Hierarchy

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Hierogamy ( Greek  ἱερογαμία , hierogamía , the custom of holding holy weddings') or Hieros gamos ( Greek  ἱερὸς γάμος , hierós gámos ' holy wedding ', also theogamy ) is the marriage of two gods. Sometimes the term is also applied to the union between a deity and a mortal.

distribution

The holy wedding, especially that between Zeus and Hera , played an important role in the cult of the Greeks. In the Mesopotamian cultures of Sumer , Assyria, and Babylon , hierogamy played the most prominent role in cult .

Mesopotamia

Kramer assumed that the ritual of the holy wedding of the city prince with the goddess Inanna originated in Uruk in the middle of the third millennium, as part of an "increasing Sumerian nationalism", and that this custom was subsequently applied to Inanna and Dumuzi , an early mythical king of the city was returned. According to Kramer, the following literary texts can be assigned to this ritual:

  • Love poems in which Dumuzi woos Inanna
  • Poems about the marriage ceremony emphasizing its importance for the welfare of the king and the country of Sumer and its people
  • " Rhapsodic " love poems from Inanna to Dumuzi

The celebration of a hieros gamos in Sumer was reconstructed using such cuneiform texts . They do not describe the actual process, but rather texts that belong to the cycle around Dumuzi and Inanna and that may be quoted on such an occasion.

The festival was probably part of the New Year celebrations . The city prince performed a ritual union with the goddess Inanna in the main temple of the city. It is unclear who played the role of Inanna; it is usually assumed that it was a priestess. Kramer suspects a hierodule . According to Kramer, a holy wedding with Inanna has been proven for Šulgi von Ur and Iddin-Dagān von Isin . The ritual was performed on a bed with a special blanket and ended with a festival with singing, dancing and music. The wedding of Šulgi took place in the Eanna in the Kullab of Uruk, which he reached by boat. The king is called a shepherd, he brings Inanna cattle, sheep, goats, spotted lambs and fawns and anoints her womb with milk and fat before touching her sacred vulva. The best source for the ritual is "Iddin-Dagan A" or song for the rite of the holy wedding of the goddess Inanna with King Iddin-Dagan of Isin, received in 14 texts from Nippur from the reign of Iddin-Dagān. A text from the British Museum describes in the Emesal dialect the union of Inanna and Dumuzi, which perhaps served as a model for the holy wedding. A bed covered with lapis lazuli is prepared for the goddess in a reed hut in the Eanna temple in Eridu . The fire god Gibil cleans the room, night falls and the goddess longed for the bed. The goddess is implored to hand over “staff and staff” to the king. Ninšibur leads the king to the bed and asks Inanna that the king may long enjoy her holy bosom, that he may have a good and glorious reign, that the throne of his kingship may be firmly established. She is to give him a scepter with which he can guide the people, and the staff and the crook, a permanent crown that elevates the land, from sunrise to sunset, from the Upper to the Lower Sea , from where the halub tree grows to where the cedar grows; over all of Sumer and Akkad she is to give him a stick and staff. He should be the shepherd of the black-headed people, wherever they live, he should make the fields fertile like a farmer, increase the sheep like a reliable shepherd. Under his rule there should be plants and grain, there should be abundance, and in the marshes the fish and birds should cackle (?), The reed should grow tall, in the steppe the mašgur trees should grow tall, in the forests Deer and wild goats multiply, the gardens should produce honey and wine, lettuce and cress should thrive in the irrigation ditches, and life should last in the palace.

Lenzen wants to recognize the scene of the holy wedding in room B12 in the Isin-Larsa-Temporal temple district of Ur. It is 6 × 11 m in size with a 3 m wide platform on the narrow side.

The ritual of the New Year celebration is also transmitted from an Aramaic text from Syene . He tells of the cultic union of the king of Araš ( ʿrš, rš ) with the goddess Nana .

Herodotus tells of a holy wedding on the ziggurat of Babylon.

Greece

The term itself, the “holy wedding”, originally refers to the Greek world of ideas of ἱερὸς γάμος , which u. a. describes the holy marriage of the earth goddess Gaia with the sky god Uranos as a theogamy or "wedding of the gods".

There was also the holy wedding among the following generation of gods, the Olympian gods . Especially once a year, Hera and her husband Zeus united under a chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus L.) Lygos on Samos . A bath in the Imbrasos then renewed her virginity. Hera had also been born under a lygos. The celebration of the Tonaia , τωναία in which the cult image was wrapped with chaste tree branches , commemorated this event. This tree stood at the altar in Heraion and was described by Pausanias , among others . Other important marriages of gods are those between Hades and Persephone , Demeter Erinys and Poseidon , Demeter and Iasion .

The ritual union of the Athenian Basilinna with Dionysus is an example of the sacred marriage of a god and a mortal. Once a year, the oldest Dionysus shrine in Athens, which was called "In the Swamps" ( ἐν λίμναις ), was opened, where this event took place.

