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Ritual and the cosmos: astronomy and myth in the Athenian Acropolis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2011

Efrosyni Boutsikas  and
Robert Hannah
Efrosyni Boutsikas
Affiliation:
Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NF, United Kingdom email: [email protected]
Robert Hannah
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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The paper deals with the cult of the daughters of the mythical king of Athens, Erechtheus, who lived on the Acropolis. This myth establishes the deceased daughters as goddesses who are owed cult by the Athenians. It further equates them with the Hyades, a prominent star cluster in the constellation of Taurus, which they form after their deaths. We examine here the possibility that this myth not only narrates the placement of the girls after their death in the sky in the form of the Hyades, but also may have bound the constellation to certain festivals held on the Acropolis, which through their aetiological myths were connected to the daughters of Erechtheus and in which the participation of young girls (Arrhephoroi) was important. To explicate this cult, we explore its context on the Acropolis as fully as possible, through the visual arts, the literary myth, the festival calendar, and the natural landscape and night-sky, so as to determine whether the movement of the constellation of the Hyades was indeed visible from the Acropolis during the time when the young maiden cult rites were performed on the hill.

Keywords

AthensAcropolisArrhephoroiHyades
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 7 , Symposium S278: “Oxford IX” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy , January 2011 , pp. 342 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011

References

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Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, transl. Race, W. H., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2009.Google Scholar
Aristophanes, Frogs, in Aristophanes, vol. IV, transl. Henderson, J., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2002.Google Scholar
Euripides, Bacchae, in Euripides, vol. 6, transl. Kovacs, D., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2003.Google Scholar
Euripides, Erechtheus, in Euripides, vol. 7, transl. Collard, C. & Cropp, M., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2008.Google Scholar
Hesiod, Works and Days, in Hesiod, vol. 1, transl. Most, G. W., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2007.Google Scholar
Homer, Iliad, 2 vols, transl. Murray, A. T., rev. W. F. Wyatt, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1999.Google Scholar
Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5 vols, transl. Jones, W. H. S., Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1918–35.Google Scholar
Philochoros, in Jacoby, F. (ed.), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Weidmann, Berlin, 1923–.Google Scholar
Photios, in Freese, J. H., The Library of Photius, Macmillan, New York, 1920–.Google Scholar
Scholia in Aratum vetera, ed. Martin, J., Teubner, Stuttgart, 1974.Google Scholar
Burkert, W. 1983, Homo Necans. The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
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Hurwit, J. M. 1999, The Athenian Acropolis. History, Mythology and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar