Pigging around

Terracotta figurine of a female wearing a polos and holding a piglet in her right hand and a torch in her left hand. From the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) at Ancient Corinth. Around 320-200 BC. Corinth Archaeological Museum. From this web page about Demeter and Persephone...

See the pig? It's wild/feral/old breed pig...The type that mates during winter and spring. 

Check this out: the same type of pig this time as a ceramic votive figurine, found in the Sanctuary of Demeter Chamyne at Olympia. 4th century BC. Pyrgos Archaeological Museum. From this web page about Demeter and Persephone... 

BTW, this was the predominant type of pig "farmed" (herded in forests actually) in Europe before intensive enclosure pig breeding started.

Like the Old Irish Pig also known as Irish Greyhound Pig, which was the only pig breed in Ireland until the 19th c. From this web page about swineherds in Irish mythology...

Piglets were sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone during the festival of Thesmophoria which was celebrated in Oct/Nov to commemorate the abduction of Persephone by Hades. 

Based on all the animal and plant calendar markers contained in the legend about the Abduction of Persephone, she was abducted at the beginning of winter, Oct/Nov...You can find full discussion in my post "Abduction of Persephone"...

One of the animal calendar markers was the fact that "...when Kore (Persephone) was carried off by Plouton (Hades)...one Eubouleus, a swineherd, was pasturing pigs on that spot, and they were swallowed up in the pit of Kore..."

If Persephone was abducted while "Eubouleus was pasturing his pigs", I believe that this means that she was abducted during "pannage"...

Pannage is the practice of releasing livestock-pigs in a forest, so that they can feed on fallen acorns, beechmast, chestnuts or other nuts...

Pannage coincides with the acorn shedding season of whatever oak variety grows in the area...

The acorn shedding season of the Eastern Mediterranean oaks, like Holm Oak or Valonian Oak, starts from Oct/Nov and lasts until Dec/Jan...

It is interesting that the swineherd whose pigs were swallowed by earth was called Eubouleus, the same as the Winter (Chthonian) Zeus (Hades)...

And that it is in honour of Eubouleus that "...piglets are thrown into the pits of Kore (Persephone) during Thesmophoria..."

Thesmophoria was a festival held in honour of Demeter Thesmophoros (bringer of treasure or wealth) and celebrated mostly in the month of Pyanopsion (Oct/Nov), the time of the Greek agricultural year when grain seeds were sown...

Considering that Persephone was deified grain seed, it is fitting that her abduction and taking to the underworld is commemorated at the time when grain seed is sown into the ground. Talked about this in my post "Dance of the Panes" about this Athenian red-figure skyphos (wine cup) dated to 5th BC depicting: "Goddess [I would suggest Persephone] emerging from the ground between two [dancing/prancing] Pans"...

In my post about the abduction of Persephone I said that it is very unlikely that piglets were thrown into the Megara pits of Core in Oct/Nov. This is because natural pig breeding season is Oct-May, with peak Nov to Jan...

This is true for wild pigs and for feral pigs (domesticated pigs which escaped to the wild and which live without human influence)...

Domesticated pigs which live with people can breed at any time of the year, but even they suffer from "seasonal infertility", a reduction in fertility and fecundity in breeding pigs at a particular period of the year – usually summer and early autumn...

Basically, pigs are meant to mate in winter and spring, and to give birth to piglets in spring and summer, so that the piglets can have enough time and food  to fatten up and get ready for the next winter...

Don't know when pigs mated in Ancient Greece, but On this Red-Figure vase, dating to 470 to 460 BC, we see Odysseus, left, and the swineherd Eumaeus, with pigs which look very very much like wild or feral pigs...So...

And as I said at the start of this article, wild/feral/primitive breed pigs breed during the winter, starting in Oct/Nov...

Anyway, 6-month old wild, feral, old breed, pig which lives outside and forages, is significantly smaller than an adult wild pig, typically reaching about half the size in terms of weight and length. So people could still have sacrificed adolescent piglets during Thesmophoria...

But the problem is that according to the descriptions of Thesmophoria, after the pigs were thrown into the pits, "some time later", during the same 3 days festival, the rotten remains of these pigs were retrieved from the pits...

