I will be taking a break until January -- Season's Greetings to all of my readers.
What follows is a recent draft of a chapter from my forthcoming work on the iconography of the Gundestrup cauldron. The entire work will appear next year as an Ebook -- I will keep you posted. (Apologies for the formatting problems -- mostly due to the footnotes)
The first large plate in
my analysis depicts, on the left, a pony-tailed figure who is
immersing (or drawing out) another, smaller, figure from what has
been variously described as a vat or a cauldron. From its profile and
deep form, the vessel can be identified as a situla of a type known
from southern Italy. The shape closely resembles an Apulian
red-figure pottery situla dated to ca. 350 B.C. and in the Museum of
Fine Arts in
Boston1
.
To the right of these
two figures, the central design is divided into upper and lower
registers by an ivy branch. The ivy is a very common icon of the
Dionysian cult and, although most associate the vine with Dionysos,
Carl Kerényi2
says “It is a significant fact that in Greece the wine god never
bore the name or epithet “Ampelos,” “vine,” but in Attica was
called “Kissos,” “ivy”.” Lysimachos of Thrace appointed
Philetairos to guard the royal treasure which had been deposited at
the fortified city of Pergamum in Asia Minor. Philetairos was a
devotee of Dionysos and had himself made into a eunuch to emulate Dionysos’ feminine aspect. He founded the Attalid dynasty which
continued through his nephew Eumenes I (263-241 B.C.) and the coins
of this dynasty often bore an ivy-leaf subsidiary symbol as an
attribute of its founder.
The usual form of the
ivy branch as a decorative element on Greek pottery of a Dionysian
theme such as is illustrated by Kerényi3
shows the branch as having a serpentine form, but here, the branch is
straight. There is an uncertain, double wing-like object at the left
end and the right end terminates in a single ivy-leaf so it is
possible that the artist has combined the ivy branch with the image
of a thyrsos, the
often ivy bound staff held by Dionysos and his attendants that is
normally crowned with a pine-cone instead of the ivy leaf depicted
here. A more prosaic explanation could be that the artist did not
want to devote the space needed by a serpentine branch, although this
does not explain why the branch has two terminals as the ivy scroll
should be depicted as being continuous and having no terminals
whatsoever.
To the right of the ivy
branch, three figures walk to the left, each playing the Celtic
war-trumpet known as the carnyx. The
long instrument is made to be played upright and the horn at the end
is in the form of a boar’s head. There is no significance to the
appearance of the carnyx with regard to the place of manufacture of
the Gundestrup cauldron as the silversmiths’ clients were
undoubtedly Celts and would have brought such instruments to any
battle that they fought. Both Greeks and Romans used the image of a
carnyx as an attribute of the Celts where they often used them as
part of the depiction of war trophies.
Above the carnyx players is a serpent which is
possibly ram-headed. This represents the form of Dionysos known as
Zagreus. Another aspect of the serpent which ties
into the ivy theme is discussed by Kerényi:
“The snake is a phenomenon of life, in which the
association of life with coldness, slipperiness, mobility, and often
deadly peril, makes a highly ambivalent impression. ... Of the two
characteristic plants of the Dionysian religion – ivy and the vine
– it was the former “colder”plant that suggested a kinship with
the snake; thus, a snake was twined into the ivy wreaths of the
maenads. The maenads tore the snake to pieces as they did the other
animals they carried in their hands. They also tore the ivy wreaths,
perhaps instead of the snakes.”4
In front of the carnyx players,
and forming the lower register of the procession, there is a man
wearing a boar-crested helmet and carrying what might be either a
sword or a short staff over his shoulder and in front of him are six
spearmen carrying long Celtic shields. The procession makes its way
toward a rampant hound which faces them. Behind the hound is the
lower part of the large figure who holds the smaller figure above the
situla.
The choice of a boar’s crested
helmet is no accident, for the boar is the Celtic symbol of the
underworld, night, the dark half of the year and death as I have
described elsewhere.5
He drives the spearmen toward a Celtic Cerberus who guards the
entrance to the underworld.
