Insect myths may present the origins of a people, or of their skills such as finding honey. Other myths concern the nature of the gods or their actions, and how they may be appeased. A variety of myths tell of transformations, such as between the soul of a living or dead person and a butterfly in Japan. Finally, insects appear as symbols of human qualities such as swiftness, or as portents of forthcoming trouble; accordingly, they may appear as amulets to ward off evil.
Myths of origin
The Kalahari Desert's San people tell of a bee that carried a mantis across a river. The exhausted bee left the mantis on a floating flower but planted a seed in the mantis's body before it died. The seed grew to become the first human.[1]
In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand. There Egyptian gods that associate with insects like SelketKhepri and Neith[2] The bowstring on Hindu love god Kamadeva's bow is made of honeybees.[3]
The Baganda people of Uganda hold the legend of Kintu, the first man on earth. Save for his cow, Kintu lived alone. One day he asked permission from Ggulu, who lived in heaven, to marry his daughter Nambi. Ggulu set Kintu on a trial of five tests to pass before he would agree. For his final test Kintu was told to pick Ggulu's own cow from a stretch of cattle. Nambi aided Kintu in the final test by transforming herself into a bee, whispering into his ear to choose the one whose horn she landed upon.[4][5][6]
In Greek Mythology, Aristaeus was the god of bee-keeping. After inadvertently causing the death of Eurydice, who stepped upon a snake while fleeing him, her nymph sisters punished him by killing every one of his bees. Witnessing the empty hives where his bees had dwelt, Aristaeus wept and consulted Proteus who then proceeded to advise Aristaeus to give honor in memory of Eurydice by sacrificing four bulls and four cows. Upon doing so, he let them rot and from their corpses rose bees to fill his empty hives.[4][7]
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess Aphrodite retells the legend of how Eos, the goddess of the dawn, requested Zeus to let her lover Tithonus live forever as an immortal.[8] Zeus granted her request, but, because Eos forgot to ask him to also make Tithonus ageless, Tithonus never died, but he did grow old.[8] Eventually, he became so tiny and shriveled that he turned into the first cicada.[8]
Among the Australian aborigines, a tale tells how giant men found bee honeybags, and taught the Aboriginal peoples how to find them.[9]
The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually but doubtfully identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.[13] A series of identical embossed gold plaques were recovered at Camiros in Rhodes;[14] they date from the archaic period of Greek art in the seventh century, but the winged bee goddesses they depict must be far older.[15]
In Prometheus Bound, attributed to the Athenian tragic playwright Aeschylus, a gadfly sent by Zeus's wife Hera pursues and torments his mistress Io, who has been transformed into a cow and is watched constantly by the hundred eyes of the herdsman Argus. Shakespeare alludes to the myth:[16][17] "Io: Ah! Hah! Again the prick, the stab of gadfly-sting! O earth, earth, hide, the hollow shape—Argus—that evil thing—the hundred-eyed."[17]
Mok Chi', patron deity of beekeepers, on a codex-style Maya vessel
In Hittite mythology, the god of agriculture, Telipinu, went on a rampage and refused to allow anything to grow and animals would not produce offspring. The gods went in search of Telipinu only to fail. Then the goddess Hannahannah sent forth a bee to bring him back. The bee finds Telipinu, stings him and smears wax upon him. The god grew even angrier, until the goddess Kamrusepa (or a mortal priest according to some references) used a ritual to send his anger to the Underworld.
