This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now. A how-to guide is available.

Gold plaques embossed with the winged bee goddesses, perhaps the Thriai, found at Camiros Rhodes, 7th century BCE (British Museum)

The Bee, found in Ancient Near East and Aegean cultures, is believed to be the sacred insect that bridged the natural world to the underworld. They appear in tomb decorations; Mycenean Tholos tombs were even shaped as beehives. Image File history File links Acap. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 454 pixelsFull resolution (1850 × 1050 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 454 pixelsFull resolution (1850 × 1050 pixel, file size: 1. ... In Greek mythology, the Thriae (pebbles; also Thriai) were three virgin sisters. ... Rhodes (Greek: Ρόδος Rhódhos; Italian Rodi; [[Ladino language| ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, situated in eastern Aegean Sea. ... The British Museum in London, England is one of the worlds greatest museums of human history and culture. ...

Worship

The bee was an emblem of Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean "Mistress", also referred to as "The Pure Mother Bee".^[1] Her priestesses received the name of "Melissa" ("bee").^[2] In addition, priestesses worshipping Artemis and Demeter were called "Bees".^[3] The Delphi Priestess is often referred to as a bee, and Pindar notes that she remained "the Delphic bee" long after Apollo had usurped the ancient oracle and shrine. "The Delphic priestess in historical times chewed a laurel leaf," Harrison noted, "but when she was a Bee surely she must have sought her inspiration in the honeycomb."^[4][5] Ernst Neustadt, in his monograph on Zeus Kretigenes, "Cretan-born Zeus," devoted a chapter to the honey-goddess Melissa. Potnia (PIE *potnih2, Sanskrit ), Ancient Greek for Mistress, Lady, title of a goddess Potnia theron Artemis Athena This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ... For other uses, see Melissa (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Artemis (disambiguation). ... This article is about the grain goddess Demeter. ... Pindar (or Pindarus) (probably born 522 BC in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia; died 443 BC in Argos), was perhaps the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece. ... For other uses, see Apollo (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Melissa (disambiguation). ...

Myth

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee-maidens, usually identified with the Thriae. The Thriae was a trinity of pre-Hellenic bee-goddesses in the Aegean. The embossed gold plaque (illustration above right) is one of a series of identical plaques recovered at Camiros in Rhodes^[6] dating from the archaic period of Greek art, in the seventh century, but the winged bee goddesses they depict must be far older. The anonymous Homeric Hymns are a collection of ancient Greek hymns. ... In Greek mythology, the Thriae (pebbles; also Thriai) were three virgin sisters. ... This article is about the Christian Trinity. ... Rhodes (Greek: Ρόδος Rhódhos; Italian Rodi; [[Ladino language| ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, situated in eastern Aegean Sea. ...

Merope

Main article: Merope

Merope is connected with the bee-mask. Cretan bee-masked priestesses appear on Minoan seals. Before the Hellenes came to the Aegean, Bee of the mythographers recalled the tradition "Merope", the "bee-eater", in the old Minoan tongue. Orion, a suitor of Merope, was born in Hyrai in Boeotia, an ancient place mentioned in Homer's catalogue. According to Hesychius, the Cretan word hyron meant "swarm of bees" or "beehive."^[7] Like some other archaic names of Greek cities, such as Athens or Mycenae, Hyrai is plural, a name that once had evoked the place of "the sisters of the beehive." In Greek mythology, several unrelated women went by the name Merope (bee-mask later reinterpreted as honey-like or eloquent), which may, therefore, have denoted a position in the cult of the Great Mother rather than a mere individuals name: Merope, one of the Heliades Merope, foster mother of... In Greek mythology, several unrelated women went by the name Merope (bee-mask later reinterpreted as honey-like or eloquent), which may, therefore, have denoted a position in the cult of the Great Mother rather than a mere individuals name: Merope, one of the Heliades Merope, foster mother of... An engraving of Orion from Johann Bayers Uranometria, 1603 (US Naval Observatory Library) In Greek mythology, Orion was traditionally a great huntsman, who was set amongst the stars as the constellation called Orion. ... Hyrai is a toponym mentioned in Homers catalogue of the ships. ... Boeotia or Beotia (//, (Greek Βοιωτια; see also list of traditional Greek place names) was the central area of ancient Greece. ... page of Marc. ... This article is about the capital of Greece. ... A clay tablet with writing in Linear B from Mycenae. ...

