{"id":3378,"date":"2011-11-03T05:14:47","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T11:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3378"},"modified":"2011-11-02T20:20:05","modified_gmt":"2011-11-03T02:20:05","slug":"is-this-ancient-image-an-etruscan-mother-goddess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3378","title":{"rendered":"Is This Ancient Image an Etruscan Mother Goddess?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Etruscan<\/a>

Image from Discovery,.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Archaeologists have found an ancient Etruscan <\/a>pottery fragment that appears to be the oldest-known image of a woman giving birth.<\/a> The piece of a large pottery vessel might be 2,600 years old.<\/p>\n

The Etruscan civilization dominated northern Italy before being eventually absorbed by Rome. They used Greek letters to write their non-Indo-European language, so as a result, we know sort of how it sounded, but not what the words meant\u2014beyond some lists of kings and things of that nature.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The image show the head and shoulders of a baby emerging from a mother. Portrayed with her face in profile and a long ponytail running down her back, the woman has her knees and one arm raised.<\/p>\n

The image could be the earliest representation of childbirth in western art, according to Phil Perkins, professor of archaeology at the Open University, in Milton Keynes, England.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some scholars want to see it as a goddess rather than a woman.<\/a> Regardless, you will probably be able to buy a reproduction in the Sacred Source<\/a> catalog in a year or two.<\/p>\n

(Via Caroline Tully<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archaeologists have found an ancient Etruscan pottery fragment that appears to be the oldest-known image of a woman giving birth. The piece of a large pottery vessel might be 2,600 years old. The Etruscan civilization dominated northern Italy before being eventually absorbed by Rome. They used Greek letters to write their non-Indo-European language, so as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,163],"class_list":["post-3378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-italy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Su","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":70,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=70","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":0},"title":"Idol Thoughts","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"After three days of hearing papers and networking at AAR-SBL, our brains were full, so half a dozen friends and I headed for the traveling Etruscan exhibit at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum. It was wonderful to get away from the convention-hotel district. The exhibit on ancient Etruscan life was organized by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7009,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7009","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":1},"title":"New Poems by Sappho","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The possibility of deciphering the carbonized papyrus scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri is exciting. One friend hopes that some day an Etruscan\/Greek or Etruscan\/Latin dictionary will be discovered. (The Etruscan language used Greek letters, but we cannot completely read it, beyond some kings' names, etc.) Me, I hope\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Classics\"","block_context":{"text":"Classics","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=classics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.history.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/herculaneum-scrolls.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":559,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=559","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":2},"title":"Blog splatI am taking a\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 15, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Blog splatI am taking a break from blogging for the next eight to ten days because I leave on Wednesday for the intellectual carnival that is the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature combined annual meeting.It's in Philadelphia this year. Our last meeting there was in 1995, and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=852","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":3},"title":"Sex in World Religions & Other Updates","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 First, here is a better version of the Pagan rosary story, \"'Hail Persephone:' Pagans Retool the Rosary,\" which has a photo and also some of the rosary invocations.Kimberly Winston's article was also mentioned at the GetReligion blog on religion and journalism.\u00b6 My recent post on Carlos Castaneda must have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1092,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1092","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":4},"title":"Death by Self-Castration?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The bones of a priest of Cybele who lived in Roman Britain suggest that his career as a devotee of the goddess might have been short.Experts in Roman religion believe that the Yorkshire cleric belonged to the officially sanctioned and important religious cult of a mother goddess called Cybele, who\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":257,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=257","url_meta":{"origin":3378,"position":5},"title":"Pagans invented the wheel Well,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagans invented the wheel Well, yes, of course, if you think about it--presuming that you equate pre-Big Name Religion (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.) with \"Pagan.\" But first, let me acknowledge publication of Pagan Pride, a book of short readings (in unusual square format) \"honoring the Craft and Culture of Earth\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3378"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3382,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3378\/revisions\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}