The actual appearance of early Greek xoana, deduced from literary descriptions, has been a matter for intensive discussion for many years, but in the absence of monuments in corpore, no consensus has been reached. An exhaustive survey of the problem of Greek xoana, so far as they can be understood from written sources, was undertaken by A. Donohue (Donohue 1988), and this presents the possibility of confronting the literary testimony with new archaeological finds and studies. The meaning of xoanon (xoanos) implies something which had been scraped or perhaps carved. It is an old word, but first attested only in Sophocles. Earlier usage is uncertain though it seems probable that it was current in early epic. Thus, in Pausanias, xoanon means a wooden statue (Donohue 1988, 12 ff., 195 218). The earliest primitive wooden statues of Greek gods are still unknown, but our knowledge of similarly primitive clay figurines of LHIIIC and the Protogeometric period has advanced considerably. Among the earliest, the figurines from the Phylakopi sanctuary and from Tiryns (Renfrew et al. 1985, pls. 36 7, nos. SF 1550 and 1553; Tiryns, ibid., pl. 35) are very similar to primitive clay figurines from prehistoric Europe. The best parallels to the Greek date from the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age (Bronze D, cf. Bouzek 1997, 143, here Fig. 1; for new items from Bronze D from Bohemia and Slovakia, cf. the conference on the Urnfields, Teplý Potok 1998). The earliest known Protogeometric statuettes from Olympia (Heilmeyer 1972; cf. also Herrmann 1972, 59) resemble these figurines clearly. All of them also recall primitive wooden figurines known from Britain, Denmark and northern Germany, made of slightly adjusted tree-trunks with branches (Coles 1990, cf. here, Fig. 2). Greek Protogeometric bronze figurines also show a striking similarity in their stylization to this group of wooden figurines from Britain and Ireland, and there are similar notable parallels between the figures depicted in Scandinavian rock carvings and the earliest simple Geometric representations in LHIIIC and Greek Geometric vase painting (cf. Bouzek 1997, 140, 143 4, figs. 168 72; Sandars 1968, fig. 80; Sprockhoff 1954). Though the warrior figurines of bronze had a clear Near Eastern ancestry (Byrne 1991; Seeden 1980) the wooden and clay idols, and the stylization of the Protogeometric figurines, point in another direction (Bouzek 1977; Haws 1990, with bibl.). Many of the wooden figurines, known from finds in Great Britain and Denmark, have now been dated by dendrochronology to the late second millennium BC (cf. esp. the lecture by B. Coles in Prague, March 1998). Greek Geometric xoana may have resembled the well-known ivories, like those from the Ivory Grave in the Dipylon cemetery at Athens (Müller 1927, pl. 32, no. 345; Schweitzer 1969, figs. 146 8), but their simple predecessors were probably much more like the wooden idols from prehistoric Europe. Recent excavations in Greece have uncovered in the earliest sanctuaries single non-constructional post-holes which may well be 19(1) 109 113 2000 ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 109
Figure 1 Primitive clay figurines from Geece (1, 3 4, 6) and from Central Europe (2, 5). 1, 3 4 Olympia; 2 Stránky, Bohemia; 5 Bavaria; 6 Phylakopi on Melos. (After Bouzek, in press) 110 ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
Figure 2 Wooden sculpture: warriors on a boat. Roos Carr, Holderness, England. Drawing A. Waldhauserová. (After Bouzek, in press) remains from the fixing of lower parts (bases) of primitive xoana (cf. esp. Østby 1994, 55 9, for Tegea). Moreover, it may be remembered that the bell-shaped dolls known from Protogeometric and Geometric Athens, Euboea, Boeotia and Samos have also northern parallels and possibly models in the Central Balkans (Bouzek 1997, 127 8 with bibl.; for Samos, Jarosch 1994). Apollo, who was still represented as an aniconical pillar in Classical times (as at Bassai, cf. for the simple images V. Lambrinoudakis and O. Pelagia, LIMC II, 244, 253, 364), had strong northern links with the solar deity of the Baltic area. The Delphic Apollo, riding a swan, still visited his Hyperboreans every winter, leaving his sanctuary to another northerner, Dionysus (Ahl 1982; Hegyi 1989; Bouzek 1997, 35 8). The Hyperborean maidens brought the cult of Apollo, or some of its aspects, to Delos, in at least two missions, which were later commemorated by sending amber packed in straw in relay mail, as reported by Herodotus (IV, 32 6). Thus both Apollo and the xoana indicate some northern inspiration, as does the distribution of waggons connected with Apollo as a solar deity (Bouzek 1997, 35 40, 97, 122, 125 7; Pare 1992, 179 86). ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 111
