Animals, Gods and Humans - Chapter 5 potx

Althoughthe Romans did not worship any gods in animal shapes, in the first centuries CE, animals swarmed on to the religious scene of the Graeco-Roman worldKötting 1964; Isager 1992.. Al

Animals on the religious scene

Religions flourished during the imperial age: as traditional religionsthrived, foreign religions were imported and new cults invented Althoughthe Romans did not worship any gods in animal shapes, in the first centuries

CE, animals swarmed on to the religious scene of the Graeco-Roman world(Kötting 1964; Isager 1992)

Sacred animals were kept in the vicinity of temples and used as a source

of income, for sacrifices or as symbols for a god At some temples, there wereparks with different species of animal, as Lucian reports from the temple of

Atargatis in Hierapolis (The Syrian Goddess, 41) Fish with golden ornaments swam in the temple lakes, well fed and marvelled at by onlookers (ibid.).

Pachomius, who initiated the monastic movement in Egypt, as a child wastaken by his parents to the Nile to sacrifice to the creatures in the waters, tothe Lates fish, which was held to be sacred in the region where he lived(Frankfurter 1998: 62–3) Dogs and serpents were present in the temple ofAsclepius in Epidaurus, and Alexander of Abonouteichos even introduced aliving serpent with an artificial human head as “the new Asclepius” in a cult

that seems to have been a great success (c 170 CE) In Egypt, sacredcrocodiles, cats, ibises and other species were venerated by the natives andvisited by tourists In a depiction of a procession in honour of the goddessIsis in Rome, one of the priestesses has an asp coiled around her arm, while

in a wall painting from Pompeii showing ceremonies to Isis that includebetween thirty and forty people, two ibises are placed in the foreground.What did these non-sacrificial animals signify?

Some of the meanings and hermeneutic mechanisms behind the religioususe of animals can be glimpsed in Apuleius’ description of a religiousprocession at Cenchreae in Greece The procession was held in the spring in

honour of Isis (The Golden Ass, 11.8–11) Its purpose was the launch of the

first ship of the year, which marked the opening of the sailing season In theGraeco-Roman world, processions were standard when religious festivalswere celebrated, and as in Apuleius’ novel, they included animals, mostly forsacrifice but sometimes also for festive purposes

T H E R E L I G I O U S VA L U E O F

A N I M A L S

In Apuleius’ account, the procession starts in a carnival-like way withpeople decked out in various costumes One man is clad in a soldier’s outfit,another is dressed as a hunter, and yet another walks by in women’sclothing; a gladiator, a magistrate, a philosopher, a fowler and a fishermanalso appear In addition to these, a tame bear is carried on a portable chair,clad as a matron; an ape goes by dressed as Ganymede with a gold cup in hishand; while in an allusion to Pegasus and Bellerophon, an ass with wingsglued to its back trots along, accompanied by an old man.1After these ludi-crous figures comes a special procession of women devotees of the goddess.There are musicians, a choir of youths, and men and women who have beeninitiated into the cult of Isis Next to them walk priests, brightly clad inwhite linen, carrying the special symbols of the goddess Finally, the godsthemselves arrive: Anubis with the head of a jackal is painted partly black,partly gilded, and is followed by the statue of a cow – an image of thegoddess Hathor – which is carried on the shoulders of a priest After thesemore priests walk by, carrying the symbols of the mysteries of Isis hidden in

a basket The symbol of Isis, which is shown to the spectators, is a goldvessel, the handle of which is an asp with swelling neck and twisting coils

(vipera aspis).

These animals play different roles Those in front belong to the carnivalpart of the procession, and their function is mainly to raise a laugh Thebear, the ape and the ass play the roles of humans or appear as mythologicalillustrations, but they do so in a comic way The animals at the rearsymbolize gods – the jackal-headed Anubis, Hathor in the form of a cow,and the asp of Isis These last-mentioned figures are thus not real beasts butimages of beasts referring to gods

The animal nature of these creatures is striking and significant At oneand the same time, it points away from itself and is mingled with humanityand even with divinity In fact, the animals in the procession either do notbehave like animals or are not real animals at all This characteristic –animality suspended and reinterpreted – is typical rather than peculiar whenanimals or images of animals appear in religious settings Thus the religioussignificance of these animals does not lie primarily in their inherent animalnature but in that to which it gives added meaning There is a synergeticeffect between the actual animal and the being with which the animal iscombined or connected – be it a human or a god

