Bi-Cephale Motif

The Bronze Age Bi-Cephale Motif in Cyprus

By V. E. Cook

Three remarkable objects depicting two headed creatures have been found in the context of the Cypriot Proto White Painted – White Painted I ware that defines the spatial-temporal contexts of this article: Cyprus during 12th and 11th century B.C. They are the two terracotta bi-cephale figurines discovered in the Ingot God Sanctuary at Enkomi and a White Painted I dish decorated with a bi-cephale snake found in the Skales Tomb 58.

Before examining these objects it is befitting to discuss the motif in more general terms. [1] These particular pieces were created in terms of a symbolic conviction that has been very superficially analyzed – the present day scholarly emphasis being more on pottery classification and site context.

Bi-cephalism expresses naturally occurring opposites as they are incorporated in the dilemmas of the mortal condition of the living body. They are the naturally inescapable fundamental experiences of birth – death, male – female, day – night. But more subjectively they are the experiences of pain and pleasure, the sorrow of death to which can be opposed intangible, ritualized, collective consolation, which myth and ensuing religions abstract into good and evil. One can suppose that it is this latter moral tradition, that a double head on a single body represents, bearing in mind that in all traditions the head is a sacred organ of perception, as opposed to the flesh entailing functions of the rest of the body.

Perhaps the earliest manifestation of this bi-cephale symbolism is the caduceus represented on 4th millennium Babylonian cylinder seals. [2] A thorough study of the Levantine origin of this motif can be found in A.L. Frothingham, “Babylonian Origin of Hermes the Snake God and of the Caduceus,” AJA, vol. 20, no. 2 April-June, 1916, pp. 175-211. The intertwining of the entire bodies of  copulating serpents is a unique manifestation of the fertilizing union resulting in life and death. The caduceus is relevant to the serpent motif under study in so far as the two heads emerging from intertwined bodies may have developed into the notion of a single functioning body with two separate heads. It ought to be noted that a cylinder seal depicting the caduceus with what Frothingham (p. 193, 194, fig. 17) refers to as Babylonian and Hittite characteristics has been found in Cyprus.

In the case of the caduceus, the serpents represent conflicting opposites that will be unified, or healed, by means of a staff, or a sword, symbolizing the hermetic primeval phallus of the axis mundi (Guenon 1962, pp. 137, 171) This significance can be deduced from Hebrew written traditions: the Old Testament and the Kabbale. The tradition of Aaron’s rod involves a single serpent climbing Aaron’s rod as if pulled upwards by the polar staff (axis mundi) out of the earth that, the serpent as a phallus symbol had violated by penetrating the earth, resulting in the life-death cycle. The Kabbale presents the tradition of Lilith the primordial feminine presence (as opposed to the masculine) whose disobedience led to evil (as opposed to good). The word “lilit” signifies nocturne (the opposite is daylight). In the Kabbale’s Emek-Ammélekh Book XI a passage from Isaiah XXVII, I (probably a tradition stemming from the Hebrew migration into Israel during the 12th century B.C.) is reinterpreted that Lilith and her evil consort Sammaël, each symbolized by a serpent, will be punished by Jehovah’s sword. [3]

Although the initial expression of the dilemma expressed in the snake motif seems to have appeared and developed in Mesopotamia, the bi-cephale concept seems to have evolved more explicitly in Asia Minor. Bi-cephale creatures are particularly frequent in the Hittite repertoire (Courtois, pp. 307-308). Numerous terracotta objects depicting double human heads on flat, round bodies appear during the early Bronze Age at Chatal Hüyük. There is a double headed eagle relief on the cliffs of the Yazilikaya sanctuary. Several other examples of this concept are illustrated in K. Bittel, Les Hittites: a double headed eagle relief on the 14th century B.C. Alaca-Hüyük gateway (P. 190, fig. 215), another one on an 18th century B.C. stamp seal from Bogazköy (p. 94, fig. 78), and a 14th century B.C. double headed duck askos (p. 157, fig. 165) found at Bogazköy.

