Pygmies (mythology)

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In Greek mythology, pygmies are the names of mythical peoples who allegedly lived in Africa or Asia. Their main characteristic was their very small size. In the Middle Ages the ancient tradition was taken seriously, people believed in the real existence of the pygmies. It was only in the early modern period that people realized that they were mythical creatures.

term

"Pygmies" is the Germanization of the Latin name pygmaei , which was adopted from ancient Greek into Latin in ancient times . The ancient Greek word πυγμαῖος pygmaíos means "mitten", "the size of a fist"; it is derived from pygmḗ ("fist"). As the “fist length”, pygmḗ was also a measure of length in ancient Greece that corresponded to 18 finger widths (just under 35 cm). It was not until the 19th century that the originally mythological term pygmies was transferred to actually existing societies in Central Africa , whose common feature is a relatively small body size. See for these: Pygmies .

Antiquity

A pygmy is fighting a crane. Attic red-figure vase painting , around 430 BC BC, Museo Arqueológico Nacional de España

The term pygmies ( pygmaíoi ) already appears in Homer's Iliad . There is only mentioned in passing that the cranes in the fall for Okeanos fly and bring the Pygmies in relentless combat death. So there was already a pygmy legend back then that Homer assumes to be known. This legend was popular throughout ancient times, especially in the fine arts. The core of the pygmy saga, which was told in different variations and artistically designed, includes the following elements: The pygmies are described as naked or very scantily clad, but farming cave dwellers on the edge of the inhabited world. According to Aristotle they lived in the swampy area of ​​the Nile springs, after Ktesias and Megasthenes in India. Their combat strength is said to be low, which is due to their small size. For this, the common assumptions fluctuated between approx. 30 cm and a little less than a meter.

According to legend, the deadly enemies of the pygmies were the cranes, against whom they fought to the death every year and whose clutches and offspring they destroyed whenever possible. The pygmies were armed, but mostly defeated and were killed by the cranes. This "crane fight " ( geranomachy ) occupied the imagination of many Greek, Etruscan and Roman artists. It was depicted as a tragicomic and entertaining motif on vases and drinking vessels, wall paintings and gems . This was taken as a parody of the heroic saga. Statuettes, reliefs, mosaics and lamps also showed pygmies. In the fine arts, the pygmies were sometimes depicted as small, but normally proportioned people, but often with (sometimes grotesquely) distorted proportions, for example with thick bellies. From the 5th century BC Chr. Dominated the disproportionate representation.

In his Metamorphoses , the poet Ovid mentions a pygmy mother who dared to compete with the goddess Juno ; after her defeat she was transformed into a crane by Juno and then had to take part in the fight against her people on the side of the cranes. According to a version handed down by the mythographer Antoninus Liberalis , the beautiful and proud pygmy was Oinoe; After her transformation into a crane, she initially stayed in the area because she did not want to part with her human son, but was then driven out by the pygmies, and this was the reason for the hereditary enmity between pygmies and cranes.

The geographer Strabo considered the stories of the pygmies to be fictitious. He said that the poets did not claim untruths out of ignorance, but only invented such legends for entertainment purposes. According to his assumption, the starting point for the creation of the legend was the small size of some animals in the area south of Egypt, which led to the fact that people also imagined small human inhabitants of that region. There are no credible reports from eyewitnesses about the pygmies.

middle Ages

A pygmy fights his archenemy, the cranes. Illustration from the Schedel Chronicle (1493)

In the Middle Ages the ancient tradition was the starting point; people believed in the real existence of the mythical pygmies. In the then authoritative Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate , the term "pygmies" occurs. The late medieval universities debated whether the pygmies were human or whether it was a special kind of ape, in a sense an intermediate stage between humans and animals. Prominent scholars such as Albertus Magnus and Petrus de Alvernia argued that they could not be human because they lacked reason. Albertus Magnus said that they were capable of a kind of reflection and articulate speaking, but incapable of science and art and generally of grasping the general and, moreover, without a feeling of shame. These discussions played an important role in determining the defining characteristics of the term “human” in the 13th century. The story of the crane fight was generally believed at that time. A pygmy episode was included in the popular Herzog Ernst legend; Duke Ernst intervenes on the side of the pygmies in the fight against the cranes, namely in the Orient, because one suspected the land of the pygmies also - like some ancient authors - in the east.

