The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype
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This landmark book explores the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche. Here the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.
Featuring a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, this Princeton Classics edition of The Great Mother introduces a new generation of readers to this profound and enduring work.
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The Great Mother - Erich Neumann
BOLLINGEN SERIES XLVII
ISIS
Tomb of Thutmosis IV, Thebes, XVIII Dynasty
THE GREAT MOTHER
AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHETYPE
BY
ERICH NEUMANN
Translated from the German by
RALPH MANHEIM
With a new foreword by
MARTIN LIEBSCHER
BOLLINGEN SERIES XLVII
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright 1955 © 1963 by Bollingen Foundation Inc., New York, NY;
Copyright © Renewed 1983 by Princeton University Press
New foreword by Martin Liebscher copyright © 2015 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
All Rights Reserved
press.princeton.edu
Second Edition, 1963
First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Edition, 1972
First Princeton Classics Edition, with a new foreword by Martin Liebscher, 2015
This is the forty-seventh in a series of works sponsored by Bollingen Foundation
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-691-16607-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930406
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To C. G. Jung
FRIEND AND MASTER
IN HIS EIGHTIETH YEAR
FOREWORD TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION
Bachofen is overall a treasure chest of psychological knowledge, if one understands him—his merits as an historian aside—as a modern researcher of the soul, something he himself was not aware of. For instance, as soon as you read the tellurian [= chthonic or earth centred] region as the unconscious and oppose it to the uranian region of consciousness, all of his findings—interpreted symbolically and not historically—gain a new and highly modern significance.
¹
THIS PRAISE of the Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Bachofen, whose study Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World (1861) can be seen as the foundational text of modern theories of matriarchy, was written by the German-born Jewish psychologist Erich Neumann (1905–1960). The passage originates from an unpublished manuscript on the Jakob-Esau brother motif and was written during Neumann’s first years in British Mandate Palestine, where he had migrated in 1934.
After the Nazis had seized power in Germany, Neumann, a dedicated Zionist since his youth, left Berlin with his family in the autumn of 1933 to settle in Tel-Aviv for good. He briefly interrupted his journey, until May 1934, to study with Carl Gustav Jung in Zurich. These few months not only qualified the young man, who had just finished his study of medicine and held a university degree in psychology and philosophy, to practice as a psychotherapist, but also formed the beginning of a friendship and correspondence with the Swiss psychologist that lasted until Neumann’s death.²
The above passage is significant as it shows that Neumann was acquainted with Bachofen’s thoughts on ancient mother cults long before his own major works on that theme, On the Origins and History of Consciousness (1949) and the collection of essays The Fear of the Feminine (1953), appeared. But Neumann’s main monograph on this subject is The Great Mother (1955), which is now available to a new generation of readers. The book opens with a quotation from Bachofen’s preface to The Myth of Tanaquil (1870): We must raise our aspirations to their very limit if we would not fall short of them
(p. lvi). Bachofen could not have been more accurate in regard to his own writings: though his theory of a cultural evolution, which developed from the female-dominated epochs of hetaerism and the mother right through to the male-dominated cultures of Dionysos and Apollo, was criticized and rejected by most contemporary historians, it nevertheless asserted its influence on a number of important thinkers ranging in their diversity from Friedrich Nietzsche to Friedrich Engels. But it was psychological theoreticians especially, such as Joseph Campbell and Erich Neumann, who, in the wake of C. G. Jung, tried to rescue Bachofen’s concept of an age of gynaecocracy through a psychological revision. Their attempts were solidly based on the archetypal theory of Jung, who had himself written a substantial piece on that subject entitled Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype.
Jung’s article originated from the Eranos conference of 1938, which was dedicated to The Nature and Cult of the Great Mother.
To accompany the conference, an exhibition was put together that displayed different mythological, religious, and artistic depictions of the Great Mother.³ Neumann, who had only visited Switzerland twice before the war, in 1934 and 1936, did not see the exhibition himself, but Jung sent him a copy of his contribution to the Eranos Yearbook of 1938.⁴ In his contribution Jung stayed on the surface of the archetypical cultural manifestations and concentrated mainly on their psychological implications in regard to the mother complex. Neumann, in his later study, expanded Jung’s original research through a detailed examination of the different archetypal appearances of the Great Mother in mythology and religion.