As far as I know, bi-cephale representations are completely absent from the Minoan-Mycenaean repertoire.

White Painted I Plate

This plate, with a uniquely sophisticated mythical motif painted on its outer base, whether destined to be hung on a wall or only as a prophylactic tomb offering, begs for an interpretation of its symbolic animal human relationships which might even shed a light on the ethnic traditions of the craftsman and owner.

The snake and the two masculine antagonists

In any study of the snake motif  the strong physiological basis for ophidian symbolism, which explains its remarkably ubiquitous presence in mythological iconography, should be recalled. For this an excellent reference is J.H. Charlesworth (pp. 44-57) where 32 symbolical features of the snake are discussed in detail.

Of more direct concern in this study is the bi-cephale aspect of the snake and its iconographical context. The snake depicted here may in fact not be bi-cephale, but may be two copulating snakes, if the forked tail depicted in the drawing is correct. On the other hand, two headed snakes do exist in nature and captured the attention of the ancients (Charlesworth, p. 136). In either case, the significance of a body supporting conflicting opposites is the same.

The Cypriot dish expresses a less abstract symbolism than the caduceus for the human dilemma. Animal forces replace the staff while two male human figures, rather than Jehovah, confront the serpent. This masculine relationship to the serpent is a Levantine concept in contrast to the Cretan goddesses so famously wielding snakes without destroying them.

It has been proposed that the two men attacking the serpent are Herakles and Ioklas (V. Karageorghis, 1980, p. 128) attacking the Hydra of Lerna, although this is not a multi-headed creature. Here it is suggested that the myth being represented is that of Gilgamesh and Enkidu attacking a menace symbolized by the monster Mumbaba, rather than the Hydra. In the Babylonian myth the serpent’s role is to steal the plant of immortality from Gilgamesh. It should be observed that the earliest cuneiform renditions of the legend were in non Semitic Sumerian, dating from contexts preceding Sargon’s conquest of Sumer (around 2100 B.C.), which makes them the earliest known epic. The motifs of this initial hero are widespread and repeated on cylinder seals throughout Mesopotamia, Syria Palestine, and Asia Minor. The majority of the written tablets mentioning Gilgamesh are expressed in the Babylonian semitic form of cuneiform. Some have been found at Ugarit, and others at Bogazköy where they were translated into Hittite (McCall, p. 19). On the other hand, the earliest written reference to Herakles appears to be a Homeric  reference in the Iliad which would be centuries later than the crafting of the Cypriot plate.

The relationship of the two men to the two heads of the snake may not be gratuitous. The two men may represent the mental-transcendence of Gilgamesh the king as opposed to the mortal-physical aspect of Enkidu, a man raised as a beast, sent by the goddess Aruru to combat Gilgamesh’s erotic ravaging of his virgin women subjects. The serpent may embody the predominance of physical, erotically reproductive mortality alongside the mental ability to transcend this condition. Eventually, one head (Enkidu’s condition) will succumb to it, while the other’s mental state (Gilgamesh’s condition) will survive, transformed by the experience, into a wiser king. This life-death dichotomy can be experienced as a male-female dichotomy. The female manifests the appearance of flesh with its ensuing corruption and death. The male is apt to feel himself victimized by this condition. The myth relates that Enkidu was a wild man, in an animal condition, who was civilized by the temple prostitute Shamhat who clothed him in her clothes. Gilgamesh on the other hand was a highly civilized king of half divine origin, who seduced the goddess Ishtar partly because of his elegant masculine garb, but in refusing her, incurred a wrath that caused her to attempt to destroy him (see the bull motif discussed below). When eventually Enkidu dies instead of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh dons a lion’s skin – thus identifying himself with Enkidu’s mortal animal condition, but transfigured into an ideal realm of the lion as symbol of the sun, also related to the predatory appearance-disappearance condition manifested within femininity (the giving birth to entities that die). [4] The emphasis on the change of garments, or skin, as Enkidu’s animal skins, then goddess garment, or Gilgamesh’s royal garments, exchanged for a lion’s skin, or used as a sail (Graves, 1955, p.89) may be related to the notion of the immortality of the snake due to its trait of shedding and renewing its skin. In the Mesopotamian legend the snake steals immortality from Gilgamesh, which would make the snake inimical, like Humbaba. However, Enkidu’s death is compensated for by Gilgamesh’s understanding, and Humbaba, which on this plate may be replaced by a double headed snake,  is overcome. At the beginning of the epic the two men (Enkidu clothed in Shamach’s feminine garb ) are in initial conflict but in a physical battle they become entwined into a complementary condition. How can one read this without recalling Achille’s throwing himself onto Patrocle’s dead body with the words “my friend myself” in Homer’s Iliad? The men join as humans undivided by sexual dichotomy to bring about the overcoming of the mortal condition, while the female presence, is perhaps suggested in the iconography of the plate by abstracting her to her animal aspects: the dog and the dove, as will be explained below.

