Love Goddess #11: Astarte’s Pierced Nipples September 15, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient , trackback
Astarte was one of those bitter-bitter eastern Mediterranean dieties, all smiles and pubic triangles until she wanted your elder son as a human sacrifice… Her name is arguably Punic and may have meant ‘womb’, but, again, fertility and bloodshed went together spectacularly well among the Phonecians so no baby rattles or wedding showers just yet. There are literally hundreds of representations of Astarte from coins to freizes in the early centuries B.C. before the Romans outlawed her excesses and before the Greeks absorbed her into Aphrodite and Artemis. However, the most interesting representation is perhaps this statue found in the western limits of her realm in Carthaginian Spain: though the statue itself has the hallmarks of Syrian manufacture; it was certainly far travelled. This masterpiece was dug up in a necropolis at Galera in Granada and goes today by the name of the Diosa de Galera, the Goddess of Galera or sometimes the Dama de Galera, the Lady of Galera. She sits today in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid, all polished alabaster: she is widely admired. But what makes her so different from all those other mother goddess statues kicking around our museums and galleries? Quite simply it is her breasts. They are pierced: not in the sense of a girl in her late teens trying to really piss off her mother, but for religious and magical considerations… A small gap in the Dama’s head allows the introduction of milk. Small wax plugs would have been inserted in the nipple holes as blocks. Then, in a ceremony c. 500 B.C. among Punic-speaking folk, incense would be lit in the dark underground sanctuaries of the goddess and when the temperature rose to a certain level – you have to imagine a hundred and fifty candles around her and lots of sweating enthusiasts – the wax would melt and her breasts would shoot forth milk, beheld by prostrated and amazed worshippers. The priest or some favoured acolyte would then drink the milk and god help the next first born when Carthage decided to march on a snotty northern city state. He’d be dead before you could ‘Ishtar’s my uncle.’
Beach is always on the hunt for Love Goddesses: Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. Here are our earlier efforts. Astounding how often breasts feature…
Love Goddess #10: Lactating German Virtues
Love Goddess #9: Damian Hirst’s Madonna
Love Goddess #8: Simonetta Vespucci
Love Goddess #7: The I Love You Wall
Love Goddess #6: Northumberlandia
Love Goddess #5: Agnes ‘Madonna’ Sorel
Love Goddess #4: Juliet, Verona and the Invention of Love
Love Goddess #2: Lynne’s Madonna at Ely
24 Sept 2014: Louis writes ‘What I find intriguing is the fact that she is not painted. I am pretty sure that, during her tenure as the goddess of choice at Galera, she would have been painted. And in colours that we would consider garish today. Think Garden Gnome. As an archaeologist of my acquaintance once said: The garden gnome is more in line with classical\ancient art, then all those beautiful, but unpainted, marble statues in all those museums. I would be very much interested in how it was painted back then….’ Thanks, Louis for the arresting image!
