I share my name with a number of individuals, among them a Sannion who lived in the Tauric Chersonesos or the modern Crimea. On a lark tonight I decided to see if I could find anything further about him which brought me to to this fascinating site and its collection of epigraphic material. Specifically the grave stele of Oinanthe daughter of Glaukios. My jaw dropped as I read the translation by N. Khrapunov. This inscription, apparently dating from the 2nd century CE, describes a scenario very similar to the one found on the Bacchic Orphic gold lamellae except 1) most of the lamellae were written circa 500-300 BCE and found in Southern Italy or Central to Northern Greece and 2) I don’t recall ever having encountered it in the literature before. I need to check on that because it’s entirely possible I’m forgetting references, but a quick Google search hasn’t turned anything up so who knows, I may have just made a pretty significant discovery.
And to make it even better – the epitaph contains allusions not just to Bacchic Orphism but to concepts that are part of the Starry Bull tradition because of intuitive leaps I made after a couple of spiritual experiences. It never ceases to amaze me when I get confirmations like this, no matter how often it happens. Holy fuck, I’m not just hallucinating – this shit is real!
So here’s the stele:
I wish it was larger or came with a transcription of the Greek so I could do some further analysis, as I’m curious to see if it uses the same language as the lamellae in a couple places.
Khrapunov writes:
Marble gravestone. Two female figures are shown standing in the niche, their faces are chopped off, and between them is a basket for needlework. The monument was found in 1890 near Kazach’ya bay. Dates 2nd century A. D.
Although I’m sure that the decapitation was accidental or the result of vandalism, it is interesting in light of the theme of headless heroes within the Starry Bull tradition; note as well the basket for needlework considering how prominent weaving and balls of thread are in our mysteries.
Who are the two women? Most likely Oinanthe and a female relative; I’d guess her mother or daughter from the context of the inscription. But what if it is Ariadne and Arachne or Persephone and Melinoe?
Oinanthe daughter of Glaukios.
Oinanthe (Οἰνάνθη) is a name with a strong Bacchic pedigree. It means “wine blossom” and was shared by 1) a nymph from mount Nysa who served as Dionysos’ wetnurse 2) a mistress of the third Ptolemy who was torn apart and cannibalized by a mob in a Demeter-temple according to Polybios Historíai 15.27.1-2 3) a Roman priestess of Liber and 4) a mainad mentioned at Nonnos Dionysiaka 14.225, among others.
Her father Glaukios has an equally significant name. Γλαυκος means “brightly shining” or “bluish-green” while γλεῦκος means “sweet, unfermented” and was used of mead or young wine. Even more relevant is the story of the doomed son of king Minos:
But Glaukos, while he was yet a child, in chasing a mouse fell into a jar of honey and was drowned. On his disappearance Minos made a great search and consulted diviners as to how he should find him. The Kouretes told him that in his herds he had a cow of three different colors, and that the man who could best describe that cow’s color would also restore his son to him alive. So when the diviners were assembled, Polyidos, son of Koiranos, compared the color of the cow to the fruit of the bramble (or mulberry), and being compelled to seek for the child he found him by means of a sort of divination. But Minos declaring that he must recover him alive, he was shut up with the dead body. And while he was in great perplexity, he saw a serpent going towards the corpse. He threw a stone and killed it, fearing to be killed himself if any harm befell the body. But another serpent came, and, seeing the former one dead, departed, and then returned, bringing a herb, and placed it on the whole body of the other; and no sooner was the herb so placed upon it than the dead serpent came to life. Surprised at this sight, Polyidus applied the same herb to the body of Glaukos and raised him from the dead. (Apollodoros, Bibliotheka 3.3.2-6)
I could make a whole post untangling the threads of this myth as it pertains to the Starry Bull tradition, but instead I’ll just point out that this is one of the reasons we employ the white-red-black color scheme.
The Muses would better glorify your beauties, the ill-starred young wife Oinanthe, having your children placed at your knees, and (sing) the beauty law of the goddess Ilithia who helps in having a child, the joyful gifts for your mother, father, and husband.
