Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say historians

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/jan/01/cerne-abbas-giant-is-hercules-and-was-army-meeting-point-say-historians

by diodorus • 3 years ago

75 50 3 years ago

kitd• 3 years ago

The figure may even have been cut as a motivational act by the mustering army itself. Not so far away are the Fovant monumental badges, cut for similar reasons by WW1 soldiers preparing to go to France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovant_Badges

matthewfelgate• 3 years ago

Wow thanks for sharing these, I had never heard of these!

jameshart• 3 years ago

Thanks for sharing that link. Today I learned of the “Post Office Rifles”, which sound like something from a Terry Pratchett novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Rifles

The fact they’re commemorated in the Wiltshire chalk makes it even more Pratchettian.

Also the “Bulford Kiwi” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulford_Kiwi “one of the few hill figures in Wiltshire to be neither a white horse nor a military badge”

mrob• 3 years ago

The fact they’re commemorated in the Wiltshire chalk makes it even more Pratchettian.

To explain, Pratchett lived in Broad Chalke, only a few miles from Fovant. As somebody curious about many things, and living so close to them, I think it's likely that he saw the Fovant Badges.

thaumasiotes3• 3 years ago

The only argument given that the figure is Hercules is "clearly, it's Hercules". I am not making this up.

Why even bother writing the article?

thih93• 3 years ago

Note that they also mention the missing mantle. The paper linked from the article elaborates, compares it to other representations of Hercules holding a mantle in his left hand.

thaumasiotes3• 3 years ago

The paper says that because the giant has a club, it is generally accepted to be Hercules. It notes that an image of Hercules should also have a lion skin, but -- despite extensive discussion of LIDAR scans showing what the image would have been in the past -- presents no evidence that the giant ever had one; it just says that, because the giant is obviously Hercules, there must have originally been a lion skin too.

Luc• 3 years ago

Heracles holding a club and a lion's skin is a bit of a trope. Do a quick search and you'll find dozens of etchings and statues.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/372746

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lansdowne_Herakles_G...

Wikipedia has an illustration of the cloak outline but the reference is to a book I don't have access to.

krisoft• 3 years ago

Heracles holding a club and a lion's skin is a bit of a trope.

But this one does not have a lion’s skin. Maybe a man with a club is just a man with a club.

This kind of thinking would lead a historian living in 3k to identify a picture of an astronaut as the mythical hero of Ironman.

msluyter• 3 years ago

Yeah I was wondering about this as well. To what extent were the greek myths known in that part of the world at that time? A brief googling suggests that from the 6th century onward there were various transcriptions of greek texts (Boethius, for example), but it's not 100% clear to me what was known / available in Britain in the 10th century, specifically.

Apparently Irish monks preserved some ancient Greek texts after the collapse of Rome. Interesting stuff!

tootie• 3 years ago

Roman culture was well-known and venerated among the Anglo-Saxons and Hercules was venerated among Romans as much as the Greek Herakles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72f794/in_th...

thih93• 3 years ago

Cutting a chalk figure of Hercules as fighting warrior, with club poised to strike, would have served as a fine rallying point (...)

Are we really going to describe this figure with no mention of the giant erection? Talk about an elephant in the room.

Especially since it's unclear if the ancient warriors actually fought like this[1]. Plus, the phallus was not present in the original drawing according to the 2020 lidar scans[2]:

"From a review of historical depictions, the Giant's current large erection has been identified as the result of merging a circle representing his navel with a smaller penis during a 1908 re-cut: the navel still appears on a late 1890s picture postcard. Lidar scans conducted as part of the 2020 survey programme have concluded that the phallus was added much later than the bulk of the figure, which was probably originally clothed."

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6mwsbg/did_t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant

taneq• 3 years ago

Turns out humans have been drawing dicks on things basically forever.

debo_4• 3 years ago

Long before we had dictation, we had dicktation

AlecSchueler2• 3 years ago

They're talking about its function, so an appendage added 100s of years after the original was being used isn't very relevant.

saalweachter• 3 years ago

I'm going to headcanon -- you can headcanon reality, right? -- that that was just one in a series of events, of mischievous soldiers/maintainers adding the erection and generals/the local clergy ordering the giant clothed, with no way to know the original state of the giant.

bee_rider• 3 years ago

What is the past anyway? If something happened far enough back that all that we have left of it is stories and architecture, what is the reality, as separate from those stories?

It seems like the sort of thing soldiers probably did.

hnbad• 3 years ago

It's fun to think that someone at some point decided to just add a phallus to the drawing as an act of vandalism and that's what the giant is now best known for.

But note that "probably originally clothed" cites an article that merely argues the figure was originally "wearing trousers" because the phallus was not present. It doesn't elaborate beyond that. Notably "trousers" in the modern sense didn't exist at the time so the speculation about clothing seems dubious without evidence of lost outlines.

varjag• 3 years ago

Then research led by the National Trust that examined sediment and snail shells came to the surprising conclusion that the giant was late Saxon, possibly 10th century.

Just because the art is crap doesn't mean it's neolithic!

cjs_ac• 3 years ago

If you need more dirty puns about the figure, the Metro has you covered.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/29/volunteers-polish-giants-erec...

dmurray• 3 years ago

If you missed some of the less obvious ones or are just interested in helping with the restoration, the National Trust is always looking for new members.