Bird

The bird, apparently a dove, depicted on the dish, along with the other motifs, seems to metaphysically reinforce the activity of the two slayers of the serpent. Like the snake, the dove is commonly associated with the Cretan goddess. There is a long and universal tradition of birds being the intermediary between earthly life and the detached heavens. The transition between the female earth life manifestation principle and the constant presence of the sky is represented by the bird’s detachment from the earth. Birds release seeds from their beaks and droppings while they soar towards the clouds that produce life enabling rain.

Here the dove is framed by the arrows of Gilgamesh’s bow as if it were one of the arrows attacking the serpent’s body. This suggests that the arrows are performing a creative destruction. The bow and arrow, a weapon sometimes attributed to Herakles in his attack on the hydra, is commonly represented on Babylonian cylinder seals (McCall, pp. 56, 64).

Dogs

Dogs generally accompany female divinities such as the Mesopotamian goddess Gula, or Bau, known for her healing abilities, or the later huntress Artemis (Johnson, p. 114). Dogs are probably attached to healing in a dog cult observed in Phoenician Kition and the later Greek Asclepios cult as well, because of a curative property of their tongues when they lick wounds (Stager pp. 39-41). In later Greek tradition Orthus a two headed hell hound who like multi headed Cerberus guards the gates of the underworld is a sibling of the Lernean Hydra. Is it an exaggeration to suggest that the two dogs here, in the company of a Mumbaba type creature, developed into the Orthos myth? In any case, dogs incorporate the death aspect of life and the underworld earth that is related to the female principle. Not only are they the only creatures to kill on human command, they eat corpses. Their howling at the moon links them to the transcendent feminity of the tides and menstruation.

In this iconography each man may each be associated with one of the dogs as well as one of the two heads of the snake: Enkidu’s dog would be the female, death representing aspect, like Enkidu himself, who dies. Gilgamesh’s dog would represent the healing (wound licking, moon howling) aspect, like Gilgamesh himself who lives to return to his people and reign over them by building a temple to Ianna-Ishtar, rather than coupling with his women subjects.

Bull

Alongside the dove and the dogs who traditionally accompany goddesses, the iconography of the Cypriot plate includes two conflicting masculine forces: a presiding bull and a serpent being attacked.

The bull’s placement above the other figures attacking the snake recalls the Bull of Heaven of the Gilgamesh epic. The bull represents Ishtar’s father, the sky god Anu. Gilgamesh, as a King falls under the protection of Anu, while Enkidu is protected by the female force of the great queen Ninsun in the early stage of the epic which this plate may represent. It is only after Mumbaba is killed that Ishtar, scorned by Gilgamesh who is wary of her devastations as a lover, has her father, in guise of the bull, attack Gilgamesh, who, aided by Enkidu, manages to kill the bull. It is this crime that the god Anu will punish with the death of Enkidu, leaving Gilgamesh to wander alone in search of the immortality that the serpent will steal from him.