During the war, Neumann’s contact with Jung was interrupted. It was in those difficult years of isolation that Neumann wrote two of his best known works, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (1949) and On the Origins and History of Consciousness (1949). The latter already included an important chapter on the archetype of the Great Mother. According to Neumann, mankind—and this runs parallel to the psychological development of the individual child—has gradually evolved from an unconscious uroboric
⁵ state via the age of the Great Mother toward the patriarchal cultures of ego emancipation. Little surprise that Neumann’s chapter on the Great Mother opens with a reference to Bachofen: The world experienced by the waking ego of humanity is the world of J. J. Bachofen’s matriarchate with its goddesses of motherhood and destiny. The wicked, devouring mother and the good mother lavishing affection are two sides of the great uroboric Mother Goddess who reigns over this psychic state
(On the Origins and History of Consciousness, p. 39). The chapter contains Neumann’s first attempt at a thorough differentiation of the archetype on which he based his later elaborations in The Great Mother.
Jung had seen a draft version of On the Origins and History of Consciousness and recommended Neumann to Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, the Dutch organizer of the Eranos conference, who was looking for someone to write an introduction to the first Bollingen publication of material from the Eranos picture archive. The chosen topic was the archetype of the Great Mother, as there was sufficient pictorial material available from the 1938 exhibition. Fröbe-Kapteyn outlined the task in her letter to Neumann of 30 October 1947: Even before the war, the Bollingen Foundation planned to publish a series of publications from the Eranos picture archive. They will each consist of around 100 images in large format with a foreword. All images of each volume must relate to a single archetype or primitive image. I have proposed that we commence with the archetype of the Great Mother.
⁶ Neumann accepted the proposal, which also included financial support from the Bollingen Foundation, but instead of providing an introduction to a catalogue of images he wrote a book in its own right, illustrated with the images. He finished the manuscript in 1951 and the book was published in the Bollingen Series in 1955.
Neumann’s The Great Mother provided a watershed moment in the way archetypal studies would be conducted. There was certainly no shortage of monographs on archetypal material in Jungian circles at the time, but none of these could compete with the minute detail and careful structuring of Neumann’s examination of the Great Mother archetype. But what was true for Bachofen—that one needs to aim for the highest goal to achieve at least the minimum—can also be said for Neumann. The 1960s saw a rise of skeptical studies by archaeologists who questioned the existence of an ancient Great Mother cult. Though there was a brief revival of the theory when Maria Gimbutas’s The Language of the Goddess came out in 1989, most archaeological scholars today agree that there is no evidence for ancient worship of the Great Mother goddess, and that it was to a great extent a creation of nineteenth- and twentieth-century academics from Bachofen via Jung, Campbell, and Neumann to Gimbutas.⁷
It is therefore important today to read Neumann’s study not as a contribution to a failed archaeological theory of an ancient cult of the Goddess, but as an exemplary study of archetypal psychology. Similar to Neumann’s psychological re-evaluation of Bachofen’s theory, the text speaks to us through the amplification of the archetypal material⁸ and helps to explain the primal fears and protective characteristics that are attributed to the Great Mother. Such a polarity of the projection of male fantasies is not only linked with Jung’s anima theory but also finds parallels in Otto Weininger’s dichotomy of the holy mother Maria and the Greek hetaera (1903) or in Sigmund Freud’s concept of castration anxiety and the description of the male neurotic in On the Universal Tendency of Debasement in the Sphere of Love
(1912). But male anxiety and projective fantasies were not of interest only to depth-psychology. In his study on masochism, Cold and Cruelty
(1967), the anti-Freudian philosopher Gilles Deleuze returns to Bachofen’s evolutionary model of matriarchy. Though Neumann is not explicitly mentioned, his psychological and archetypal re-evaluation of Bachofen can be recognized in Deleuze’s differentiation of the uterine, the oedipal, and the oral mother.
Neumann did not live to see the publication of Deleuze’s study. He died unexpectedly on 5 November 1960, almost seven months before the death of his friend and teacher C. G. Jung. During his final years Neumann was well aware that The Great Mother told only one side of the story, and he had plans to complement the study with a volume on the female psychology of the Great Mother: As the female psychology is different from the male psychology the stage development of consciousness, which has determined the occidental formation of consciousness of both man and woman, does not suffice to understand the female psychology. For that reason any attempt to examine the psychology of the feminine in the patriarchy, has to orientate itself on a specific female development…
⁹ His last lecture at the Psychological Club Zurich on 10 October 1959, entitled The Fear of the Masculine,
was such an attempt to engage with the female psychology, but due to his early death, he did not have time to elaborate on this topic in the way he had done for the male psychology in The Great Mother.
Martin Liebscher
¹ Erich Neumann: Contributions to the symbolism of the Jacob and Esau opposition,
part II: On the collective symbolism of the brother motive,
unpublished manuscript [Neumann Papers, Jerusalem].
² See Analytical Psychology in Exile. The Jung-Neumann Correspondence, edited and introduced by Martin Liebscher, translated by Heather McCartney, The Philemon Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
³ This would mark the beginning of the Eranos picture archive, which was later transferred to the Warburg Institute in London and formed the basis of The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) in New York.