Angostura• 3 years ago

Outstanding!

yazzku• 3 years ago

They polished the erection...by hand? Tell me more about the precise logistics of that operation.

adolph• 3 years ago

I think it is an Eastern European thing in general, not just Poland.

danparsonson• 3 years ago

Coincidentally I just finished listening to Dan Carlin's two-part "Hardcore History" podcast about the Vikings, Twilight of the Aesir - highly recommended and currently available for free (via podcast apps or https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/).

debo_4• 3 years ago

I took a senior classics course on the ancient near East when I was in university. (It had no prereqs, and I wanted to do something that actually felt like university.)

It was fascinating. One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was potentially derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for turning this stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.

Anyways, I've never bothered looking this up further. I just loved the potential origins of things. (Another interesting one -- Jesus being in many ways derived from Baal. Given that our professor was also a priest, I thought he was surprisingly open to teaching this stuff.)

digging• 3 years ago

One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was potentially derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for turning this stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.

Any more info about this? It's not clear how the two figures are related from this description, but I wouldn't be surprised if Hercules was derived from an earlier Phoenician myth. (Or did Hercules have a purple cloak I'm unaware of?)

pvaldes2• 3 years ago

a Phoenician hero walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue

This can be taken littorally, but not literally. Is clearly speech beautification.

In ancient times it was probably understood by the public that the narrator talks about a task that is impossible (or really difficult at least). Is clearly a metaphor to stress that a character has heroic qualities like strength and, in particular, a high tolerance to pain.

boomboomsubban• 3 years ago

A quick search for Phoenician purple (apparently called Tyrian purple) brought up this seventeenth century painting recounting a second century AD Heracles story that may have been influenced by the Phoenician god Melqart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules%27s_Dog_Discovers_Pur...

riffraff• 3 years ago

interesting, a couple weeks ago I learned indo-europeists think that "strong man kills snake thingy" may be a shared proto-indo-european tale[0] (think Indra, Thor, Hercules).

I wasn't too convinced and hearing now that it might be from a non-indo-european tradition is quite fun, thanks :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Trito

inemesitaffia• 3 years ago

There's a similar story but in Africa. Actual snake though

gerdesj2• 3 years ago

"Jesus being in many ways derived from Baal"

I recall Baal being a daemon/devil/naughty boy - as described by followers of Christianity.

Perhaps one of us is mistaken.

thaumasiotes3• 3 years ago

Why would one of you need to be mistaken? Ba'al is just an ordinary word meaning "lord" in several Semitic languages. Various Semitic gods are given the title.

It is not surprising in the slightest that many traits of the Semitic god Jesus would derive from the traits of other Semitic gods, nor is it surprising that Christians would demonize non-Christian gods.

bitwize• 3 years ago

And if you glide to the right point, you'll find a Dragon's Tear that exposes a bit more backstory.

helsinkiandrew• 3 years ago

Why is the journal of the Medieval Academy of America called “Speculum”: A device used to “examine hollow openings in your body, like your vagina, anus, ears or nostrils”

EDIT: oh, perhaps the medieval genre of speculum literature: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature

kemayo• 3 years ago

It's a word with multiple meanings, though admittedly the one you mention is the most common modern one. Presumably, given that it's a journal and about medieval studies, it's a reference to speculum literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature

thih93• 3 years ago

I guess we can only speculate.

mellosouls• 3 years ago

Yes, it is related to the usage there (and is listed on that page).

But here's the definitive answer from the publication itself:

"SPECULUM, this mirror to which we find it appropriate to give a Latin name, suggests the multitudinous mirrors in which the people of the Middle Ages liked to gaze at themselves and other folk — mirrors of history and doctrine and morals, mirrors of princes and lovers and fools."

From the preface to the first volume, linked at the top here:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/MAAHistory

Ps: word origin:

from Latin: mirror, from specere to look at

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/speculu...

nsajko• 3 years ago

The paper is open-access: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/727992

Jun8• 3 years ago

I’ve always found the name of the village Cerne Abbas, after which the giant is named, interesting: “abbas” is a common Arabic name, maybe an early Arabic warrior fought with the Celts? (No, but this would be a cool story)

Turns out abbas means “abbot” in Latin, derived from Greek in Septuagint, which in turn is from Aramaic abba, meaning “my father”. Arabic abbas means “lion”, from عَبَسَ‎ (ʕabasa, “to frown”): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Abbas#:~:text=From%20Arabic....

antman123• 3 years ago

friendly reminder Aramaic is not a dead language (at least not yet -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic)

gerdesj2• 3 years ago

There is an awful lot of the usual "I think that ...", which is fine, but probably bollocks.

The big lad is there on the hill near to Cerne, why or when is largely immaterial but it is there. Unless or until some actual datable evidence becomes apparent then everything is speculation.

I personally think it is medieval or later in origin but I would love to be wrong and it to be say pre Roman Britain, so roughly before Christ (BC) or whatever you call 2024 years ago.

biorach• 3 years ago

until some actual datable evidence becomes apparent then everything is speculation.

The 10th century date is supported by evidence

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/cerne-giant-...

Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say historians

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