The theme of this chapter is to offer a survey of the role played by animals

in some of the religions of the empire How was their presence experienced?What did it mean? We have already pointed out the great variety of animalsand their roles and functions, and the difference between real animals andimages of animals In the following section, various interpretations of therole of animals will be commented upon

Initially, it is important to stress that the type of connection madebetween the divine and the bestial varied: animals either partook in the

divine, appeared as symbols, were attributes of divinities or were used asinstruments These four types of relationship between animals and godsvaried regionally, depending on the different cultures and religions of theempire Although the instrumental use of animals in sacrifices was generallywidespread in Mediterranean cultures, the three other types of relationshipwere more characteristic of some cultural areas than of others.2

I suggest that the direct participation of animals in the divine that wasaccompanied by a cult of animals and implied veneration of a god in animalform was typical of Egyptian culture, while the symbolic and metaphoricaluse of animals was typical of the mystery cults, including Christianity, and

in Greek and Roman religions, animals were predominantly used to signifythe attributes of gods

Divine animals and their worship – the case of Egypt

The procession described by Apuleius was in honour of Isis, and it is nocoincidence that this Egyptian goddess had animals in her entourage Egypthad a rich and diverse fauna, which for more than four millennia had beenabundantly illustrated on wall paintings and depicted in statues and onpapyri (see especially Houlihan 1996, 2002) These animals were depictedrealistically in their natural habitat or cooperating with humans In addi-tion, a wide range of animals appear in the hieroglyphs, a holy script that,even if it was less and less understood in the Graeco-Roman period, wasprominent on monuments and buildings Nearly two hundred signs, one inevery four or five, refer to animals (te Velde 1977: 76; Houlihan 2002:132–43) The presence of animals in the Egyptian imagination persistedthrough the millennia and made this country special in relation to its neigh-bours In the last millennium BCE, the religious use of animals becameextremely striking Much of this use may be defined as animal cults,3espe-cially when it comes to the worship of specific exemplars of one species or tothe worship of whole species The accompanying ritual practice, and notleast its theological interpretation, probably differed from one case toanother and over time

Gods were depicted as humans with animal attributes, as hybrids (usually

as a human with an animal head) or as completely theriomorphic.4 Forinstance, Horus was depicted either as a man, a falcon or a human with thehead of a falcon, while Anubis was depicted as a jackal or with the head of ajackal In Egypt, the hybrid and theriomorphic forms clearly reflected thedivine, that which transcended traditional categories and human limitations(cf Morenz 1960: 20–1),5but even if human and animal elements tended to

be fused in the depiction of the Egyptian gods, these gods did not behavelike animals but mainly as humans do (Silverman 1991: 13–20) Thus, atthe same time as the animal aspect contributed to characterizing the divine,

it did not restrict the divine to an animal form or essence A specific god

could be represented by different animal species The chosen animal of a god

was characterized as the Ba of the god, which meant that it was a

manifesta-tion of the dynamic power of the deity, one aspect of the existence of the god

in question (Hornung 1967: 76; Kessler 1986: 572) The ibis, which wasthe bird of Thoth, is one example of an animal species connected with aspecific god

Sometimes a specific exemplar of a species was singled out for specialtreatment as a unique representative of the god, such as the Mnevis bullconnected to the cult of Re and Atum, and the Apis bull of Memphis, whichwas conceived of as a living embodiment of the god Ptah Apis was perhapsthe most famous of these divine beings in animal form and was regarded asthe king of all sacred animals (Kessler 1986: 571) When an old Apis died,the dead bull became the object of elaborate rituals that finally, through themouth-opening ceremony, revitalized the mummified beast A new bull calfwas immediately found and installed as the new Apis Apis bulls, as well asthose of Mnevis, were regarded as intermediaries between humans and gods

In the last centuries BCE, the Egyptian religious imagination was, to anincreasing degree, preoccupied with animals The Greek rulers of Egypt, thePtolemies, went to great lengths to show how they honoured sacred animals.Apis, the bull of Memphis, and Mendes, the ram of Thebes, were evenconsidered to be related to the royal family