⁴ Carl Gustav Jung: Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,
Collected Works IX/1, pp. 75–110.
⁵ On the Uroboros see chapter 2.
⁶ Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn to Erich Neumann, 30 October 1947 [Neumann papers].
⁷ Lucy Goodison & Christine Morris, (eds.): Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence (London: British Museum Press, 1998).
⁸ See page 13.
⁹ Neumann’s summary of his lecture of 7 October 1950 in the Psychological Club Zurich entitled Towards a Psychology of the Feminine in the Patriarchy,
Jahresbericht 1950, ed. Psychological Club Zurich, p. 28. An extended version of the lecture was published as The Psychological Stages of Woman’s Development
in 1953.
FOREWORD
SOME years ago Professor C. G. Jung and Mrs. Olga Froebe-Kapteyn suggested that I write an introduction to the first publication of material from the Eranos Archive for Symbolic Research in Ascona, Switzerland—a volume devoted to the manifestations, in art and culture, of the Great Mother archetype.
In founding the Eranos Archive Mrs. Froebe has taken the lead in the important task of tracking down, collecting, and arranging examples of archetypal material that has found its creative expression in art.
I am deeply grateful not only for the original suggestion but also for Mrs. Froebe’s generous consent to my enlargement of her original plan. For it soon became clear that the work was undergoing a transformation in my hands, and that for me the written text, an exposition of the Archetypal Feminine, was assuming paramount importance. The reproductions from the Eranos Archive had become illustrations to this text. These represent perhaps half the pictorial material of the present volume, having been supplemented by many more examples.
Yet it should not be thought that the pictures merely provided the first spark of inspiration; throughout my work on this book they held the center of my interest and determined the whole content and rhythm of my thinking. In this sense the book, even in its present form, may be regarded wholly as a presentation of the Eranos Archive.
I wish to thank the Bollingen Foundation for making possible not only the writing of this book but also its translation into English. I owe personal thanks to the editorial staff of Bollingen Series, particularly for supplying most of the picture sources and other reference apparatus. To Mr. Ralph Manheim I owe special thanks for his care and skill in making the translation. A number of persons who have helped me in composing and revising my text have wished to remain unnamed. I should like here to express my thanks to them all.
E. N.
Tel Aviv, 1952; October, 1954
NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Acknowledgment of the sources of the plates is made as fully as possible in the List of Plates. Every effort has been made by the publishers to locate the source of each photograph reproduced and to give due credit, but in a number of instances this has not been possible. The publishers and the author wish to express their appreciation for the use of all of the illustrative material. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers and others for the reproduction of illustrations or for permission to quote:
Allen and Unwin, London, for passages from Briffault, The Mothers; American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, for passages from The Poetic Edda; British School of Archaeology at Athens, for a figure from its Annual, Vol. VII; Cahiers d’Art, Paris, for plates from Zervos, La Civilization de la Sardaigne and L’Art en Grèce; Cambridge University Press for a figure from Harrison, Themis; Chatto and Windus, London, for passages and a figure from Layard, The Stone Men of Malekula; Dodd, Mead and Co., New York, for a figure from Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture; Faber and Faber, London, and the Czechoslovak Theatrical and Literary Agency, Prague, for a passage from Karel Čapek; Folkwang-Verlag, Hagen, Germany, for illustrations from Danzel, Mexiko, and Fuhrmann, Peru II; W. de Gruyter and Co., Berlin, for figures from Ermann, Die Religion der Ägypter; Harvard University Press, for passages from the Homeric Hymns in the Loeb Classical Library; J. C. Hinrichs Verlag, Leipzig, for an illustration from Der Alte Orient; H. Keller Verlag, Berlin, for an illustration from Deubner, Attische Feste; Alfred A. Knopf, New York, for a figure from Glotz, The Aegean Civilization; Kungliga Vitterhetshistorieoch Antikvites Akademia, Stockholm, for a plate from Roosval, Die Steinmeister Gotlands; Macmillan and Co., London, for figures from various works of Sir Arthur J. Evans; Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, for extracts from the Rouse translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey; Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich, for illustrations from Leicht, Indianische Kunst, and for our plate 82a; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, for passages and figures from Piggott, Prehistoric India; E. Pfeiffer Verlag, Leipzig, for a plate from Benzinger, Hebräische Archäologie; Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, for an illustration from Sarzec’s work on Chaldea; Princeton University Press, for passages from Ancient Near Eastern Texts; Putnam and Co., London, for a passage and a plate from Oppenheim, Tell Halaf; Anton Schroll and Co., Vienna, for figures from Hoernes, Urgeschichte der bildenden Kunst; B. Schwabe and Co., Basel, for figures from Mode, Indische Frühkulturen; Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, and Macmillan, London, for a poem by George Meredith; Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, for a figure from Allen, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland; J. Springer Verlag, Berlin, for illustrations from Prinzhorn, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken; Stanford University Press and Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, London, for figures from Morley, The Ancient Maya; Editions Tel,
Paris, for our plates 136, 137, and 160, from the Encyclopedie photographique; Thames and Hudson, New York and London, for an illustration from Leenhardt, Arts of the Oceanic Peoples; Verlag Ullstein (Propyläen-Verlag), Berlin, for illustrations from Glaser, Gotische Holzschnitte, Holländer, Aeskulap und Venus, and Schäfer and Andrae, Die Kunst des Alten Orients; Mr. Philip Wayne, for a passage translated from Goethe.