The pygmy legend about the crane fight was spread as far as China; it can be found in Chinese encyclopedias from the 7th to 9th centuries AD, where the size of the pygmies is given as the equivalent of about 90 cm.

Early modern age

In the early modern period , naturalists and doctors, philosophers, philologists and theologians continued the pygmy debate. The humanist Sebastian Münster (1488–1552) still followed the ancient and medieval tradition in his Cosmographia ; for him they were monstrous beings. From the second half of the 16th century, however, the voices of scholars who denied the existence of the pygmies increased. In 1557 Gerolamo Cardano put forward a well-thought-out argument in his De rerum varietete . Above all, the very short lifespan assumed by the pygmies struck him as inconsistent. He argued that with such a short life span, according to a biological law, pregnancy must be correspondingly short; such a rapid development of a human body is impossible because of its complexity. Animal observations are to be regarded as the cause for the origin of the legend. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558) asserted that the earth had meanwhile been explored, but that no pygmies had been found anywhere, so they should be regarded as mythical creatures. This argument was well received in the years that followed. Another scholar who strongly opposed the pygmy legend was Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605). He dealt with the question in detail, whereby as a zoologist he was particularly offended by the story of the fight against the cranes. While the archaeologists were particularly interested in the statements made by Homer and Aristotle, the theologians found the mention of pygmies in the Latin Bible important. Some theologians spoke out against the existence of the pygmies, others did not doubt it; some, including Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), thought they were demons. Thomas Browne pointed out in his Pseudodoxia epidemica (1646) that the occurrence of the name pygmies in the Latin Bible is due to a translation error. In 1699 the English doctor and zoologist Edward Tyson published the treatise Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, The Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape, and a Man , in which he identified the pygmies with chimpanzees; he emphasized the anatomical proximity of the chimpanzee to humans. In the Enlightenment , the pygmies were considered to be mythical creatures. A connection with reports that were already available at the time about actually existing short people in Africa was not established.

literature

  • Pietro Janni: Etnografia e mito. La storia dei Pigmei . Edizioni dell'Ateneo & Bizzarri, Rome 1978
  • Véronique Dasen: Pygmaioi . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Volume 7.1, Artemis, Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-7608-8751-1 , pp. 594-601 (text) and Volume 7.2, pp. 466-486 (images); Supplements by the author in the supplementary volumes Supplementum 2009 : Supplement volume 1, Artemis, Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-538-03520-1 , pp. 440–443 (text) and supplement volume 2, pp. 211–213 (images)

Remarks

  1. ↑ For the dating see Véronique Dasen: Pygmaioi . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Supplementum 2009 , Supplementum 1, Düsseldorf 2009, pp. 440–443, here: 441.
  2. ↑ Homer, Iliad 3, 3–7.
  3. ^ Pietro Janni: Etnografia e mito , Rome 1978, pp. 19–49.
  4. ↑ Véronique Dasen: Pygmaioi . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC), Vol. 7.1, Zurich 1994, pp. 594-601 (text) and Vol. 7.2, Zurich 1994, pp. 466-486 (illustrations).
  5. ^ Hansjörg Wölke: Review by Pietro Janni, Etnografia e mito . In: Gnomon 55, 1983, pp. 97-99, here: 98 f.
  6. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.90-92.
  7. ^ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 16.
  8. ↑ Strabon, Geographika 1,2,30.
  9. ↑ Strabon, Geographika 17,2,1.
  10. ↑ Ezekiel 27:11: filii Aradii cum exercitu tuo erant super muros tuos in circuitu sed et Pigmei qui erant in turribus tuis faretras suas suspenderunt in muris tuis per gyrum ipsi conpleverunt pulchritudinem tuam. Pigmei here is a translation of the Hebrew word Gammadim , another translation is "brave warriors".
  11. ↑ Joseph Koch: Are the pygmies people? A chapter from the philosophical anthropology of medieval scholasticism . In: Archive for the history of philosophy 40, 1931, pp. 194–213; Theodor W. Koehler : Homo animal nobilissimum. Contours of the specifically human in Aristotle's commentary on natural philosophy of the thirteenth century , Leiden 2008, pp. 420–443.
  12. ↑ Pietro Janni: Etnografia e mito , Rome 1978, p. 59 f.
  13. ↑ On the early modern reception of the pygmy sagas see Pietro Janni: Etnografia e mito , Rom 1978, pp. 67–95.