Sirens

This is a very strange object. Hydria. Kerameikos,  Athens, Archaeological Museum in Athens. 660-580 BC. 

Why is it strange? Well, the vessel's body is divided into three friezes. From the bottom up:

1. Lion and red deer

2. Leopard (panther is the melanistic color variant of the leopard ) and wild boar

3. Sirens (the strange bit)

And I think that these are all animal calendar markers...

I think that the bottom frieze represents autumn, Jul/Aug-Oct/Nov. 

Both Eurasian lions and red deer mate during autumn, lions starting at the beginning of autumn and red deer at the end...

I also think that the middle frieze represents winter (Oct/Nov-Jan/Feb). 

Both Eurasian wild boar and leopard mate during winter, wild boar starting at the beginning of  winter and leopard at the end...

These animals have been used as calendar markers for these parts of the year throughout Eurasia. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Anyway if the animals on the bottom frieze are calendar markers for autumn, and the animals on the middle frieze are calendar markers for winter, what are sirens doing on the top? Where logically we should find calendar markers for spring???

Well, if my logic is correct, and not completely bonkers, sirens should in some way be linked to spring...Are they? Well I couldn't find any mention of spring in relation to sirens...But I found this:

Sirens were formerly handmaidens of the goddess Persephone, and they were with her when she was abducted by Hades. 

There are two different stories about what happened to them then...

In one story, Demeter gave them the bodies of birds to assist in the search. They eventually gave up and settled on the flowery island of Anthemoessa...

In the other, Demeter cursed the Sirens for failing to intervene in the abduction of Persephone and turned them into birds with human heads...

You can read more about Sirens here. Anyway, whatever way the Sirens ended up the way they are, as birds with human heads, that happened after Persephone was abducted...When did that abduction happen?

Well, did you know that all the plants and animals featuring in the legend about the abduction of Persephone are linked to winter? Beginning of winter to be precise. You can read the full discussion in my post "Abduction of Persephone"...

So if Persephone was abducted at the beginning of winter, then the Sirens acquired their wings, either through curse or blessing, during the winter...As this is the time of the year Persephone spends in the underworld, and when the search for her takes place...

But considering that they are depicted standing and not flying, the top frieze could be depiction of the time when "...they eventually gave up and settled on the flowery island of Anthemoessa..."??? Which would be in spring...

Which means that they could be a symbol of the end of winter or spring...And which means that they do logically fit to the top frieze. And that my logic is not bonkers 🙂 Well, not always...

Oh yeah, sorry, here is the strange bit 🙂 Remember this article, in which I talked about the Ancient Greek soul bird?

And in this article I talked about the proposal (not mine btw), that during the same period when the Siren hydria we are talking about was made, human soul was by Ancient Greeks depicted as a bird with a human head...

Before the soul became completely anthropomorphised, it was depicted as bird with the head of the deceased person...Like on this Attic red-figure crater, c. 460BC-430BC, depicting the death of Procris...

And this is because the souls fly to the otherworld...

And guess who was Persephone abducted by? No other than the lord of the otherworld. And where was she taken? To the otherworld. And who can fly to the otherworld? Soul birds of course...Birds with human heads...Like Sirens...

And you know how there is this ancient belief, preserved in Slavic folklore, that it was the migratory birds which took souls of the deceased to the otherworld at the beginning of winter, and how they brought sous of the babies from the otherworld at the end of winter...

Migratory birds which were by Slavs believed to spend winter in the otherworld...The same time Persephone spent there...Soul birds...Birds with human heads...And so while they were there, they might as well search for Persephone...

And so are the Sirens the returning migratory birds which gave up looking for Persephone in the otherworld, and have returned to our world in spring? 

This is the strange bit...Very very strange...

Soul bird

Attic red-figure lekythos, c. 500–450 BC, showing Charon welcoming a soul into his boat. Charon was the boatman that took souls across the river Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead...

The soul, psyche (ψυχή) was here depicted as a miniature version of the deceased person with wings...

Before the soul became completely anthropomorphised, it was depicted as bird with the head of the deceased person...Like on this Attic red-figure crater, c. 460BC-430BC, depicting the death of Procris...

Well, whether this is indeed the depiction of the soul of Procris leaving his body or not is debated...The description on the British Museum page for this object says " a Harpy (?) waiting for her soul"...

The first depiction of the human headed bird in a funerary contexts are found on Attic funerary plaques from the Archaic period (650-480BC) depicting a prothesis (wake).

Like this one, where we see the "soul bird" standing with its wings outstretched, under the funeral bier on which the body lies in state, as if ready to take flight. Above the body, we see three birds in flight. As I said, some people believe that this is a depiction of a soul...

If, whether these human headed birds are representations of a human soul is debatable, then this next thing is highly controversial...

