Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox deity In Greek mythology, Europa (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx, Eurṓpē, {{#invoke:IPA|main}}) was a Phoenician princess from Tyre and the mother of King Minos of Crete. The continent of Europe is named after her. The story of her abduction by Zeus in the form of a bull was a Cretan story; as classicist Károly Kerényi points out, Template:Qi<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
An early reference to Europa is in a fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, discovered at Oxyrhynchus.<ref name="Hesiod">Hesiodic papyrus fragments 19 and 19A Template:Webarchive of the Catalogue of Women, dating from the third century AD.</ref> The earliest vase-painting securely identifiable as Europa dates from the mid-7th century BC.<ref>Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985) I.3.2, note 20, referring to Schefold, plate 11B. References in myth and art have been assembled by W. Bühler, Europa: eine Sammlung der Zeugnisse des Mythos in der antiken Litteratur und Kunst (1967).</ref>
EtymologyEdit
Greek {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Eurṓpē) may have been formed from εὐρύς (eurus), "wide, broad"<ref>εὐρύς Template:Webarchive, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus</ref> and ὤψ/ὠπ-/ὀπτ- (ōps/ōp-/opt-): "eye, face, countenance".<ref>ὤψ Template:Webarchive, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus</ref> Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion.<ref>Template:Cite book. Compare also glaukōpis (γλαυκῶπις 'grey-eyed') Athena or boōpis (βοὠπις 'ox-eyed') Hera).</ref>
It is common in ancient Greek mythology and geography to identify lands or rivers with female figures. Thus, Europa is first used in a geographic context in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea.<ref> {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} "Telphusa, here I am minded to make a glorious temple, an oracle for men, and hither they will always bring perfect hecatombs, both those who live in rich Peloponnesus and those of Europe and all the wave-washed isles, coming to seek oracles." (verses 247–251, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White).</ref> As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BC by Anaximander and Hecataeus.<ref>Histories 4.38. Cf. James Rennell, The geographical system of Herodotus examined and explained, Volume 1, Rivington 1830, p. 244</ref> Toponyms related to that of Europa exist in the territory of ancient Greece, such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia, as collected by Robert Beekes.<ref name="Beekes">Template:Cite journal</ref>
An alternative suggestion due to Ernest Klein and Giovanni Semerano (1966) attempted to connect a Semitic term for "west", Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" (in reference to the sun), Phoenician 'ereb "evening; west", which would parallel occident (the resemblance to Erebus, from PIE *h1regʷos, "darkness", is accidental, however). Barry (1999) adduces the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night", "[the country of] sunset", in opposition to Asu, "[the country of] sunrise", i.e. Asia (Anatolia coming equally from Ἀνατολή, "(sun)rise", "east").<ref> M.A. Barry (1999) "L'Europe et son mythe: à la poursuite du couchant". Revue des deux Mondes. p. 110. Template:ISBN</ref> This proposal is mostly considered unlikely or untenable.<ref group=note>Martin Litchfield West states that Template:Qi. Template:Cite book.</ref><ref>Klein, Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Barking: Elsevier) vol. I A-K, 1966; Klein's etymology of Europa is singled out among his "optimistic" conclusions in Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite NIE</ref>
FamilyEdit
Sources differ in details regarding Europa's family, but agree that she is Phoenician, and from an Argive lineage that ultimately descended from the princess Io, the mythical nymph beloved of Zeus, who was transformed into a heifer. She is generally said to be the daughter of Agenor, the Phoenician King of Tyre;<ref name="encarta2008">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> the Syracusan poet Moschus<ref>Moschus, Europa (on-line text at Theoi Project Template:Webarchive).</ref> makes her mother Queen Telephassa ("far-shining") but elsewhere her mother is Argiope ("silver-faced").<ref group=note>Kerenyi points out that these names are attributes of the moon, as is Europa's broad countenance.</ref> Other sources, such as the Iliad, claim that she is the daughter of Agenor's son, the "sun-red" Phoenix.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":03">Scholia on Homer, Iliad B, 494, p. 80, 43 ed. Bekk. as cited in Hellanicus' Boeotica</ref> It is generally agreed that she had two brothers, Cadmus, who brought the alphabet to mainland Greece, and Cilix who gave his name to Cilicia in Asia Minor, with the author of Bibliotheke including Phoenix as a third. So some interpret this as her brother Phoenix (when he is assumed to be son of Agenor) gave his siblings' name to his three children and this Europa (by this case, niece of former) is also loved by Zeus, but because of the same name, gave some confusions to others. After arriving in Crete, Europa had three sons fathered by Zeus: Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon, the first two becoming judges of the Underworld, alongside Aeacus of Aegina, when they died.<ref name="encarta2008" /><ref>Pseudo-Apollonius, Bibliotheke 3.1.1.</ref> In Crete she married Asterion, also rendered Asterius, and became mother (or step-mother) of his daughter Crete. Pausanias wrote that the poet Praxilla makes Carnus a son of Europa.<ref>Pausanias, Graeciae Descriptio 3.13.5</ref>
