCE, Minet el Beida, Syria. Louvre.
Horse frontlet carved in relief with a female figure flanked by lions, Assyrian ca. 9th–8th century BCE. MET, New York. Likely depicts the Mistress of the Animals motif.
It’s important to note that the horse frontlet is identified with the Mistress of Animals, who is part of the Scythian goddess’ image evolution. And I think it’s interesting that she’s on a horse frontlet, where a well-known image of the Scythian goddess is:
Scythain ancestral goddess, 4th century BCE. Facing for a Horse's Frontlet. Found in Tsymbalka (Tsimbalka) Barrow, Dnieper Area, Zaporozhye Region, formerly the Taurida Province Russia (now Ukraine). Rhe Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
Next, I want to look at a group of figures called either “the unveiling goddess” or “the stripping goddess.” This is a group of female figures shown standing on the back of a animal and holding their dress in their hands:
Goddess opening her veil. Cylinder seal, Syrian, between 1650 B.C. and 1350 B.C. limonite ; Morgan Seal 967. The Morgan Library & Museum.
Goddess opening her veil. Cylinder seal, Syrian, between 1700 and 1550 BCE. Louvre.
This figure is very common— I’ve found a ton of examples in books of her. Given how common this image is and its resemblance to the Scythian goddess’ two tails, I wonder if the “unveiling goddess” could have influenced the iconography of the Scythian goddess. I also want to note that this isn’t the first time that a woman holding a dress or cloth has been mistaken for two tails— there’s a similar optical illusion with Coptic images of Mother Earth.
Finally, I want to link the Scythian goddess to this imagery. When describing an early example of the Scythian goddess and Mistress/ Master of Animals, Ustinov writes: “…the Olynthus reliefs presumably represent the androgynous Astarte-Aphrodite.”
There’s also this link between Astarte and the Scythian goddess: “A late fourth-century snake-limbed goddess appears on a capital from Salamis on Cyprus (Fig. 6.3.3) ,'" a centre of the Aphrodite-Astarte cult.”
Capital fragment, Salamis, Cyprus, 300-250 BCE. Currently in the British Museum.
I also want to mention the similar hair style to one of the oldest two tailed sirens, a Luristan bronze:
Luristan bronze, 000-650 BCE. Museum Rietberg, Switzerland.
Her hair is in the same style as several of the goddesses, including the gold pendant in the Louvre, called “Hathoric curls.”
Sources
That these objects are viewed as a group, and their identification:
Benzel, Kim. "Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age," in Joan Aruz, Sarah B. Graff, and Yelena Rakic, Eds., Cultures in Contact: From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium B.C. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposia (2013), Pp. 258-267.
This author calls her “the stripping goddess” and has several examples of her:
Cornelius, Izak. The Many Faces of the Goddess : The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500-1000 BCE. 2nd enl. ed, Academic Press ; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008.
This author calls her “the unveiling goddess,” and has many examples of her:
Lippke, Florian. Winter, Urs: Frau Und Göttin: Exegetische Und Ikonographische Studien Zum Weiblichen Gottesbild Im Alten Israel Und in Dessen Umwelt V.IRAT III-WIN 1983.1 (Frau).
Other examples of the unveiling goddess:
Keel, O & Staubli, T 2001. “Im Schatten deiner Flügel”: Tiere in der Bibel und im Alten Orient. Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag.
Connections between Astarte and the Scythian goddess:
Ustinova, Yulia. "Snake-Limbed and Tendril-Limbed Goddesses in the Art and Mythology of the Mediterranean and Black Sea." Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interaction in Scythia, Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century B.C. - Fist Century A.D.). Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005.
Bouillon, Hélène. « A New Perspective on so-Called Hathoric Curls », Ägypten Und Levante – Egypt and the Levant XXIV, 2014 p. 209-226. 2014.
The Olynthus plate:
Laws, Guitty Azatpay. "A Herodotean Echo in Pompeian Art?" American Journal of Archaeology 65, 1 (1961): 31-35.
