Thesan | |
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Goddess of the dawn | |
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Equivalents | |
Greek equivalent | Eos |
Roman equivalent | Aurora and Mater Matuta |
Thesan (Eos), Morning, Dawn, Aurora.
In Etruscan Religion and mythology, Thesan is the Etruscan goddess of the dawn. [1] Thesan is the Roman equivalent of Aurora. [2] In Etruria, she received offerings together with the sun god Usil as discribed in the liber linteus. [1] She was especially worshipped at Caere's harbour of Pyrgi, where a temple was dedicated to her and a singular series of "daybreak antefixes" was excavated. [1]
Thesan was depicted with wings and sometimes nude, such as a clay acroterium from Astrone valley. [3] According to scholar De Grummond: "Although Thesan is often compared with the Greek Eos and the Roman Aurora, Greek texts suggest that they understood her cult persona at Pyrgi to be rather a counterpart of Leukothea, the “White Goddess,” who had a special connection with the sea, and who in turn was assimilated to the Roman Mater Matuta, a goddess of the morning and of childbirth." [2]
Unlike Eos in the Greek religion, Thesan is worshipped in the Etruscan religion. Her name appears on the mummy wrappings of the Zagreb mummy (Liber Linteus) and on a bronze tablet from Pyrgi. [4]
Thesan was depicted on several bronze Etruscan mirror backs, bearing a great pair of wings on her back like many other Etruscan goddesses, especially appropriate to a sky-goddess. One meaning of her name is simply "dawn", and related words are thesi, meaning "illumination", and thesviti, "clear or famous". The other meaning of her name connects her with the ability to see the future, for thesan also means "divination", as seen in the related Etruscan word thesanthei, "divining", "illuminating", or "brilliant". This relates to her function as a dawn goddess – since divination throws light on the dark future and enables one to see what may happen, like the dawn, which illuminates what was previously dark. She was called by some as a childbirth goddess, as she was present at the beginning of the day, which finds its parallel in the beginning of a new baby's life. Similar to the Roman goddess Lucina, goddess of light and childbirth, who brought the infant into the light of day. [5]
The Etruscans identified their Thesan with the Greek dawn goddess Eos. In the Greek legend, Aphrodite had found Eos in bed with her lover Ares; to punish Eos, Aphrodite "tormented with constant passion, and Eos became infamous for her many young lovers. [6] The Etruscans seemed to quite like these stories and easily transferred them to their dawn goddess Thesan; the stories depicted on the mirrors are generally straight out of Greek myth. [3] Thesan, the goddess of the dawn, “,” is depicted abducting a younger mortal on several engraved Etruscan mirrors dated from 530 to 450 B.C., w
The upper exergue has Thesan (Eos), the goddess of dawn, in her quadriga, a four-horse chariot. Asset number 812745001
A common representation of Thesan is carrying off Kephalos. The handsome hunter is the son of Hermes. Eos is often depicted carrying or embracing Kephalos before returning him to his wife, Prokris, in Athens. [7]
The motif of Thesan and her lover can be found on Etruscan mirrors, pottery, and tomb frescoes.
In one mirror depiction from 480-470 BCE at the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Thesan is running off with Kephalos. Winged and with a nimbus, Thesan is depicted running or in flight with Kephalos in her arms after having kidnapped him. This is probably the first version of the myth according to which Thesan falls in love with the young hunter hero, son of Hermes and Herse, who then becomes Thesan's husband. This mirror is from Vulci, from the excavations of Luciano and Alexandrine Bonaparte, princes of Canino; acquired in 1840 Cat. 12241. According to the museum:
"Bronze workers from Vulci in the late archaic period were able to cast flawless mirrors with complex decorations, already using wax models rather than cold engraving. The very low relief is enriched with engraved calligraphic details; there were leaves inlaid with silver on the frame."
Another relief mirror from the British Museum is museum number 1865,0712.14, Thesan is shown in the act of abducting Cephalus, a young man of Athens who had been married to the King Erechtheus’ daughter, Procris. Thesan is winged here, wearing a chiton and diagonal himation that flows in the breeze; about her head is a halo, to emphasize her function as a goddess of light. She runs off to the left carrying Cephalus in her arms, who is shown as nude and much smaller than she is. He does not look at all distressed at the situation and he rests in her arms with his right hand on her shoulder. Like many depictions of Etruscan women and their lovers, she is shown as larger and therefore more important or powerful than the man: This has been taken as an indication of the high status of Etruscan women.
The same scene is depicted on a mirror handle in high relief openwork; Cephalus is again quite a lot smaller (and younger) than Thesan, who is not winged this time, but whose cloak billows behind her in the breeze. She smiles down at young Kephalos as She lifts him up, and he is nude save for a short cloak and hunting boots.
This same image is depicted in a in the British Museum Museum number 1847,0806.130
Another favorite scene of Thesan/Eos depicts a far more somber affair. Her son's Etruscan name is recorded as Memnum (Memrun) [4] and Latinized as Memnon. This son by Tithonus, another young man she abducted to be her lover, called Thinthun by the Etruscans and was killed in the Trojan War.Eos grieved so terribly that she threatened never to bring forth the dawn again. She was finally persuaded to return, but in Her grief she weeps tears of dew every morning for Her beloved son. One mirror-back shows Her before Tinia (Zeus) with Thethis (Thetis), the mother of Achle (Achilles). Both goddesses plead with Tinia to spare their sons' lives; but both were already doomed to die. This is known as the Memnon Pieta. [9] The relief mirror mentioned (right) depicts Thesan carrying off the body of her dead son Memnun. Often in ancient art there are different interpretations as often figures were not labelled. However Etruscan mirrors with figures do have names engraved beside them. [10]
As with Greek art depictions, Thesan is depicted in bronze mirrors entreating upon Tinia along with Thethis (=Thetis) to spare the lives of their sons, Memnun and Achle respectively. The goddesses were him to affect the destiny of their sons in their battle against each other.
