The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  I HAD NEVER HEARD of the mummies of Pierre Jouguet, let alone the momentous discovery of the papyrus fragments wrapped around them, until a bone-chillingly cold afternoon in a guest room at Lincoln College, Oxford. It was early January 1991, and I was deep into research for my book on Greek priestesses, fast on the trail of Queen Praxithea. Huddled beside an electric fire, I opened Jan Bremmer’s Interpretations of Greek Mythology, keen to read Robert Parker’s article “Myths of Early Athens.” Within seconds I forgot the frosty chill of the guest room, enthralled by the tale of the Athenian king Erechtheus and how he sacrificed his daughter to save the city. Why had I never heard of this riveting story in my years of study? And how soon could I get my hands on a copy of Euripides’s text?

  Lincoln College’s resident papyrologist, Nigel Wilson, lived steps away in the front quad. He obligingly lent me his copy of Nova fragmenta Euripidea, which I carried across the Turl to the newsstand for photocopying. Holding the Kleine Texte edition down on the flashing glass of a first-generation Xerox machine, I watched as, page by page, Euripides’s Erechtheus spilled out in one long roll of slippery paper, strangely reminiscent of papyrus scrolls of the ancient past.

  I carried the Xerox around with me for the better part of the next six months, working on the fragmentary Greek whenever I could steal a free moment, all the while waiting for a time when I could turn my full attention to the text. World events conspired to bring three full months of unexpected research time the following summer. As director of excavations on the island of Yeronisos off western Cyprus, I usually head for the trenches in May to begin the summer field season. But the dig had to be canceled in 1991, because of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing first Gulf War. Operation Desert Storm’s ground campaign had begun at the end of February, and by spring uncertainty still hung in the air. It was this unforeseen chain of events that grounded me Stateside for a full summer of unscheduled and uninterrupted research. Euripides’s Erechtheus was the first order of business.

  Staring out the leaded windows of Bryn Mawr College’s classical seminar room in the Thomas Library, I fixed my eyes on the weeping cherry tree below. It was late afternoon, August 15, and I had finally finished reading through the fragmentary Greek text. I was stunned by the power of Praxithea’s patriotic speech and intrigued by Athena’s appointment of Praxithea as first priestess of Athena Polias, and my mind’s eye turned to the central panel of the Parthenon’s east frieze. I had been poring over it all morning, trying to come to grips with the woman at its very center, the so-called priestess of Athena. Why didn’t she hold a temple key, the single attribute that would absolutely confirm her priestly status? Confirm, that is, if she were a historical priestess. But what if she were the first, mythical priestess of Athena, Queen Praxithea herself? Thus two independent lines of inquiry, both in pursuit of the priestess of Athena, collided in a single image shown on the east frieze. Could I be looking at what Euripides is talking about: a family group, with father, mother, and three daughters? And do I see Queen Praxithea, mother and priestess, at the very center of it all?

  By November the following year, I stood face-to-face with Colin Austin himself, there in the Cambridge University lecture hall where Anthony Snodgrass had invited me to present my reinterpretation of the Parthenon frieze. I had set aside the priestess book and had worked on nothing else throughout the intervening fifteen months, devouring all I could find on foundation myths, landscape, memory, ritual, sacrifice, drama, democracy, and architectural sculpture. And now I met the man who had first recognized in Sorbonne Papyrus 2328 the words of Euripides himself. Colin held in his hand the Kleine Texte volume containing the Erechtheus fragments. As we left with a band of students and faculty making our way to the post-lecture reception, he asked: “Would you like to read it together?” And when we had finished, seated there at the far end of the table of merrymakers, he turned and asked if I would care to read it again. So we went back to the beginning and read the play through for a second time. This was the first of many such encounters and the beginning of an enduring conversation. Colin never stopped learning from the Erechtheus fragments and encouraged me to do the same. His untimely death in 2010 sadly brought an end to our wide-ranging discussions, but following his advice, I have continued to learn from all that this remarkably rich text has to teach.

