How to read rhodian orientalizing jewellery iconography? A reappraisal of the rhodian Great Goddess's hypothesis
Christian MazetReligion and Cult in the Dodecanese during the first millennium BC | International Conference | Rhodes 2018 / 18th-22th October _ University of the Aegean In his major 1978 study about rhodian orientalizing jewellery, Robert Laffineur linked jewels iconography with the female cult sphere. According to him, images of oriental inspiration as mistresses of animals, naked goddesses, winged deities, women at the window, women holding their breast, bee-women and even centaurs holding beasts were related to a Great Goddess of Nature and Fertility for which we have to restore, in Rhodes, a cult corresponding to these striking illustrations. Reassessing the inaccurate religious concept of the oriental “Great Goddess” and its improper association with Greek goddesses, I suggest that if one would see in these female images any relation to a local cult, then we should do it with the archaic cult of Athena, the major deity of the island, whose shrines are devoted to the acropolis of the three main cities, in Ialysos, Lindos and Camiros. Indeed, some findings as lenses of rock-cristal found in a votive deposit at Ialysos, dated back to the 7th century BC, or a bronze from the Lindos acropolis with the image of a mistress of birds, can be understood as probable goldsmith offerings. Another interesting research track, but anachronistic, lies in the 7th Olympic of Pindar, where technical capabilities of the Rhodians, particularly in the gold work, are connected with the goddess. With these thin clues, the rhodian Athena might be seen as the protectress of rhodian goldsmiths. Moreover, without any epigraphical proof of this archaic cult and because the adoption of an imported image does not induce in itself an assimilation of the signification (on the contrary, what characterizes the Greek Orientalizing is the ability of crafstmen and the community to integrate elements for a new purpose and functions), this hypothesis deserves to be reassessed at the light of our better understanding of the rhodian jewellery production and a renewed study of its female iconography within its archaeological contexts from which this (these)jewels belonged. We know well now jewels are first worn during life time and repaired before being buried : the last use of these images, also beyond the island, seems to be strictly related to a funerary purpose. It is therefore helpful to reconsider the way we see rhodian jewellery in rhodian archaic community’s life time and as grave goods : the wide adaptability of the iconographic repertoire allows to understand it rather for its wider apotropaic meaning than for an hypothetic aristocratic distinction.