Portrait of a Priestess – Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece

Product Information

As “cultic citizens,” women participated in state festivals at Athens alongside men and celebrated their own rituals apart from them, at shrines within the house and in cults outside the house in the company of other women. Their association with fertility made them indispensable performers of rites connected with the agricultural year. Women also served as priestesses, as dedicators, and as euergetai (benefactors). At home, their rituals accompanied nuptial preparations, the laying out of the dead, and the departure of soldiers for war. Female religious activity was considered so critical to the welfare of the community that it was sanctioned by law and financed by the polis. Religion further allowed women’s widespread movement throughout the city as they left their homes to participate in processions and festivals, visit shrines, sanctuaries, and cemeteries. By performing rituals on behalf of the city, Athenian women distinguished themselves from female foreigners and slaves as rightful citizens of the polis. Women-only festivals further offered opportunities to build and strengthen female social networks, to act autonomously, and perhaps even to subvert social norms. Domestic rituals accomplished by women in turn helped to mark the life stages and strengthen familial identity. In this sphere of polis life the priestess clearly played a leading and fundamental role. This makes it all the more astonishing that Joan Breton Connely's Portrait of a Priestess is, as she rightly claims, the first full-length work to take the Greek priestess specifically as its subject. . . . Connelly has run down inscriptions—honorific, funerary, financial, or cult-related—all over the Mediterranean. She has studied a plethora of statues and vase paintings in collections from Samos to St. Petersburg, from Messene to Munich, from Thebes to Toledo. Her indexes of monuments and inscriptions testify to the prodigious amount of work that has gone into this volume. . . . Portrait of a Priestess is a remarkable triumph against heavy odds."—Peter Green, New York Review of Books

Hiereiai (singular: hiereia) was the title of the female priesthood or priestesses in ancient Greek religion, being the equivalent of the male title Hierei. Ancient Greece had a number of different offices in charge of worship of gods and goddesses, and both women and men functioned as priests. While there were local variations depending on cult, the Hiereiai had many similarities across ancient Greece. Normally, their office related only to a specific sanctuary or Greek temple. urn:lcp:portraitofpriest2007conn:epub:a1eaaca7-6d69-4004-bf2f-21eb61c36fed Foldoutcount 0 Identifier portraitofpriest2007conn Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1jj2477g Invoice 1652 Isbn 0691127468 The privileges of the priestess differed widely between temples. Normally, the priestess was given an income from the city, since the office was regarded as a public office. [10] In addition to this, she was also awarded for each ritual and festival she participated in, and given fees for special rituals she performed for private people. [11] She was normally given a share in the sacrificial animals, such as the skins and furs of the dead animals. [12] Local variations of cults made different requirements. The most common rule was that goddesses had priestesses, and male gods had male priests. The virgin goddess Artemis was, for example, served by young virgins, while Hera, goddess of marriage, was served by adult married women. However, it was far from uncommon for there to be a staff of several different "temple servants" in each temple which included both men and women in different positions. [1] Appointment [ edit ]Chapter 3 Priesthoods of Prominence: Athena Polias at Athens, Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, Hera at Argos, and Apollo at Delphi Connelly's brave effort is a long time in the making and deserves to be taken seriously. For one thing, the book is substantial in length and assembles a rich body of documentation, much of it epigraphical and unfamiliar to many archaeologists and art historians. It is also lavishly produced."—Catherine M. Keesling, Bryn Mawr Classical Review urn:oclc:845582959 Scandate 20100928033746 Scanner scribe6.sfdowntown.archive.org Scanningcenter sfdowntown Source Connelly's landmark study is a must-read for any scholar of ancient religion, art, or gender studies."—Laurie A. Kilker, Religion Journal urn:lcp:portraitofpriest00conn:epub:3a02a5fb-16d1-4d80-a5b8-0471ebf7b85b Extramarc University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (PZ) Foldoutcount 0 Identifier portraitofpriest00conn Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t9v12t35t Isbn 0691127468