Green xoana were bathed and dressed (Bald Romano 1988) and much admired; the Trojan palladion was considered essential for the development of civilized life in Greece. But as in the Near East and in prehistoric Europe the statues of gods were never considered identical with the deities themselves. They were only their images, similacra, which facilitated some association between the worshipper and the deity. The significance of xoana was different at different levels of religious experience in all the regions mentioned. At the lower, popular level, the statue was a medium for the god to listen to personal prayers. At the level of state religion, cult statues were symbols of the civic community, and, at a higher level, the divine representations could serve symbolically to help introduce a candidate to a mystery initiation (cf. for general aspects, Burkert 1977, 148 54). The religious function of crude wooden statues in prehistoric Europe and in Greece was apparently quite similar at the beginnings of the Greek Dark Age, and only later did the courses of the two traditions part ways. While in the European Iron Age the wooden figures of gods remained only roughly adapted tree-trunks with barely suggested facial features, in Greece they developed gradually towards the most inspiring images of divinity in human form in the whole history of the mankind. Institute for Classical Archaeology Charles University Celetná 20 CZ-110 00 Prague 1 Czech Republic LIMC ABBREVIATION Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. REFERENCES AHL, F.M. 1982: Amber, Apollo and Apollo s singing swans. American Journal of Philology 103, 373 411. BALD ROMANO, I. 1988: Early Greek cult images and cult practices. In R. Hägg et al. (eds.), Early Greek Cult Practice (Stockholm 1988), 127 34. BOUZEK, J. 1977: Les origins des bronzes grecs. In Actes du IVe colloque sur les bronzes antiques, Lyon 1976, 35 9. BOUZEK, J. 1997: Greece, Anatolia and Europe: Cultural Interrelations during the Early Iron Age (Jonsered, SIMA 122). BOUZEK, J. in press: Apollo Hyperboréen, le Héro solaire et l âme humaine. In Etudes consacrées à Lilly Kahil (Paris). BURKERT, W. 1977: Griechische Religion der archaischen und klasischen Epoche (Stuttgart). BYRNE, M. 1991: The Greek Geometric Warrior Figurine, Interpretation and origin (Louvain-La-Neuve and Providence, RI). COLES, B. 1990: Anthropomorphic wooden figures from Britain and Ireland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 56, 315 33. DONOHUE, A. 1988: Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta, American Classical Studies 15). 112 ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
HAWS, B. 1990: Protogeometrische Bronzefiguren in Basel: zum Stil und Proportionen früher griechischen Statuetten. Antike Kunst 33, 3 19. HEGYI, D. 1989: Prehistoric roots of the Greek cult of Apollo. Acta Ant. Hung. 32, 5 21. HEILMEYER, W.-D. 1972: Frühe olympische Tonfiguren. Ol. Forsch. VII (Berlin). HERRMANN, H.-V. 1972: Olympia, Heiligtum und Wettkampfstätte (München). JAROSCH, V. 1994: Geometrische und früharchaische Terrakotten aus Samos. Samos XII (Bonn), MÜLLER, V. 1927: Archaische Plastik bis zu den Perserkriegen (Bielefeld). ØSTBY, E. 1994: Recent excavations in the sanctuary of Athena Alea at Tegea. In Archaeology in the Peloponnese, 39 64. PARE, C.F.E. 1992: Wagons and Wagon-graves of the Early Iron Age in Central Europe (Oxford). RENFREW, C. et al. 1985: The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary of Phylakopi (London). SANDARS, N.K. 1968: The Arts of Prehistoric Europe (Harmondsworth). SCHWEITZER, B. 1969: Die geometrische Kunst Griechenlands (Köln). SPROCKHOFF, E. 1954: Nordische Bronzezeit und frühes Griechentum. Jb. Römisch. Germ. Mus. Mainz 1, 37 71. TEPLÝ POTOK 1998: Acts of the Conference on the Urnfield cultures, Teplý Potok 1998, printing. ß Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000 113