Celticum

As in other cultures of the Iron Age , the holy wedding ( old Irish banais rígi ) is said to have played an important role with the Celts . A new king's assumption of power was only possible and valid if he had previously united with the personified symbol of the country. This is reported, among others, by Ailill mac Máta with Medb , Conn Cétchathach in the story Baile in Scáil ("The Vision of the Ghost") and other medieval legends in which an initially old and ugly, then young and beautiful woman is described as "rulership over Scotland and Ireland ”( flathius Alban is Erenn ). The Cailleach Bérri or Senainne Bérri ("The old woman from Beare") is said to have had a similar function. The transformation of the old into the young woman is a symbol of the rejuvenation of the country by the new, young king. According to Miranda Green, the connection between Roman gods and Celtic goddesses can be seen as a form of hierarchy between the ruler and the country goddess. Examples are Apollon / Grannus and Sirona , Mars / Loucetius and Nemetona , Mars / Lenus and Ancamna , and a few others. The religious scholar Bernhard Maier believes the connection with the holy wedding is not really given and worth discussing.

literature

  • Samuel Noah Kramer : Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Volume 107/6, 1963, pp. 485-527.
  • Samuel Noah Kramer: The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth, and Ritual in Ancient Sumer. Bloomington University Press, Bloomington, Indiana 1969.
  • Samuel Noah Kramer: Inanna and Šulgi: A Sumerian Fertility Song. In: Iraq. Volume 31, 1969, pp. 18-23.
  • Bernhard Maier : The religion of the Celts. Gods - myths - worldview. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-48234-1 , pp. 171-173.
  • Willem H. Ph. Römer 1993. The hymns of Išme-Dagan from Isin. Orientalia 62, 90-98.
  • Yitzhak Sefati : Love Songs in Sumerian Literature. Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Ananna Songs (= Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern languages ​​and culture ). Bar-Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan 1998.

Web links

Commons : Hieros gamos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aphrodite Aavagianou 1991, Sacred Marriage in the Rituals of Greek Religion. European University Theses Series 15, Classics, 54. Frankfurt, Peter Lang.
  2. ^ Marielouise Cremer 1982, Hieros gamos in the Orient and in Greece. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 48, pp. 283–290.
  3. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 489 f.
  4. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 490.
  5. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 490.
  6. ^ Moshe Weinfeld, Feminine Features in the Imagery of God in Israel: The Sacred Marriage and the Sacred Tree. Vetus Testamentum 46/4, p. 525.
  7. ↑ Jean Bottero, La Hieros Gamos après l'epoque sumèrienne. In: Samuel N. Kramer, Le mariage sacré à Babylone , Paris 1983, pp. 175-214.
  8. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 490.
  9. ^ Jan JA van Dijk, La Fete du nouvel an dans un texte de Šulgi. Bibliotheca Orientalia 11, 1954, pp. 83-88; Samuel Noah Kramer, Shulgi of Ur: A Royal Hymn and a Divine Blessing. Jewish Quarterly Review , New Series 57, 1967, pp. 137 f.
  10. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 490.
  11. ^ Samuel Noah Kramer, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Literature: The Sumerian Sacred Marriage Texts. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107/6, Cuneiform Studies and the History of Civilization 1963, p. 490
  12. ↑ Samuel Noah Kramer, Shulgi of Ur: A Royal Hymn and a Divine Blessing. Jewish Quarterly Review , New Series 57, 1967, pp. 371-380
  13. ↑ Willem H. Ph. Römer 1969. A Sumerian hymn with Inanna's self-praise. Orientalia. 38, pp. 97-114.
  14. ^ Hugo Heinrich Figulla : Cuneiform Texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. Vol. 42. London 1959, No. 4.
  15. ^ Hugo Heinrich Figulla: Cuneiform Texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. London Vol. 42, 1959, No. 4, i, line 14 obv.
  16. ^ Hugo Heinrich Figulla: Cuneiform Texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. London Vol. 42, 1959, No. 4, i, lines 18-20 obv.
  17. ^ Hugo Heinrich Figulla: Cuneiform Texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. London Vol. 42, 1959, No. 4, i, line 17.
  18. ^ Hugo Heinrich Figulla: Cuneiform Texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum. Vol. 42. London 1959, No. 4, ii, lines 7-30 (obv.)
  19. ↑ HJ Lenzen, The two main sanctuaries of Uruk and Ur at the time of the III. Dynasty of Ur. Iraq 22 (Ur in Retrospect, in Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley), 1960, p. 137.
  20. ↑ Richard C. Steiner, The Aramaic Text in Demotic Script: The Liturgy of a New Year's Festival Imported from Bethel to Syene by Exiles from Rash. Journal of the American Oriental Society 111/2, 1991, pp. 362-363.
  21. ↑ Aphrodite Avagianou: Sacred Marriage in the Rituals of Greek Religion. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1991, pp. 19-24.
  22. ^ Marielouise Cremer 1982, Hieros gamos in the Orient and in Greece. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 48, pp. 283–290.
  23. ^ Pausanias VII, 4.4.
  24. ↑ Bernhard Maier: The religion of the Celts. Gods, myths, worldview. P. 102.
  25. ^ Bernhard Maier: Lexicon of the Celtic religion and culture. P. 164 f.
  26. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. P. 531 f.
  27. ↑ Miranda Green: Pagan Celtic Religion: Archeology and Myth. In: Transactions of the Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion. Issued by the Society, London 1990, p. 25.
  28. ↑ Bernhard Maier: The religion of the Celts. Gods - myths - worldview. Beck, Munich 2001, p. 173.