My esteemed friends, Professors Castorches, Phendikles, and Pappadakes return to-day to Athens.

NOTE A.—"HERA BOÖPIS."

NOTE ON HERA BOÖPIS.

I extract the following from my Paper on Troy, read on the 24th of June 1875, before the Society of Antiquaries in London.

It has been said by a great scholar,[64] that, whatever else the Homeric epithet γλαυκῶπις may mean, it cannot mean owl-headed, unless we suppose that Ἡρη Βοῶπις was represented as a cow-headed monster. I found in my excavations at Troy three splendid cow-heads with long horns of terra-cotta,[65] and I believe them to be derived from Hera idols, but I cannot prove it. But it is not difficult to prove that this goddess had originally a cow's face, from which her Homeric epithet βοῶπις was derived. When in the battle between the gods and the giants, the former took the shape of animals, Hera took the form of a white cow, "nivea Saturnia vacca."[66] We find a cow's head on the coins of the island of Samos, which had the most ancient temple of Hera, and was celebrated for its worship of this goddess.[67] We further find the cow's head on the coins of Messene, a Samian colony in Sicily.[68] The relation of Hera to the cow is further proved by the name Εὔβοια, which was at once her epithet,[69] the name of one of her nurses,[70] the name of the island in which she was brought up,[71] and the name of the mountain at the foot of which her most celebrated temple (the Heræon) was situated.[72] But in the name Εὔβοια is contained the word βοῦς. Hera had in Corinth the epithet βουναία,[73] in which the word βοῦς is likewise contained. White cows were sacrificed to Hera.[74] The priestess rode in a car drawn by white bulls to the temple of the Argive Hera.[75] Iö, the daughter of Inachus, the first king of Argos, was changed by Hera into a cow.[76] Iö was priestess of Hera,[77] and she is represented as the cow-goddess Hera.[78] Iö's cow-form is further confirmed by Æschylus.[79] The Egyptian goddess Isis was born in Argos, and was identified with the cow-shaped Iö.[80] Isis was represented in Egypt as a female with cow-horns, like Iö in Greece.[81]

The cow-shaped Iö was guarded in Hera's sacred grove at Mycenæ by the hundred-eyed Argus, who was killed by Hermes, by order of Zeus; and Hera next persecuted Iö by a gad fly, which forced her to wander from place to place.[82] Thus Prometheus says: "How should I not hear the daughter of Inachus, who is chased around by the gad fly?" But the wandering of Iö is nothing else than the symbol of the moon, which restlessly moves in its orbit. This is also shown by the very name of Iö (᾽Ιώ), which is derived from the root I (in εἶμι, I go). Even in classical antiquity Iö was still frequently represented as a cow; as at Amyclæ.[83] Iö continued to be the old name of the moon in the religious mysteries at Argos.[84] Apis, king of the Argive realm, was the son of Phoroneus, and thus the grandson of Inachus, and the nephew of Iö. From Apis, the Peloponnesus and also Argos were called Apia; after his death he was worshipped under the name Serapis.[85] According to another tradition, Apis ceded his dominion in Greece to his brother, and became king of Egypt,[86] where, as Serapis, he was worshipped in the shape of a bull. Æschylus makes the wanderings of Iö end in Egypt, where Jove restores her to her shape, and she bears Epaphus, another name for the bull-god Apis. The cow-horns of the Pelasgian moon-goddess Iö, who became later the Argive Hera and is perfectly identical with her, as well as the cow-horns of Isis, were derived from the symbolic horns of the crescent representing the moon.[87] No doubt Iö, the later Hera, had at an earlier age, besides her cow-horns, a cow's face. Hera, under her old moon-name Iö, had a celebrated temple on the site of Byzantium, which city was said to have been founded by her daughter Keroëssa—i.e., "the horned."[88] The crescent, which was in all antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages the symbol of Byzantium, and which is now the symbol of the Turkish empire, is a direct inheritance from Byzantium's mythical foundress, Keroëssa, the daughter of the moon-goddess Iö (Hera); for it is certain that the Turks did not bring it with them from Asia, but found it already an emblem of Byzantium. Hera, Iö, and Isis, must at all events be identical also with Demeter Mycalessia, who derived her epithet "the lowing," from her cow-shape, and had her temple at Mycalessus in Bœotia. She had as door-keeper Hercules, whose office it was to shut her sanctuary in the evening, and to open it again in the morning.[89] Thus his service is identical with that of Argus, who in the morning unfastens the cow-shaped Iö, and fastens her again in the evening to the olive tree,[90] which was in the sacred grove of Mycenæ, close to the ῾Ἡραῖον.[91] The Argive Hera had, as the symbol of fertility, a pomegranate, which, as well as the flowers with which her crown was ornamented, gave her a telluric character.[92]

In the same way that in Bœotia the epithet Mycalessia, "the lowing," a derivation from μυκᾶσθαι, was given to Demeter, on account of her cow-form, so in the plain of Argos the name of Μυκῆναι, a derivative from the same verb, was given to the city most celebrated for the cultus of Hera, and this can only be explained by her cow-form. I may here mention that Μυκάλη was the name of the mount and promontory directly opposite to and in the immediate neighbourhood of the island of Samos, which was celebrated for the worship of Hera.

In consideration of this long series of proofs, certainly no one will for a moment doubt that Hera's Homeric epithet βοῶπις shows her to have been at one time represented with a cow's face, in the same way as Athena's Homeric epithet γλαυκῶπις shows this goddess to have once been represented with an owl's face. But in the history of these two epithets there are evidently three stages, in which they had different significations. In the first stage the ideal conception and the naming of the goddesses took place, and in that naming, as my esteemed friend Professor Max Müller rightly observed to me, the epithets were figurative or ideal, that is, natural. Hera (Iö), as deity of the moon, would receive her epithet βοῶπις from the symbolic horns of the crescent moon and its dark spots, which resemble a face with large eyes; whilst Athena, as goddess of the dawn, doubtless received the epithet γλαυκῶπις to indicate the light of the opening day.

In the second stage of these epithets the deities were represented by idols, in which the former figurative intention was forgotten, and the epithets were materialised into a cow-face for Hera, and into an owl-face for Athena; and I make bold to assert that it is not possible to describe such cow-faced or owl-faced female figures by any other epithets than by βοῶπις and γλαυκῶπις. The word πρόσωπον for 'face,' which is so often used in Homer, and is probably thousands of years older than the poet, is never found in compounds, whilst words with the suffix ειδης refer to expression or likeness in general. Thus, if Hera had had the epithet of βοοειδής, and Athena that of γλαυκοειδής, we should have understood nothing else but that the former had the shape and form of a cow, and the latter that of an owl.

To this second stage belong all the prehistoric ruins at Hissarlik, Tiryns, and Mycenæ.

The third stage in the history of the two epithets is when, after Hera and Athena had lost their cow and owl faces, and received the faces of women, and after the cow and the owl had become the attributes of these deities, and had, as such, been placed at their side, βοῶπις and γλαυκῶπις continued to be used as epithets consecrated by the use of ages, and probably with the meaning "large-eyed," and "owl-eyed." To this third stage belong the Homeric rhapsodies.

PLATE II.

THE WEST SIDE OF THE ACROPOLIS OF MYCENÆ.

In the background is the principal summit of Mount Eubœa, 2500 feet high, crowned with an open Chapel of the Prophet Elias. To face page 23.

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