This name Merope figures in too many isolated tales for "Merope" to be an individual. Instead the "Merope" must denote a position as priestess of the Goddess. But surely Merope the "bee-eater" is unlikely to be always a bee herself. Though there is a small Mediterranean bird called the Bee-Eater, which was known under that name to Roman naturalists Pliny and Aelian, this Bee-Eater is most likely to have been a She-Bear, a representative of Artemis. The goddess was pictured primitively with a she-bear's head herself, and the bear remained sacred to Artemis into classical times. At a festival called the Brauronia, pre-pubescent girls were dressed in honey-colored yellow robes and taught to perform a bear dance. Once they had briefly served Artemis in this way, they would be ready to be married. In later times, a Syriac Book of Medicine recommends that the eye of a bear, placed in a hive, makes the bees prosper. The bear's spirit apparently watches over the hive, and this was precisely the Merope's role among the Hyrai at Chios. Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. ... The name Aelian may refer to one of two people: Aelianus Tacticus, a Greek military writer of the 2nd century, who lived in Rome Claudius Aelianus, a Roman teacher and historian of the 3rd century, who wrote in Greek This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists...

Language

Beekeeping was a Minoan craft, and the fermented honey-drink was an old Cretan intoxicant, older than wine. The proto-Greek invaders, by contrast, did not bring the art of beekeeping with them. Homer saw bees as wild, never tame, as when the Achaeans issued forth from their ship encampment "like buzzing swarms of bees that come out in relays from a hollow rock" (Iliad, book II). For two thousand years after Knossos fell the classical Greek tongue preserved "honey-intoxicated" as the phrase for "drunken." ^{[citation needed]} The Bee is also seen in a number of Aegean and Near Eastern names. The Jewish historian Josephus noted that the name of the poet and prophet Deborah meant "bee." Melissa is also similarly defined. The name "Merope" seems to mean "honey-faced" in Greek, thus "eloquent" in Classical times. Beekeeping, tacuinum sanitatis casanatensis (XIV century) Beekeeping (or apiculture, from Latin apis, a bee) is the practice of intentional maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. ... Mead Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast. ... A fanciful representation of Flavius Josephus, in an engraving in William Whistons translation of his works Josephus (37 – sometime after 100 CE),[1] who became known, in his capacity as a Roman citizen, as Titus Flavius Josephus,[2] was a 1st-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and... For information on the nurse of Rebeccah, mentioned in Genesis, see Deborah (Genesis) Deborah or Dvora (Hebrew: ‎ Bee, Standard Hebrew Dəvora, Tiberian Hebrew Dəḇôrāh) was a prophetess and the fourth Judge and only female Judge of pre-monarchic Israel in the Old Testament (Tanakh). ...

See also

• Aristaeus and the bees, and their rebirth from an oxhide bougenia.

A minor god in Greek mythology, Aristaeus or Aristaios was the son of Apollo and the huntress Cyrene, who despised spinning and other womanly arts but spent her days hunting. ... The mistaken belief that bees are produced from the carcasses of dead ox. ...

Notes

Arthur Bernard Cook (1868-1952) was a British classical scholar, known for work in archaeology and the history of religions. ... Pindar (or Pindarus) (probably born 522 BC in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia; died 443 BC in Argos), was perhaps the greatest of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece. ...

References

• Cook, A.B. "The bee in Greek mythology" 1895 Journal of the Hellenic Society 15 pp 1ff, noted by Harrison 1922:443 note 1.
• Harrison, Jane Ellen, (1903) 1922. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek religion, third edition, pp 91 and 442f.
• James W. Johnson, "That Neo-Classical Bee" Journal of the History of Ideas 22.2 (April 1961), pp. 262-266.
• Kerenyi, Karl 1976. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton: Bollingen Press)
• Neustadt, Ernst 1906. De Jove cretico, (Berlin). Chapter III "de Melissa dea" discusses bee-goddesses and bee-priestesses in Crete.
• Scheinberg, Susan 1979. "The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83(1979), pp. 1-28.