Perhaps even more strange, at least for outsiders, was the veneration ofwhole species of animals, for instance falcons, ibises, crocodiles and cats Theemotional climate surrounding the divine animals could be very strong, andthe killing of sacred animals, intentional or not, sometimes attracted a lynchmob Most striking were the animal cults that developed in connection withsome temples: four million mummified ibises were interred in the necropolis

of Saqqarah, but burial grounds for ibises are found in many other places inEgypt K.A.D Smelik has described the ibis cult (Smelik 1979) On the basis

of data from Greek papyri, he reveals an extensive practice connected withtemple cults, breeding and feeding the birds and mummifying dead ones, aprocedure that ensured that they continued to exist after death The ritual ofmummification took care of the eternal destiny of the animal in question.But Smelik also remarks that there are few data concerning the Egyptian reli-

gious attitude towards the ibis (ibid.: 243) It is simply not possible to

interpret the meaning of these religious acts directly from the myriads ofembalmed birds Patric F Houlihan has pointed out that animals that werefarmed and mummified were regarded as intermediaries between gods andhumans, and that the mummies were finally offered as votive gifts to thetemple before they were stored in their underground galleries (Houlihan1996: 9) At least in the case of mummified cats, some of the animals hadbeen strangled H te Velde remarks that this practice “is not killing life todestroy it, but to let it arise from death” (te Velde 1977: 81) It seems likelythat these animals acted as intermediaries between humans and gods, but

unlike Graeco-Roman sacrificial animals, they were taken care of after deathand preserved for ever, which shows that they were regarded as divine.6Why were so many animals considered to be sacred in Egypt? Thisproblem has puzzled ancient commentators as well as modern researchers.Greek and Roman authors regarded what they conceived of as animalworship as a peculiar phenomenon, one of the curiosities of the strangeEgyptian culture Egyptian animal cults clearly offended against the Graeco-Roman world view, which placed animals low in the hierarchy of being.Roman authors in particular described Egyptian “animal worship” withcontempt and scorn, while the Greeks were more understanding (Smelik andHemelrijk 1984: 1999).

The first Greek author to comment on the phenomenon was Herodotus Hewas deeply interested in Egypt but refused to give an answer to the question ofwhy animals were held sacred and wrote: “but were I to declare the reason whythey are dedicated, I should be brought to speak on matters of divinity, ofwhich I am especially unwilling to treat; I have never touched upon such savewhen necessity has compelled me” (2.65) Others were not so reluctant.Diodorus of Sicily (59 BCE) gives several explanations, which refer either tomythological or to historical origins, to the animals’ function as totemic signs,

or to the general usefulness of those animals that were worshipped (1.86–9).Like Diodorus, Cicero also stressed the usefulness of the animals: “Even theEgyptians who are being laughed at, deified a beast solely on the score of some

utility which they derived from it” (The Nature of the Gods, 1.36) Cicero’s

example is the ibis, which he describes as a destroyer of serpents

It seems to have eluded these authors that the Egyptians may also haveworshipped animals because they were strange, frightening or generally hadqualities not found in humans They held basically different views of animalsfrom the Egyptians and of why they could possibly have been regarded assacred (cf Kristensen 1971: 156) It was obviously very difficult for non-

Egyptians to understand that the animal per se could be conceived of as sacred

and be the object of a cult And while the usefulness of an animal species mayhave been a reason for its worship, it must also be added, as a corrective to theargument about usefulness, that in Egypt it was especially undomesticatedanimals that were given divine attributes (Houlihan 2002: 102)

In addition to the arguments about the usefulness of the animals involved,other explanations had recourse to symbols and allegories, working from thenotion that Egyptian animal worship was based on hidden meanings (Plutarch,

On Isis and Osiris, 71–6; Porphyry, On Abstinence, 4.9) Plutarch, who wrote On Isis and Osiris at the beginning of the second century CE, is an example of anauthor who uses symbolic explanations but who also gives a more complexpicture of different aspects of animal worship and offers various explanations ofthe phenomenon, ranging from the aetiological to the symbolic

