Poppy goddess

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"Poppy goddess" figurine from the sanctuary at Gazi, Crete

The name poppy goddess is often used for a famous example of a distinctive type of large female terracotta figurine in Minoan art, presumably representing a goddess, but not thought to be cult images, rather votive offerings. It was discovered in a sanctuary of the Post-palace period (LM III, 1400–1100 BC) at Gazi, Crete, and is now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.[1]

The name comes from the shape of the terminals of opium poppy seedheads rising from the diadem on the head. Other figures have different ornaments to the head, including many birds, and the Horns of Consecration symbol. They have a round "skirt", shaped like a vessel, and formed on the potter's wheel, after which the upper body was hand-formed while the clay was still malleable. Some have feet peeping out from under their skirt. They always have raised hands, normally with palms pointing sideways or out, and there is often a hole at the top of the head, perhaps to help firing, while the openings at the ears may be intended to suggest readiness to hear prayers. Most are unpainted.[2] They relate to other, less stylized, types of Minoan clay goddess figures.[3]

Terracottas from Gazi in AM Heraklion, 1300-1100 BC, including the poppy goddess, but birds are more common here.

In this period,

Gortys and Prinias.[1] On the heads of the figures there are various religious symbols, such as horns of consecration, diadems, birds, and the seeds of opium poppies. The female figure known popularly as the poppy goddess is perhaps a representation of the goddess as the bringer of sleep or death.[1]

The figurines found at Gazi, which are larger than any previously produced on Minoan Crete, are rendered in an extremely stylized manner. The bodies are rigid, the skirts simple cylinders, and the poses stereotyped.

Religious significance

Interpreters speculate that the raised hands of the figurine who gazes toward the visitor indicate that it is a deity and that the gesture of the two upraised hands with open palms is an epiphany gesture of the goddess.[4] It is possible that the goddess is giving a greeting, or a blessing, or is praying, or it may symbolize her appearance in earth in human form.[1]

Poppies were mentioned in Greco-Roman myths as offerings to the dead.

sheaves and poppies in both hands (Idyll vii 157).[7]

Eleusis and it is almost certain that in the Cretan cult sphere opium was prepared from poppies."[8]

British classicist and scholar,

Cretan "Mother of the Gods".[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e J.A. Sakellarakis. Herakleion Museum. Illustrated guide to the Museum. Ekdotike Athinon. Athens 1987. p. 91
  2. ^ Hood, 108-109
  3. ^ Hood, 106-107
  4. ^ a b Walter Burkert (1985). Greek religion, Harvard University Press. pp. 23, 30
  5. ^ Nicholas J. Saunders, (2013) The Poppy: A Cultural History from Ancient Egypt to Flanders Fields to Afghanistan.
  6. ISBN 0-14-001026-2
  7. ^ Kerenyi, 1976 p.23
  8. Karl Kerenyi
    . Dionysos. Archetypal image of Indestructible life. part I iii. The Cretan core of Dionysos myth. Princeton University Press. 1976 p. 25
  9. ^ Harrison, Jane Ellen (1928). Myths of Greece and Rome. pp. 60–61.

External links
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