Editing Dodona (section)

==Herodotus==
[[File:Plan Dodona sanctuary-en.svg|thumb|Plan of the sanctuary, as it developed up to the Roman period. #16 on this map is the Christian Basilica that occupies the site of the former Zeus temple.]]

Herodotus<ref>{{harvnb|Vandenberg|2007|pages=29–30}}.</ref> (''Histories'' 2:54–57) was told by priests at Egyptian [[Thebes (Egypt)|Thebes]] in the 5th century BCE "that two [[priest]]esses had been carried away from Thebes by [[Phoenicians]]; one, they said they had heard was taken away and sold in [[Libya]], the other in Hellas; these women, they said, were the first founders of places of divination in the aforesaid countries." The simplest analysis of the quote is: Egypt, for Greeks as well as for Egyptians, was a spring of human culture of all but immeasurable antiquity. This mythic element says that the oracles at the oasis of [[Siwa Oasis|Siwa]] in Libya and of Dodona in Epirus were equally old, but similarly transmitted by [[Phoenicia]]n culture, and that the seeresses – Herodotus does not say "[[sibyl]]s" – were women.

[[Herodotus]] follows with what he was told by the prophetesses, called ''[[peleiades]]'' ("doves") at Dodona:
{{quote|that two black doves had come flying from Thebes in [[Egypt]], one to Libya and one to Dodona; the latter settled on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech, declaring that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there; the people of Dodona understood that the message was divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine. The dove which came to Libya told the Libyans (they say) to make an oracle of Ammon; this also is sacred to Zeus. Such was the story told by the Dodonaean priestesses, the eldest of whom was Promeneia and the next Timarete and the youngest Nicandra; and the rest of the servants of the temple at Dodona similarly held it true.}}

In the simplest analysis, this was a confirmation of the [[oracle#Egypt|oracle]] tradition in Egypt. The element of the dove may be an attempt to account for a folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense and the eventual connection with Zeus, justified by a tale told by a priestess. Was the ''pel-'' element in their name connected with "black" or "muddy" root elements in names like "Peleus" or "Pelops"? Is that why the doves were black?

Herodotus adds:

{{quote|But my own belief about it is this. If the Phoenicians did in fact carry away the sacred women and sell one in Libya and one in Hellas, then, in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is now Hellas, but was formerly called [[Pelasgian|Pelasgia]], was [[Thesprotia]]; and then, being a slave there, she established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there; for it was reasonable that, as she had been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in the land to which she had come. After this, as soon as she understood the Greek language, she taught divination; and she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who sold her.

I expect that these women were called 'doves' by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian.}}

Thesprotia, on the coast west of Dodona, would have been available to the seagoing Phoenicians, whom readers of Herodotus would not have expected to have penetrated as far inland as Dodona.