Initially, Plutarch claims that the majority of Egyptians who treatanimals as gods made not only their sacred offices ridiculous but also their

behaviour blameworthy, because it led the weak and innocent into

“supersti-tion” (deisidaimonia) and the cynical and bold into “atheistic and bestial reasoning” (atheos kai theriodes logismos; 71) Plutarch does not believe the

traditional explanations of why animals are held to be sacred, for instancethat the gods, fearing the evil Typhon (Seth), changed themselves intoanimals, or that the souls of the dead were reborn in animals Neither does

he set much store by aetiological explanations as background for a quent divination: the totemic explanation that animals were originally used

subse-on standards for the different squads and companies of Osiris; that laterkings used gold and silver masks of wild beasts’ heads in battles; or that anunscrupulous king persuaded different peoples to honour different animals,with the result that while they revered their own animal, they sometimesattacked the animals of their neighbours (72) Plutarch had further been toldthat most animals were sacred to Typhon, and that the priests either vener-ated these animals to appease him or they tortured and sacrificed the animals

to punish the god (73) He also mentions the usefulness of some of theanimals that were worshipped, especially stressing their symbolic value Ascarab is an image of the sun god because it rolls its ball of dung with amovement similar to that of the sun in the heavens (74); the crocodile is aliving representation of God because it is the only beast that has no tongueand thus illustrates that the divine word does not need a voice (75) Someanimals are worshipped for both their usefulness and their symbolism (75).Most interestingly, Plutarch ends his survey with a sort of apology forEgyptian animal worship, because he sees living beings more clearly asmirrors of the divine than lifeless statues: “In view of this the divine isrepresented no less faithfully in these [animals] than in bronze and stoneworks of art, which equally take on gradations of colour and tincture, butare by nature devoid of all perception and intelligence Concerning theanimals honoured, then, I approve especially of these views” (76).7

While Plutarch does not support animal worship, he at least shows asympathetic attitude to the phenomenon and attempts to understand what

it means His account is interesting because he mentions a variety of tices and explanations, and he probably reproduces some of the richmythological reflections and elaborations that in Egypt must have accompa-nied the cult of animals, although one wonders how many of thesereflections were intended for outsiders and what the Egyptian priests them-selves really believed Plutarch obviously filtered the Egyptian conceptionsthrough his Greek perspective and thus Hellenized the idea of animalworship (cf Froidefond 1988: 317, note 7)

prac-Plutarch’s awareness of the symbolic dimension has often been sized, although his symbolic interpretations can more fittingly be described

empha-as allegories (cf Froidefond 1988: 67–92; Griffiths 1970: 100–1) Plutarchhimself characterizes the connections that the Egyptians made between an

animal and its symbolic interpretation as “slight resemblances” (glischra

homoioteta; 75) It is reasonable to think that Plutarch has underplayed some

of the multiple meanings of these animal symbols, and their cross-referenceswithin Egyptian myth and ritual, and thus has missed some of the dynamic.Above all, Plutarch did not understand or want to take seriously beliefs inthe inherent sacredness of live animals According to Plutarch, such viewsbelong to the superstitious outlook of common people As for these ordinarypeople, modern commentators, as well as ancient ones, have had a tendency

to claim that they have misunderstood the real meaning of the cult ofanimals However, whether such cults have a “real” meaning, and whetherpriests are better than others at giving it, is doubtful

The question of Egyptian animal worship has also vexed modernresearchers, and in spite of some interesting attempts, it has perhaps not yetbeen fully solved P.F Houlihan, characterizing these as “inspired attempts atinterpreting the complex underlying symbolism of these faunal motifs”,concludes that much of the significance of these motifs is still imperfectlyunderstood (Houlihan 2002: 98) One obvious obstacle to giving an adequateexplanation of animal worship has been the tendency to see the phenomenon

as a sign of decadence and religious perversion (for instance, Brunner-Traut1986: 557, 567) Animal worship clearly offends the traditional Cartesiannotion of a duality between spirit and matter, as well as the Christian notionthat the human body is a fit vehicle for divinity, while the animal body is not;and perhaps also a general (although not always conscious) evolutionary atti-tude to religion according to which totemism and the cult of animals belong

to a primitive past But in spite of these obstacles, there have also beenconstructive attempts to explain and understand Egyptian animal worship.Henri Frankfort has stressed that “in Egypt the animal as such, irrespec-tive of its specific nature, seems to possess religious significance” (Frankfort1961: 9) According to him, the metaphorical relationship between man and

beast is not metaphorical but “a strange link” between them (ibid.: 9).