The design of the shields with
their small round bosses has been used to support a late date for the
Gundestrup cauldron as most round bosses are of a later date than the
long spindle bosses such as on the famous shield from the River
Witham in England6.
The round-bossed Battersea shield was traditionally dated to the
first century B.C. but a recent analysis of the red enamel has proven
that its actual date was the second century B.C. or earlier.7
In his discussion of the Wandsworth shield roundel Jope says that the
dating presents a paradox: the line ornamentation being suggestive of
a time before the later second century B.C.8
The round bosses depicted on the Gundestrup cauldron are far smaller
than than the round bosses on the later British shields and the
shields themselves are very narrow. It seems that the bosses are
just a little bigger than the size of the hand. In the early third
century B.C., Celtic shield bosses were small and of round or
rectangular form and the shield itself had a central midrib9.
Problems with this design led to the boss being extended to form the
familiar spindle-boss. On some coins of Ariminum in Umbria dating
after 268 B.C. a Gaulish warrior is depicted with a shield having
such a small round boss. These coins are very rare and their
condition is usually not very good but there is usually no clear
depiction of the mid-rib. On one example, the shield appears to be of
wicker but this specimen is in very poor condition. Another example
shows no mid-rib whatsoever although the condition is good enough to
show such a detail had it been present.10
The real key to the dating of
these spearman is the fighting style which combines a long shield
with a spear. In Britain, the earliest weapon set seems to be the
dagger and spear, with the long sword replacing these and appearing
after about 300 B.C.11
The coins from Ariminum in Umbria must adjust this date slightly
toward the present, but it would be very difficult to explain the
combination fighting styles of infantry with body length shields and
spears and cavalry, presumably with swords, any later than the third
century B.C. The related Greek hoplites had completely fallen out of
fashion by the time of Alexander the Great.
The origin of the design of the
spearmen procession lies in the Venetic decorated bronze situlae of
the 5th. century
B.C. and it seems likely that Thracian artists working in northern
Italy would have had a number of models to choose from. Jacobsthal
illustrates two of these situlae12
showing a procession of spearmen with long shields very similar to
those on the Gundestrup cauldron. The shields depicted on the second
illustration have small round bosses just as is depicted on the
Gundestrup plate.
The procession reverses
its direction in the upper register with four helmeted horsemen
galloping to the right. Each has a different helmet crest: from left
to right a crescent, antlers, a boar and a bird. The horse
strappings have two phalerae on each horse, but these are of simple
design with a large central boss surrounded by smaller bosses or
roundels. Most of the Celtic phalera illustrated by Jacobsthal are of
ornate pierced work in the early Celtic style, but one from La Tène
has a simply-decorated central boss with very small bosses surrounding it13.
Another, more elaborate example from a chariot burial in Horovicky,
Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and dating to the 5th
century B.C.
is in Prague at the Národní Muzeum.14 This example has the central boss and is surrounded by two registers of masks interspersed with sets of two very small bosses. Owing to the plain design of the phalerae depicted the range of possible dates could be quite long.
is in Prague at the Národní Muzeum.14 This example has the central boss and is surrounded by two registers of masks interspersed with sets of two very small bosses. Owing to the plain design of the phalerae depicted the range of possible dates could be quite long.
The horsemen are wearing
spurs and rather too much has been made of this with regard to the
dating of the Gundestrup cauldron. Kaul says “... spurs were first
introduced in LT D, which started about 125 B.C. On the basis of the
spurs therefore, the cauldron cannot have been produced prior to 125
B.C. or at the most one two two decades earlier. Spurs are thought
however to have been in use earlier in Greek Macedonia”15
Given the cultural range of devices depicted on the cauldron, any
reference to Celtic spurs as dating only to La Tène D should not be
taken too seriously. The horsemen are attired in Thracian garb and
reveal their Celtic identity only through the helmet crests. The
artist drew from his models rather freely as we can see in the use of
an Italian situla on this plate and in the overall composition of the
spearmen which appear to have been taken from Venetic situla art. It
remains only for us to ask just how early spurs can be dated in the
Greek world. The answer to this question does not come from any
archaeological finds which mostly would be dated very loosely – and
perhaps even inaccurately, but a date prior to 350 B.C. is proven in
the historical record through Xenophon’s (c. 430 – c. 355 B.C.)
