DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0055
THE ROCK-DOVE 411
case she is holding an infant, and must be certainly recognized as the great
Anatolian Goddess Ma.
So far from emanating from any Semitic source, this dove-cult shared Impor-
ab autupio by Cyprus and the Minoan World, only appears to have paies-
become a pronounced feature in the Palestinian Coast towns at a com- "n'an
. . . 1-love
paratively late date. The evidence of recent excavations in the earlier Cult
strata of these regions is consistently negative, and it is only in a quite ad- pi,'eno_
vanced Classical stage that the records of the Dove Goddess at Ascalon and menon'
elsewhere come to the fore. On the Hittite monuments and cylinders,
on the other hand, as we have seen, there are relatively early indications of
the cult.
The truth is that the Classical writers from whom was due our earlier
information about Derketo (Atargatis), the ' dove' Semiramis and the rest,
saw everything through a Semitic medium, and in an already Semitized
shape the sacred doves of Palestine had themselves become a special white
breed.1 But it is now recognized by zoologists that the rock-dove The
(Columba livid) is'without contradiction the parent stem of all our domestic u°^e"
pigeons '.2 Nor can any one acquainted with the caves and rock shelters,
which in Crete (as in the related East Mediterranean area) were the earliest
sanctuaries, doubt that this was the original Sacred Dove of all these
regions. In Crete, indeed—apart from migratory turtle-doves—it seems still
to be the only indigenous species,3 and swarms of these birds still haunt the ^j1™ b
inmost clefts of such old centres of Minoan cult as the Diktaean and Cretan
Kamares Caves or the great vault of Skoteino in the Knossian region, long sanc-
unfrequented by human votaries.
The rock-dove, like all our native pigeons, is, on the whole, of
a somewhat sombre or dusky plumage—the word ' dove ', as is well known,
having that signification in the Aryan languages, and answering indeed to the
old Irish diibh = black. So, too, the doves of Dodona,'1 the earliest recorded
seat of the cult among the Hellenes,5 are described—like those of the twin
1 Tibullus' lines (1, vii, 17: ed. Postgate) and the migratory turtle-doves were the only
sum up this aspect: species observed by the naturalist and explorer-
Quid referam ut volitet crebras intacta per Trevor-Battye (see Camping in Crete, p. 262).
urbes ■' The rocky nooks about Dodona make'it
alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro. quite possible that-we have there, too, to deal
2 See the article ' Doves' in Enc. Britam with Columba //via.
mca (1907 ed., p. 379) by the eminent orni- • See especially, A. B. Cook, Zeus, i, p. 364
thologist, Professor Alfred Newton. seqq.
This—noted as ' common in sea caves '—
case she is holding an infant, and must be certainly recognized as the great
Anatolian Goddess Ma.
So far from emanating from any Semitic source, this dove-cult shared Impor-
ab autupio by Cyprus and the Minoan World, only appears to have paies-
become a pronounced feature in the Palestinian Coast towns at a com- "n'an
. . . 1-love
paratively late date. The evidence of recent excavations in the earlier Cult
strata of these regions is consistently negative, and it is only in a quite ad- pi,'eno_
vanced Classical stage that the records of the Dove Goddess at Ascalon and menon'
elsewhere come to the fore. On the Hittite monuments and cylinders,
on the other hand, as we have seen, there are relatively early indications of
the cult.
The truth is that the Classical writers from whom was due our earlier
information about Derketo (Atargatis), the ' dove' Semiramis and the rest,
saw everything through a Semitic medium, and in an already Semitized
shape the sacred doves of Palestine had themselves become a special white
breed.1 But it is now recognized by zoologists that the rock-dove The
(Columba livid) is'without contradiction the parent stem of all our domestic u°^e"
pigeons '.2 Nor can any one acquainted with the caves and rock shelters,
which in Crete (as in the related East Mediterranean area) were the earliest
sanctuaries, doubt that this was the original Sacred Dove of all these
regions. In Crete, indeed—apart from migratory turtle-doves—it seems still
to be the only indigenous species,3 and swarms of these birds still haunt the ^j1™ b
inmost clefts of such old centres of Minoan cult as the Diktaean and Cretan
Kamares Caves or the great vault of Skoteino in the Knossian region, long sanc-
unfrequented by human votaries.
The rock-dove, like all our native pigeons, is, on the whole, of
a somewhat sombre or dusky plumage—the word ' dove ', as is well known,
having that signification in the Aryan languages, and answering indeed to the
old Irish diibh = black. So, too, the doves of Dodona,'1 the earliest recorded
seat of the cult among the Hellenes,5 are described—like those of the twin
1 Tibullus' lines (1, vii, 17: ed. Postgate) and the migratory turtle-doves were the only
sum up this aspect: species observed by the naturalist and explorer-
Quid referam ut volitet crebras intacta per Trevor-Battye (see Camping in Crete, p. 262).
urbes ■' The rocky nooks about Dodona make'it
alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro. quite possible that-we have there, too, to deal
2 See the article ' Doves' in Enc. Britam with Columba //via.
mca (1907 ed., p. 379) by the eminent orni- • See especially, A. B. Cook, Zeus, i, p. 364
thologist, Professor Alfred Newton. seqq.
This—noted as ' common in sea caves '—