Great Goddess

The Venus of Moravany. Venus figurines were among the earliest works of human culture and are widely hypothesized to have represented an epitome of femininity and fertility in the cultures that created them.

Great Goddess is the concept of an almighty goddess or mother goddess, or a matriarchal religion. Apart from various specific figures called this from various cultures, the Great Goddess hypothesis, is a postulated fertility goddess supposed to have been worshipped in the Neolithic era across most of Eurasia at least. Scholarly belief in this hypothesis has reduced in recent decades, though theological belief in a Great Goddess is common in the Goddess movement.

Hypothesis

Fragmentary Snake Goddess icon from Cnossos, illustrated for the Outline of History by H. G. Wells

The Great Goddess hypothesis theorizes that, in Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, a singular, monotheistic female deity was worshiped. The theory was first proposed by the German Classicist Eduard Gerhard in 1849, when he speculated that the various goddesses found in ancient Greek paganism had been representations of a singular goddess who had been worshipped far further back into prehistory. He associated this deity with the concept of Mother Earth, which itself had been developed in the 18th century by members of the Romanticist Movement.

Soon after, this theory began to be adopted by other classicists in France and Germany, such as Ernst Kroker, Fr. Lenormant and M. J. Menant, who further brought in the idea that the ancient peoples of Anatolia and Mesopotamia had influenced the Greek religion, and that therefore they also had once venerated a great goddess. These ideas amongst various classicists echoed those of the Swiss judge J. J. Bachofen, who put forward the idea that the earliest human societies were matriarchal, but had converted to a patriarchal form in later prehistory. Commenting on this idea, the historian Ronald Hutton (1999) remarked that in the eyes of many at the time, it would have been an obvious conclusion that "what was true in a secular sphere should also, logically, have been so in the religious one."

In 1901, the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans—who in an 1895 work had dismissed the Great Goddess theory—changed his mind and accepted the idea whilst excavating at Knossos on Crete, the site of the Bronze Age Minoan civilisation. After unearthing a number of female figurines, he came to believe that they all represented a singular goddess, who was the Minoan's chief deity, and that all the male figurines found on the site represented a subordinate male god who was both her son and consort, an idea that he based partially upon the later classical myth of Rhea and Zeus. In later writings in ensuing decades he went on to associate these Neolithic and Bronze Age images with other goddesses around the Near East. As Hutton pointed out, "his influence made this the orthodoxy of Minoan archaeology, although there was always a few colleagues who pointed out that it placed a strain upon the evidence."

Examples

Scholars such as Marija Gimbutas and Arthur Evans have proposed that certain Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures worshipped a singular Great Goddess or a unified feminine principle expressed through various local forms. The following figures are among those most frequently cited by proponents of this theory:

• Neolithic figurines (e.g., the Venus of Willendorf, Çatalhöyük goddess figurines): Interpreted by Gimbutas as expressions of a prehistoric earth or fertility goddess, central to a matristic and peaceful society in Old Europe.
• Minoan snake goddess (Crete): Identified by Arthur Evans as a central deity of Minoan religion. Though some scholars contest this interpretation, she has remained a popular candidate in Great Goddess reconstructions.
• Cybele (Anatolia): Though historically complex, she has been associated by some with survival of earlier goddess traditions into classical antiquity. Gimbutas viewed her as a remnant of the earlier goddess archetype.
• Potnia Theron ("Mistress of Animals") (Mycenaean and Minoan): Seen as a potential continuation of the prehistoric Great Goddess, associated with animals and wilderness.

These figures have been interpreted as local expressions or survivals of a broader, singular Great Goddess archetype by a specific school of feminist and symbolic archaeology. However, such interpretations are subject to scholarly debate and are not universally accepted.

See also

• Goddess worship (disambiguation)
• Great Mother (disambiguation)
• King of the gods

References

Works cited

• Evans, Arthur (1895). Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script. London: Bernard Quaritch.
• Evans, Arthur J. (1901–1902). "The Palace of Knossos". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 8: 1–94. doi:10.1017/S0068245400001404.
• Evans, Arthur (2013) [1921]. The Palace of Minos. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-06106-3.
• Gerhard, Eduard (1849). Über Metroen und Götter-Mutter (in German). Berlin: G. Reimer.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1991). The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization. Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-250418-0.
• Gimbutas, Marija (1999). The Living Goddesses. University of California Press.
• Gimbutas, Marija (2007). The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25398-8.
• Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford University Press.
• Hutton, Ronald (2022). Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-26101-1.

Further reading

General studies

• Budin, Stephanie L. (2011). The Myth of the Mother-Goddess. Cambridge University Press.
• Eliade, Mircea (1978). A History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries. University of Chicago Press.
• Goodison, Lucy; Morris, Christine, eds. (1998). Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence. British Museum Press.
• Marler, Joan (1991). The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. HarperOne.
• Neumann, Erich (1955). The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Princeton University Press.

Archaeology and historical perspectives

• Eller, Cynthia (2000). The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Beacon Press.
• Mellaart, James (1967). Çatalhöyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia. Thames & Hudson.
• Tringham, Ruth; Conkey, Margaret (1993). "Archaeology and the Goddess: Exploring the Contours of Feminist Archaeology". Feminisms in the Academy. University of Michigan Press.

Religious and mythological studies

• Robins, Gay (1993). The Women in Ancient Egypt. Harvard University Press.
• West, Martin L. (2007). Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford University Press.