Is it really possible for a pig carcass to rot in a pit in Oct/Nov in 3 days?

To the point where these "rotten remains" of the sacrificed piglets could be crumbled and scattered?

Apparently, the rotten pig carcasses were crumbled, mixed with crumbled cakes baked in the shape of snakes and phalluses, and were then scattered on fields when seeds were sown, in the belief that this would ensure a good harvest...

Maybe the "rotten remains" taken out of the pits of Core were thrown into the pits not during Thesmophoria but during Skirophoria, grain threshing festival held in the month of Skirophorion (Jun/Jul) and which was also held in honour of Demeter, the goddess of fruitfulness...

Like I proposed in my post about the abduction of Persephone. Or maybe, the "rotten remains" taken out of the pits of Core were thrown into the pits previous year? Would much of these sacrifice piglets remain after a year in the pit?

About those "cakes baked in the shape of phalluses and snakes"...Phallus shaped cake used in sowing fertility magic is kind of obvious. Check this out: In Serbia in the past people lived in extended families called "zadruga". When grain needed to be sown, the family would choose one man to do all the sowing. He had to abstain from sex from that moment until all the seeds were sown...Talked about this in my post "Sowing"...

But what about snakes? Apart from the fact that they look like phalluses 🙂? Check this out

According to the Orphic theogony, when Rhea (Earth goddess), gave birth to Zeus (storm god), she became Demeter (Grain goddess). Demeter and Zeus then had sex as snakes and fathered Persephone. What does this mean?

Gist for the lazy ones: thunderstorm season in Greece starts in Apr/May (Zeus), the same time when the grain harvest season started in Ancient Greece (Rhea turns to Demeter) which is the same time when snake mating season starts (Zeus and Demeter make Persephone as snakes)...

Orphic dudes preserved some really ancient knowledge indeed. I talked about this in my post "Who are Persephone's parents"...

So Persephone, grain seed, appears with snakes. And disappears with snakes. Cause snakes disappear underground around the time when Persephone also disappears underground which is also the time when the seeds are sown into the ground...

Hence

Persephone was sometimes depicted with vailed face or with no face at all and with a snake crawling out of her garment. Statue from Cyrene, Libya.

Interesting, right? Then check this out

In Lužnica and Nišava region of Serbia people used to make a special Christmas bread called "polje" (field). It was decorated with wheat stacks, people and a snake, symbol of summer, holding a wheat sheaf in its mouth. 

Why are so many "Ancient Greek agricultural magical practices" preserved in South Slavic folklore? As I said before, South Slavs are descendants of pretty much anyone who ever lived in the Balkans. Look at their genes...

Because of that, South Slavs are also preservers of (partial remnants) of the cultures of all these ancient people too. 

Question: Did modern Greeks preserve this particular agricultural magical ritual?

Anyway, the piglets were sacrificed to Persephone by being thrown into a pit called Megara. Interestingly, in the "Pigs at the Gate: Hittite Pig Sacrifice in Its Eastern Mediterranean Context" by Billie J Collins, we can read that:

"...the practice of depositing piglets into pits probably came to Greece via Anatolia and it is surely no coincidence that many of the excavated Megara of Demeter/Persephone are located on Anatolian soil..."

Based on the available Hittite textual evidence, we know that:

The rituals involving pig sacrifices were mostly linked to fertility, land or female.

The main receiver of these sacrifices was the Sun-goddess of the Earth (The equivalent of Persephone, The Queen of the underworld).

The overseer of these pig sacrifices was the Hittite Queen...

Interesting, right?

That's enough pigging around for today. More soon...

PS: 

Demeter, Persephone and the Sun Goddess of the Earth have another link: Bees. 

Amulet of a bee goddess, 700 - 600 BC. Found in excavations of Kamiros, Rhodes, Greece. One of the nicknames of Persephone, The Queen of the Underworld, was Melitodes ("sweet as honey"), and the priestesses of Demeter and Persephone, were known as Melissae ("bees")...

I talked about this in my post "The sacred tree and a bee"...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...