Antiquities Exhibits

The daughter of Zeus and Demeter, Persephone, often referred to as Kore, became queen of the underworld when she was abducted by Hades.  As a goddess associated with the spring fertility of vegetation, she was worshipped along with her mother Demeter in the rites of the  Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a more enjoyable prospect after death.   However her cult was based on ancient agrarian rituals that were practiced around the Mediterranean at Minoan Crete, Egypt, Asia Minor, Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Libya far earlier.  In Minoan Crete, the female vegetation divinity was identified as Ariadne.  Some scholars suggest the name Ariadne was a "friendly" name, derived from the word for "pure," because of a superstitious taboo about speaking the real names of deities associated with the underworld. In another cult on Crete, Persephone was  conflated with Despoina, "the mistress" of a chthonic divinity, who was considered the unnameable d...

 Plaques in the form of a bust were sometimes placed in tombs of women in ancient Greece as token representations of ideal and perpetual maidenhood.  The female is sometimes depicted wearing a crown (polos) possibly alluding to tragic virgins of myth such as Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter who became the queen of the underworld through her abduction by Hades, the god of the underworld.  Persephone and her mother Demeter were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised the initiated a more enjoyable prospect after death. Image: Painted Terracotta Tomb plaque made in Boeotia about 420-390 BCE that I photographed at the British Museum in 2016.

  Eros, the Greek god of love, is shown as a beautiful youth with both male and female characteristics. The figure was originally part of a lamp holder and would have had an oil lamp on the tendril he holds in an outstretched hand. The sculpture shares in the expressive, dynamic qualities of later Greek Hellenistic art; it appears to be flying on the beautifully detailed wings. The lamp from which the figure came was probably made in the eastern Mediterranean for a wealthy house or villa in Italy. The bronze has been associated with a trove of Greek luxury goods recovered from an ancient shipwreck near the town of Mahdia on the coast of Tunisia. - Anne Bromberg, Dallas Museum of Art. A cult of Eros existed in pre-classical Greece, but it was much less important than that of Aphrodite. However, in late antiquity, Eros was worshiped by a fertility cult in Thespiae. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him (also share...