Ro0hafz4 - Am I Lost?

Manuel Bujados (1889-1954), “La Esfera”, October 1915

What is your favorite obscure Greek mythological fact

Hm, probably the Orphic fragment that says that Persephone was born with a monstrous appearance (fragment 87 according to Athanassakis, fragment 58 in the translation of Otto Kern’s compilation of fragments at HellenicGods.org):

…"of the daughter of Zeus, whom he begat of his mother Rhea; or of Demeter, as having two eyes in the natural order, and two in her forehead, and the face of an animal on the back part of her neck, and as having also horns, so that Rhea, frightened at her monster of a child, fled from her, and did not give her the breast (θηλη), whence mystically she is called Athêlâ, but commonly Phersephoné and Koré"…

It's so totally different from all other versions that only describe her as very beautiful (as goddesses tend to be). Sometimes I regret that I didn't give my Persephone horns.

Trying to ignore or erase things like racism, patriarchal attitudes towards sexuality, antisemitism, xenophobia, ableism, etc renders a reading experience a lot less meaningful (and less interesting) than actually talking about it and confronting it. If you go into denial the moment you realize that Dracula is loaded with Victorian ethnic and sexual anxieties, what’s even the point? There isn’t much else to the book.

If you’re reading Dracula for the first time and you’re not acquainted with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s book Monster Theory: Reading Culture, try reading this excerpt and seeing how it impacts your reading of Dracula: Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

Traditional Tibetan-style house in the Indian Himalayas.

by Drowster

The Epic of Gilgamesh illustrated by Wael Tarabieh (2/2)

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth stands as one of the ancient stories that has survived the test of time and continuously appears in mainstream entertainment. Most understand that this concept began with the story of Theseus of ancient Athens and how he navigated the labyrinth and slayed the beast within, but many don’t know the inspiration of this idea.

Nearly a millennia before Classical Greece rose to the height of its power (500-350 BCE) the two leading cultures of the Aegean Sea were the Mycenaeans on the mainland and the Minoans on modern day Crete, and it is on this island that we find the labyrinthian structures of Bronze age Greece.

The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos: Plan and Sections by British archaeologist Sinclair Hood and Canadian archaeologist William E, Taylor, Jr., was published as Supplementary Volume No. 13 of The British School at Athens in 1981. It shows the archaeological remains of one of the many Minoan Palaces. Though mostly destroyed and crumbling, we can still see the complex layout of halls and rooms that twist, turn, and abruptly end. Beginning with the excavations of Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, scores of theories have been raised about the purpose of such confounding architecture, from a form of defense to a means of controlling foreign visits.  

Besides the confusing architecture, though no depictions of minotaurs were found, Minoan Palaces such as the one at Knossos did contained several pieces of art that depicted bulls. Upon further inspection, the symbol of the Bull was quite prominent throughout the ancient culture from sports, such as bull leaping, to religious sacrifice.

When looking to those who lived in the past, one should remember that we are not the only ones who inquired about archaeological remains. These ruins would’ve been seen by the Classical Greeks, but by that time their imaginations about the great Palaces and Bull iconography of the Minoan civilization was transformed into the myth of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth.

View more posts on Ancient Greece.

– LauraJean, Special Collections Undergraduate Classics Intern

kadamba style architecture

Fyodor Dostoevsky ― Crime and Punishment

“Shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years— / Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.”

— Walt Whitman, from “L. of. G’s Purport”, Leaves of Grass