Articles
Hybrid Entities in the Near Eastern and Aegean Sources of the Bronze Age: an Attempt of Interpretation
Olga Astapova , Vladimir Lidsky
Vostok/Oriens '2013, №1
Symbolic interpretation of hybrid images as conveying the idea of combination of terrestrial and celestial principles is discussed in the present article by means of comparative analysis of the Near Eastern and Aegean pictorial and written sources of the Bronze Age. Human involvement into the Other World makes him/her open to the inner transfiguration, the latter being represented by the traits of several animals emerging in his/her appearance. Besides, in the present research an emphasis is made on the problem of radical change of the attitudes to hybrids by the end of the Bronze Age. We are trying to proof the idea of hybrid’s demonization as being provoked by the change of the religious paradigm that became obvious in the human’s rejection of his/her inner transfiguration into terrestrial-celestial being.
Keywords: transfiguration, Theseus, Minotaur, Gilgamesh, Huwawa, Anzud, Dionysus, griffin, cherub, the cave cults, the Earth Mother, tauromachia, bullfighting, the religious paradigm
Pages: С. 7–33
