Great Goddess

The Venus of Moravany. Venus figurines were among the earliest works of human culture and are hypothesized to have represented femininity and fertility in the cultures that created them.

The Great Goddess is the concept of an supreme mother goddess, often understood as part of ancient matriarchal religions. These religions are believed to have been Monotheistic, in which there is a singular goddess and their avatars. In most attested traditions, goddesses are part of a polytheistic pantheon in which mother goddesses exist alongside a pantheon of male and female deities. The Great Goddess is believed to have been worshiped as a creator deity in the Neolithic era across most of Eurasia, at least. There is scant scholarly support for the hypothesis. Theological belief in a Great Goddess is central to the Goddess movement.

Hypothesis

Fragmentary Snake Goddess icon from Cnossos, illustrated for the Outline of History by H. G. Wells

The Great Goddess hypothesis theorizes that, in Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic Europe, West Asia, and North Africa, a singular, monotheistic female deity was worshiped. The theory was first proposed by the German Classicist Eduard Gerhard in 1849, when he speculated that the various goddesses found in ancient Greek paganism had been representations of a singular goddess who had been worshipped far further back into prehistory. He associated this deity with the concept of Mother Earth, which itself had been developed in the 18th century by members of the Romanticist Movement.

Soon after, this theory began to be adopted by other classicists in France and Germany, such as Ernst Kroker, Fr. Lenormant and M. J. Menant, who further brought in the idea that the ancient peoples of Anatolia and Mesopotamia had influenced the Greek religion, and that therefore they also had once venerated a Great Goddess. These ideas amongst various classicists echoed those of the Swiss judge J. J. Bachofen, who put forward the idea that the earliest human societies were matriarchal, but had converted to a patriarchal form in later prehistory. Commenting on this idea, the historian Ronald Hutton (1999) remarked that in the eyes of many at the time, it would have been an obvious conclusion that "what was true in a secular sphere should also, logically, have been so in the religious one."

In 1901, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans—who in an 1895 work had dismissed the Great Goddess theory—changed his mind and accepted the idea whilst excavating at Knossos on Crete, the site of the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation. After unearthing a number of female figurines, he came to believe that they all represented a singular goddess, who was the Minoan's chief deity, and that all the male figurines found on the site represented a subordinate male god who was both her son and consort, an idea that he based partially upon the later classical myth of Rhea and Zeus. In later writings in ensuing decades he went on to associate these Neolithic and Bronze Age images with other goddesses around West Asia. As Hutton pointed out, "his influence made this the orthodoxy of Minoan archaeology, although there were always a few colleagues who pointed out that it placed a strain upon the evidence."

Examples

Scholars such as Marija Gimbutas and Arthur Evans have proposed that certain Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures worshipped a singular Great Goddess or a unified feminine principle expressed through various local forms. The following figures are among those most frequently cited by proponents of this theory:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Eller, Cynthia (2000). The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-6792-5.
    Eller, Cynthia (2011). Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861–1900. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    Balter, Michael (2005). The Goddess and the Bull: Çatalhöyük—An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-7432-4360-5.
    Hutton, Ronald (2001). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-285449-0.
  2. ↑ Gerhard (1849), p. 103.
  3. ↑ Hutton (1999), p. 33.
  4. 1 2 3 Hutton (1999), p. 36.
  5. ↑ Evans (1895), pp. 124–131.
  6. ↑ Evans (1901–1902).
  7. ↑ Gimbutas (2007); Gimbutas (1991).
  8. ↑ Evans (2013).
  9. ↑ Gimbutas (1999).
  10. ↑ Gimbutas (1991), ch. 5–6.

Works cited

  • Evans, Arthur (1895). Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script. London: Bernard Quaritch.
  • Evans, Arthur J. (1901–1902). "The Palace of Knossos". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 8: 1–94. doi:10.1017/S0068245400001404.
  • Evans, Arthur (2013) [1921]. The Palace of Minos. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-06106-3.
  • Gerhard, Eduard (1849). Über Metroen und Götter-Mutter (in German). Berlin: G. Reimer.
  • Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization. Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-250418-0.
  • Gimbutas, Marija (1999). The Living Goddesses. University of California Press.
  • Gimbutas, Marija (2007). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25398-8.
  • Graeber, David; Wengrow, David (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-241-40242-9.
  • Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press.
  • Hutton, Ronald (2022). Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26101-1.

Further reading

General studies

Archaeology and historical perspectives

Religious and mythological studies