Louis Nebelsick2016, PPT Congress Biskupin
Louis Daniel Nebelsick UKSW Warszawa Jason, Heracles, Jonah, some Ketoi and the wine red sea. Some thoughts on the iconography of resurrection in the North Italian Iron Age This presentation on the iconography of resurrection in first millennium BC Italy is based on the exegesis of a small relief on the base of an early 5th century Etruscan simpulum handle from the ostentatious mid-5th century BC Bolognese woman´s burial, the Tomba Grande de Girardini Margherita. It shows the image of a nude youth with a sheep`s fleece in hand leaping out of a monstrous bearded snake´s mouth. Initially, the interpretation of this motif follows it´s traditional interpretation as Jason escaping from the mouth of the monstrous Colchian serpent/dragon. This ladle from Etruscan Felsina can be related to a series of Etruscan and Greek images showing Jason, with Athena/Minerva´s help, being disgorged by the golden fleece´s monstrous guardian, obviously after having previously been swallowed by the giant snake. This unorthodox variant of the Jason myth, which only survives in figurative art, is found sporadically in Greek pottery and Etruscan seals from the fifth to third centuries BC but is older as it can be traced back to an image on late seventh-century Corinthian pottery. Obviously, this archaic permutation of Jason´s quest for the Golden Fleece can be seen within the context of the tangle of tales of death and resurrection that make up the surviving Argonautica narrative, particularly those ascribed to Medea´s magic cauldron, which was being shown on Etruscan funeral pottery by the second half of the 7th century. Interestingly, most surviving versions of Medea rejuvenating either Pelias, a ram or Jason, which are shown on late 6th and early 5th-century Attic pottery, come from southern Etruscan graves. In the Tomba Grande and in other Etruscan funerary contexts, Jason´s resurrection would clearly evoke the mourner’s aspirations of vanquishing death. All the more so as the Bologna Jason is shown rushing out of the dragon’s mouth youthful, vigorous and nude. The physiognomy of the monster on the Bologna simpulum however, allows for a broader exploration of this topic of heroic triumph over death. Deliberately deviating from the standardized ogival shape of a serpent’s head the pointed face and thick neck of this coiled monster closely resembles that of a ketos (Greek mythology’s whale), an ambiguity that deliberately invites the beholder to entertain a wide palate of mythological celebrations of heroic resurrection and rejuvenation. Both images and texts relate the mythical triumphs of heroes over the ferocious sea-borne emissaries of godly wrath. Perseus rescues Andromeda from the Ketos at Jaffa and Herakles saves Hesione from the sea monster before Troy. In particular, both the iconography and written reports of Herakles adventure make it clear that the Ketos’ impenetrable skin made him immune to warrior’s weapons forcing the hero to enter the monster and fatally wound him and reemerge. Interestingly in one variant of Herakles contest with the Ketos he emerges hairless as a baby. Remarkably, the earliest image of the ingestion and reemergence of a human from a sea-borne monster is shown on a cist from an early 6th-century princely tomb in East Alpine Styria, Klein-Klein Krollkogel. Whereas Greek and Etruscan Keté have a sinuous aspect the monsters shown swallowing and vomiting their human victims on Klein Klein cist 8 is clearly a fish. Other images of giant fish attacking seafarers and their ships have survived from orientalizing contexts in Etruria, making it likely that an older version of the Hero/Ketos confrontation was in circulation on the Italian peninsula before it was couched in Greek narrative and pictorial imagery. The obvious analogy for these images is the story of Jonah and the giant fish (Hebrew dag [דָּאג]). Although the Book of Jonah, as we have it, is clearly a palimpsest of legends finally crafted into one of the Bible’s most persuasive narrative masterpieces in the post-exilic period, its basic structure clearly reflects older Levantine traditions. Fascinating analogies from the Egyptian story of the shipwrecked sailor show that similar stories inevitably involving maritime monsters swallowing and rebirthing their human prey must have been circulating in the Near East as early as the 14th century BC. This article then turns to examine the context of story telling and trans-cultural communication, in which the transmission of these myths was imbedded, the symposium. Not only is the symposium itself redolent with nautical symbolism but also the wine god and his entourage are enmeshed in a maritime mythology which show surprising entanglements with the Jonah story.