treatise on horsemanship. He says:
“With
a horse entirely ignorant of leaping, the best way is to take him by
the leading rein, which hangs loose, and to get across the trench
yourself first, and then to pull tight on the leading-rein, to induce
him to leap across. If he refuses, some one with a whip or switch
should apply it smartly. The result will be that the horse will clear
at a bound, not the distance merely, but a far larger space than
requisite; and for the future there will be no need for an actual
blow, the mere sight of some one coming up behind will suffice to
make him leap. As soon as he is accustomed to leap in this way you
may mount him and put him first at smaller and then at larger
trenches. At the moment of the spring be ready to apply the spur; and
so too, when training him to leap up and leap down, you should touch
him with the spur at the critical instant.”16
and:
“But possibly
you are not content with a horse serviceable for war. You want to
find him him a showy, attractive animal, with a certain grandeur of
bearing. If so, you must abstain from pulling at his mouth with the
bit, or applying the spur and whip-- methods commonly adopted by
people with a view to a fine effect, though, as a matter of fact,
they thereby achieve the very opposite of what they are aiming at.
That is to say, by dragging the mouth up they render the horse blind
instead of alive to what is in front of him; and what with spurring
and whipping they distract the creature to the point of absolute
bewilderment and danger.”17
I include the quoted passages lest
there should be any doubt that it was indeed the spur to which
Xenophon was talking about and not any loose translation of “whip”.
Where, exactly, the use of spurs actually originated remains
questionable, but it should be mentioned that Xenophon did enter the
service of the
Thracian king Suethes18
and one study places the origins of the spur to Thrace, Macedonia and
Illyria19.
Part of Illyria, too, is within the zone of the so called “Situla
Culture” and it is possible that the original model of the horsemen
came from a now lost situla and that the artist changed the costumes
to the familiar Thracian garb he was used to depicting and added the
Celtic helmets as an attribute to identify the nationality of the
riders.
The final element is the
horned serpent in the top right corner of the plate. The direction of
the serpent is the same as the horsemen that precede it and it
appears to lead them. Zeus impregnated Persephone when he was in the
form of a serpent and in this form he was Zeus Meilichios, the
epithet referring to an early serpent deity of the underworld. Zeus
had earlier pursued Rhea, the Great Goddess and his own mother, and
she changed herself into a snake. Zeus did the same and mated with
her, the two snakes intertwined in the form of the Herakleotic knot.
This device was combined with the staff of Hermes, the guide of souls
to the underworld, and it became the caduceus. “Meilichios”
meant "Easy-to-be-entreated", gracious or gentle.
Aelian20
tells of a grove in Epirus where snakes that are supposed to be
descended from the Python at Delphi are fed by a naked priestess. If
the snakes are gentle when she approaches them with honey cakes then
it is a good omen for the people, but if they frighten her and do not
accept the cakes then it is considered a bad omen. The theme exists
in Gaul and Miranda Green21
describes a stone at Sommerécourt in Haute Marne where a goddess is
depicted with a ram-horned snake entwined about her that feeds from a
bowl on her knees.