The Liber Lintaeus connects Thesan with the Etruscan sun god Usil, equivalent to the Greek Helios and Roman Sol. [3] [12] She has her arm around Usil’s back, implying a connection that Helios and Eos do not have. [12] A fourth century mirror now shows her in conversation with both Usil and Nethuns (Etruscan Neptune / Poseidon). [13]
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, 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 Etruscan religion, Fufluns or Puphluns was a god of plant life, happiness, wine, health, and growth in all things. He is mentioned twice among the gods listed in the inscriptions of the Liver of Piacenza, being listed among the 16 gods that rule the Etruscan astrological houses. He is the 9th of those 16 gods. He is the son of Semla and the god Tinia. He was worshipped at Populonia and is the namesake of that town.
Menrva was an Etruscan goddess of war, art, wisdom, and medicine. She contributed much of her character to the Roman Minerva. She was the child of Uni and Tinia.
In Etruscan religion and myth, Thalna was a divine figure usually regarded as a goddess of childbirth. Determinate gender, however, is not necessarily a characteristic of Etruscan deities, and Thalna is also either depicted as male, or seems to be identified as a male figure because of the placement of names around a scene. Her other functions include friendship and prophecy. Her name may mean "growth, bloom." She appears in Etruscan art in the company of Turan, Tinia, and Menrva.
In Etruscan religion, Hercle, the son of Tinia and Uni, was a version of the Greek Heracles, depicted as a muscular figure often carrying a club and wearing a lionskin. He is a popular subject in Etruscan art, particularly bronze mirrors, which show him engaged in adventures not known from the Greek myths of Heracles or the Roman and later classical myths of Hercules.
Neptune is the god of freshwater and the sea in the Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-inspired tradition, he is a brother of Jupiter and Pluto, with whom preside over the realms of heaven, the earthly world, and the seas. Salacia is his wife.
Aurōra is the Latin word for dawn, and the goddess of dawn in Roman mythology and Latin poetry. Like Greek Eos and Rigvedic Ushas, Aurōra continues the name of an earlier Indo-European dawn goddess, Hausos.
Uni is the ancient goddess of marriage, fertility, family, and women in Etruscan religion and myth, and was the patron goddess of Perugia. She is identified as the Etruscan equivalent of Juno in Roman mythology, and Hera in Greek mythology. As the supreme goddess of the Etruscan pantheon, she is part of the Etruscan trinity, an original precursor to the Capitoline Triad, made up of her husband Tinia, the god of the sky, and daughter Menrva, the goddess of wisdom.
Memnon is a prominent heroic figure. In Ancient Greek: Μέμνων means 'resolute'. The Roman's named him son of Aurora/(Dawn). The Etruscans called the two Thesan and Memnun. Memnon was Mythical, semi-divine, and Eithiopian (Αἰθίοψ).
Pyrgi was originally an ancient Etruscan town and port in Latium, central Italy, to the north-west of Caere. Its location is now occupied by the borough of Santa Severa. It is notable for the discovery here of the gold tablets, an exceptional epigraphic document with rare texts in Phoenician and Etruscan languages, and also the exceptional terracotta pediment statues from the temple.
Usil is the Etruscan god of the sun, shown to be identified with Apulu (Apollo). His iconic depiction features Usil rising out of the sea, with a fireball in either outstretched hand, on an engraved Etruscan bronze mirror in late Archaic style, formerly on the Roman antiquities market. On Etruscan mirrors in the Classical style, Usil appears with an aureole.
A dawn god or goddess is a deity in a polytheistic religious tradition who is in some sense associated with the dawn. These deities show some relation with the morning, the beginning of the day, and, in some cases, become syncretized with similar solar deities.
Catha is a female Etruscan lunar or solar deity, who may also be connected to childbirth, and has a connection to the underworld. Catha is also the goddess of the south sanctuary at Pyrgi, Italy.
Ethausva is an Etruscan divine figure that appears in a few Etruscan inscriptions. She is depicted as a winged female richly robed and wearing a jeweled crown on her head. Her lack of mention on Etruscan artwork and inscriptions suggest that she was not very common, but she was considered canon to the Etruscan Pantheon so she was still known during the time of the Etruscans.
Epiur is an Etruscan mythological figure that appears on bronze Etruscan engraved mirrors. He is shown as an infant that has the face of a young man. He is also often winged and being held by Hercle or Menrva, who are charged with the protection and care of infants. He is also often shown to be presented to other gods.
In Greek mythology, Cephalus is a Aeolian prince, the son of Deion/Deioneos, ruler of Phocis, and Diomede, and grandson of Aeolus. He was one of the lovers of the dawn goddess Eos.
Eos is an 1895 painting by the English artist Evelyn De Morgan. done in a Pre-Raphaelite style. It depicts the Greek goddess Eos, goddess of the dawn and of love, standing on a seashore, surrounded by birds and flowers and pouring water from a jug.
Apulu, also syncopated as Aplu, is an epithet of the Etruscan fire god Śuri as chthonic sky god, roughly equivalent to the Greco-Roman god Apollo. Their names are associated on Pyrgi inscriptions too. The name Apulu or Aplu did not come directly from Greece but via a Latin center, probably Palestrina.
Śuri, Latinized as Soranus, was an ancient Etruscan infernal, volcanic and solar fire god, also venerated by other Italic peoples – among them Capenates, Faliscans, Latins and Sabines – and later adopted into ancient Roman religion.