Rites de Passage at Thera: Some Oriental Comparanda

The shaving of the hair of young boys and girls as part of a 'rite de passage' from childhood to adulthood is a custom which is known both in the Aegean world and also in the Orient. The Aegean comparanda are frequently quoted in the study of this custom but this is not the case with the Oriental comparanda. The author attempts to assemble the most striking examples from literary and epigraphic documents, including some from Cyprus. He also attempts to interpret the scenes from Room 3B of Xeste 3. A suggestion is made that they may represent scenes of the shaving and offering of hair.

The purpose of this paper is neither to describe nor to interpret the frescoes from Xeste 3 at Thera. This has already been done admirably by a number of scholars since their discovery (recently Davis 1986, 399 - 406; N. Marinatos 1987, 23 - 33; Doumas 1987, 151 - 159). They have underlined not only their religious significance but also the importance of the building in which the frescoes were found.

Xeste 3 has been described as a public building in which religious rites were performed with the participation of many people (N. Marinatos 1984, 14f.; Doumas 1987, 155).

Though the connections of Thera with the Orient are well known (Åström 1971, 415 - 421; Warren 1979, 106ff. and n. 2; Buchholz 1980, 227 - 240), I am sure that they will eventually prove to be closer when all the material from the recent excavations has been studied. In this communication I do not propose to suggest that the ritual scenes depicted in the frescoes of Xeste 3 were in any way influenced by ritual practised in the Orient. I refer specifically to the shaved hair of young women and men, with the aim of drawing attention to some Oriental comparanda which have not yet to my knowledge been adequately considered in discussions on the shaved heads of Minoan boys and girls on whom certain locks of hair had been left to grow. Such comparanda from the Orient date to various chronological periods but this does not diminish their value, since religious ritual has deep roots in human consciousness and does not undergo the same rapid development as happens, for example, in artistic styles.

Let us begin with the information provided by ancient Greek authors on this subject.

Herodotus (II, 65) speaks about a custom among the Egyptians according to which 'the inhabitants of the various cities, when they make a vow to any god, pay it to his animals in the way which I will now explain. At the time of making the vow they shave the head of a child, cutting off all the hair, or else half, or sometimes a third part, which they then weigh in a balance against a sum of silver. And whatever sum the hair weighs is presented to the guardian of the animals.' Lucian also makes allusion to a custom among the Egyptians (Ploion e Euchai, 3) according to which all the free-born boys plait their hair until they come of age. Egyptian men shaved their heads, as we know from numerous representations, but boys had several tufts of hair remaining; princes also appear wearing a plaited lock which falls from near the top of the head, behind the ear, to the neck. The ear-locks which Orthodox Jews now wear are not, apparently, a direct survival of this old custom, but were initiated in the Middle Ages by the Jews of the Diaspora wishing to follow biblical laws (Leviticus 19, 27). According to these laws, priests are not allowed to shave their side locks and beards; the Jews of the Diaspora by doing so wished to demonstrate their own identity and to emphasize their difference from other peoples. The Jews depicted in Assyrian reliefs do not show these characteristics.

The custom of shaving the hair has a long tradition in the Near East. In the Ugaritic texts it is mentioned that when the god El hears of the death of Baal (when the latter confronted Môt = Death) he is so grieved that he leaves his throne, sits on the ground and, among other terrible things which he inflicts upon his body, shaves his two locks of hair (Caquot and Sznycer 1970, 424 - 425; Gwaltney 1976, 386f.). This custom is also known in the Greek world and is often mentioned in Greek drama.

Hair is a sign of strength in biblical heroes. Samson had seven locks of hair. The Assyrian Kings are depicted with long hair and a beard. The dedication of one's hair to the gods was the maximum offering.

Lucian, describing the temple of Astarte at Hierapolis in Syria in the 2nd century AD, mentions that the inhabitants of Hierapolis shave the hair of young men and women when they go to the temple and dedicate it to Astarte, having placed the hair in vases of gold or silver. On these vases they engrave their names, and Lucian mentions that he did the same when he went to the temple and that the vase containing his hair and which he had engraved with his name was still in the temple (Peri Syries Theas, 60).