| Relation | Names | Sources | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alcman | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | Template:Abbr | ConTemplate:Cn | Diod.Template:Cn | Template:Abbr | Hyg.Template:Cn | Template:Abbr | Non.Template:Cn | |||
| Parentage | Phoenix | ✓<ref group=note name=":0"/> | ✓ | ✓ | ✓<ref group=note name=":0">Though Europa was unnamed in this text, she must be the daughter of Phoenix who coupled with Zeus.</ref> | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Phoenix and Cassiopeia | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Phoenix and Telephassa | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Phoenix and Telephe | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Phoenix and Perimede | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Agenor | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Agenor and Telephassa | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Agenor and Argiope | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||
| Siblings | Phineus | ✓ | ✓<ref group=note>Even though Phineus was called the son of Agenor according to Apollodorus, his mother may be different because only three sons (Cadmus, Phoenix and Cilix) were born to Agenor and Telephassa.</ref> | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Astypale | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||
| Phoenice | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Peirus | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Cadmus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| Thasus | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Phoenix | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Cilix | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Adonis | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Consorts | Zeus | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||
| Asterius | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Children | Minos | ✓ | ✓<ref group=note>Unnamed but pertains to Minos who was king of Crete</ref> | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||||
| Rhadamanthys | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||||||||
| Sarpedon | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
| Carnus | ✓ | |||||||||||||||
MythologyEdit
The Dictionary of Classical Mythology explains that Zeus was enamoured with Europa and decided to seduce or rape her, the two being near-equivalent in Greek myth.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He transformed himself into a tame white bull and mixed in with her father's herds. While Europa and her helpers were gathering flowers, she saw the bull, caressed his flanks, and eventually got onto his back. Zeus took that opportunity and ran to the sea and swam, with her on his back, to the island of Crete. He then revealed his true identity, and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Zeus gave her a necklace made by Hephaestus<ref name="Hesiod"/> and three additional gifts: the bronze automaton guard Talos, the hound Laelaps who never failed to catch his quarry, and a javelin that never missed. Zeus later re-created the shape of the white bull in the stars, which is now known as the constellation Taurus. It should not be confused with the Cretan Bull that fathered the Minotaur and was captured by Heracles. Roman mythology adopted the tale of the Raptus, also known as "The Abduction of Europa" and "The Seduction of Europa", substituting the god Jupiter for Zeus.
The myth of Europa and Zeus may have its origin in a sacred union between the Phoenician deities 'Aštar and 'Aštart (Astarte), in bovine form. Having given birth to three sons by Zeus, Europa married a king Asterion, this being also the name of the Minotaur and an epithet of Zeus, likely derived from the name Template:'Aštar.<ref name="West1997">Template:Cite book</ref>
According to Herodotus' rationalizing approach, Europa was kidnapped by Greeks (probably Cretans), who were seeking to avenge the kidnapping of Io, a princess from Argos. His variant story may have been an attempt to rationalize the earlier myth; or the present myth may be a garbled version of facts—the abduction of a Phoenician aristocrat—later enunciated without gloss by Herodotus.
CultEdit
Astarte and EuropaEdit
In the territory of Phoenician Sidon, Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD) was informed that the temple of Astarte, whom Lucian equated with the moon goddess, was sacred to Europa:
- There is likewise in Phœnicia a temple of great size owned by the Sidonians. They call it the temple of Astarte. I hold this Astarte to be no other than the moon-goddess. But according to the story of one of the priests this temple is sacred to Europa, the sister of Cadmus. She was the daughter of Agenor, and on her disappearance from Earth the Phœnicians honoured her with a temple and told a sacred legend about her; how that Zeus was enamoured of her for her beauty, and changing his form into that of a bull carried her off into Crete. This legend I heard from other Phœnicians as well; and the coinage current among the Sidonians bears upon it the effigy of Europa sitting upon a bull, none other than Zeus. Thus they do not agree that the temple in question is sacred to Europa.<ref name="encarta2008" /> Template:Verify source
The paradox, as it seemed to Lucian, would be solved if Europa is Astarte in her guise as the full, "broad-faced" moon.