  AND SO I OFFER a wholly new paradigm for understanding the Parthenon frieze, one that sees it as a representation of the great foundation myth from Athens’s legendary past.57 Viewing the frieze against the backdrop of the story set out in Euripides’s Erechtheus, we can understand, for the first time, the momentous family portrait shown in the central panel of its east side. Mother, father, and three daughters have embarked on a supreme act of selfless love for their city, an act of ultimate sacrifice that exemplifies the core values upon which Athenian democracy was built. The unthinkable will be demanded of this family, and yet its members will not be found wanting. They shall give their utmost for the community, laying aside self-interest to serve a greater, common good.

  Erechtheus (second from right), Praxithea (center), and daughters preparing for sacrifice, east frieze, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.51)

  Understanding these figures as members of a family group enables us to perceive subtle adjustments in their heights, communicating that the three girls are sisters of three separate ages (above). The maiden at far left stands slightly shorter than the girl beside her, while the child at far right is shorter still.58 Indeed, the “enigma” of this scene falls away as we recognize the Athenian royal family: Erechtheus, Praxithea, and their three daughters.59

  This portrait group would have been immediately recognizable to Athenians because of the distinctive presence of three girls. Most royal families in Greek myth had at least one treasured son. The Athenian dynasty was unusual for its abundance of daughters and scarcity of male heirs. As we have seen, by most accounts, Erechtheus had three daughters, as did Kekrops before him and Deukalion even earlier still. From its first days, then, the Acropolis was inhabited by a profusion of royal maidens. This is not surprising given that the patron of the city was a female divinity. There is a synergy and cohesion between the virgin goddess of the city and the virgin daughters of its earliest kings.

  Royal family of Elis preparing for chariot race with Zeus at center, Queen Sterope and King Oinomaos at left, Pelops and Hippodameia at right. Olympia, east pediment. (illustration credit ill.52)

  If we look to the greatest temple that immediately preceded the Parthenon, that of Zeus at Olympia completed in 456 B.C., we similarly find on its east end the local royal family in a solemn lineup (above).60 King Oinomaos of Elis, his wife, Sterope, his daughter Hippodameia, and her suitor, Pelops, are shown in the pediment rather than on a frieze, but the parallel is nonetheless strong. The east façade of a temple is always its most significant: this is the location of the main entrance that faces the open-air altar upon which sacrifice was offered. Unlike in Christian churches, Greek altars were located outside and to the east of temple buildings. This allowed the cult statue to look out through the front door, to watch and savor the animal sacrifices offered to it. Importantly, having the front door at the east end of the temple allowed the rising sun to pour its radiance upon the icon of the divinity each morning. One must remember, the cult statue was no mere representation of the god but the divine presence itself. Cult statues therefore needed to be awakened with first light, bathed, dressed, fed, and delighted with animal sacrifice, offerings, and gifts.61

  In keeping with the primacy of the east façade, we shall begin our look at the Parthenon frieze here and work our way westward to the back of the temple. This, of course, is the reverse of the direction that pilgrims would have taken as they entered the Acropolis at the west and walked along the flanks of the Parthenon toward its east end. But this only serves to remind us that the intended primary viewer of the Parthenon sculptures was Athena, not the human visitors. To make sense of the sculptures, then, w
e must read from the goddess’s point of view, beginning at the east, where our narrative starts.62

  The woman shown at the very center of the east frieze has long been identified as a fifth-century priestess of Athena Polias, a cult title meaning “Athena of the City.”63 Strikingly, though, she lacks the chief iconographic indicator of her sacred office: the temple key. From the Archaic period on, large, rodlike keys served to identify priestesses. These women appear in terra-cotta and stone statuary, on grave markers, and in vase painting, their rank at the top of the temple hierarchy always recognizable by the keys they hold.64 We need only look to the image of Athena’s priestess on a fourth-century B.C. honorary relief found on the Acropolis to see the prominence of the temple key cradled in her left arm (previous page).65 Raising her right hand in a gesture of prayer, the priestess stands beside the statue of Athena Parthenos. Nike (Victory), perched on Athena’s hand, leans over to crown the priestess with honors. We would expect a historical priestess on the Parthenon frieze to look much like this woman on the honorary relief set up on the Acropolis in the late classical period.