In Hindu mythology, Parvati was summoned by the Gods to kill the demon Arunasura in the form of Bhramari Devi, who took over the heavens and the three worlds. She stings him to death with the help of innumerable black bees emerging from her body, and the Gods regain control.[18]
In ancient Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra is seen to roll across the sky each day, transforming bodies and souls. Beetles of the family Scarabaeidae (dung beetle) roll dung into a ball as food and as a brood chamber in which to lay eggs; this way, the larvae hatch and are immediately surrounded by food. For these reasons the scarab was seen as a symbol of this heavenly cycle and of the idea of rebirth or regeneration. The Egyptian god Khepri, Ra as the rising sun, was often depicted as a scarab beetle or as a scarab beetle-headed man. The ancient Egyptians believed that Khepri renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon, then carried it through the other world after sunset, only to renew it, again, the next day.[19]
The mantis was revered in southern African Khoi and San traditions where man and nature were intertwined.[20] Several ancient civilizations considered the insect to have supernatural powers; for the Greeks, it had the ability to show lost travelers the way home; in the Ancient EgyptianBook of the Dead the "bird-fly" is a minor god that leads the souls of the dead to the underworld; in a list of 9th-century BC Nineveh grasshoppers (buru), the mantis is named necromancer (buru-enmeli) and soothsayer (buru-enmeli-ashaga).[21][22]
According to Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly was seen in Japan as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. If a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, it is said in Japan that the person whom you most love is coming to see you. Large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened– thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.[23]
Diderot's Encyclopédie similarly cites butterflies as a symbol for the soul. A Roman sculpture depicts a butterfly exiting the mouth of a dead man, representing the Roman belief that the soul leaves through the mouth.[24] Indeed, the ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which primarily means "soul" or "mind".[25] According to Mircea Eliade, some of the Nagas of Manipur claim ancestry from a butterfly.[26] In some cultures, butterflies symbolise rebirth.[27] In the English county of Devon, people once hurried to kill the first butterfly of the year, to avoid a year of bad luck.[28] In the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean a death in the family.[29]
An Ancient Greek myth tells of the cithara player Eunomos ("Mr Goodtune"). During a competition, the highest string on his five-string cithara broke. At that moment, a cicada landed on the musical instrument and sang in the place of the missing string: together, they won the competition.[30]
An Australian aboriginal tale tells how a man builds a shelter for his sick son; when he returns with food, his son has vanished, but up in a tree is a cocoon around a pupa.[9]
Symbols, amulets and omens
Dragonfly symbol on a Hopi bowl from Sikyátki, Arizona
Insects have often been taken to represent qualities, for good or ill, and accordingly have been used as amulets to ward off evil, or as omens that predict forthcoming events. A blue-glazed faience dragonfly amulet was found by Flinders Petrie at Lahun, from the Late Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt.[31] During the Greek Archaic Era, the grasshopper was the symbol of the polis of Athens,[32] possibly because they were among the most common insects on the dry plains of Attica.[32] Native Athenians wore golden grasshopper brooches to symbolize that they were of pure, Athenian lineage and did not have any foreign ancestors.[32] In later times, this custom became seen as a mark of archaism.[32]
For some Native American tribes, dragonflies represent swiftness and activity; for the Navajo, they symbolize pure water. They are a common motif in Zuni pottery; stylized as a double-barred cross, they appear in Hopi rock art and on Pueblo necklaces.[33] Among the classical names of Japan are Akitsukuni (秋津国), Akitsushima (秋津島), Toyo-akitsushima (豊秋津島). Akitu or akidu are archaic or dialectal Japanese words for dragonfly, so one interpretation of Akitsushima is "Dragonfly Island".[34] This is attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jinmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.[35][36] As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonfly is associated with autumn,[37] and more generally dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in Japanese art and literature, especially haiku.[33]
In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as "horse-stinger",[38] "devil's darning needle", and "ear cutter", link them with evil or injury.[39]Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people's souls.[33] The Norwegian name for dragonflies is Øyenstikker ("eye-poker"), and in Portugal, they are sometimes called tira-olhos ("eyes-snatcher"). They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name gwas-y-neidr, "adder's servant".[39] The Southern United States term "snake doctor" refers to a folk belief that dragonflies follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured.[40]
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Eos is the goddess and personification of the dawn, who rose each morning from her home at the edge of the river Oceanus to deliver light and disperse the night. In Greek tradition and poetry, she is characterized as a goddess with a great sexual appetite, who took numerous human lovers for her own satisfaction and bore them several children. Like her Roman counterpart Aurora and Rigvedic Ushas, Eos continues the name of an earlier Indo-European dawn goddess, Hausos. Eos, or her earlier Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ancestor, also shares several elements with the love goddess Aphrodite, perhaps signifying Eos's influence on her or otherwise a common origin for the two goddesses. In surviving tradition, Aphrodite is the culprit behind Eos' numerous love affairs, having cursed the goddess with insatiable lust for mortal men.
In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea". Some who ascribe a specific domain to Proteus call him the god of "elusive sea change", which suggests the changeable nature of the sea or the liquid quality of water. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, meaning "versatile", "mutable", or "capable of assuming many forms". "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.
In Greek mythology, Tithonus was the lover of Eos, Goddess of the Dawn. He was a prince of Troy, the son of King Laomedon by the Naiad Strymo (Στρυμώ). The mythology reflected by the fifth-century vase-painters of Athens envisaged Tithonus as a rhapsode, as attested by the lyre in his hand, on an oinochoe of the Achilles Painter, circa 470–460 BC.
In Greek mythology, Geras, also written Gēras, was the god of old age. He was depicted as a tiny, shriveled old man. Gēras's opposite was Hebe, the goddess of youth. His Roman equivalent was Senectus. He is known primarily from vase depictions that show him with the hero Heracles; the mythic story that inspired these depictions has been lost.
Khepri is a scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun. By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life.