InterpretationEdit
There were two competing myths<ref>Bibliotheke 3.1.1.</ref> relating how Europa came into the Hellenic world, but they agreed that she came to Crete (Kríti), where the sacred bull was paramount. In the more familiar telling she was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a bull, who breathed from his mouth a saffron crocus<ref name="Hesiod"/> and carried her away to Crete on his back—to be welcomed by Asterion,<ref group=note>According to the scholium on Iliad XII.292, noted in Karl Kerenyi (1996) Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life p. 105. Template:ISBN. Pausanias rendered the name Asterion (2.31.1); in Bibliotheke (3.1.4) it is Asterion.</ref> but according to the more literal, euhemerist version that begins the account of Persian-Hellene confrontations of Herodotus,<ref group=note>Herodotus, Histories I.1; the act is made out to be a revenge for the previous "kidnapping" of Io.</ref> she was kidnapped by Cretans, who likewise were said to have taken her to Crete. The mythical Europa cannot be separated from the mythology of the sacred bull, which had been worshipped in the Levant. In 2012, an archaeological mission of the British Museum led by Lebanese archaeologist, Claude Doumet-Serhal, discovered at the site of the old American school in Sidon, Lebanon currency that depicts Europa riding the bull with her veil flying all over like a bow, further proof of Europa's Phoenician origin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Europa does not seem to have been venerated directly in cult anywhere in classical Greece,<ref group=note>No public statue of Europa is mentioned by Pausanias or any other Classical writer, but a headless statuette, closely draped in a cloak over a peplos, of the type called "Amelung's Goddess", but inscribed "Europa", at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seems to be a Roman copy of a lost Greek original, of Template:C.; an uninscribed statuette of the same type, from Hama, Syria, is in the Damascus Museum, and a full-size copy has been found in Baiae: Template:Cite journal; I. E. S. Edwards, ed. The Cambridge Ancient History, plates to vols. V and VI 1970:illus. fig. 24.</ref> but at Lebadaea in Boeotia, Pausanias noted in the 2nd century AD that Europa was the epithet of Demeter—"Demeter whom they surname Europa and say was the nurse of Trophonios"—among the Olympians who were addressed by seekers at the cave sanctuary of Trophonios of Orchomenus, to whom a chthonic cult and oracle were dedicated: Template:Qi<ref>Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.39.2–5.</ref>
The festival of Hellotia in Crete was celebrated in honour of Europa.<ref>Template:SmithDGRBM Via archive.org.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Argive genealogyEdit
Template:Argive genealogy in Greek mythology
In art and literatureEdit
Europa provided the substance of a brief Hellenistic epic written in the mid-2nd century BCE by Moschus, a bucolic poet and friend of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, born at Syracuse.<ref group=note>The poem was published with voluminous notes and critical apparatus: Winfried Bühler, Die Europa des Moschos (Wiesbaden: Steiner) 1960.</ref>
In Metamorphoses Book II, the poet Ovid wrote the following depiction of Jupiter's seduction:
|
His picturesque details belong to anecdote and fable: in all the depictions, whether she straddles the bull, as in archaic vase-paintings or the ruined metope fragment from Sikyon, or sits gracefully sidesaddle as in a mosaic from North Africa, there is no trace of fear. Often Europa steadies herself by touching one of the bull's horns, acquiescing.
Her tale is also mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales. Though his story titled "Dragon's teeth" is largely about Cadmus, it begins with an elaborate albeit toned down version of Europa's abduction by the beautiful bull.
The tale also features as the subject of a poem and film in the Enderby (fictional character) sequence of novels by Anthony Burgess. She is remembered in De Mulieribus Claris, a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 1361Template:Endash62. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in Western literature.<ref name="Brown_xi">Template:Cite book</ref>
GalleryEdit
- The Kidnapping of Europa Mosaic.jpg
Europa velificans, Template:Qi (mosaic, Zeugma Mosaic Museum)
- Tizian 085.jpg
The Rape of Europa by Titian (1562)
- Chauveau, François Métamorphoses d'Europe Eau-forte.jpg
The Rape of Europa by François Chauveau (1650)
- Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre - Le Rapt d'Europe.jpg
The Rape of Europa by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1750)
- The rape of Europa, Goya.JPG
The Rape of Europa by Francisco Goya (1772)
- Felix Vallotton The Rape of Europa.jpg
The Rape of Europa by Félix Vallotton (1908)
- Valentin Serov - Похищение Европы - Google Art Project.jpg
The Rape of Europa by Valentin Serov (1910)
- UT-McClungPlaza.jpg
Europa on the Bull by Carl Milles (1926)
- Monumento a Europa.jpg
Rapto de Europa by Juan Oliveira Viéitez (1989)
- Statue of Europa outside Council building in Brussels.jpg
Europa by Léon de Pas (1997)
- Sculture by the European Parliament 1.jpg
Europe by May Claerhout (1999)
NamesakesEdit
ContinentEdit
The name Europe, as a geographical term, was used by Ancient Greek geographers such as Strabo to refer to part of Thrace below the Balkan Mountains.<ref>Strabo, Geography 8.1.1 Template:Webarchive.</ref> Later, under the Roman Empire the name was given to a Thracian province. Thrace or Thraike in Greek mythology, was the sister of a water nymph named Europa.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Circular reference Europa was also a surname given to the earth mother goddess Demeter.<ref>Pausanias, 9.39.4</ref>
It is derived from the Greek word Eurōpē ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) in all Romance languages, Germanic languages, Slavic languages, Baltic languages, Celtic languages, Iranian languages, Uralic languages (Hungarian Európa, Finnish Eurooppa, Estonian Euroopa).
