Miriam Robbins Dexter
Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA. Her first book, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990), in which she translated texts from thirteen languages, was used for courses she taught at UCLA for a decade and a half. She completed and supplemented the final book of Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses. (1999) Her 2010 book, co-authored with Victor Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the 2012 Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Sarasvati award for best nonfiction book on women and mythology. In 2013, Miriam and Victor published a new monograph, “Sacred Display: New Findings” in the University of Pennsylvania online series, Sino-Platonic Papers. With Vicki Noble, Miriam edited the anthology, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015) (Susan Koppelman award for best edited feminist anthology, 2016). Miriam is the author of over 30 scholarly articles and 11 encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She has edited and co-edited sixteen scholarly volumes. For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC. She has guest-lectured at the New Bulgarian University (Sophia, Bulgaria) and “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University (Iaşi, Moldavia, Romania).
less
Interests
Uploads
Books by Miriam Robbins Dexter
The other way in which this is a source book is that the author has translated texts from all of these cultures, so that the reader may have primary sources for all of these female figures.
From Publishers Weekly
Before her death from cancer in 1994, the pioneering archeologist Marija Gimbutas had nearly completed this book, a distillation of her life's work. After decades of scholarly research that shaped much of the field of pre-Indo-European archeology (7000-3000 B.C.), Gimbutas produced two copiously illustrated, oversized books accessible to a nonscientific audience, The Language of the Goddess and The Civilization of the Goddess. This final, smaller work illuminates the continuity between scores of religious symbols from the cultural flowering of Neolithic Old Europe in the fifth millennium B.C. to European folk cultures of the modern era. The first part concisely presents Gimbutas's discoveries and observations about imagery of goddesses and gods, symbols and signs, sacred script, temples, burial practices and social structure in Old Europe before 4400 B.C., and reveals the sophisticated degree of abstraction and artistry in the expression of the Old European cyclical sense of birth, maturation, death and regeneration. The second part traces the adaptations of these Old European elements into subsequent religious systems from the late Neolithic era to our own century. As in her previous work, Gimbutas's aesthetic and spiritual sensitivity adds a depth unusual in archeological writing. This book is a major contribution to cultural history, especially the history of religion; clearly no one but Gimbutas could have produced this masterful contribution to the archeomythology of Europe. Although Part One is generously illustrated with ink drawings of excavated artifacts, none appear in Part Two, as they had not been assembled before Gimbutas's death. Miriam Robbins Dexter, who edited the book, has added a helpful introduction plus a summary at the end of each chapter.
From Library Journal
Gimbutas, a much-praised and consistently controversial archaeologist and scholar of religion, startled academia with her assertion of the realities of goddess-focused religion in preliterate Europe. This book, ably completed after Gimbutas's death by Dexter, was intended by her to be a popular treatment of her themes but also draws upon later findings. Wide-ranging and fascinating, The Living Goddesses should intrigue the curious and delight most feminist scholars. Highly recommended.
This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty languages.
The “sexual” display of these female figures reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine, and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient divine feminine.
Eurasia (Cambria Press, 2010).
Female figures doing a “sacred display” of their genitals are found in two iconographic forms: (1) a
bent-knee dance — the legs often taking an M-position — and (2) crouching and strongly displaying
the genitals. Some figures, such as the Irish Sheela na gig from Kiltinan,1 do both, dancing a magical
dance while opening and displaying her vulva. Sheela na gigs are medieval female display figures
which are placed in the walls of churches and castles in the British Isles; they are both protective and
apotropaic.
Sacred Display figures represent both the beneficent and the ferocious aspects of the divine
feminine: they are apotropaic, warding off the enemy, and — a natural concomitant — they are
protective for their people. They bring both fertility and good fortune.
This seeming explosion of creative religious expression on the part of contemporary Western women is the thematic focus of this book; the 33 chapters are the individual stories of the movement’s founders in their own words.
Papers by Miriam Robbins Dexter
As evidenced by comparative linguistic and mythological data, most
powerful goddesses and heroines in the mythologies and literatures of
the various Indo-European cultures have been descendants of pre-
Indo-European female figures. They were products of the cultures
indigenous to the areas to which the Proto-Indo-European peoples
migrated, in the fourth to third millennia B.C. They were subsequently
assimilated into the patriarchal Indo-European pantheons, but with
attrition of their powers. These powers underwent a qualitative change
as well: in origin autonomous entities, whose powers were self-
contained, these goddesses, when assimilated into Indo-European
cultures, became bestowers of energy. It is notable that, although they
bestowed energy, they did not retain that energy for themselves. Hence,
the goddesses bestowed their forces on the three functional levels
required by Proto-Indo-European males, becoming transmitters of
sovereignty, martial energy, and nurturing energy. However, these
female figures cannot be pigeonholed into distinct functional levels.
Such a classification belongs only to male deities, who were the active
participants in Indo-European patriarchal cultures. Conversely, when
the quality of their powers was modified, the pre-Indo-European
female figure assumed a 'passive' role in Indo-European society.
Meita, and the Greek Helen, as daughters of the sun. Just as Surya and
Saules Mieta were married to both a moon god and a set of divine
twins, so Helen's brothers were the divine twin Diokouroi, and her
husband was Menelaus, a hero/diety who may have had lunar overtones.
In this paper Menelaus is related to both Greek men, "wait, be steadfast,"
and men, "moon," as "double entendres."
unmarried goddesses in most ancient Indo-European patriarchal societies. This virginity indicated two phenomena: chastity and autonomy. Chastity was a requisite for purposes of inheritance in patrilineal societies. Further, virgins were often depicted as 'storehouses' of energy which was transferable to others. Although some heroines received renewable virginity, this gift usually led to renewed loss of virginity. Eternal virginity was possessed by goddesses as an indicator of their autonomy. Since they were not under the domain of husbands, they often retained significant powers.
Indo-European Dawn goddess as she appeared in Northern Indo-
European, particularly in Baltic folk songs, as opposed to the manner
in which she was celebrated in Southern Indo-European myth and
ritual, particularly in Italic, Greek and Indic.