Chapter 10 Lecture Two of Two Eastern Fertility Myth ©2012 Pearson Education Inc.

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Chapter 10Lecture Two of Two

Eastern Fertility Myth

EASTERN FERTILITY MYTHInanna and Dumuzi

Inanna and Dumuzi

• Babylonian Inanna and Dumuzi• Egyptian Isis and Osiris• Phrygian Cybele and Attis• Aphrodite and Adonis

Fig. 10.5A female head from Uruk

Iraq Museum, Baghdad/Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich, Germany

Inanna and Dumuzi

• Pattern of the dying divinity• The grieving of the consort• The quest• Rebirth

Inanna and Dumuzi

• Inanna = goddess of sex and war• Dumuzi = her shepherd consort

Inanna and Dumuzi

• Inanna goes into the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the underworld

• She must strip naked before she is allowed in• She’s put on trial and condemned to death by

the Annunaki gods — hung on a hook as a piece of decaying meat

Inanna and Dumuzi

• While she’s there, the earth is barren• Ninshubur follows her instructions and

eventually goes to Enki• Enki fashions beings, who trick Ereshkigal

into releasing her with their weeping for the death of children

• But unless she can find someone to die for her, she must return

Inanna and Dumuzi

• Dumuzi is seen not mourning her death enough

• Inanna tells the demons to take him• He is allowed to return to earth one day

each year to receive ritual honors.

OBSERVATIONSThe Dying God and the Sacred Marriage

Dying God, Sacred Marriage

• The logic of the myth lies in the agricultural cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.

• It was played out in the ritual "sacred marriage" (hieros gamos) between the king as Dumuzi and an "Inanna."

EASTERN FERTILITY MYTHThe Egyptian Isis and Osiris

Isis and Osiris

• Isis becomes the central Egyptian goddess• The Greeks equated her with Demeter• Key political charter myth -- the Pharaoh is

justified in the myth

Fig. 10.6Isis and Osiris

Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich, Germany

Isis and Osiris

• Isis and Osiris were fraternal twins• They married and become king and queen

of Egypt• They brought features of civilized life to

Egypt• Osiris travelled to teach other nations

Isis and Osiris

• The monster Typhoeus kills Osiris with the coffin trick

• It floats out the Nile and to Byblos in Phoenicia

• A tree grew around it• The king of Byblos cut down the tree for his

palace and brought the coffin with it

Isis and Osiris

• In her quest, Isis comes to Byblos• Stops by a well and is met by the daughters

of the king and queen• She cares for their son -- burning away the

mortal parts by night while flying above it as a swallow

• Discovered, she reveals herself and demands the coffin back

Isis and Osiris

• Typhoeus finds where Isis has hidden the coffin and tears the corpse up into fourteen pieces

• Isis finds all the pieces but one, the penis, and builds where each one was found

• She fashions a wooden phallus as a replacement

Isis and Osiris

• While bringing the coffin back from Byblos, Isis reanimated the penis and became pregnant while flying over it as a hawk

• Now the hawk god Horus is born

Isis and Osiris

• Horus defeats Typhoeus and his allies• But Isis lets him go• Angered, Horus assaults Isis and tears off

her crown• Isis is visited by Osiris and another Horus

(the baby) is born

Fig. 10. 7 Rebirth of Osiris

Author’s photo

Eastern Fertility MythsCybelê and Attis (Fig. 10.8 A bust of Cybelê)

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples; Art Resource, New York

Cybelê and Attis

• Zeus impregnates a rock near Cybele• The hermaphrodite Agdestis is born —so

powerful and wild, that the other gods fear him

• Dionysus gets him drunk and sets a snare that tears off his male sexual organ — the pomegranate tree springs from the genitals

Cybelê and Attis

• A local princess, Nana, picks up the fruit and puts it into her dress

• She becomes pregnant• Her father, disgraced, tries to prevent the

birth by locking her up and starving her• She is supported by Cybele • Attis is born

Cybelê and Attis

• Attis is about to marry, but Agdestis, his companion, drives the guests insane

• One guest, Gallus, slices off his own genitals• Maddened, Attis also cuts off his own

genitals to spite Agdestis and dies

Cybelê and Attis

• His intended kills herself where he died, and Cybele buries them in a common grave

• Zeus allows Attis’s hair and one finger to live on

OBSERVATIONSFrom Blood, Life

From Blood, Life

• The bizarre elements of the myth of Cybelê and Attis are explicable in light of their etiological function, as they explain the origins of ritual human sacrifice and self-castration to perpetuate the cycle of life from blood.

APHRODITE AND ADONIS

Birth of Adonis

• Pygmalion and Galatea• Paphos• Cinyras• Myrrha• Adonis born from the myrrha tree

Aphrodite

• Adonis becomes the love-object of Aphrodite• Killed in a hunt• Becomes the anemone flower

PERSPECTIVE 10.2H.D.'s "Adonis"

H.D.'s "Adonis"

• The twentieth-century poet who went by the initials "H.D." used the figure of Adonis as a symbol for the seasons of our individual lives.

"each of us like youhas died once,each of us like youstands apart, like youfit to be worshipped."

Conclusions

• Behind their common features, the fertility myths we studied have different emphases.

• Demeter-Persephonê: Death is a part of life.• Inanna-Dumuzi: Life must be bought back

through sacrifice.• Isis-Osiris: New life comes through the

pharaoh.

Conclusions

• Cybelê-Dumuzi: Blood is life, and shedding it brings new life.

• Greek variation differs in the important regard that there is no dying male consort. Fertility is through mother-daughter, where the female seems to beget life without a male.

Chapter 10 Lecture Two of Two Eastern Fertility Myth ©2012 Pearson Education Inc.

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