7/27/2019 Laffineur (ed) Thanatos

1/5

Kernos4 (1991)Varia

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Peter Warren

R. Laffineur (ed.), Thanatos................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

AvertissementLe contenu de ce site relve de la lgislation franaise sur la proprit intellectuelle et est la proprit exclusive del'diteur.Les uvres figurant sur ce site peuvent tre consultes et reproduites sur un support papier ou numrique sousrserve qu'elles soient strictement rserves un usage soit personnel, soit scientifique ou pdagogique excluanttoute exploitation commerciale. La reproduction devra obligatoirement mentionner l'diteur, le nom de la revue,l'auteur et la rfrence du document.

Toute autre reproduction est interdite sauf accord pralable de l'diteur, en dehors des cas prvus par la lgislationen vigueur en France.

Revues.org est un portail de revues en sciences humaines et sociales dvelopp par le Clo, Centre pour l'ditionlectronique ouverte (CNRS, EHESS, UP, UAPV).

................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Rfrence lectroniquePeter Warren, R. Laffineur (ed.), Thanatos ,Kernos [En ligne], 4 | 1991, mis en ligne le 06 avril 2011, consult le25 octobre 2012. URL : http://kernos.revues.org/514

diteur : Centre International dEtude de la religion grecque antiquehttp://kernos.revues.orghttp://www.revues.org

Document accessible en ligne sur : http://kernos.revues.org/514Ce document est le fac-simil de l'dition papier. Tous droits rservs

7/27/2019 Laffineur (ed) Thanatos

2/5

REVUE DES LIVRES 343

Le dernier chapitre (La Esfinde raptay profetiza,p. 131-144) constitue un bel exemple d'tude, l 'appui de l 'archologie, dela significationde la sphinge si inquitante pour les Grecs (dont lesreprsentat ions ontun caractre sexuel trs bien mis en vidence par l'A.). L'analysedes tmoignages littraires amne l'A. conclure l'volution dumonstre ravisseur la chanteuse d'nigmes: un e atlpoMOllau (Eur.)dont l'nigmeest conue l'oppos deschants potiques quidonnent lagloire,et qui, par sa nature, e st t r s proche dela parole prophtique.Ence sens dipe, levhors de la ville et diffrent desautres jeunes de sacommunaut, sera le r ival u lt ime qui dliera la trame des motstressspar elle, dans un e victoire qui,tout en le faisant apparatre commel'apto'tov"p destructeur de monstre, constitue le commencement desapropre ruine.

Dans ses Conclusions(p. 145-148), l'A. souligne lespoints qui confirment le rle assign la parole des femmes comme intermdiaireentre le silenceet le discours des hommes, celui-citant dou delogos:en somme,un e parolenigmatique qui, dit-elle,appartenait l a t yrannie (maiscette ide devrait t re p lus fermement soutenue).

Le thme pourrai t se prter des excs de nature diverse.Nanmoins, l'A. fait un e belle dmonstration de modration etd'intelligence. Loin de l'nigme inquitante, nous voici devant unlogos bien soutenu ...

I l faut se fliciter de cette contribution espagnole la connaissancede la conception dela femmedans l'Antiquit.

EmilioSUAREZ DE LA TORRE (Valladolid)

Rober t LAFFINEUR (d.),Thanatos. Les coutumes funmires en gel 'ge du Bronze. Actes du Colloque de Lige (2123avril 1986), Lige,Universit, 1987, 245 p., 59 pl.(Aegaeum. Annales d'archologiegenne de l'Universitde Lige, 1).

T he s tu dy of death, of burial customs an d post-funerary practices,has a twofoldpotential. I t may advance understanding both of beliefsabout after-lifean d of th e a tt it ud e s a nd s tr uc tu re s, social, religious,technological,of th e world of th e living. Burial evidencecan thus beinterrogated, empirically an d theoretically, for eachof these objectives.In sum the two enquiries becomeunitary, sincein the pre-modern worldJenseitsvorstellungeninfluencedsubstantially th e form an d practice ofday-to-day l iv ing : consider ho w much of economicproduction an denergyexpenditure was forthe world ofthe dead, notth e living.