This is all pretty standard stuff for a woman’s epitaph – however the mention of the Mousai stands out as Orpheus’ mother was Kalliope and Kalliope’s mother Mnemosyne is frequently invoked in the gold lamellae.
One also notes the term “ill-starred” which finds parallel in the gold leaf from Thurii:
Fate and other immortal gods conquered me with the star-smiting thunder.
As well as the password given to the sentries, Onoma Asterios “I am Starry.”
But now you are sleeping on cold sands near waves of murmuring Kokytos, and incessant sound of beloved voice, with which your mother, like a bird, is mourning for you, can not wake you; you hear nothing, like a stone, but black deep streams of the Ocean are flowing around you, and the souls of the dead coming under the earth are making terrible noise; you can not understand cry of your parents nor of your husband, as you drank – alas! – from Lethe’s water. What a cruel law of the blissful!
There’s a lot to unpack here.
First off, we discover what happens when the soul drinks from the waters of Lethe, which the gold lamellae strenuously warn against doing:
You will find a spring on the left of the halls of Hades, and beside it a white cypress growing. Do not even go near this spring! Further on you will find another. The Lake of Mnemosyne, flowing forth with cold water. In front of it are guards. You must say, ‘I am the child of Ge and starry Ouranos; this you yourselves also know. I am dry with thirst and am perishing. Come, give me at once cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Mnemosyne.’ And they themselves will give you to drink from the divine spring, and then thereafter you will reign with the other heroes. (Gold tablet from Petelia)
Doing so makes you fall asleep and become deaf to the prayers of your family. This is an especially dire fate considering the importance of these prayers within Orphism:
Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a god-given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant things and feasts. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to serve them. And they present a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices. (Plato, Republic 2.364a–365b)
… prayers and sacrifices appease the souls, and the enchanting song of the magician is able to remove the daimones when they impede. Impeding daimones are revenging souls. This is why the magicians perform the sacrifice as if they were paying a penalty. On the offerings they pour water and milk, from which they make the libations, too. They sacrifice innumerable and many-knobbed cakes, because the souls, too, are innumerable. (Derveni Papyrus col. 6.1-11)
Note something else? The sleeper is compared to a stone.
Just like Ariadne, who after her abandonment by Theseus fell into a death-like slumber from which only Dionysos could rouse her.
Catallus specifically compares the grief-struck princess to a stone statue:
Yes, looking out from the surf-booming shore of island Dia– at Theseus departing with his swift fleet–is gazing Ariadne, carrying uncontrollable rage in her heart. Not yet does she believe she sees what she sees– since she, just then first aroused from treacherous sleep, discovers herself abandoned, pitiful, on lonely sand. Yet, unmindful, the youth pushes the waves with his oars; escaping; leaving his worthless word to the laughing gale. The Minoan girl, at seaweed’s edge, stares far, far out at him with suffering eyes. Like a Bacchante’s stone statue she stares out–how sad!–and she swirls in great billows of hurt: blond hair not in place under delicate scarf, bosom not covered by thin outer dress, milk-white breasts not bound under smooth inner dress. All cloth, from her whole body fallen, the salt tide sports with at her feet. But not then for the fate of her scarf, not then for her swirling dress does she care, Theseus: with all her heart, with all her spirit, with all her mind the forlorn girl needs you. (64.53-71)
Which calls to mind the manner of her death in Nonnos:
Perseus shook in his hand the deadly face of Medousa and turned armed Ariadne into stone. Bakchos was even more furious when he saw his bride all stone. […] Hermes addressed Dionysos, saying ‘She has died in battle, a glorious fate, and you ought to think Ariadne happy in her death, because she found one so great to slay her. Come now, lay down your thyrsos, let the winds blow battle away, and fix the selfmade image of mortal Ariadne where the image of heavenly Hera stands.’ (47.665ff)
The comparison of Oinanthe’s mother to a bird is also significant in light of the Orphic ritual discussed in the Derveni papyrus wherein a caged bird is set loose either as part of an initiation, a funeral or a rite for the dead. I discuss it at length in my book Heart of the Labyrinth, so I’m just mentioning it here.