Kerényi reveals the process in the
stories of Zeus and Rhea and Zeus and Persephone:
“Taking
his mother or daughter to wife, the son or husband begets a mystic
child who in turn will court only his mother. To such involvements
the snake figure is more appropriate than any other. It is the most
naked form of zoë
absolutely reduced to itself. Rhea, the great mother, assumes it for
the original generation of her son, but this form is eminently suited
to a male, a son and husband, who forces his way uninterruptedly down
through the generations of mothers and daughters – the generations
of living beings – and so discloses his continuity just as zoë
does. Individual snakes were ritually torn to
pieces, but the snake,
the genus as a whole, was indestructibly present, bearing witness to
the indestructibility of life in what was, in a manner of speaking,
its lowest form.”22
There is little
disagreement on the overall narrative interpretation of this plate as
showing the regeneration or resurrection of fallen warriors. The
situla is described by some as a cauldron, not because of its form
but because of a later Welsh story where a magical cauldron is
described “that if one of thy men be slain today, and be cast
therein, tomorrow he will be as well as ever he was at the best,
except that he will not regain his speech.”23
One of the
interpretations of the plate24
is that the foot-soldiers on the lower register become resurrected as
cavalry on the upper register. If we consider this as a historical
account then we might say that the cavalry in the upper register had
formerly been spearman in an earlier incarnation. This not only
preserves the idea of zoë
but gives us a date of somewhere around 300 B.C. when the Celtic
style of fighting shifted away from their version of the Greek
hoplites to include mounted swordsmen. It would thus not be a
representation of a future, but of a past.
The rest of the
iconography confirms the iconography of that particular scene by
having the warriors associated with Dionysos. The ram-headed serpent
is Dionysos Zagreus and the process of resurrection takes place in the underworld – the entrance being guarded by a hound representing Cerberus. The ivy branch represents the continuity of life as zoë.
Unlike the southern Italian pots which depict the ivy branch in its
typically serpentine form, this branch is shown like a tree, with the
wing-like device at the left end perhaps representing roots. The
symbol of a tree can be found on some Celtic coins – especially on
gold coins of the Dobunni where it is the sole obverse device.
Branches and tree trunks are sometimes found in Celtic pits and wells
where they appear to have been ritually placed. It is thus likely
that the fusion of the Dionysian or Orphic beliefs with those of the
Celts thus had the Celts sacred tree being combined with the Greek
ivy-scroll. A deciduous tree can be seen to “die” in the winter,
only to be reborn again in the spring. In this symbolism, a leaf can
be compared to life as bios
while the tree itself represents zoë.
The procession here is very different from the Greek versions in
which the dead are escorted into the countryside and the situla
carries the wine for the rites of resurrection. We might wonder if
the Druids reserved this resurrection only for the bravest of
warriors and that the cauldron on which this scenes were illustrated
were used for serving the heroes feast in which the bravest of all
would be given the choicest portion. That a situla is shown and not a
cauldron suggests that the idea of a cauldron of regeneration
actually predates the ritual use of the situla and the change to the
situla is an example of syncretism.
The situla was originally a bucket
used for drawing water from a well. The Venetic culture used the form
to depict scenes from life showing feasting and processions and it
appears to have taken on some significance to the afterlife. This
idea is supported by by its common depiction in Dionysian processions
showing the rites of the departed, but instead of water, wine was
carried in it. Perhaps the later miracle of changing water into wine
was, in reality, a metaphor for the shift in the composition of the
sacred liquid. This miracle is not restricted to Christ but also to
Dionysos. Robert M. Price says:
“My
guess is that it was this contact with Gentiles and Samaritans that
resulted in the assimilation of theological and mythological themes
from these traditions, both as Johannine missionaries accommodated their message to the categories of their hearers and as Samaritan and
pagan converts brought favorite beliefs and mythemes, even
unwittingly, into their new religion. Thus in the Gospel of John
Jesus repeats the water-to-wine miracle of Dionysus (2:1-11) and
describes himself, like Dionysus, as the life-giving grapevine
(15:1-10). (Of course the Synoptics bear many of the same traces of
Dionysus influence: Jesus’ blood is wine, his flesh bread, since he
is a Dionysian corn king.)”25
The source of this
metaphor is in the formation of the Orphic cult where, sometime prior
to the later sixth century B.C. Orpheus (whether a real person or a
mythological founder of the cult is uncertain) shifted the meaning of
religion away from gaining material blessings in this world toward
the fate of the soul after death.26
Knight refers to this event as “the great reformation”. He
continues:
“The mystery
cults were ancient religions founded on the idea of human interaction
with spirit. ... Before the great reformation, spirit generally meant
the life force within nature, specifically the power of fertility. In
the Near east for example, fertility was closely associated with
water. There was an ancient Babylonian mystery tradition in which it
was believed that moisture retreated to a great underground abyss
during the dry season. This abyss, known as the Deep, was the
source of life-giving energy that sustains the world, and it was from
here that the life-giving waters returned at the start of the wet
season each year.