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
For the present edition, the references and bibliography as well as some of the quotations have been revised in order to bring them into accord with the English translations of works by Erich Neumann and by C. G. Jung which have been issued since 1955. Other corrections of a minor nature have been made in the text and captions. It was the author’s wish that the motto from J. J. Bachofen be added at the beginning of Part I.
CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES
While about half of the plates were originally chosen from the pictures in the Eranos Archive, many have been replaced by technically more satisfactory photographs obtained from museums, professional photographers, etc. (The abbreviation P means photograph.
) Where original Eranos Archive pictures have been reproduced, the actual photographic source is given if known; every effort has been made to trace the original source and to make proper acknowledgment. Full references to books and articles are given in the Bibliography of this volume.
Frontispiece. Isis
Egypt, Tomb of Thutmosis IV, Thebes, XVIII Dynasty, XV century B.C.
P: A. Gaddis, Luxor
1a. Venus of Willendorf
Limestone, found near Krems, Austria, paleolithic (Aurignacian)
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. P: Museum
1b. Venus of Menton
Soapstone, France, paleolithic (Aurignacian)
Musée des antiquités nationales, St-Germain-en-Laye. P: Charles Hurault
1c. Venus of Lespugne
Ivory, Haute Garonne, France, paleolithic (Aurignacian)
Musée de l’Homme, Paris. P: Museum
2. Venus of Laussel
Limestone relief, Dordogne, France, paleolithic (Aurignacian)
Prehistoric Section, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. P: Unknown source
3. Sleeping Woman
Clay figurine, Malta, neolithic
Valletta Museum, Malta. P: From Luigi Ugolini, in Dedalo (Milan, Rome), XII, fasc. 7 (Aug., 1932), pp. 557, 578
4. Isis with the King
Egypt, Temple of Seti I, Abydos, XIX Dynasty, XIV–XIII century B.C.
P: Unknown source
5. Henry Moore: Madonna and Child
Bronze, maquette (height 7 in.) for a statue at Clayden, England, 1943
Private collection. P: Courtesy of the sculptor
6. Goddess
Clay, Thrace (Bulgaria), neolithic
Sofia Museum. P: Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, of a cast in that Museum
7a. Female figurine
Terra cotta, Peru, pre-Columbian
Gaffron Collection, Art Institute of Chicago. Drawing from Holländer, Aeskulap und Venus, p. 164
7b. Drawing by a psychotic
Germany, XX century
Collection of the Psychiatrische Klinik, Heidelberg. From Prinzhorn, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, p. 92, fig. 45
8. Goddesses
Clay, Cyprus, c. 2500 B.C.
British Museum, P: Museum
9. Fragments of figures of the goddess Beltis
Stone, Susa (Iran), VII century B.C.
P: From Holländer, Aeskulap und Venus, p. 206
10–11. Goddesses
Terra cotta, Mesopotamia, c. XXIV century B.C.
Louvre, P: Archives photographiques
12a. Goddess
Lead, Troy, burned city,
III stratum; probably imported from Mesopotamia
Formerly in the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin (lost in the Second World War)
P: From Schmidt, Schliemann’s Sammlung Trojanischer Altertümer, p. 255, courtesy of the Museum
12b. Astarte
Gold, repoussé plaque, Ras Shamra, Syria, c. XIII century B.C.
P: From Syria, Revue d’art oriental et d’archéologie (Paris), X (1929), Pl. LIV, fig. 2
13. Goddess
Terra cotta, from a cave near Lapethos, Crete
British Museum. P: Courtesy of V. C. C. Collum
14. Goddess
Terra cotta, Sidon, Phoenicia, probably c. 2500 B.C.
Louvre. P: Museum
15. Mother goddesses
Clay, India, 1000–300 B.C.
Curzon Museum, Muttra. P: Museum
16. Female figurines
Terra cotta, Ur, c. 3000 B.C.
British Museum. P: Museum
17. Female figurine
Terra cotta, perhaps Egypt, c. 2000 B.C.