Atum, sometimes rendered as Atem or Tem, is the primordial God in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose. He created himself and is the father of Shu and Tefnut, the divine couple, who are the ancestors of the other Egyptian deities. Atum is also closely associated with the evening sun. As a primordial god and as the evening sun, Atum has chthonic and underworld connections. Atum was relevant to the ancient Egyptians throughout most of Egypt's history. He is believed to have been present in ideology as early as predynastic times, becoming even more prevalent during the Old Kingdom and continuing to be worshiped through the Middle and New Kingdom, though he becomes overshadowed by Re around this time.
Nu or Nun, in ancient Egyptian religion, is the personification of the primordial watery abyss which existed at the time of creation and from which the creator sun god Ra arose.
Bees have been featured in myth and folklore around the world. Honey and beeswax have been important resources for humans since at least the Mesolithic period, and as a result humans' relationship with bees—particularly honey bees—has ranged from encounters with wild bees to keeping them agriculturally. Bees themselves are often characterized as magically imbued creatures and their honey as a divine gift.
Hittite mythology and Hittite religion were the religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites, who created an empire centered in what is now Turkey from c. 1600–1180 BC.
Kintu is a mythological figure who appears in a creation myth of the people of Buganda, Uganda. According to this legend, Kintu was the first person on earth.
Scarabaeus sacer, common name sacred scarab, is the type species of the genus Scarabaeus and the family Scarabaeidae. This dung beetle is native of southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia, and it was venerated in ancient Egypt.
Cicada lore and mythology is rich and varied as there are about 2500 species of cicada throughout the world, many of which are undescribed and remain a mystery to science. Cicadas have been prized as a delicacy, and are famed throughout the world for their song.
Telipinu was a Hittite god who most likely served as a patron of farming, though he has also been suggested to have been a storm god or an embodiment of crops. He was a son of the weather god Tarḫunna (Taru) and the solar goddess Arinniti in the system of their mythology. His wife was the goddess Ḫatepuna, though he was also paired with Šepuru and Kataḫḫa at various cultic centres.
Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Myths appear frequently in Egyptian writings and art, particularly in short stories and in religious material such as hymns, ritual texts, funerary texts, and temple decoration. These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only brief fragments.
Human interactions with insects include both a wide variety of uses, whether practical such as for food, textiles, and dyestuffs, or symbolic, as in art, music, and literature, and negative interactions including damage to crops and extensive efforts to control insect pests.
Aker was an ancient Egyptian personification of the horizon, and an earth and underworld god, believed to guard the eastern (Bakhu) and western (Manu) horizons.
Insects have long been used in religion, both directly and as images or symbols.
Insects have appeared in literature from classical times to the present day, an aspect of their role in culture more generally. Insects represent both positive qualities like cooperation and hard work, and negative ones like greed.
Insects have found uses in art, as in other aspects of culture, both symbolically and physically, from ancient times. Artforms include the direct usage of beetlewing (elytra) in paintings, textiles, and jewellery, as well as the representation of insects in fine arts such as paintings and sculpture. Insects have sometimes formed characteristic features of artforms, as in Art Nouveau jewellery.
↑ Prete, Frederick R.; Wells, Harrington; Wells, Patrick H. (1999). "The Predatory Behavior of Mantids: Historical Attitudes and Contemporary Questions". In Prete, Fredrick R.; Wells, Harrington; Wells, Patrick H.; Hurd, Lawrence E. (eds.). The Praying Mantids. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp.3–8. ISBN978-0-8018-6174-1.
↑ "Mantid". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
↑ "Butterfly". Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert. January 2011. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
↑ Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects. Gale, 2003.
↑ Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue onlineArchived 3 December 1998 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, etc. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678.
↑ Egan, Rory B (2011). "Cicadas in Ancient Greece. Ventures in Classical Tettigology". Cultural Entomology Digest (3).
↑ "Beads UC7549". Petrie Museum Catalogue. The Petrie Museum, UCL. Archived from the original on 16 September 2017. Retrieved 10 June 2015. There is a photograph in the catalogue; it is free for non-commercial usage.
1 2 3 4 Roche, Paul (2005). Aristophanes: The Complete Plays: A New Translation by Paul Roche. New York City, New York: New American Library. p.176. ISBN978-0-451-21409-6.
1 2 3 Mitchell, Forrest L.; Lasswell, James L. (2005). A Dazzle of Dragonflies. Texas A&M University Press. pp.19–27, 38. ISBN1-58544-459-6.
↑ Hand, Wayland D. (1973). "From Idea to Word: Folk Beliefs and Customs Underlying Folk Speech". American Speech. 48 (1/2): 67–76. doi:10.2307/3087894. JSTOR3087894.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