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As far as I know there is no mention of the Herakles myth in Linear B tablets. It has already been supposed by Robert Graves that the Greek legend was transmitted from the Sumerian-Babylonian myth of Gilgamesh. According to Graves (pp. 88, 89) “Herodtus (ii, 42) says that when he asked for Herakle’s original home, the Egyptians referred him to Phoenicia.” Graves continues that “It may be assumed that the central story of Heracles was an early variant of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic which reached Greece by way of Phoenicia. Gilgamesh has Enkidu for his beloved comrade, Heracles has Iolaus. Gilgamesh is undone by his love for the goddess Ishtar, Heracles by his love for Eianeira. Both are of divine parentage. Both harrow Hell. Both kill lions and overcome divine bulls ; and when sailing to the Western Isle Heracles, like Gilgamesh, uses his garment for a sail. Heracles finds the magic herb of immortality as Gilgamesh does and is similarly connected with the progress of the sun around the Zodiac.” The presence of Enkidu, to whom the texts explicitly ascribe the task of protecting Gilgamesh, is quite clear on this plate where he is protecting Gilgamesh by holding the serpent’s tail. On a late Babylonian cylinder seal Gilgamesh can also be found struggling with a seven headed serpent (p. 109, note 2).

Although he makes no mention of bi-cephalism or the caduceus, Lawrence Stager (pp. 39-42) explains the bi-polarity of sickness-health in a way that suggests the subject of this plate may have been prophylactic. He traces the archer god Apollo, god of both healing and pestilence, to a bi-polar healing cult of the Canaanite, Ugaritic gods Resheph, god of pestilence united to Mikael, god of salvation.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that the Gilgamesh Enkidu myth made its way to the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age and this plate may recall a Cypriot role in this transmission.

Other remarkable objects have been found in the Skales cemetery where the plate was found, which lead to equally debatable interpretations. They are discussed in Karageorghis (pp. 122-136) and my own thesis presented on this website (notably, a bronze tripod cauldron, a bronze tripod, and three obeloi, two of which bear inscriptions). The context of this plate is very pertinent, but beyond the scope of this article. It is best referred to in V. Karageorghis’ publication of the site: Palaepaphos-Skales, Konstanz, 1983, although in my own work I have questioned his attribution of the obeloi inscriptions.

Centaurs

The symbolism of two heads on one body when the subject is not a snake is not always as complex. In the case of the double headed eagle, it is generally believed to refer to control over the horizontal axis of the earth: the eagle’s head points right and left, east and west. However, in the case of the centaurs found in the Enkomi sanctuary, the creatures gaze straight ahead, like the Anatolian early Bronze Age double headed round bodied figurines. It seems to me that in the case of the centaurs  we have the same universal religious paradox of opposites as can be supposed in the above mentioned serpent.

Of the two terracotta figurines discovered in the Enkomi Ingot God Sanctuary, one clearly resembles an early bronze age, Red Polished, Cypriot bi-cephale figurine found in a grave at Dhenia, which dates from around 2000 B.C. There is no link that I know of that would relate these two objects other than that stylistically they are indigenous to Cyprus, but it suggests that bi-cephalism may have been familiar concept to the later Cypriots. In their earlier Red Polished form these heads are related to an Anatolian type of Red Polished pottery, some of which bears the frequently attested Anatolian bi-cephale motif.

As J.C. Courtois (p. 307-308) points out, the closest analogies to this sort of object are Hittite. I agree with E. Lagarce that these figurines with human heads wearing a polos and wings painted on the animal body may be sphinxes (E. Lagarce, p. 169, McCall, pp. 44, 46 for illustrations of this motif), which may have eventually have been transformed into the single headed 10th century B.C. centaur discovered at Lefkandi, bearing a winged band on his body similar to the Enkomi sphinxes. For the purposes of this discussion we shall refer to all these creatures as centaurs.