Louvre. P: Museum
18. Head
Bronze, Benin, Nigeria
British Museum. P: Museum
19. Head
Bronze, Benin, Nigeria
Pitt-Rivers Museum, Farnham, England. P: John Harris, Bournemouth
20. Goddess
Clay, Kličevac, Yugoslavia, Bronze Age
Formerly in National Museum, Belgrade (lost in First World War). P: Museum, from Ebert, Reallexikon, Vol. VI, Pl. II
21. Fertility goddess
Clay, glazed and incised, Cyprus, c. 2500–2000 B.C.
Louvre. P: Unknown source
22. Female figure
Stone, St.-Sernin, southern France, perhaps late neolithic
Archaeological Museum, Rodez, France, P: From Revue anthropologique (Paris), XLI (1938), p. 348, fig. 27
23. Female figurines
Stone, Cyclades, Aegean Islands, c. 2500 B.C.
British Museum. P: Museum
24. Female figurines
Marble, Amorgos, Cyclades, Aegean Islands, c. 2500 B.C.
National Museum, Athens. P: Alison Frantz, American School of Classical Studies, Athens
25. Female figure
Clay, from an Egyptian grave, predynastic
Staatliche Museen, Berlin. Drawing from Holländer, Aeskulap und Venus, p. 165
26. Female figurines with upraised arms
Terra cotta, Egypt, predynastic
a, b: Brooklyn Museum; c: British Museum. P: Museums
27a. Effigy vessel
Terra cotta, Troy, iv stratum
Drawing from Hoernes, Urgeschichte, p. 361, fig. 8
27b. Mother goddesses
Clay, Crete, Minoan period
P: From Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts (Berlin), LI (1936), figs. 5, 6 (pp. 225, 226)
28a. Goddess within urn
Terra cotta, Palace at Knossos, Crete, late Minoan period
Drawing from Evans, Palace of Minos, Vol. II, Pt. 1, fig. 63
28b. Effigy vessel
Painted terra cotta, Mallia, Crete, early Minoan III period
P: From Picard, Die Grosse Mutter,
Eranos Jahrbuch 1938, p. 98, fig. 3
29. Earth
Detail from an Exultet Roll (MS. Add. 30337) illuminated at the Abbey of Monte Cassino, 1070–1100
British Museum. P: Museum
30a. Painting by a psychotic
Watercolor, Germany, XX century
Collection of the Psychiatrische Klinik, Heidelberg. From Prinzhorn, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, p. 245
30b. Child’s drawing
Israel, contemporary
Author’s collection
THE POSITIVE ELEMENTARY CHARACTER
31a. Female cult figure
Clay, Prussia, IX–VII century B.C.
Formerly in the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin (lost in the Second World War). P: Museum
31b. Effigy vessel
Clay, Tlukom, Poland (former Prussia), 750–400 B.C.
Formerly in the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin (lost in the Second World War). Drawing courtesy of the Museum
32. Mother and child
Terra cotta, Cyprus, 1900–1700 B.C.
Louvre, P: Archives photographiques
33a. Effigy vessels: vase women
Terra cotta, Cyprus, respectively XII, X–VIII, and VI century B.C.
Louvre, P: Archives photographiques
33b. Rain goddess, with weather god in chariot
Impression from shell cylinder seal, southern Mesopotamia, Akkad period
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. (Cf. Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, Vol. I, fig. 220.) P: Library
34. Four-breasted vessel
Terra cotta, Trujillo, Peru, Chimu culture (pre-Columbian)
Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. P: Museum
35. Diana of Ephesus
Alabaster and bronze, Rome, II century A.D.
Museo Nazionale, Naples. P: Anderson
36. The goddess Nut
Painted ceiling relief, Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt, Roman period
P: Unknown source
37. Goddess, holding child, on lion
Bronze, Hittite, northern Mesopotamia, c. 1500 B.C.
Collection of Near Eastern Antiquities, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. P: Museum
38. Isis with Horus
Copper, Egypt, c. 2040–1700 B.C.
Egyptian Section, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. P: Courtesy of the Museum
39. Mother and child
Wood, probably Belgian Congo
Formerly in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. P: Museum
40. Mother and child
Effigy vessel, Peru, Chimu culture (pre-Columbian)
Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. P: Museum
41. Mother and child
Effigy vessel, Peru, Inca culture (pre-Columbian)
Gaffron Collection, Art Institute of Chicago. P: Courtesy of the Institute
42. Mother and child
Wood, Yoruba tribe, Nigeria
Horniman Museum, London. P: Layton, London, copyright by the London County Council
43. Mother and child
Priest’s staff, wood, Yoruba tribe, Nigeria.
Collection of René d’Harnoncourt, New York, P: Soichi Sunami, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
44. Isis-Hathor, suckling Horus
Bronze, Egypt, VIII–VI century B.C.
