Historical Antecedents and Cross-Cultural Influences

Eleusis was by no means the only place in Greece that featured yearly festivals in honor of a goddess of grain and the annual renewal of life. Similar rituals were characteristic of many centers of ancient eastern Mediterranean civilization, including islands as far north as Samothrace, as far east as Cyprus, and as far south as Crete. In all of these regions were cults of one or another Great Goddess of life, fertility, and the harvest, whose worship involved secret rites of purification and initiation. In Pylos (western coast of Messenia), for example, an ancient tablet (Fr. 1222) mentions annual rites in honor of a pair of goddesses draped in a veil, who would be led in a formal procession with great pomp and solemnity down to the sea for washing and purification (Faure 33). On the west coast of Asia Minor, Greek city-states were practicing the cult of the Phrygian goddess Cybele as far back as the seventh century BCE. Known among the Greeks primarily as the Great Mother, or simply as Meter, this originally foreign goddess of nature and fertility was early associated with Rhea or Demeter herself (Burkert 178). Indeed, according to some scholars, "Demeter and Cybele were but local forms of the Great Mother worshipped under diverse names all over Greece" (Harrison 158; Baring and Cashford 369).

In the early part of this century, Foucart theorized, on the basis of statements by classical authors (e.g., Herodotus Bk. 2) as well as the discovery at some Mycenaean sites of Egyptian figurines and small artifacts, that the cult of Demeter in Greece originally derived, in whole or in part, from Egypt. Further support for this hypothesis comes from certain remarkable parallels between the myth of Isis (especially in the version presented by Plutarch in his Isis and Osiris, chs. 15 and 16) and that of Demeter (as recounted in the "Hymn to Demeter," see below). Among the details of these parallels are episodes in both stories involving infant princes who almost gain immortality--but not quite--at the hands of the respective goddesses.

On the basis of these correspondences, Foucart and his followers concluded that the Mysteries at Eleusis originally must have come from Egypt (Foucart 2-23; Magnien 44-46). Yet the fact that the sanctuary ruins in Eleusis evidently go back centuries earlier than the Hymn itself, and that excavations have unearthed no Egyptian artifacts there from that period, militates against this hypothesis (Mylonas 15, 276). On the other hand, since we know that Greek colonists and mercenaries had settled in Lower Egypt by the seventh century BCE (Leclant 245), it is reasonable to surmise that these Greek and Egyptian fertility goddesses had already begun to penetrate each other's cults and mingle in the minds of worshippers, perhaps by way of Cretan influences. There is still no consensus about this and it remains a topic of lively debate.

Many scholars today favor the view that the cult of Demeter probably derived from Thessaly or Thrace. They base this conclusion partly on references in Homer and other ancient authors to some evidently pre-Dorian temples to Demeter in the Thessalian towns of Thermopylae, Pyrasos, and Pherai; partly on certain etymological links connecting key words in the rites of Demeter to prehellenic dialects from the north (Mylonas 14-20; Kerényi 111, 145). Other scholars point out that Demeter may be the same as a goddess "Dameter," who is mentioned briefly in Linear B tablets from Pylos dating from approximately 1200 BCE. This evidence suggests that the cult of Demeter may after all have originated in the southern Peleponnesus (Ventris and Chadwick 289). But in any case, whether the specific cult of Demeter at Eleusis originated in northern or southern Greece, the undeniable parallels with worship of grain goddesses in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean region point to frequent contacts and the cross-fertilization of religious ideas.

Most closely related to the Mysteries at Eleusis were the so-called "Thesmophoria" (from thesmoi, meaning "laws," and phoria, "carrying," in reference to the goddess as "law-bearer"). These rites were celebrated by women only throughout all Greece in the month of Pyanepsion (late October), their characteristic feature being a pig sacrifice, the usual sacrifice to chthonic deities. The Greeks attributed special powers to pigs on account of their fertility, the potency and abundance of their blood, and perhaps because of their uncanny ability to unearth underground tubers and shoots. It was believed that mingling their flesh with the seeds of grain would increase the abundance of next year's harvest. The ceremonies comprised fasting and purification, a ritualized descent into the underworld, and the use of sympathetic magic to bring renewed life back out of the jaws of death (Harrison 120-31; Baring and Cashford 374-77). Similarly, the Eleusinian Mysteries also revered swine and their rituals featured the washing and sacrificing of young pigs sacred to Demeter (although this took place on the beaches at Pireas near Athens rather than at Eleusis itself). The numerous correspondences suggest that the Eleusinian Mysteries were of a piece with the Thesmophoria, and perhaps shared the same historical origins.

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