Animals possessed religious significance precisely because of their ability By apparently not changing from generation to generation, animallife participated in the static life of the universe, which was an Egyptianideal In this way, their unchangeable exterior, which embodied permanence,was interpreted by Frankfort as religiously significant

unchange-Erik Hornung has pointed out that the Egyptians did not establish thekind of division between humans and animals that the Israelites did, forexample, and that the distinction between humans and animals was moreblurred in Egypt (Hornung 1967: 69) Humans simply did not have thesame superior position in relation to the animal world that they had in otherparts of the Mediterranean region Hornung has also stressed that a belief in

a partnership between animals and humans existed in Egypt (ibid.: 70–2).

However, he does not see the animal as a god but characterizes this idea as a

popular misunderstanding (ibid.: 76) Instead, the animal should be

conceived of as a dwelling place, vehicle or living image of the god

It is easy to subscribe to the view that animals had a much higher status inEgypt than in most other places, and it is probably correct, as Frankfort haspointed out, that the religious relationship between animals and humans inEgypt is not just a metaphorical one In a similar vein, John Bowman hasremarked on the scale of the embalming of animals in the Late Period ofEgyptian history that “it would be misleading to see them [i.e the animals]simply as tokens of the divinity of some higher power One essentially divinequality was perceived in the animal itself, and this is surely the light in which

we should interpret the universal representations of the gods with animalheads, Thoth with the ibis head, Horus the falcon, Hathor the cow, Bastet thecat or lioness, Thoeris the hippopotamus and so on” (Bowman 1986: 173–4)

It is natural to agree with Frankfort and Bowman that at least some of therelations between animals and gods and some of the ritual uses of animalsmust be explained by these animals having an inherently divine quality In thepresent context, this view is also consonant with Ragnhild Bjerre Finnestad’sunderstanding that the Egyptian world view regarded the gods as immanentand that the natural world as such expressed ultimate reality (Finnestad 1984).Consequently, when animals in Egypt were objects of cults, these animalswere not only conceived of as symbols of the divine but were themselvesessentially seen as divine They were not only living images of the god butshared in the divine essence of the god, at least in some of the aspects of thisessence This view is also supported by the opposition of Greek and Romanauthors: the fact that more than a few animals in Egypt participated directly

in the divine seems to have been the single observation that most troubledancient authors in relation to Egyptian animals They therefore eitherderided it or tried to explain it away, for instance by resorting to symbolicand allegorical explanations

To the question of why the religious use of animals increased in the LatePeriod of Egyptian history (from 700 BCE) and flourished under Roman rule,

a reasonable answer has been suggested by Smelik and Hemelrijk.According to them, this almost limitless use of animals for religiouspurposes had in the Late Period become a national symbol for the Egyptians:

“The choice of animal worship as a new national symbol at a time when thetraditional gods no longer served as protectors of Egypt must correspond tothe fact that animal worship struck foreigners as the most bizarre note of theentire Egyptian gamut” (Smelik and Hemelrijk 1984: 1863–4) The use ofanimals as national symbols also implies that they were not only vitalelements in the flourishing Egyptian religion of the Late Period but also hadimportant functions to fulfil as markers of cultural and religious boundaries

Against animals

The general antagonism against Egyptian animal worship is seen, forinstance, by Juvenal He opens his fifteenth satire with the question: “Who

knows not, O Bithynian Volusius, what monsters demented Egyptworships?” The jackal-headed god Anubis, clad in a Roman tunica, wassacred to the Egyptians, ridiculous to non-Egyptians Juvenal mocks peoplewho are duped by a priest wearing a mask in the form of a jackal’s head,impersonating Anubis, and he adds, for good measure, that the priest

himself cannot resist laughing at the onlookers (Satire, 6.532–4) Clement of

Alexandria makes fun of “the wallowing animal” one finds in the holiest

part of Egyptian temples (Paedagogus, 3.2) Even authors who were more

positive towards Egyptian religion tried to explain away the animal worshipand, as we have seen, to convert the animals into symbols and allegories Themajority of the non-Egyptian inhabitants of the Graeco-Roman worldregarded animal worship as an inferior form of religion

In a thorough article, Smelik and Hemelrijk have investigated “which partEgyptian animal cult played in the general conception of Egypt in Antiquity”(Smelik and Hemelrijk 1984: 1955) Besides pointing out different types ofnon-Egyptian explanation of animal worship, they also stress as fundamentalthat the Romans were at the same time fascinated by the exotic character of

Egyptian religion and culture but repelled by animal worship (ibid.: 1945).

