Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and Evidence

by Ruth Tringham (Editor), Margaret Conkey, Lyn Meskell

The nurturing Earth Goddess, the Great Mother worshipped at the dawn of civilization—historical fact or consoling fiction?
While Goddess mythologies proliferate and the public devours books by artists, psychotherapists, and enthusiastic amateurs, it is remarkable that those in the field of prehistory have remained largely silent. Did Goddess worship really exist? What actually remains from the earliest cultures, and what can it tell us? What can we learn about the early stages of human religion from the study of prehistoric carvings, pictures, pottery, figurines, and temples?
In Ancient Goddesses, historians and archaeologists write accessibly about this intriguing and controversial topic for the first time. Considering a number of significant early civilizations—Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt; “Old Europe;” Early North West Europe; “Celtic” civilization; the Prehistoric Aegean; Malta; the Ancient Near East; Old Testament Israel; Çatalhöyük; and Archaic Greece—these experts review the most recent evidence so that readers can make up their own minds.

Contributors include Ruth Tringham and Margaret Conkey, University of California, Berkeley; Lynn Meskell, New College, Oxford; Fekri Hassan, University College, London; Karel van der Toorn, University of Amsterdam; Joan Westenholz, Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem; Elizabeth Shee Twohig, University College, Cork; Caroline Malone, New Hall, Cambridge; Mary Voyatzis, University of Arizona; and Miranda Green, University of Wales College.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Ancient History, Theology, Research, Religion

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 31, 1998

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got to about page 40 before putting this down. It's not horrible- but it definitely is misleading it what it seems to be about. Instead of being a book on and about "Ancient Goddesses" from different religions, it is about whether or not there were ancient matriarchal societies that worshipped goddesses. It seems concerned with the feminist claims of early, powerful, matriarchal societies.
I could care less to be honest. I just wanted to LEARN about the goddesses.
The book itself isn't bad, but does seem a bit convoluted, and not well structured.
But mainly, again, it's just not what I am looking for. DNF

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In one of his books ("The Leopard's Tale," I think) about the dig he heads at Catalhoyuk, the famed early-Neolithic city in Turkey, Ian Hodder says it's important to make his work accessible to a wide audience - local people and government officials, but also the public at large. That includes the tourists who've made Catalhoyuk a popular destination, and especially the ones who arrive on organized "Goddess tours," having heard of the site's art and eager to see for themselves how ancient Anatolians, like other prehistoric Europeans and Middle Easterners, lived in an era of harmony, matriarchy and the worship of a supreme, nurturing Mother Goddess. Hodder tells them politely that what's been found doesn't support that interpretation. I got the sense he'd like to say something stronger.

Academics since the 19th century have spread the belief in that golden age, including the original Catalhoyuk excavator, James Melaart, and, most notably, Marija Gimbutas, a specialist in southeastern Europe whose books helped bring forth a peculiar strain of New Age feminism. In 1998's "Ancient Goddesses," Goodison and Christine Morris pushed back with 10 essays from specialists making Hodder's point more forcefully, in more detail and with evidence from well beyond southern Turkey. The overall conclusion, which apparently represents the mainstream view these days: The Goddess theorists wildly overinterpreted the evidence.

The book proceeds more or less clockwise from the Balkans and Anatolia to the Levant, Egypt, Crete, Malta and finally northwestern Europe including the British Isles, covering eras from the Neolithic to the Roman Empire and touching on subjects like the supposed destruction of SE Europe's Goddess culture by warlike, patriarchal tribes from the steppes; the meaning of the "Venus" figurines found all over the region; the fact that Yahweh had a consort, Asherah; the large cast of Egyptian goddesses and their changing roles; and the barrow tombs and mythology of Ireland, Wales and England.

A fun game you can play is to go to page 166, look at the drawings of carved concentric circles (common in Neolithic art) from Longhcrew in Ireland, and see if you agree with an early investigator, Abbe Henry Breuil, they must be "the eyes of the mother goddess." Or with English archaeologist O.G.S. Crawford that Breuil, in seeing "faces where others cannot," had detected an ancient goddess-face motif, reduced to stylized eyes as it spread westward. You'll end up wondering if trying to figure out prehistoric art is any more of a science than deciding what shapes you see in clouds.

[Cary Kostka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of essays revolving around godsesses of the ancients. The authors do a great job in covering many of the well known beliefs of past societies and injecting new and thought changing information about the how's and why's of past cultural norms that were built around the goddesses.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes a unique look at the evidence and evolution of goddesses from ancient Sumeria to the Britsih Isles. It dispells many myths of a single "Mother Goddess" created by modern New Agers and Wiccans. Instead a complex history backed by evidence from the archeological record examines the true circumstances of the anciet goddesses

[Debi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book disappointed me.