Mistress of Animals

It is not necessary to go through all the stages of initiation into the intricacies of hagiographical studies to immediately recognize, when reading the works related to the dossier of St Menas, that we are dealing with a subgenre of hagiography which contemporary scholars term "fictional hagiography". The figure of the Saint and the events of his life were invented by anonymous authors and editors in various ways, according to their own tastes and the anticipated tastes of their audience. This article seeks to identify the narrative elements, terms, and descriptions of events that serve as markers of this specific genre. My aim is not to reconstruct the biography of the saint, but to gain a better understanding of the religiosity of those who came to Abū Mīnā, particularly their expectations. Researchers of the St Menas dossier are fortunate to have at their disposal extensive findings from archaeological excavations, which enable not only the dating of the sanctuary's establishment and expansion but also aid in reconstructing the spaces and buildings where the cult of the Saint took place. While literary texts require ongoing critical assessment of their reliability, the extensive sanctuary, its furnishings, churches, houses, and streets relieve us from an excessive level of skepticism. Although the article's title suggests a focus on texts, archaeology assists the historian in creating a comprehensive picture of what occurred at Abū Mīnā.

This article centers on a unique bronze plaque from the late Iron Age (1st-4th century CE), possibly originating from Medvezhskaya, Komi Republic, or West Siberia. The plaque depicts five winged figures atop scrolling claw motifs, with a bar spanning the top. Art historian Boris Erenburg connects this plaque to eight significant Cherdyn plaques from the Perm region, highlighting their high status in the Permian Bronze corpus. Originally dated to the 7th-8th centuries, further research places these artifacts in the 1st-4th centuries.

The artistic style of this plaque, despite being found 500 kilometers from Cherdyn, bears remarkable resemblance to the Cherdyn plaques, featuring wing-like arms, spiral claws, and a hooked nose akin to a bird’s beak. Scholars believe these plaques depict a goddess figure rooted in ancient matriarchal traditions. Erenburg suggests a link to the Mesopotamian winged goddess Inanna (Ishtar), hinting at cosmic symbolism.

These plaques likely represent a microcosmic three-tiered cosmology—subterranean, terrestrial, and celestial realms—centered around a deity as the axis mundi. The disproportionate claws on our plaque, with their spiral forms, evoke dynamic symbolism, potentially reflecting creation myths where a supreme deity brings order from chaos.

Perm art typically portrays complex mythological compositions, but this plaque's minimalist design emphasizes a central deity in a creation scene, resonating with Finno-Ugrian cosmogonic legends. A Komi myth, featuring "Chozh the Duck" and six eggs, parallels the spiral symbolism and cosmic themes on our plaque, suggesting its depiction of a Finno-Ugrian creation moment. This artifact stands as a testament to the profound artistic and symbolic achievements of its creator.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Germany lay in ruins. Divided East and West, under Western and Soviet occupation, their country devastated, Germans began to rebuild their lives, homes, and country while searching for a way to process their role in the war, their defeat, and its meaning for themselves as a people. One way they began to reconstruct a sense of identity was to highlight historic German cultural creations. Germans, amidst the physical and political turmoil that surrounded them under military occupation, expended extraordinary efforts to preserve and rebuild two churches nearly obliterated by Allied bombing-the Frauenkirche of Dresden in East Germany and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächniskirche of Berlin in West Germany. The struggle to preserve as much as possible the prewar appearance of these universally recognized architectural landmarks demonstrates how Germans, even in defeat, used links to past glory to help forge a new, postwar German identity.

In the third and second millennia B.C., civilizations in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Sindh, Demon, Syria, Anatolia, Elam, and Crete represented "the wrestling hero," "the hero of animals," or "the master of animals" using this motif. Mesopotamia was the birthplace of the "wrestling hero" or "master of animals" style as early as the fourth millennium B.C. Beginning in the third millennium B.C., it spread throughout the ancient near-eastern arts. On cylinder seals found in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Elam as well as on the prints of square and rectangular Sindhi seals found in Haraba and Muhenju Daru, this type was depicted. Additionally, it was depicted as the circular flat in the Arabian Gulf and ancient Near East.

When the Second World War ended in 1945, Germany lay in ruins. Divided East and West, under Western and Soviet occupation, their country devastated, Germans began to rebuild their lives, homes, and country while searching for a way to process their role in the war, their defeat, and its meaning for themselves as a people. One way they began to reconstruct a sense of identity was to highlight historic German cultural creations. Germans, amidst the physical and political turmoil that surrounded them under military occupation, expended extraordinary efforts to preserve and rebuild two churches nearly obliterated by Allied bombing-the Frauenkirche of Dresden in East Germany and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächniskirche of Berlin in West Germany. The struggle to preserve as much as possible the prewar appearance of these universally recognized architectural landmarks demonstrates how Germans, even in defeat, used links to past glory to help forge a new, postwar German identity.