  Honorary relief, Athena with Victory crowning priestess at lower left, found on the Athenian Acropolis. Second half of fourth century B.C. (illustration credit ill.53)

  The absence of a key in the hand of the woman at the center of the east frieze is, in fact, the catalyst for this entire revisionary study of the Parthenon. For it was in writing Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece that I first had to account for this so-called keyless “priestess.” Ultimately, I had to reject the conventional reading of this scene and open myself to a wider range of possibilities as to whom this female figure represents. The Parthenon Enigma is a direct result of this conundrum.

  And so, on that August afternoon at Bryn Mawr, the full kaleidoscope of possibilities converged to focus upon a singular realization. The woman shown at the center of the east frieze has as yet no need of a key, for she is none other than the first mythical priestess of Athena, Praxithea herself. In fact, the queen is shown here just before the sacrifice of her daughter, before the goddess proclaimed her a priestess. She lacks the temple key because there was not yet a temple on the Acropolis to be locked or unlocked. Praxithea is, indeed, the Ur-priestess of Athena Polias, and her vibrant story provides the founding myth upon which the historical priesthood would be based.

  The bearded man shown behind her has traditionally been identified as the priest of Poseidon-Erechtheus or, alternatively, as the chief magistrate of Athens, the archon basileus.66 But there is no evidence for the participation of either man in the culminating rite of the Panathenaia, a feast that was ministered by female cult officials.67 What is distinctive about this man is his costume. He wears the long, unbelted, short-sleeved tunic typically worn by priests, indeed by men who offer sacrifice. Attic funeral reliefs that commemorate priests show them dressed in this same costume.68 A priest named Simos (facing page) wears it on a marble gravestone of fourth-century B.C. date. Like the man in the center of the Parthenon’s east frieze, Simos strikes a contrapposto pose, with weight shifted onto his right leg. In his right hand, he holds the knife of sacrifice, the standard attribute for male priesthood and counterpart to the temple key of female sacred office. The knife identifies Simos as the one who slits the throat of the sacrificial animal.69

  Late classical Attic funerary relief of priest named Simos. Late fifth/early fourth century, Athens. (illustration credit ill.54)

  That the male figure in the center of the east frieze carries no knife argues against his identification as a historical priest of the fifth century B.C. But what man would be standing with Queen Praxithea and her daughters? The mythical king Erechtheus is dressed as a sacrificer as he solemnly prepares to offer his youngest daughter, in accordance with the Delphic oracle. The priesthood of Poseidon-Erechtheus will be established in his memory, just as the priesthood of Athena Polias will remember his wife, Praxithea.

  The identity and sex of the child shown at the far right of the scene (following page) are vigorously debated. Is this a girl or is it a boy? The eighteenth-century commentators Stuart and Revett saw the figure as a girl.70 During the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth, interpreters tended to see a boy. In 1975, Martin Robertson, Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford, reinvigorated the debate, arguing afresh that we have a little girl here. He pointed to the horizontal creases encircling the child’s neck as distinctively feminine, indeed as the signs of female beauty sometimes referred to as “Venus rings.”71 John Boardman, Robertson’s successor to the Lincoln Professorship, followed in identifying the child as a girl. Employing comparative anatomy of masculine and feminine posteriors, he contrasted the configuration of a boy’s bare bottom (this page), shown on the north frieze, with that of the child shown at the center of the east frieze, concluding that the two children must be of different sexes.72 Today, the field stands evenly divided between those who see a boy and those who see a girl in this figure.73

  I would argue that it matters little whether this figure looks to the modern eye like a girl or a boy. Archaic and classical Greek artists were so unused to depicting the female nude that when confronted with this challenge, they relied on what they knew best: the male nude. A fine example can be seen on a red-figure vase in Bari, Italy, showing nude girls exercising (facing page).74 They are endowed with well-developed masculine physiques, heavy musculature approaching that of bodybuilders. The girls’ breasts emerge implausibly from their armpits, as if afterthoughts.