Jürgen Fischer, in Oriens-Occidens-Europa<ref>Jürgen Fischer, Oriens–Occidens–Europa (Wiesbaden: Steiner) 1957.</ref> summarized how the name came into use, supplanting the oriens–occidens dichotomy of the later Roman Empire, which was expressive of a divided empire, Latin in the West, Greek in the East.
In the 8th century, ecclesiastical uses of "Europa" for the imperium of Charlemagne provide the source for the modern geographical term. The first use of the term Europenses, to describe peoples of the Christian, western portion of the continent, appeared in the Hispanic Latin Chronicle of 754, sometimes attributed to an author called Isidore Pacensis<ref>David Levering Lewis, God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215, New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.</ref> in reference to the Battle of Tours fought against Muslim forces.
The European Union has also used Europa as a symbol of pan-Europeanism, notably by naming its web portal after herTemplate:Citation needed and depicting her on the Greek €2 coin and on several gold and silver commemorative coins (e.g. the Belgian €10 European Expansion coin). Her name appeared on postage stamps celebrating the Council of Europe, which were first issued in 1956. The second series of euro banknotes is known as the Europa Series and bears her likeness in the watermark and hologram.
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Chemical elementEdit
The metal europium, a rare-earth element, was named in 1901 after the continent.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Moon of JupiterEdit
The invention of the telescope revealed that the planet Jupiter, clearly visible to the naked eye and known to humanity since prehistoric times, has an attendant family of moons. These were named for male and female lovers of the god and other mythological persons associated with him. The smallest of Jupiter's Galilean moons was named after Europa.
NotesEdit
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
Primary sourcesEdit
- Isidore, Etymologiae xiv.4.1
- Herodotus, The Histories, Book 1.2
- Eusebius, Chronicon, 47.7–10, 25, 53.16–17, 55.4–5
- Ovid, Metamorphoses, 862, translation by A.D. Melville (1986), p.Template:Nbs50
- Metamorphoses, ii.833-iii.2, vi.103–107
Secondary sourcesEdit
- Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, III, i, 1–2
- Apollodorus, The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics), translated by Robin Hard, Oxford University Press, 1999. Template:ISBN
- Graves, Robert, (1955) 1960. The Greek Myths
- D'Europe à l'Europe, I. Le mythe d'Europe dans l'art et la culture de l'antiquité au XVIIIe s. (colloque de Paris, ENSTemplate:SndUlm, 24–26.04.1997), éd. R. Poignault et O. WattelTemplate:Sndde Croizant, coll. Caesarodunum, n° XXXI bis, 1998.
- D'Europe à l'Europe, II. Mythe et identité du XIXe s. à nos jours (colloque de Caen, 30.09–02.10.1999), éd. R. Poignault, F. Lecocq et O. WattelTemplate:Sndde Croizant, coll. Caesarodunum, n° XXXIII bis, 2000.
- D'Europe à l'Europe, III. La dimension politique et religieuse du mythe d'Europe de l'Antiquité à nos jours (colloque de Paris, ENS-Ulm, 29–30.11.2001), éd. O. WattelTemplate:SndDe Croizant, coll. Caesarodunum, n° hors-série, 2002.
- D'Europe à l'Europe, IV. Entre Orient et Occident, du mythe à la géopolitique (colloque de Paris, ENS-Ulm, 18–20.05.2006), dir. O. WattelTemplate:Sndde Croizant & G. de Montifroy, Editions de l'Age d'Homme, LausanneTemplate:SndParis, 2007.
- D'Europe à l'Europe, V. État des connaissances (colloque de Bruxelles, 21–22.10.2010), dir. O. Wattel – de Croizant & A. Roba, Bruxelles, éd. Métamorphoses d'Europe asbl, 2011.
External linksEdit
Template:Sister project Template:EB1911 Poster
- A metope from Sicily, carved with Europa, Template:C.Template:Snd540 BCE: the bull's face, turned head-on, clearly reveals his Near Eastern iconic antecedents
- Europa on the Greek euro coin of €2
- www.europesname.eu A study describing the origin and artistic use of the name EUROPE in its mythical, geographic and political sense by Drs. Peter H. Gommers
- Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Europa)
- Template:Cite NIE
