| It’s a fact that many of the female mysteries were eventually taken over by men, even to the point of re-enacting birth rituals and the men continued the tradition of wearing the women’s dress. (105) Women’s robes are the primary attire of almost all priests and (106) in Greece, when young boys became men, they went through an initiation ceremony where they were called Ephebes, and they wore women’s clothes and took them off, to announce their entry to manhood. To men in Greece, the process of maturing meant growing up from a woman into a man. (106) Warrior class cultures were in vogue by 1775 BC, with the appearance of the corded-ware battle-axe people and the bell-beaker people who were a combination of Aryan and pre-Aryan people. (107) Scholars commonly argue that it was the nomadic cattle herders who first became the roving bandits of violent conquerors of the more peaceful settled farming villages. According to Joseph Campbell, in Occidental Mythology, by 3500 BC, these roving gangs were threatening farming communities and towns, plundering and robbing, then leaving or remaining to enslave the locals. By 3000 BC, Campbell suggests: “power states were being established by such invaders, and by c. 2500 BC, the rule in Mesopotamia had passed decisively to a series of strong men from the desert, of whom Sargon of Agade (c. 2350 BC) was the first important example and Hammurabi of Babylon (c. 1728-1686 BC), the second. These were contemporaries, approximately, of the sea kings of Crete, but with a radically different relationship to the goddess.” Sargon may have been the first king to use the mythology of the god’s birth to justify his personal kingship. He relates the story of his birth and subsequent role in the garden of the goddess Astarte: “Sargon am I, the mighty king, Monarch of Agade, My mother was of lowly birth; my father I knew not; the brother of my father is a mountain dweller; and my city, Azupiranu, lies on the bank of the Euphrates. My lowly mother conceived and bore me in secrecy; placed me in a basket of rushes; sealed it with bitumen, and set me in the river, which, however, did not engulf me. The river bore me up. And it carried me to Akku, the irrigator, who took me from the river, raised me as his son, made of me a gardener: and while I was a gardener the goddess Ishtar loved me. Then I ruled the kingdom…” (108) The Eurasian nomads consisted of gangs of nomadic invaders who were said to have “invaded” Europe, the Middle East and China, and were responsible for domesticating the horse around 3500 BC. (109) The Eurasian nomads comprised of several ethnic groups which inhabited the steppes of Central Asia, Mongolia, and what is now Russia. They developed the chariot, wagon, cavalry and horse archery which vastly helped them accelerate the ability to hunt animals from horseback and combining archery with the horse-drawn chariot, would lead to the ultimate fighting vehicle or war machine of the age. In the 8th century BC, Scythia would emerge to be regarded as the first nomadic empire. (110) |
Transitions from goddesses of love, marriage, fertility and childbirth, to goddesses of war, and conquest, can be better understood if we consider the roles played by these goddesses. According to Mary Condren, author of The Serpent and the Goddess, the “war-goddess” was more of a diplomatic goddess or a trickster than a full-fledged fighter. Condren describes her findings: “Scholars are agreed that the so-called goddesses of war do not ‘themselves participate in battle.’ Instead, they usually try to undermine the male armies, to demoralize them or otherwise trick them into fulfilling their will. In some cases, they will even confuse the armies into killing their own people rather than inflicting hurt on the opposition. Unlike the male gods who delight in the description of their weapons, the ‘war-goddesses’ use magical means to undermine the armies; weapons are not their province.” (111) The mythology of the ancient people would undoubtedly change to reflect the changing attitudes in society, and this explains how Inanna went from a loving goddess of fertility to the warlike Ishtar persona in latter Akkadian literature. Van Dijk suggests that the fierce Inanna of Enheduanna's hymns is really an image of the Sargonic Ishtar, and that, furthermore, this image of Ishtar is really a projection of the victorious city of Akkad. (112) Therefore, we can see how cultures which shifted towards patriarchy were creating mythologies to support their new social reorganization. (113) (105) The Great Mother, p. 290; (Briffault, Vol. II, p. 543. Also cf. Koppers, "Zum Ursprung des Mysterienwesens" (106) ibid, p.52-3; https://www.didaskalia.net/issues/vol4no1/deforest.html (107) Occidental Mythology, p. 69; Marija Gimbutas, "Culture Change in Europe at the Start of the Second Millennium BC.: A Contribution to the Indo-European Problem," Selected Papers of the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Philadelphia 1956 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), p. 544, item 19 (108) ibid, p. 72-3; Leonard William King, Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings (London: Luzac and Co., 1907), Vol. II, pp. 87-91 (109) "What We Theorize – When and Where Domestication Occurred,". International Museum of the Horse. Retrieved 2015-01-27. (110) Annamoradnejad, Rahimberdi; Lotfi, Sedigheh. "Demographic changes of nomadic communities in Iran (1956–2008)". Asian Population Studies. 6: 335–345 (111) The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland, Mary Condren, Harper and Row, 1989, p. 35; For the Goddesses of War, see Hennessy, "The Ancient Irish Goddesses of War." Amendments to this article appear in Wh. Stokes, "The Ancient Irish Goddess of War", RC 2 (1873-75):489-92. Cf. also Charles Donahue, "The Valkyries and the Irish War-Goddess," PMLA 56 (1941):1-12; John Carey, "Notes on the Irish War-Goddess," Eigse 19, no. 2 (1983):263-76 (112) J. van Dijk "Les contact ethniques dans la Mesopotamie et les syncretismes de la religion sumerienne" in Syncretism, Sven Hartman, ed., “Stockhold" Almgvist * Wiksell, 1969, esp. 194-203 (113) In the Wake of the Goddess, p. 67 |