As in the case of the mythical motifs of the White Painted I dish, the representation of the centaur has been attributed to an Aegean influence (Karageorghis, pp. 50-54). In both cases the relationship to the Aegean is more tenuous than has been assumed. Indeed a terracotta head of a centaur, very similar to the Cypriot head with Cypriot stylistic antecedents, was found at Vrokastro, and two others, less similar, were found at Ayia Irini in Crete. However they are in 11th century pottery contexts, whereas another, which most resembles the Cypriot examples but is single headed, is of unknown provenance in the Chania museum. Nothing allows dating these pieces as earlier types than the Enkomi centaurs. On the contrary, given that the Enkomi terracottas were discovered in a Proto White Painted (Myc. IIIC:2) context, the Enkomi examples may be earlier. It is remarkable that the Cretan centaurs are mono-cephale. Perhaps the bi-cephale symbol which places the woman on a negatively comparable plane to the man was not congenial to the more goddess oriented Cretan tradition. Nonetheless, like the decorative proto geometric and later geometric type of pottery itself, there was a cultural sharing between the Aegean and Cyprus. What can be questioned is the direction of influence concerning the development of what is a distinct post palatial culture on the Greek continent, Crete and Cyprus.

The argument that the subject of the White Painted I plate involves Herakles seems to be reinforced by the fact that the centaur Chiron was Herakles’ mentor and the centaur Nessos was responsible for his death, whereas the two Enkomi centaurs discussed below appear in Cyprus during this innovative period. However, this coincidence of snake in the case of Skales and centaur at Enkomi also has a Levantine tradition. According to Merkale (p.217) the Hebrew word “lilit” (Isaiah XXXIV,V) appears only once in the Bible where it is assimilated to the Assyrian word for evening, and for owl, but it is translated in the Greek Septante as “onocentaure” (half man, half horse or mule). Hence there is a Hebrew significance to the word – and the myth – of Lilith including both the centaur and the double snake, motifs that appear in Cyprus at the close of the Bronze Age marked by dramatic population shifts. Neither the masculine predominance concerning the destruction of the snake, as opposed the more positive fertility association of the snake with the goddess in Cretan tradition, nor the bi-cephale motif, well anchored in Anatolia and the Near East, would relate these objects to Mycenaean or Cretan colonists, which heretofore has been a consensus opinion among scholars. There are traces of earlier Cypriot elements, but there also seems to be a renewed energy stemming from the Syro-Hittite traditions, which had been dormant during the influx of Mycenaean pottery and palatial life during the 13th century B.C.

[1] It doesn’t seem to me that this motif is to be confused with the bifacial « janus » of several other objects found during this period (E. Lagarce, p. 170). The latter, like the double headed eagle, are more apt to be expressing a spatial orientation controlling the cardinal points.

[2] K. Bittel, p.211, fig. 246.  A 14th c. B.C. stone plaque from Alaca Hüyük representing what Bittel refers to as an “arbre stylisé” strongly resembles a caduceus, the moreso as it is flanked by two genies like on the green steatite Babylonian vase dedicated to the King Gudea (Frothingham fig. 3). Two similar genies appear in 12th century Cyprus on the handles of a bronze amphora from Kaloriziki.

[3] “en ce jour là Jéhovah visitera de son épée terrible Léviathan, le serpent insinuant, qui est Sammaël et Léviathan le serpent sinueux qui est Lilith.” (Merkale, p. 217).

[4] The lion, who like the snake and the tree is related to the goddess, is the zodiac sign of the sun, thought to be engendered from the night womb of Ishtar; the sun is both her child and her fecundating lover in so far as she is the earth (Frothingham p. 194).

Bibliography

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Charlesworth (J.H.) The Good and Evil Serpent, how a universal symbol became Christianized, Yale University Press, 2010

Courtois (J.C.), “Le sanctuaire du dieu au lingot d’Enkomi-Alasia, ” Alasia I, Paris, 1971, pp. 151-363.

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Karageorghis (V.), and all., Palaepaphos-Skales an Iron Age Cemetery in Cyprus, Deutsches Archäeologisches Institut, Ausgrabungen in Alt-Paphos aus Cypern, hers. von F.G. Maier, Bd 3, Konstanz, 1983.

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