In prehistoric Aegean studies th e empirical investigation of deathdoes no t have a ba d record. Cemeteries of Souphlian d Zarkos,Athens,Dendra, Eleusis, Mycenae,Perati an d Prosymna, th e Cyclades, Kos,Rhodes and Knossos h av e b ee n pu bli she d in considerable detai! an d

7/27/2019 Laffineur (ed) Thanatos

3/5

344 REVUE DES LIVRES

Pelon's Tholoi (1976) is a very substantial synthesis (to be added towhich is hi s further survey, t en y ea rs on, in the present volume). Bu t inth e absence of contemporary textual evidence analyses of belief ar escar ce. Whi le for th e G re ek I ro n Age we ma y recal l works such asAndronikos's Totenkult (1968), E. Vermeule's Aspects of death in earlyGreek ar t an d poetry (1979) an d Sourvinou-Inwood's To die an d enterthe house of Hades: Homer, before an d after, in J. Whaley (ed.),Mirrors of Mortality; Studies in the Social History of Death (1981), withextensive references, for th e Bronze Age we turn back to th e stillseminal studies of Matz on the Aghia Triadha sarcophagus, inGottererscheinung (1958), an d Pini, Beitrtige zur minoischenGrtiberkunde (1968). Recently, however, symbolism, in which so muchcomparative an d theoretical work ha s been done by Hodder, ha s begun toreceive more attention in the early Aegean, an d r ight ly so, given th erichness of th e Bronze Age iconography. Morgan's thematic an didiomatic analyses of wal l paintings of course concern th e world of th eliving. Bu t th e potential of eschatological symbolism is exemplified inLaffineur's highly perceptive study, centred on Mycenaean Messenia,of th e owl in death, Le symbol isme de la chouette, in L'AntiquitClassique, 50 (1981), p. 432-44. The scope for further advances here issurely large. We await Sourvinou-Inwood's R ea di ng D um b Imagesw it h k ee n i nt er es t. Exempli gratia, can Levi's analysis of th e models

from th e Kamilari tomb be carried further, as Alexiou began to do(Gnomon, 43 [1971], p. 279), or th e rich symbolism ofthe iconography ofth e Tanagra larnakes be more fully illumined (for continuity of th etradition, M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition [1974],p.6,207,n.24)?

How, then, does Thanatos stand? As the proceedings of th e Ligecolloquium (April 1986) th e volume is inevi tably subject to th e eclecticnature o f an y calI for conference papers, even on a specific theme. Th escope and treatment are in f act rich; twenty four papers followLaffineur's forward-Iooking introduction. Chronologically th eNeolithic period ha s one (Treuil, Where are the tombs ?, an d how to f indthem); t he E ar ly Bronze Age ha s six (Doumas, Cycladic society from theburial evidence; Sampson, Fountoulakis, socioeconomic correlates oft he b ur ia ls a nd treatment of th e bones, both valuable studies, at th e largeand impor tant Euboean cemetery of Manika [for more tombs there ad dE. Sakellarakis , in BSA, 82 (1987), p. 233-64]; Petit, B ra ni ga n a ndWalberg on, respectively, interpretation of th e annexes, ritual interference with bones, and the pottery from th e Early Minoan roundtombs). Middle Bronze Age Crete ha s three studies on th e cemeteries ofMallia an d Khrysolakkos in particular; de Pierpont is right to s tress thedifficulties in interpreting th e exiguous evidence of Khrysolakkos, but 1cannot s ha re h is lack of enthusiasm for rituals t he re in i n connexion

7/27/2019 Laffineur (ed) Thanatos

4/5

REVUE DES LIVRES 345

w ith t he de ad : th e building r em ains a re impressive architecturally; itlies in th e hearl of th e cemetery area which, as va n Effenterre emphasized, is del iberately located near th e sea an d so suggest ive of le grandvoyage; th e idea of an Egyptian funerary chapel cornes readi ly to mind.N ex t Mainland cemeteries, tomb a rchi tecture and burial customs,Argolid, Messenia, Ep irus, from Middle Helladic to Submycenaean,receive te n papers, Late Cypriote burial customs an d Aegean influencethereon two. Finally Finet 's Usages et rites funraires en Babylonie isoffered as a co mp ar at iv e s tu dy, w it h mu ch interesting information,mostly text-based. Yet such a stand-alone study raised a question ofmethodology and theoretical framework. On what basis is th e detailedp ractice of one region (Mesopotamia) of relevance to another (theAegean) , even if similar act ivit ies, e.g. mourning, ar e found in bothregion ?