The image of a figure holding two wild animals, often called the "Mistress/Master of Animals", has appeared across many ancient periods and regions, on artifacts from proto-literate Mesopotamia in the Near East to the Aegean Iron Age. This motif has a demonstrable chain of cultural custody that is closely tied to concepts of both divinity and royalty. Rather than following a linear progression of diffusion with consistent interpretation, the Master/Mistress motif is culturally translated by adopting populations to suit the understandings of the individuals within those populations. Though some concepts such as healing remained constant from culture to culture, the symbol was reinterpreted or modified based on the role it played in adopting populations' cultural schemas. This resulted in the two seemingly separate motifs of the "Master" and "Mistress". This translation demonstrates the close relationship these early cultures had to one another in spi...

The article discusses one of the variants of the image of the tendril goddess (Rankenfrau) with the mask of a satyr recorded in depictions on plates found in Chersonesos Taurica, in the funerary complex within the Kul-Oba burial-mound and also in a burial-mound near the village of Ivanovskaya (Fig. 1–3). Examination of the context for each of the finds and also their comparison allows the assumption that they were all used to decorate apparel – the head-dress of a priestess. The image of the goddess depicted on these plates can be traced back to the iconographic type  of the Potnia Theron. The combination of images of the winged goddess and a satyr mask in a single item is probably linked with the cult of Artemis Orphia.

On a number of pilgrimage items and utility objects from the Late Antiquity, St Thecla, a highly revered saint, also known as Thecla the Protomartyr, is often shown accompanied by St Menas, whose tomb in Egypt was the pilgrimage centre associated with healing miracles. The saintly couple appear in ad bestias compositions or in a simplified variant: two saints with a cross. Although the popularity of St Menas and St Thecla, as well as their shrines, are well known in Late Antiquity, the connection between the two cults seems to be poorly scrutinised. By means of comparing and analysing hagiographic texts, epigraphic material and objects of visual culture depicting Sts Menas and Thecla, the paper investigates the nature and origin of this cult community, aspects of pilgrimage related to the saints, as well as the iconographic patterns on which the common image of the saintly couple is based upon.

The iconography of the Horus cippus, an amulet popular in Egypt from the late Third Intermediate Period to Roman times (8th century BCE - 2nd century CE), is unexpectedly recapitulated in bronze “goddess plaques” of the 7-8th centuries CE made by Permian peoples – Finno-Ugric groups from the Ural region of northern Eurasia. The likely explanation is that both templates are descendants of the widely-diffused “Master of Animals” motif, which originated in Mesopotamia during the Ubaid period (6-5th millennium BCE). Transfer of the Master/Mistress of Animals motif  from the Near East to the Ural region probably occurred via the Scythians of the 1st millennium BCE.

The image of a figure holding two wild animals, often called the "Mistress/Master of Animals", has appeared across many ancient periods and regions, on artifacts from proto-literate Mesopotamia in the Near East to the Aegean Iron Age. This motif has a demonstrable chain of cultural custody that is closely tied to concepts of both divinity and royalty. Rather than following a linear progression of diffusion with consistent interpretation, the Master/Mistress motif is culturally translated by adopting populations to suit the understandings of the individuals within those populations. Though some concepts such as healing remained constant from culture to culture, the symbol was reinterpreted or modified based on the role it played in adopting populations' cultural schemas. This resulted in the two seemingly separate motifs of the "Master" and "Mistress". This translation demonstrates the close relationship these early cultures had to one another in spite of their perceived distinctness.

Corpi celesti, fenomeni naturali, aspetti del mondo animale, insieme al ciclo imperscrutabile della vita e della morte, appaiono come componenti essenziali della sfera del sacro nel mondo antico. Credenze, aspetti rituali e di culto trovano espressione anche in un articolato universo comunicativo plasmato da figure, simboli e segni composti in linguaggi figurativi e astratti. decodificare questi messaggi fortemente simbolici è impresa non di rado ardua in quanto ci si muove, soprattutto se in assenza di fonti scritte, nel campo insidioso delle interpretazioni opinabili. in qualche caso temi iconografici mostrano estese corrispondenze che oltrepassano di molto limiti culturali e cronologici e si pone pertanto il quesito se si tratti di "semplici" convergenze o di più profonde connessioni, di elementi effettivamente comuni, dovuti a un patrimonio spirituale o mitologico condiviso. in questo senso la suggestiva definizione di "divinità migranti" è stata utilizzata da marco Bettelli per evidenziare il trasferimento, fra oriente e occidente, di alcuni soggetti iconografici di natura religiosa, come ad esempio il motivo simbolico dello scudo nelle versioni a incavi e ad otto, che alla conclusione dell'età del Bronzo, verso la fine del ii millennio a.C., si ritrova nella Penisola italiana, come probabile esito di percorsi di collegamento con l'egeo e l'area vicino orientale.