Louvre. P: Vizzavona, Paris
45. Celtic mother goddess
Stone, II century A.D.
Museum Carolino-Augusteum, Salzburg. P: Unknown source
46. Goddess with young god
Bronze, San Vittorio de Serri, Sardinia, prehistoric
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Caligari. P: From Zervos, La Civilization de la Sardaigne, Pl. 455
47. Goddess with dead young god
Bronze, near Urzulei, Sardinia, prehistoric
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Caligari. P: From Zervos, La Civilization de la Sardaigne, Pl. 459
48. Baubo figures
Terra cotta, Priene, Asia Minor, V century B.C.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. P: Unknown source
49. Goddess
Alabaster, Parthian, c. I–II century A.D.
Louvre. P: Giraudon
50. The earth goddess Tlazolteotl
Aztec, Codex Borbonicus, fol. 13, date unknown
Chambre des Députés, Paris. Drawing from Danzel, Mexiko, Vol. I, Pl. 37b
51. Hecate-Artemis as whelping bitch
Black stone scaraboid seal, archaic Ionian style
Collection of Dr. Rudolph Reitler, Haifa. P: Courtesy of the owner
52. Winged goddess
Terra cotta, Mexico (Colima complex), pre-Columbian
Collection of Mrs. Henry Moore, P: Courtesy of Mrs. Moore and Curt Valentin
53. Female figure
Red clay, Ixtlán de Rio, near Tepic, Mexico, pre-Columbian Museum für Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte, Hamburg. P: Museum
54. The nude goddess
Impressions of cylinder seals, hematite (except c, green jasper). a–c, Babylon, I Dynasty; d–g, Syria, c. 1450 B.C.
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. (Cf. Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, Vol. I, resp. figs. 504, 503, 505, 944 [here reversed], 945 [here reversed], 946, 937.) P: Library
55a. Enthroned nude figure
Terra cotta, Sanctuary of Delphi, perhaps prehistoric
Delphi Museum. P: From Fouilles de Delphe, Vol. V (Paris, 1908), fig. 60, p. 14
55b. Vessel: female figure with snake
Terra cotta, red glaze, from a tomb at Kournasa, Crete, early Minoan II period
P: From Evans, Palace of Minos, Vol. IV, Pt. 1, fig. 121, p. 163
56. Snake goddess
Faïence, Palace at Knossos, Crete, middle Minoan III period
Candia Museum. P: British Museum, from a restored cast in its possession
57. Alchemical vessel
Codex Pluto 89, sup. 35, fol. 20b, XIII century
Biblioteca Medicea Laurentiana, Florence. P: Unknown source
58. Snake goddess
Terra cotta, Greece, VI century B.C.
Museum Antiker Kleinkunst, Munich. P: Unknown source
59. Atargatis, or Dea Syria
Bronze, Rome
Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome. P: Alinari
60. Ceres
Terra-cotta relief, Hellenic, Magna Graecia
Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome. P: Anderson
61. Ceremony in honor of Ceres
Fresco, Pompeii
Museo Nazionale, Naples. P: Alinari
62. The Triumph of Venus
Painting on a dodecagonal tray, School of Verona, early XV century Louvre.
P: Museum
63. Siren as incubus
Hellenistic relief
Present location unknown. P: From Schreiber, Hellenistische Reliefbilder, Vol. II, Pl. 61
THE NEGATIVE ELEMENTARY CHARACTER
64. The goddess Rati
Painted wood, Bali, XIX century
Von der Heydt Collection, Rietberg Museum, Zurich. P: Kunstgewerbemuseum, Zurich
65. Kali dancing on Shiva
Painted clay, India, modern period
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. P: Unknown source
66. Kali the devourer
Copper casting, northern India, XVII–XVIII century
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. P: Unknown source
67. Kali
Copper casting, southern India, XIX century
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. P: Museum
68. The earth goddess Coatlicue
Stone, Aztec, pre-Columbian
Museo Nacional de Mexico, Mexico City. P: Museum
69. Coatlicue with serpent skirt
Stone, Aztec, pre-Columbian
Museo Nacional de Mexico, Mexico City. P: Eliot Elisofon
70. Gorgon
Marble relief, Temple of Artemis, Corfu, early archaic style, c. VI century B.C.
Museum of Corfu. P: From Zervos, L’Art en Grèce, Pl. 142
71. Rangda stealing children
Watercolor by a modern Balinese
Museum für Völkerkunde, Basel. P: Museum
72. Ta-urt
Green schist, Thebes, XXVI Dynasty
Cairo Museum. P: From Schäfer and Andrae, Die Kunst des Alten Orients, Pl. XXII
73a, b. The winged gate
Impressions of cylinder seals, dolomite or slate-olive serpentine, Akkad, c. 3000–2500 B.C.