Not only was animal worship conceived of as ridiculous, but those whoworshipped animals were themselves considered no better than animals Philodescribes what happens when a foreigner sees Egyptians worshipping wildbeasts He thinks them “more miserable than even the objects which theyhonour, since they in their souls are changed into those very animals, so as toappear to be merely brutes in human form, now returning to their original

nature” (The Decalogue, 80) A similar point was made by Origen (see Chapter

2) Epiphanius of Salamis describes the Egyptians who worshipped animals “as

if they were animals in mind and spirit” (Smelik and Hemelrejk 1984:1983).Christian authors usually explained animal worship as being caused by humandegradation since the Fall

The opposition to animal worship especially hit the Egyptians who reallyhad animal cults – and towards whom the Romans had an ambiguous rela-tionship – but other groups were also affected by the aversion totheriomorphic gods The Christians made animal worship a test of what

counted as inferior religion (cf 1 Romans 1:23–8) In Apologeticus (16) and

Ad Nationes (I.11, 14), Tertullian twice repeats that the pagans worship

animals Tertullian drips with irony when he says that pagans worship alltypes of pack animal and even donkeys together with the horse goddessEpona He jeers at pagans who have accepted gods with the heads of dogsand lions, with ram’s horns, bodies of rams, with snakes for legs or withwings on their backs or on their legs

In Octavius (28.4) Minucius Felix mocks the pagans who have horses and

donkeys in their stables consecrated to Epona, adorn them in processions toIsis and sacrifice and worship heads of bulls and rams Minucius Felixderides half-goats, half-humans and gods with lion or jackal heads, and he

especially remarks upon the Egyptian cults of the bull Apis and of wholespecies of animal There was even the death penalty for harming some ofthese last-mentioned animals.

Tertullian and Minucius Felix are in fact even more negative than Christian authors towards gods in animal form Their monotheistic andexclusive view of religion gave Christians no openings for regarding either amultiplicity of gods or gods in animal shape in a positive light Theirloathing for such conceptions was connected to the anthropomorphic char-acter of their image of God

non-Mystery religions and animal symbolism

Even if Egyptian religion was criticized by foreigners because of its extendeduse of animals, it was also at the same time a popular export As early as thesixth century BCE, it had been brought to Greece and its colonies bymerchants One of the attractions of this religion could very well have beenits rich display of animal symbolism, which contributed to its mystery.Those who were attracted probably thought that there was more to theanimals than met the eye – a point on which they obviously must have beenright However, it was animals interpreted in the symbolic mode, ratherthan animals conceived of as divine incarnations, that the Graeco-Romanworld imported from Egypt.8

The presence of animals was prominent in some of the mystery religions,especially in Egyptian cults and Mithraism, but also in Christianity andother religious movements These were religions that were characterized bypersonal initiation, transmission of secret knowledge, and the promise of abetter lot in this life, and sometimes also in the world to come In a waysimilar to Christianity taking part of its identity from Judaism, in several ofthe mystery cults people took part of their new religious identity from oldand foreign traditions – for instance, from Iran, Asia Minor and Egypt,which meant that they created new identities on the basis of a revitalization

of these traditions In the Graeco-Roman world, increasingly varied forms ofreligious tradition were developed, and in these new forms, old conceptswere transformed and redefined

It was characteristic of the mystery religions that they did not primarilyemploy living animals but animals that had been reduced to images andsymbols It was also typical of these religions that the symbolic animals were

caught in a process of endless semiosis, which also characterized these

reli-gions in general

Art historian Jas Elsner has pointed to a transformation in Roman gious art in the late second to the late third century, from the literal to thesymbolic mode (Elsner 1995: 190ff) This transformation reflects generalreligious changes Elsner compares representations of sacrifices in the statecult, which were read literally, and which referred to real animals, to the