From "Kerameikos" publication comes this "Black-figure miniature plate with an illegible scene, probably a funeral...A flute-player playing a dirge on a double flute, as the deceased receives his due. The bird is interpreted as the soul of the deceased..." Late 6th c. BC, Greece...

This is very interesting...Did Ancient Greeks really depict the souls of the deceased as birds? Like on these depictions of the prothesis (wake) from a Geometric period (900 to 700BC) amphorae?

We see birds under the funeral bier with the deceased...In the same place where the human headed bird is later found on Archaic period prothesis scenes?

Are these really depictions of the souls? Well, in "Winged representations of the soul in ancient Greek art from the late Bronze Age through the Classical period", we read that this is a possibility...

This is a thesis written by Tina Ross, a student from the University of Victoria. In it Tina lists all the "important" 🙂 people who do think that the depictions of birds in funerary context on Ancient Greek artefacts symbolise human souls. There are handful of them...

Tina actually says that "this is not a mainstream opinion", and that she just wants "to assert and highlight another possible interpretation in order to open up other avenues of interpretation"...

What do you think?

I don't know how Ancient Greeks arrived to the idea of the winged psyche, and whether at some stage in the past they did depict souls as birds. One interesting thing is that none of the people who supported this idea put forward explanation why would Greeks do so?

But I know that Slavs believed that birds carry souls between this and the otherworld. In both directions...I talked about this in my posts "Nav" and "Bird wedding"...

More specifically, Slavs believed that it was migratory birds that acted as the soul carriers. Slavs believed that every autumn, migratory birds took away the sun to Iriy, Slavic Otherworld, World of the Dead, where he spent winter. And that every spring, migratory birds brought the sun back into our world...

"...the souls of our ancestors shine every morning from Iriy (Slavic Paradise)..."

There are two worlds, the world of the living and the world of the dead. The sun spends the day in the world of the living and the night in the world of the dead...

And there are two gates that stand on the border between these two worlds: the eastern gate and the western gate...

Every morning the eastern gate is opened by Danica, the day star, which is in the morning called Zornjača, the morning star, and the sun comes from the world of the dead into the world of the living...

And every evening the sun goes from the world of the living into the world of the dead through the western gate, which is then closed behind him by Danica, the day star, which is in the evening called Večernjača, the evening star...

The souls of the dead follow sun to the western gate, which is where the entrance into the land of the dead is...

And there they enter Iriy, the ever green land of eternal spring, full of cattle...Raj..Paradise. And every morning, when the eastern gate of the world of the dead is opened, they smile on us...

BTW, in Ireland also, there was a belief that the souls of the dead departed westwards over the sea with the setting sun...

Where does the sun come from in the morning and where does it go back in the evening?

The same observation resulted in Dabog, Serbian Sun god, Serbian ancestral deity, having all the characteristics of the god of the dead, and having the cult which is in its essence a cult of the dead...According to Serbian ethnographers...

People are logical...

This is also the reason why the dead play such a huge role in Slavic agricultural cult...

Not only that the life literally grows out of the dead...

But Dabog, The Sun, the father of the living, and the dead, resides among the dead...

And if the dead are not happy with the living, and if they complain to "Their Father", Dabog, about the living...Then the living are basically fucked...

I talked about this in my post "Diduch"...

Hittites forgot about their dead, and look what happened to them

"...humiliation of the Hittite kingdom is the result of the fact that the living Hittite kings and their subjects have forgotten to respect the sacred bond with their dead..." - From the last Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II's letter...

I talked about this in my post "The house of bones"...

By the way this link between the souls, the birds and the sun, found in Slavic mythology is also found in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia...

In Ancient Egypt we find the human headed Ba bird which can fly between this world and the otherworld...And we find Ra, the sun god, traveling through the otherworld, which was imagined as green watery paradise, every night...

And in Mesopotamia we also find the sun god Utu/Shamash in the land of the dead. The Sumerian poem "Enki and the World Order" exclaims: Young Utu (the sun), father of the Great City (the realm of the dead, underworld)

But the land of the dead was by Mesopotamians not seen as paradise...It was a place of dread...But souls there were still seen as birds...In a myth called "The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld" we read that the dead "live in darkness, eat clay, and are clothed like birds with wings"...

It is strange that the otherworld was imagined as dark, horrible place, considering that it was the sun god who was the ruler of the underworld, just like in Slavic (Dabog) and Egyptian (Ra) mythology...

And not just any sun god. Young Utu, the good sun, the sun of life, not death...

This makes me wonder if Mesopotamian mythology was, like all the other mythologies, a compendium of various belief systems which preceded it? Which is why we find these "inconsistencies"...

Knowing all these ancient links between birds, souls, otherworld and sun I would say that the (Very) Ancient Greeks could have once themselves believed in the same things we find in Slavic folklore...

Migratory birds carrying the souls to and from the otherworld...