Speaking about the inhabitants of Troezen, Lucian mentions that young men and women dedicate their hair to Hippolytos before they get married. Pausanias also mentions the same custom among the Troezenians. Each maiden, before her wedding, shaves a lock of her hair and puts it in the temple of Hippolytos (Pausanias II, 32). Ritual haircuts are often represented in Archaic and Classical Greek art (Harrison 1988, 247 - 254).

In 1879 a Phoenician inscription was found at Kition, at the site Bamboula. It is written in ink on both sides of a small gypsum plaque. The inscription dates to the 6th - 5th century BC and mentions the accounts of the temple of Astarte, namely the payments received by the personnel of the temple. Among them are the 'barbers who are employed for the cult in the temple'. The interpretation of the word lglbm as 'barbers' would suggest that there must have been special barbers in the temple who shaved the hair of young people, who then dedicated it to the goddess (Peckham 1968, 306, A13; Dupont-Sommer 1970, 9 - 28; Masson and Sznycer 1972, 50f.; Dupont-Sommer 1974, 92; Guzzo-Amadasi 1977, 114f.). According to another interpretation, however, lglbm does not refer to barbers but to shaved priests who were employed in the temple (Healey 1974, 56). The shaving of the hair was considered one of the stages of preparation of the priests. However, since the shaving of hair and its dedication to divinities or to the dead was a widespread custom in antiquity among the peoples of the Aegean and the Near East, we propose to accept the interpretation of the word lglbm as barbers.

Turning now to the archaeological evidence, we would like to mention (with the permission of Professor George Bass) the recent discovery of a cylinder seal in the Kas shipwreck, dated c. 1300 BC, which depicts inter alia a human figure with shaved head and side locks. The earliest archaeological epigraphical evidence in Cyprus for the shaving of hair and its being offered in a temple also comes from Kition. On a fragmentary red-slip bowl dated to the very end of the 9th century BC and found on the earliest floor of the Great Temple of the goddess Astarte in Area II (excavated by the Department of Antiquities) there is a long engraved inscription, unfortunately fragmentary. According to Dupont-Sommer's interpretation, a citizen of Tamassos (in the central part of Cyprus, near the copper mines), called ML, went to the Temple of Astarte at Kition, shaved his hair, prayed to the goddess for himself and for his family and dedicated his hair to Astarte, having placed it in this very bowl. Then he sacrificed to the goddess a sheep and a lamb (Guzzo-Amadasi, 1977, for a complete bibliography and the various interpretations given to this inscription by scholars). If we recall Lucian's description of the custom at Hierapolis in Syria, we find a good analogy, though ML from Tamassos was not a young man, since he prayed for his family as well as himself.

As already mentioned, several studies have been written since Marinatos first observed the shaved heads of young men and women in the frescoes of Thera, mainly of Xeste 3. In all these studies the authors stress the significance of the shaving of the hair of boys and girls as they pass through various stages into adulthood. When the task of mending the numerous fragments of the frescoes from Room 3B of Xeste 3 has been completed, more light will be thrown on the ritual which used to take place in the adyton of the Xeste.

Nevertheless, some preliminary remarks may already be made, based on the published sketches (Doumas 1987, 155ff., Fig. 3 - 4). I take this opportunity to thank Professor Doumas and his collaborators who kindly showed me these frescoes on my visit to Akrotiri in the summer of 1988.