It i s readi ly apparent that many of these papers directly address thetheoretical and interpreta t ional issues noted a t th e beginning of thisreview. Perhaps only demographic implications do no t receive a paper.Doumas ( EBA Cyc la de s) , Sampson (E H Manika) an d Darcque(Mycenaean Per iod) , for example, u se ce me te ry analysis for sociopolitical analysis of th e world of th e living, and do so with markedemphases drawn from recent theoretical or normative studies onmortuary pract ices ; Darcque i s helpful ly negat ive on th e tholos=ruler

question an d Wright, Death an d power at Mycenae " changing symbolsin mortuary practice, i s a powerful addit ion, essential ly structuralist, tostudies of social symbolism; th e papers of Fountoulakis, Bra niga n a ndAstrom bear directly on Jenseitsvorstellungen. I. an d E. Loucas, LAtombe des jumeaux divins Amphion et Zthos et la fertilit de la terrebotienne, ar e concerned with conceptual continuities from Bronze Ageto later Greek times. Other valuable papers ar e si te- or area-based an dall advance well beyond straight presentation of evidence.

Therefore, while Thanatos is (inevitably) an eclectic volume, i tmarks for th e Aegean .a major advance in treatment of th e evidence ofbur ial remains an d cus toms. Not only does i t explore th e heart of th earchaeological objective, n am ely the beliefs of th e peoples investigated,i t does so at an altogether new level of sophistication, by addressing thesocial an d spiritual correlates of the careful ly placed grave goods an dmonuments , and their disjecta membra. A minor cri ticism is that the 59plates are neither l is te d n or captioned. Discussion of papers is no tincluded; i t can sometimes be informative.

Thanatos is th e f irst of t he n ew series Aegaeum, under th e editorshipof Professor R. Laffineur. It s high s tandard has been continued in thesubsequent volumes addressed to a specifie an d closely defined topic,Aegaeum 3 an d 5. Here is the best format, as too i n t he i nf lu en ti al

7/27/2019 Laffineur (ed) Thanatos

5/5

346 REVUE DES LIVRES

volumes of th e Swedish Institute in Athens, for advancing understanding at th e level of front-line research.

Peter WARREN (Bristol)

Nicole LORAUX, Les expriences de Tirsias. L e f m in in et l 'hommegrec, Paris, Gallimard, 1989, 397 p. 1 vol. 14 x 22,5 cm. (Nrf Essais).ISBN: 2-07-071700-3. Prix: 155 FF.

L'objectif principal de Nicole Loraux dans cet ouvrage, consti tu de

treize articles crits entre 1977 et 1985, es t de dterminer le plus exactement possible la place du fmin in - et non des femmes puisqu' il s'agitmoins d'tudier un e ralit institutionnelle que des modes de reprsentation - dans le monde des hommes et l ' intrieur d'eux-mmes.Contre les vidences du discours des Grecs su r la diffrence des sexes,ou plutt dans les profondeurs mmes de ces nonciations, l'A.dbusque, e nt re a ut re s, les la rmes tou tes fminines d'Achille, la souffrance des hros et des guerr ie rs , don t l 'amp leur n e se peut comparerqu' l 'preuve douloureuse des parturientes, les ambiguts de lamasculine Athna que l'on retrouve inverses chez Hlne. Quant au xex priences de Tirsi as, sous le s ig ne d esqu el les l 'o uv rag e d rou lesa trame, elles s'articulent autour du corps invisible d'Athna (NicoleLoraux se refuse, vrai di re, d f ini r ce que vi t Tirsias), de mmeque sur la rvlation du plaisir des femmes. Hracls, pour sa part, setrouve entirement dfini dans la juxtaposition des termes qui en in troduisent l ' tude: le surmle et le fminin.

Aprs avoir ainsi explor le s recoins les p lu s d iver s du domainemythico-religieux, Nicole L or au x c ha ng e de dcor mais pas depropos. Des historiens sont appels la barre pour tmoigner de la placedu naturel fminin dans l'histoire; il appara t rapidement que lafemme ne fa it i r rup tion su r la scne de l 'hi stoi re - c' es t- -d ir e essentiellement celle de la guerre - que dans des contextes de dsordreintrieur - au x cts des esclaves souvent, ces autres exclus du systme- ou de situations extrmes et exceptionnelles: elles s'arment alors et lavictoire qu'elles remportent leur confre un peu de cette andreia qui leur

est trangre. On remarquera cependant que les traditions les plusexplicites de l 'intervention des femmes dans de s vnementsd'apparence historique sont ta rd ives et ne peuvent en aucun cas treconues en dehors d u r eg is tr e mythico-religieux. Entre l'vnementpur et le rcit imaginaire, N. Loraux se refuse choisir, mais pose enconclusion le constat que c'est d an s l a sphre mythique et potique quese droulent le plus l'aise les f an tas me s s ur l a b onn e fmini t qui selaisse approprier.

Si l'on se place du point de vue de l' hi sto ire de la rel ig ion grecquecelui qui nous in t resse d i rectement - , l'ouvrage pourra agacer, mais