Aren’t the young women who die early neither the bad nor originated from petty parents but those who have the most outstanding beauty or noblest origins?
This alludes to the current of Dionysian thought wherein the best die young or “it’s better to burn out than fade away” which we find from Achilles on up to Jim Morrison.
So not without reason said Pythoness to men a good proverb that every gold descendant was the first to come down to Hades.
This is both neat and fucking profound.
Neat, because it refers to the deceased as “gold” which could mean beautiful, noble, etc. but could also be a reference to the gold lamellae. In other words the soul is pure and incorruptible as the metal on which the holy text is inscribed. I also wonder if “gold descendant” is a reference to Hesiod’s golden race of men, who are ruled over by Kronos on the island of the blessed. (Sources can be found here.)
Fucking profound because it’s saying that every deceased person is the first dead person – which hearkens back to the Egyptian identification of the dead with Osiris who was first to taste of death, which of course bolsters the tradition that Orpheus brought the mysteries to Greece from Egypt:
Orpheus, for instance, brought from Egypt most of his mystic ceremonies, the orgiastic rites that accompanied his wanderings, and his fabulous account of his experiences in Hades. For the rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus and that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter, the names alone having been interchanged; and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous, and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many, which are figments of the imagination — all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs. Hermes, for instance, the Conductor of Souls, according to the ancient Egyptian custom, brings up the body of the Apis to a certain point and then gives it over to one who wears the mask of Cerberus. And after Orpheus had introduced this notion among the Greeks, Homer followed it when he wrote:
Cyllenian Hermes then did summon forth
The suitors’s souls, holding his wand in hand.
And again a little further on he says:
They passed Oceanus’ streams, the Gleaming Rock,
The Portals of the Sun, the Land of Dreams;
And now they reached the Meadow of Asphodel,
Where dwell the Souls, the shades of men outworn.
Now he calls the river “Oceanus” because in their language the Egyptians speak of the Nile as Oceanus; the “Portals of the Sun” (Heliopulai) is his name for the city of Heliopolis; and “Meadows,” the mythical dwelling of the dead, is his term for the place near the lake which is called Acherousia, which is near Memphis, and around it are fairest meadows, of a marsh-land and lotus and reeds. The same explanation also serves for the statement that the dwelling of the dead is in these regions, since the most and the largest tombs of the Egyptians are situated there, the dead being ferried across both the river and Lake Acherousia and their bodies laid in the vaults situated there. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 1.93-96)
However, it could be identifying the deceased with Orpheus, the first man to go down to Hades and return to speak of it. In which case we may have settled who the gold lamellae are addressed to – theories ranging from the initiate themselves, Orpheus, Herakles or even Pythagoras.
Conversely this may suggest who the never identified speaker in the gold tablets is – the Delphic Pythia. (Other possibilities include Orpheus, Persephone, Mnemosyne, Herakles, Pythagoras or Dionysos.)
I just can’t believe no one else has connected this text with Bacchic Orphism before, especially since it was excavated in 1890. I have to be missing something. I mean, I’m a fucking high school drop-out and I was really, really wasted when I made the discovery.
And here’s something to make all of this even crazier.
A couple days ago I saw a doctor because my chronic illness was worsening. He wasn’t particularly attentive or helpful, but did suggest going off gluten in case I had some kind of allergy. Though as someone of Southern Italian extraction I wept at the notion of life without bread and pasta I decided to give it a shot and … well, it’s too early to say for certain but I’ve already seen a marked improvement. Like, I’m feeling better than I have in years improvement. To celebrate I smoked a ton of weed and was farting around online when I stumbled across the inscription. That’s not the crazy part – pretty much all my discoveries are made that way. No. While checking to see if I could find anything on Oinanthe and Orphism I decided to try the Latinized version Oenanthe.
Which is a species of bird.
More commonly known as the wheatear.
Har. Har. Har.
Guess ears of wheat are going on the list of religiously prohibited foods for me. But if I get my health back in trade, it’s worth it and then some.