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-09-08 14:37:04 Boxid IA127119 Camera Canon 5D City Princeton [u.a.] Donor Connelly’s primary contribution lies in her use of the visual record to fill the chronological and geographical gaps in the written sources to create a more detailed portrait of the priestess. The literary evidence in particular is highly Athenocentric and focused largely on the Classical period, while the visual material Connelly surveys dates from the Archaic through the Roman periods and comes from not only the Greek mainland but also the Peloponnese and Asia Minor, although unfortunately little from the western Greek colonies. A problem is introduced with the breadth of this approach, however. Connelly treats the material from different regions and periods of the Greek world as a continuum, neglecting to consider in detail whether other cultural conceptions, such as local religious traditions, may have influenced the portrayal of the priestesses she studies. She also neglects the possibility that by the time of the Roman Empire, religious practices in the Greek East may have been influenced by Roman ones. This assumption of the hegemony of Hellenic practices and conceptions goes counter to recent work suggesting the importance of ethnicity for the construction of identity in classical antiquity.A priestess was counted among the public officials of the city, and her office was considered an honor and commemorated with pride by her family. Some sanctuaries honored their priestesses with inscriptions and portrait statues. For this reason, the education necessary for performing was often customarily given to all daughters of aristocratic families with the right position and status for being appointed to the office. Princeton University Press must be thanked and complimented for offering such a significant and persuasive revisionist study, very generously illustrated, at so modest a price, making it affordable not just for university libraries and specialists, but for others who wish to gain 'state-of-the-question' understanding of female elites and leaders in the Greco-Roman world." ---Victor Castellani, European Legacy Her conclusions should upset many of the assumptions commonly held about women in the time of Christ. . . . Apart from the clarity of its writing and the quality of its illustrations, this book is important because it helps the lay reader grasp what today's specialists are thinking. . . . Essential reading."—Owen Higgs, New Directions All priestess offices were banned when religious freedom was abolished during the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, specifically by the Emperor's Edict in 393. [16] This was in line with the Christian principle that women were not to hold priestly office. It appears that some early Christian women assumed that such offices were to become open to them in the worship of the holy virgin Mary, but the Christian church condemned such a thing as heresy. [17] Types [ edit ] Another problem is that Connelly is extraordinarily broad in defining her subject matter. As she notes in her introduction (6), she includes “examples of girls, maidens, and women who are not, strictly speaking, priestesses, but whose engagement in cult activity sheds light on the broader system within which priestesses functioned.” I am concerned, however, that the inclusion of a wide variety of female “cult agents” obscures significant differences in their respective levels of authority, power, and responsibility. Connelly considers such widely disparate women as the kanephoroi, who carried baskets in religious processions, and the Pythia, who gave prophecies at Delphi to representatives from city-states throughout the Greek world. The respective positions of these women in the hierarchy of Greek cult were considerably different, and neither of them are what one would traditionally term a “priestess.” The kanephoros is a cult attendant and the Pythia a prophetess. To treat them both in a study of the Greek priestess may be broadening the category to such an extent that it no longer has meaning. The problem with the breadth of Connelly’s approach is particularly apparent in her treatment of the visual evidence. A significant number of the representations that Connelly discusses could be understood as either priestesses or female worshippers performing ritual actions. Because Greek religion permitted anyone to perform cultic actions such as libation or sacrifice on his or her own behalf, in the absence of further context it is often difficult to determine whether a particular representation shows a priestess acting for others, such as the state, or a female worshipper acting for herself or family members, a distinction highly significant for determining the level of women’s cultic agency in ancient Greece.

In many cults, a priestess served only for a limited time. This was especially true of virgin priestesses. Priestesses required to be unmarried virgins during their tenure served for a limited time prior to marriage, often only a year, after which their successor was appointed. The priestesses serving the cult of Athena Alea of Tegea, Artemis of Aigeira, Artemis Triklaria of Patrai, Artemis of Ephesus and Poseidon of Kalaureia all served only for a short time between that of reaching adulthood until their wedding.

A]lmost 20 years in the making, this is a remarkable book. It is easy to believe that al1 anyone has ever wanted to know about priestesses in the ancient Greek world is contained here. . . . Connelly's achievement is to put between two covers of an attractive book a storehouse of data." ---Robin Osborne, Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Joan Connelly . . . has produced a fascinating book on the central role of priestesses in ancient Greek society. Her survey is fully documented and beautifully illustrated. One cannot but admire her enthusiasm for the subject and her deft handling of the evidence."—Colin Austin, University of Cambridge, coeditor of Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae The quantity of illustrations is revealing: if women were excluded from public life, why were their images everywhere? Connelly argues that the authority entrusted to women as priestesses made them far from subordinate in the Greek state and that they were in fact often prominent and indispensable executives in the civic sphere. This is a reinterpretation of antiquity that works." ---Nigel Spivey, Financial Times Ancient Greek female priestess title The Pythia, or Oracle of Delphi, the perhaps most known type of Hiereiai, red-figure kylix, 440–430 BC, Kodros Painter, Berlin F 2538, 141668 1842 – Byzantine Museum, Athens – Priestess Isvardia (4th century) – Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, Nov 1 Ancient Greece marble statue (28465843826)

Tools

All that being said, you would think I would give it a one star. And honestly this staring was hard because all that said, it was a two. But there are some aspects of this book that are worthy of five stars. Fragments of pottery vessels in the shape used for dedications to Artemis from the late 5th century, called krateriskoi, which have been excavated in the sanctuary provide visual evidence for the ritual of “playing the bear.” They show girls naked or wearing short tunics as they dance, run, or process to an altar. They often hold wreathes or torches, and the occasional presence of a palm tree points to the worship of Artemis. Some feature bear imagery, depicting either an adult wearing a bear mask or a bear chasing a girl toward an altar. In addition to the ritual activities of girls, older women appear to help to prepare the girls for their ritual activities, perhaps their mothers, as well as one or more priestesses. The rituals may have culminated in the shedding of a saffron garment to mark the final stage of the transition. Scholars have interpreted these activities as a rite of passage that marked the physical maturation of girls and prepared them for marriage by reinforcing their identification with animals in need of domestication. 3 Women also made dedications of clothing to Artemis at Brauron after childbirth, in celebration of a successful labor and delivery. These offerings are recorded in inscriptions which have been excavated from the Brauroneion branch at Athens. From the late 5th and mostly 4th centuries bce, these inscriptions yield valuable insights into the types of votive offerings, including garments and jewelry, accomplished by women. Since only the first names of the women are usually recorded, without the names of fathers or husbands, it is likely that they acted on their own, without the oversight of a male family member. The Hiereiai priestesses were an influence in how the priestess office were conducted in Roman religion, which was heavily influenced by Greek traditions. The Greek priestesses continued to hold office until the Roman Empire became Christian, although the name of the office holders are only fragmentary preserved. Until Joan Breton Connelly's wonderful volume, Portrait of a Priestess, was published the prominent role of Greek priestesses in ancient Greek society was ignored, or even denied, by most (male) commentators. . . . Her compelling book challenges our assumptions about the role of priestesses, and more generally the role of women, in a far-off world that retains the fascination of countless readers."— The Book Depository