First, a few words about the character of the so-called adyton. Since the shaving of the hair was the most important part of the ritual of the passing from one stage of youth to the next, it is possible that this ritual act and perhaps also other related acts such as washing of the hair, took part in the adyton of the Xeste, while the relatives of the young boys and girls and other 'officials' waited in Rooms 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the Xeste. Since Rooms 3A and 3B constitute two separate areas within Room 3, the ritual of the shaving of the hair of young girls may have taken place in Room 3A which would have been secluded once the polythyra were shut, while the shaving of the hair of young men could have been carried out in Room 3B. The fact that the frescoes with young girls were discovered in Room 3A and those of young boys in Room 3B may support this suggestion. In a study of the fresco of the 'Sacred Grove' Nanno Marinatos interprets the representation of a festival, in which young men and women participate while a crowd of men and women watch, as follows: 'It is striking that only in this crowd are men and women mixed together. In the cultic sphere the two sexes are clearly separated and perform different actions... what we have here is clearly a separation of the sexes in the ritual sphere.' (N. Marinatos 1987, 25; for a different interpretation see Säflund 1987, 232f.) In a ritual like the passage from childhood to adulthood, young boys surely would be separated from girls, though we have no idea what other ritual acts, apart from the shaving of the hair of the head, were involved in the 'rites de passage', but we could envisage that a separation of the sexes would have been necessary. Describing the fresco of a young woman or priestess with red lips found in Room 5 of the West House at Thera, Nanno Marinatos remarks: 'The juxtaposition needs explanation which, I think, lies in the popular opposition between the sexes. It is the presence of the girl, blossoming into sexuality, that brings out the role of the men more clearly. Through the presentation of opposites the roles of the sexes are more clearly defined.' (N. Marinatos 1987, 31.)

A word now about the first floor of the Xeste. After the ritual of the shaving of the hair other ceremonies may have taken place, including 'receptions', as we would call them today, with the participation of all those who were invited - relatives and 'officials', such as 'sacred barbers'. For the preparation of the ritual and the 'reception' there must have been trained personnel - as there were in the Temple of Astarte at Kition - and priests who resided in areas near the Xeste, such as Rooms 6 - 14.

Let us return to the frescoes in Room 3B of the Xeste: is it possible that the mature seated man wearing a white garment (no. 3) may represent a priest or one of the officials involved in the ritual? As has been correctly observed by Doumas, this is the only representation of a draped male figure, whereas all the others are naked. All four male figures are represented holding something. Male figure no. 1 may have been holding a vase which has not survived. Male figure no. 2 holds a piece of cloth which may be associated with the dressing of the young man himself after the ceremony, or with the washing of the hair before or after the shaving. Man no. 3 (the priest?) holds a jug, which may be related to the washing of the hair, and young man no. 4 holds a bowl. Are we to suppose that this bowl contains the hair which has already been shaved off, like the bowl mentioned in the inscription of Kition and the one referred to by Lucian in his description of the temple at Hierapetra?

May I remind you of some rituals of Classical Greece relating to the 'rites des passage'? I quote from an article by Cole: 'Rituals exclusively for boys centred first around admission to their father's kin group, in Athens the phratry, and second, around a period of military training preliminary to the assumption of full political rights. Ritual exclusively for girls centred around preparation for motherhood and domestic duties. Two of these rituals are the koureion for boys and the arkteia for girls. Both were concerned with the continuing life of the family, both contained rituals that marked specific stages in the maturity process of individuals and both prepared the participants for gender-specific adult roles and tasks. The koureion marked a change of biological status for boys, as did the arkteia for girls.' (Cole 1984, 233) Similar phenomena may be observed on Crete, where Minoan customs survive down to historical times (Säflund 1987, 227 - 233).

As I have already mentioned, these suggestions are entirely of a preliminary nature, made by an 'outsider', and their aim is to make those who study the frescoes of Thera more aware of Oriental comparanda. Religious conceptions and rituals develop very slowly and survive from high antiquity in some form or other. May I bring as an example the Christian rites of baptism, which include immersing the infant in water, the cutting of tufts of hair, the wearing of a special dress and anointing with oil. I hope it is not a heresy if I suggest that at least part of this ritual, and in particular the cutting of the hair, is a survival from a remote past, marking the passage of the infant into the Christian faith.

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