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. (Cf. Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals. Vol. I, figs. 224, 233.) P: Library
73c. Byre with emerging calves
Khafaje, Mesopotamia, before 3000 B.C.
Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. (Cf. Levy, The Gate of Horn, Pl. 10a.) P: Institute
74. Libations before the king (above) and before the door of the shrine (below)
Limestone relief, Ur, Lagashite period, c. 3000 B.C.
British Museum. P: Museum
75a. Hermes as psychopomp, summoning souls of the dead
Detail of a terra-cotta lekythos, Attic
Universitäts-Museum, Jena. P: From Deubner, Attische Feste, Pl. 8, fig. 2
75b. Ancestral figure
Decorated skull, Nuku Hiva, Marquesas Islands
Collection Dumoutier. P: Emmanuel Sougez from Leenhardt, Arts of the Oceanic Peoples, fig. 82
76. Sacrificial blood bowl: earth toad
Stone, Mexico, pre-Columbian
Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. P: From Danzel, Mexiko, Vol. III, Pl. 90
77. The Land of the Dead
Aztec, Codex Borgia, fol. 26
Museo Borgiano, Vatican. Drawing from Danzel, Mexiko, Vol. I, Pl. 54
78. Headrest
Wood, Manyema tribe, Belgian Congo
Museum für Völkerkunde, Frankfort on the Main. P: Museum
79. Sky God in the jaws of the Earth Monster
Relief on a sandstone monolith, Mayan, Quirigua, Guatemala, VIII century A.D.
P: British Museum
80. Gorgon, flanked by lions
Fragment of a bronze relief from a chariot, Perugia, VI century B.C.
Museum Antiker Kleinkunst, Munich. P: Unknown source
81. Souls in the jaws of hell
Detail of wooden choir stall, France (?), medieval (details unavailable)
P: Unknown source
82a. Owl god, with headdress of crescents over stepped pyramids
Clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Bässler Collection, Staatliche Museen (?), Berlin. P: Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich
82b. Snail god
Clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Museum für Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte, Hamburg. P: Museum
83a. Sea crab with star god
Clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. P: Museum
83b. Sea crab with star god
Clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Formerly in Museum für Völkerkunde, Frankfort on the Main (destroyed during the Second World War). P: Unknown source
84a. Serpents strangling (?) the star god
Clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Museum für Völkerkunde und Vorgeschichte, Hamburg. P: From Fuhrmann, Peru II, Pl. 74
84b. Gorgon goddess with snakes
Clay pitcher, Peru, Chimu-infiuenced culture, pre-Columbian
Ethnological Collection, Zurich University. P: From Leicht, Indianische Kunst, p. 243, fig. 6
84c. Crab goddess giving birth
Painted clay vessel, Peru, Chimu culture, pre-Columbian
Formerly in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Frankfort on the Main (destroyed in the Second World War). P: From Fuhrmann, Peru II, Pl. 95
85. The solar barge passing into the mountain of the west
Detail from an Egyptian papyrus (?)
P: Drawing from Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 197
86. Female figurines
Clay, Aztec, central Mexico, lower middle culture
American Museum of Natural History, New York. P: Courtesy of the Museum
THE GREAT ROUND
87. Goddess
Alabaster figure with shell and lapis-lazuli eyes, Temple of Ishtar, Mari, Syria, c. 3000 B.C.
Aleppo Museum. P: From Syria, Revue d’Art Oriental et d’Archéologie, 1935, Pl. 10, fig. 1, following p. 26
88. Funerary figure
Basalt, Tell Halaf, Mesopotamia, IX century B.C.
Institut für Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde, Freie Universität, Berlin. P: F. Paul Mann, Berlin
89. Veiled sphinx
Stone, Tell Halaf, Mesopotamia, IX century B.C.
Institut für Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde, Freie Universität, Berlin. P: From Oppenheim, Tell Halaf, Pl. XI
90. Painted sarcophagus: a. Exterior: portrait of the deceased b. Interior: the goddess Nut
Wood, Thebes, II century A.D.
