Zebedee wrote:
Not sure that's quite right to be honest. Typically they're labelled as 'priestesses', but there are a number of examples I can think of where women are involved in elements of ritual around a bull - whether placing garlands on necks, or making a libation, or generally being involved in or around what appears to be a bull being led to sacrifice. Could be misunderstanding what you mean? It's certainly not a sacrificial scene here in the sense that the bull is being sacrificed in the scene, but it could be a bull being led to sacrifice if all the relevant elements are there. And of course it won't be if they're not.
Taphoi wrote:
Nikes are associated with the Great Gods (see stele depicting the Great Gods below) and the Nike of Samothrace stood in the sanctuary of the Great Gods and some of its buildings were built in the 4th century BC. Females will not have excluded themselves from participating in Bull sacrifice ceremonies just because Xenophon would now like to think they did. In the vase depiction below both participants are female and there are plenty of other vases, if Xenophon still doesn’t get the picture.
Yes, I meant that women did not participate in the actual sacrifice for obvious reasons. In depictions the actual sacrifice is always carried out by a male priest, and the attendants who lead the bull and hold it steady are also invariably male. I was not suggesting women were excluded, because as Zebedee says, away from the sacrificial process and before the procession begins, they make and place garlands on the bull, and were certainly not excluded as spectators, nor were children, and perhaps as musicians and suchlike. What we have here is a bull solely attended by two women, apparently. Not all depictions of bulls infer sacrifice, and bull worship was common enough in Greece. Nor is it safe to assume that a depiction necessarily is associated with “sacrifice” For example the vase Taphoi posted, showing a Maenad ( who were often depicted with wings) pouring a drink for a bull ( which was one of Dionysios’ aspects) could just as easily be depicting a ritual involving a sacred bull, and not necessarily anything to do with sacrifice. Similarly, the tomb painting shows a bull ( and I don’t see anything which looks like a garland) attended solely by what is apparently two women ( I don’t see centaurs either) who are clearly not ‘leading’ the bull, with nothing whatever to indicate a“sacrifice” scene. The “relevant elements” don’t seem to be there, other than in the eye of the beholder.
Taphoi wrote:
When reconstructing an ancient vase from shattered and incomplete fragments, the way that you know that you are right is that the scene that you have reconstructed is self consistent. That is why it is part of the evidence here that a Samothracian initiate is a strong candidate for the owner of the Amphipolis Tomb. But no single fragment of the vase is going to confirm the reconstruction in isolation. That is why I am showing that there are multiple closely interlinked reasons why the frieze is depicting the bull sacrifice from the Mysteries of Samothrace.
To quote Taphoi himself, this is just so much “tosh”. Nothing about that scene says ‘Samothrace’, or necessarily ‘sacrifice’. It won’t do to simply make up a scenario to fit your hypothesis, and then ‘interpret’ evidence in an equally imaginative way to fit, by creating fictional ‘closely interlinked reasons’.....
Agesilaos wrote:
The Neorion at Samothrace was built by Antigonos Gonatas to celebrate his victory at Kos, it would seem,
I very much doubt the Nike of Samothrace is associated with that naval battle, for the battle of Kos occurred c.261 BC, more than 50 years before the Nike was erected. Moreover, Antigonos dedicated a ship in a neorion on Delos to Apollo. A neorion at Samothrace was apparently built by Demetrios c.306 BC, and some believe that Antigonus Gonatas re-used it and placed a ship there, as well as the one at Delos. But a dedication of a ship is nothing to do with the Nike of Samothrace monument anyway.
Given c. 200 BC date of the Nike, the sculptor possibly being the same as that of the famous Pergamene frieze, and the connections to Rhodes - the marble, and the word “Rhodios” inscribed on the monument, a more plausible battle commemoration is that of Chios in 201 BC, when a combined Pergamene/Rhodian fleet heavily defeated Philip V’s Macedonian fleet.
Taphoi wrote:
The reconciliation is easy: there was an earlier Nike on a ship's prow at Samothrace - the one depicted on the tetradrachms of Demetrios Poliorketes minted in 300-295BC blowing a trumpet and holding a naval standard. That would put that original Nike back in the time period of the last quarter of the 4th century BC. So I see no problem.
More “tosh”, I'm afraid. There isn’t the slightest scintilla of evidence that there was any earlier Nike monument on Samothrace. Agesilaos is right – one simply can’t “make up” so-called corroborative evidence.......
Taphoi wrote:
I think you've lost the plot. Firstly, I already mentioned the hand of the Louvre Nike and that she did not hold a trumpet in a post above. Secondly, the Nike on a prow blowing a trumpet and holding a naval standard on the coins of Demetrios from 300-295BC is exactly the same Nike as we have now found in the Amphipolis Tomb frieze. So Demetrios did not invent it for his coins. It was a pre-existing statue before 300BC, when he adopted it. The Nike on a prow from 200BC found in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace shows us exactly where the Nike on a prow blowing a trumpet will have been: in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace, of course, where Nike was an associate of the Great Gods and where they were all associated with the Sanctuary's ship cult. Added to that, the new frieze shows that this statue stood where bull sacrifices took place with initiates wearing crimson belts during nocturnal ceremonies lit by huge braziers - all of which also fits what we know of the Mysteries of Samothrace. This in turn suggests that the ship monument was created by Demetrios Poliorketes to commemorate his victory at Salamis, because he put this cult statue onto his coins at roughly the same time to symbolise his famous victory.
If anyone has ‘ lost the plot’, it ought to be someone who continually makes up ‘fictional evidence.’As has been shown here, a Nike on a ship’s prow as a symbol of a naval victory was quite a common symbol, as the Italian example posted here demonstrates, and it certainly existed prior to 300BC or Demetrios’ time, so wasn’t unique to him, nor to Samothrace! (e.g. Seleucus I Nikator issued similar coins)
‘...all associated with the Sanctuary’s ship cult’? Whence comes this? I know of no evidence of any “ship cult”. No evidence of any earlier Nike monument, and certainly no evidence that bull sacrifices took place where the Nike stood, at the pinnacle of the site,overlooking the theatre, or at all at this time.
"During the Roman era, towards 200 AD, the entrance to the Hiéron building was modified to permit the entrance of live sacrificial offerings. A parapet was constructed in the interior to protect the spectators and a crypt was fitted into the apse. These modifications permitted the celebration of the Kriobolia and the Taurobolia of the Anatolian Magna Mater, which were introduced at this time.
( previously sacrifices were predominately sheep, goats and pigs). The new rites saw the initiate or possibly only the priest by proxy, descend into a pit in the apse. The blood of the sacrificial animals then flowed over him or her in the fashion of a baptismal rite".
..... notoriously depicted on the big screen. But note that this bull sacrifice was a late innovation in Roman times!!Once again Taphoi is making the same mistake of making false similarities, and thereby creating ‘fictional history’. Does he think the Italian examples ( there were more than one) are somehow associated with Demetrios too? Taphoi’s arguments are similar to, and about as plausible as those of Eric Von Daniken.