  Erechtheus and daughter displaying her funerary dress, east frieze, Parthenon. (illustration credit ill.55)

  Women exercising in palaistra. Krater, from Rutigliano. Bari, Museo Civico, Italy. (illustration credit ill.56)

  Anatomical analysis will not provide the answer as to the child’s sex. For this we must depend on context. Those who see a boy must construct an unattested scenario in which a temple boy participated in the culminating ritual of the Panathenaia.75 Within the context of Greek religion, which regularly required that female attendants serve the cults of female divinities, especially in the case of virgin goddesses, it would be very surprising to find a boy involved so prominently in the sacred rite of Athena.76

  What of the cloth? Athena’s peplos was, from the very start, women’s work. Wool from which to weave it was washed and carded by virgin hands. The little fingers of prepubescent girls, known as arrephoroi, set its warp under the supervision of Athena’s priestess. A team of noblewomen known as ergastinai, or “worker-weavers,” labored at their looms to produce the dress over a nine-month period that corresponded to the gestation term of a baby.77 It is unlikely that such care would be taken with the sacred garment only for it then to be “manhandled” by a priest and a boy. Indeed, within the context of Greek ritual, male hands might even have been perceived as contaminating, entirely unsuited to touching the goddess’s dress. Surely it was the priestess who presented the peplos to Athena, just as in the Iliad the Trojan priestess Theano offers Athena a beautifully woven fabric in supplication.78

  Those who view the child as a girl usually identify her as one of the historical arrephoroi, a pair of seven- to eleven-year-old girls selected from prominent citizen families to serve on the Acropolis for a festival cycle.79 Their cult title signals that they carry “unnamed” or “secret” things, the arreta. The girls participated in a special nighttime ceremony, the Arrephoria, in which they transported the “unnamable things” down the slopes of the Acropolis.80 Later, they carried something else back up again. The girls also served at the festival of the Chalkeia, during which they helped with the warping and weaving of the peplos. But, as we’ve said, the arrephoroi are always mentioned as acting in pairs, sometimes two pairs together, probably representing the outgoing and the incoming teams of two. That the child shown at the far right of the central panel has no partner makes it unlikely that she represents an arrephoros.81

  When viewed with reference to the foundation
myth, however, this child may be identified as the youngest daughter of King Erechtheus and Queen Praxithea. She is about to be sacrificed at the hand of her father, who is dressed as a priest for the event. Apollodoros tells us that Erechtheus sacrificed his youngest daughter first.82 The girl’s dress is, very conspicuously, opened at the side, revealing her nude buttocks. It would be unthinkable for a historical girl, an arrephoros from an elite family, to be portrayed with backside casually exposed during the most sacred moment of the Panathenaic ritual.83

  I would argue that the girl’s nudity is not accidental. Her garment is open to communicate that she is in the process of changing clothes. Removing her everyday attire, our heroine is about to put on her funerary dress, a great winding sheet that she and her father hold up for all to see. Through a pictorial device known as “simultaneous narrative,” the artist compresses present and future events into a single image.84 We see the dressing ritual of the present and anticipate the virgin sacrifice that is to follow moments later, its imminence betokened by the shroud.

  In the Greek world, young women who died before marriage were buried in their wedding dresses.85 Therefore, in Greek tragedy, we find maidens headed for death changing, in advance, into their bridal/funerary robes. In the Trojan Women, Euripides presents the princess-prophetess Kassandra as she is taken from Troy, dressed as a bride for Agamemnon.86 In fact, Kassandra is dressing for her murder at the hands of Klytaimnestra. So, too, in Iphigeneia at Aulis, Euripides presents his heroine all decked out in her wedding finery (kosmos), complete with a bridal crown (stephane), as she prepares for what she thinks will be her marriage to Achilles.87 Actually, of course, Iphigeneia is going to her death.