“In
the mystery cult tradition the essence of fertility also was
identified with a hero figure, usually but not always male. The
seasonal disappearance of fertility was depicted as the captivity of
the hero, and its return signified the hero’s resurrection or
rebirth. The primary purpose of the cult was to secure material
blessings and the continuation of human life. As time went on,
however, especially in Egypt, this also became associated with the
continuation of life after death.”27
Price cites an example
of the continuity of the belief into modern times as experienced and
reported by John Cuthbert Lawson28
:
“...
during a trip to rural Greece, he attended a Passion play. As the
local man acting the role of of Jesus was being brought into the tomb
on Good Friday evening, Lawson was startled at the manifest anxiety
of an old peasant woman beside him. On his asking the cause of her
distress, she blurted out, ‘Of course I am anxious; for if Christ
does not rise tomorrow, we shall have no corn this year.’”29
We know of many
incidents of the Celts offerings in wet places such as springs,
rivers wells and bogs and we also know that the shift to the La Téne
style of art was associated with the importation of wine and vessels
associated with that trade. Their word for the underworld was
“dubno”, meaning
“the deep”. We cannot be certain if the idea of “the deep”
was transmitted to the Celts from the Near East, or whether the idea
is a part of our mental evolution as a species – a human archetype,
but a friend once told me of an incident where he was setting seismic
charges on a hill in rural Mexico. The local people seemed afraid of
him and his companions and he later discovered that they believed
that he had been sent by God to blow a hole in the hill which,
according to local legend, was filled with water and that the ensuing
flood was to punish them for their sins.
Finally, from the
iconographic connections in this plate to northern Italy we turn to
an account of the triumphal procession held in 191 B.C. to celebrate
the victory over the Boii by Publius Cornelius. Livy speaks of “2,340
pounds of silver, both unwrought and wrought into vessels of
respectable craftsmanship in the Gallic style”.30
We have no evidence of the Celtic production of silver vessels and
silver seemed mainly to be used by the Gauls for coinage only, but we
know that the Etruscans had a history of finely crafted silver and
silver gilt vessels such as has been found in the Regolini Galassi
tomb of the seventh century B.C. It is highly unlikely that any Roman
would mistake the Etruscan style for Gallic, but the same could not
be said for any works done by Thracian silversmiths for Celtic
patrons such as with the Gundestrup cauldron. The fate of these
captured silver vessels would have been the melting pots. We thus
might wonder if the Gundestrup cauldron is the only currently known
example from a thriving Thracian workshop in northern Italy that
catered to the Gauls and perhaps even to the Etruscans.
1
Attributed to the Varrese Painter, Italy, Apulia, 26.7 cm, Gift of
Horace L. Mayer and Paul E. Manheim, by exchange, and the Helen and
Alice Colburn Fund 1992.317
3
ibid, figs. 127 &
128, the theme is the Dionysian exodus where a situla is carried in
a procession.
5
Hooker, John, op. cit.,
p. 60 and The Meaning of the Boar,
Chris Rudd, List 69,
Aylsham, May 2003, p.2-4.
10
Classical Numismatic Group Inc. Electronic Sale 130, lot 8
12
Jacobsthal, Paul, Early Celtic Art,
Oxford, 1944, Plate 216 a - from the Certosa di Bologna , and c –
in Providence.
19
“On the spurs’ development in Thrace,
Macedonia and Illyria during the Early Hellenistic times”.
– In: ПЪТЯТ. Сборник научни статии,
посветени на живота и творчеството на
д-р Георги Китов , Sofia 2003, 198-203
23
Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr,
in The Mabinogion,
Tr. Lady Charlotte Guest.
28
Lawson, John Cuthbert, Modern Greek Folklore
and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals,
Cambridge, 1910, p.573
30
XXXVI, 40
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