British Museum. P: Museum
91a. The goddess Nut-Naunet
Interior painting of sarcophagus, Egypt, XXI Dynasty
Aegyptologisches Institut, University of Heidelberg. P: H. Wagner, Heidelberg
91b. The goddess Nut
Interior painting of sarcophagus, Egypt
British Museum. P: Museum
92. The goddess Nut
Lid of sarcophagus of Uresh-Nofer, priest of the goddess, gray diorite, Egypt, XXX Dynasty, 378–341 B.C.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. P: Unknown source
93. Zodiac
Sandstone relief, Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt, Roman period
Louvre. P: Unknown source
94. Pietà
Italian, XIV century
Museo cristiano, Vatican. P: Unknown source
95. Jacob Epstein: The Night
Portland stone, London Transport Executive Building, 1929
P: Picture Post Library, London
96. Annunciation
Fragment of a fresco, Church of Sorpe, Spain, XII century
Museo de Arte de Cataluña, Barcelona, P: Museum
97. The Virgin Mary
Painting, Upper Rhenish Master, Germany, c. 1400
Formerly in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin. P: Museum
98. Wheel of life
Painting, Tibet
Collection of Theos Bernard, New York. P: Unknown source
99. The wheel of Mother Nature
Page from a French manuscript (details unavailable)
Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. P: Unknown source
100. Lamp with Gorgon head
Bronze, Etruscan, 475–400 B.C.
Museum, Cortona, Italy. P: Alinari
101a. Three goddesses
Impression of black serpentine cylinder seal, southern Mesopotamia, Akkad period
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. (Cf. Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, Vol. I, fig. 234E.) P: Library
101b. The Eumenides
Limestone relief, removed from the plaster of a church east of Argos, Greece
Argos Museum. P: From Mitteilungen des kaiserlichen archäologischen Instituts in Athen, IV (1879), Pl. 9
THE LADY OF THE PLANTS
102. Veneration of the tree goddess
Limestone stele, Egypt, XVIII Dynasty
Kestner Museum, Hanover. P: Atelier Eidenbenz, Basel
103. Nut as tree goddess, with the sun disk
Bronze vessel, Egypt, Saïte period, 663–525 B.C.
Louvre. P: Museum
104. Bernardino Luini (c. 1475-c. 1532): The Birth of Adonis
Detail of a fresco, Lombard School
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. P: Alinari
105. Primitive tree burial
Wagogo tribe, Tanganyika
Drawing (c. 1880) from Becker, La Vie en Afrique, Vol. I, facing p. 156
106. The Origin of the Lingam
Stone, South India, XIII century
Musée Guimet, Paris. P: Museum
107. Lingam revealing the goddess
Stone, Cambodia, XIV century
Musée Guimet, Paris. P: Museum
108a. Sun and moon tree
Impression of black serpentine cylinder seal, Assyria
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. (Cf. Porada and Buchanan, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals, Vol. I, fig. 640E.) P: Library
108b. Year tree, with the twelve zodiac animals
Teak and porcelain, China
Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna. P: Museum
109. Tree of the dead
Wood, China
Formerly in Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin (destroyed by fire, 1945). P: Museum
110. Alchemical tree
From MS. L. IV, 1, fol. 263, XVI century (perhaps a draft of Hieronymus Reusner, Pandora, Basel, 1582)
Universitätsbibliothek, Basel. P: Bibliothek
111. Tree of vice
Page from MS. Pal. Lat. 565 (Peregrinus, Speculum Virginium seu Dialogus cum Theodora virgine), XIII century
Vatican Library. P: Unknown source
112. Matron stone
Sculptured relief, Roman, Cathedral, Bonn
Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn. P: Museum
113. Baptismal font
Sandstone, sculptured by Majestatis,
Gotland, XII century
Drawing from Roosval, Die Steinmeister Gotlands, Pl. 44
114. Christ as a cluster of grapes
Sculptured detail of church door, Castle of Valére, Sion, Switzerland, XIII century
P: Unknown source
115. The Chalice of Antioch
Silver, covered with gold leaf, I–IV century
The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. P: Giraudon
116. Giovanni da Modena (fl. 1420–51?): The Restitution of the Mystic Apple to the Tree of Knowledge
Fresco, Church of St. Petronio, Bologna
P: A. Villani, Bologna
117a. Cross of Sts. Patrick and Columba
Stone, Kells, County Meath, Ireland, X century
P: Thomas H. Mason, Dublin
117b. Cross of Graiguenamanagh
Stone, County Kilkenny, Ireland, perhaps IX century
P: Thomas H. Mason, Dublin
118. Madonna as ship
Miniature from a psalter, Yugoslavia (details unavailable)
Formerly National Library, Belgrade. P: Unknown source
119. Christ asleep in a ship
Miniature (fol. 22) from the Perikopenbuch, a lectionary, Salzburg, XI century
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. P: Miniaturen des frühen Mittelalters, Pl. 12, p. 19.
120. Ship with the Cross as mast
Page from the Codex Palatinus Latinus 412, fol. 69r (Wynandus de Stega, Adamas colluctancium aquilarum), XV century
Vatican Library. P: Unknown source
121. Libation to vessel with branches, and seated goddess
Stone relief, Lagash, Sumer, c. 3000 B.C.
Louvre. P: Coppola
THE LADY OF THE BEASTS
122. Goddess with child
Terra cotta, Boeotia, archaic