[HN Gopher] Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting p...
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Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say
historians
Author : diodorus
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-01-17 22:40 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| kitd wrote:
| The figure may even have been cut as a motivational act by the
| mustering army itself. Not so far away are the Fovant monumental
| badges, cut for similar reasons by WW1 soldiers preparing to go
| to France.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovant_Badges
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| Wow thanks for sharing these, I had never heard of these!
| jameshart wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that link. Today I learned of the "Post
| Office Rifles", which sound like something from a Terry
| Pratchett novel:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Rifles
|
| The fact they're commemorated in the Wiltshire chalk makes it
| even more Pratchettian.
|
| Also the "Bulford Kiwi" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulford_Kiwi "one of the few hill
| figures in Wiltshire to be neither a white horse nor a military
| badge"
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The only argument given that the figure is Hercules is "clearly,
| it's Hercules". I am not making this up.
|
| Why even bother writing the article?
| thih9 wrote:
| Note that they also mention the missing mantle. The paper
| linked from the article elaborates, compares it to other
| representations of Hercules holding a mantle in his left hand.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The paper says that because the giant has a club, it is
| generally accepted to be Hercules. It notes that an image of
| Hercules _should_ also have a lion skin, but -- despite
| extensive discussion of LIDAR scans showing what the image
| would have been in the past -- presents no evidence that the
| giant ever had one; it just says that, because the giant is
| obviously Hercules, there must have originally been a lion
| skin too.
| Luc wrote:
| Heracles holding a club and a lion's skin is a bit of a trope.
| Do a quick search and you'll find dozens of etchings and
| statues.
|
| https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/372746
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lansdowne_Herakles_G...
|
| Wikipedia has an illustration of the cloak outline but the
| reference is to a book I don't have access to.
| msluyter wrote:
| Yeah I was wondering about this as well. To what extent were
| the greek myths known in that part of the world at that time? A
| brief googling suggests that from the 6th century onward there
| were various transcriptions of greek texts (Boethius, for
| example), but it's not 100% clear to me what was known /
| available in Britain in the 10th century, specifically.
|
| Apparently Irish monks preserved some ancient Greek texts after
| the collapse of Rome. Interesting stuff!
| tootie wrote:
| Roman culture was well-known and venerated among the Anglo-
| Saxons and Hercules was venerated among Romans as much as the
| Greek Herakles.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72f794/in_th.
| ..
| thih9 wrote:
| > Cutting a chalk figure of Hercules as fighting warrior, with
| club poised to strike, would have served as a fine rallying point
| (...)
|
| Are we really going to describe this figure with no mention of
| the giant erection? Talk about an elephant in the room.
|
| Especially since it's unclear if the ancient warriors actually
| fought like this[1]. Plus, the phallus was not present in the
| original drawing according to the 2020 lidar scans[2]:
|
| "From a review of historical depictions, the Giant's current
| large erection has been identified as the result of merging a
| circle representing his navel with a smaller penis during a 1908
| re-cut: the navel still appears on a late 1890s picture postcard.
| Lidar scans conducted as part of the 2020 survey programme have
| concluded that the phallus was added much later than the bulk of
| the figure, which was probably originally clothed."
|
| [1]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6mwsbg/did_t...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant
| taneq wrote:
| Turns out humans have been drawing dicks on things basically
| forever.
| debo_ wrote:
| Long before we had dictation, we had dicktation
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| They're talking about its function, so an appendage added 100s
| of years after the original was being used isn't very relevant.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I'm going to headcanon -- you can headcanon reality, right? --
| that that was just one in a series of events, of mischievous
| soldiers/maintainers adding the erection and generals/the local
| clergy ordering the giant clothed, with no way to know the
| original state of the giant.
| bee_rider wrote:
| What is the past anyway? If something happened far enough
| back that all that we have left of it is stories and
| architecture, what is the reality, as separate from those
| stories?
|
| It seems like the sort of thing soldiers probably did.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Reality is what actually happened and we can view different
| past events with different levels of accuracy /certainty.
| varjag wrote:
| _Then research led by the National Trust that examined sediment
| and snail shells came to the surprising conclusion that the giant
| was late Saxon, possibly 10th century._
|
| Just because the art is crap doesn't mean it's neolithic!
| cjs_ac wrote:
| If you need more dirty puns about the figure, the Metro has you
| covered.
|
| https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/29/volunteers-polish-giants-erec...
| dmurray wrote:
| If you missed some of the less obvious ones or are just
| interested in helping with the restoration, the National Trust
| is always looking for new members.
| Angostura wrote:
| Outstanding!
| yazzku wrote:
| They polished the erection...by hand? Tell me more about the
| precise logistics of that operation.
| adolph wrote:
| I think it is an Eastern European thing in general, not just
| Poland.
| danparsonson wrote:
| Coincidentally I just finished listening to Dan Carlin's two-part
| "Hardcore History" podcast about the Vikings, Twilight of the
| Aesir - highly recommended and currently available for free (via
| podcast apps or https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-
| series/).
| debo_ wrote:
| I took a senior classics course on the ancient near East when I
| was in university. (It had no prereqs, and I wanted to do
| something that actually felt like university.)
|
| It was fascinating. One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was
| potentially derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked
| along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed
| beneath his feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for
| turning this stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.
|
| Anyways, I've never bothered looking this up further. I just
| loved the potential origins of things. (Another interesting one
| -- Jesus being in many ways derived from Baal. Given that our
| professor was also a priest, I thought he was surprisingly open
| to teaching this stuff.)
| digging wrote:
| > One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was potentially
| derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked along the
| shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his
| feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for turning this
| stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.
|
| Any more info about this? It's not clear how the two figures
| are related from this description, but I wouldn't be surprised
| if Hercules was derived from an earlier Phoenician myth. (Or
| did Hercules have a purple cloak I'm unaware of?)
| pvaldes wrote:
| > a Phoenician hero walked along the shore and discovered
| that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a
| purple hue
|
| This can be taken littorally, but not literally. Is clearly
| speech beautification.
|
| In ancient times it was probably understood by the public
| that the narrator talks about a task that is impossible (or
| really difficult at least). Is clearly a metaphor to stress
| that a character has heroic qualities like strength and, in
| particular, a high tolerance to pain.
| debo_ wrote:
| I didn't intend for it to be interpreted literally. I wrote
| "derived from stories of."
| riffraff wrote:
| interesting, a couple weeks ago I learned indo-europeists think
| that "strong man kills snake thingy" may be a shared proto-
| indo-european tale[0] (think Indra, Thor, Hercules).
|
| I wasn't too convinced and hearing now that it might be from a
| non-indo-european tradition is quite fun, thanks :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Trito
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| There's a similar story but in Africa. Actual snake though
| bitwize wrote:
| And if you glide to the right point, you'll find a Dragon's Tear
| that exposes a bit more backstory.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Why is the journal of the Medieval Academy of America called
| "Speculum": A device used to "examine hollow openings in your
| body, like your vagina, anus, ears or nostrils"
|
| EDIT: oh, perhaps the medieval genre of speculum literature:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature
| kemayo wrote:
| It's a word with multiple meanings, though admittedly the one
| you mention is the most common modern one. Presumably, given
| that it's a journal and about medieval studies, it's a
| reference to speculum literature:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature
| thih9 wrote:
| I guess we can only speculate.
| nsajko wrote:
| The paper is open-access:
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/727992
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