Celtic bear-goddess Artio. Bronze artifact c. A.D. 200 from Musée de St. Germaine en Laye, published in Campbell’s, Historical Atlas of World Mythology, v 1 part 2, p. 155
This amazing sculpture comes from Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology: Mythologies of the Great Hunt of the Celtic bear-goddess Artio. This statue shows the goddess feeding a she-bear and interestingly enough there is a slit in the box pedestal wherein coin offerings could be dropped.
We have been digitizing the original photos and negatives used for the creation of this series for almost 2 years and it was a volunteer who brought this particular image to our attention.
Campbell writes that Artio is the Celtic sister to Artemis, the Greek virginal goddess of the wild, the untamed. Young girls called “bears” would perform dances in worship of Artemis at her temple in Brauron, outside of Athens.
Returning to this statue of Artio and the she-bear, Campbell used this image to illustrate the mythological and ritual significance of the bear and sacrifice which he shows as recurring through many cultures. Thus the bear holds an important stance in the ancient collective imagination in relationship to the natural world – see pages 147-155 of this volume (Historical Atlas of World Mythology, v 1 part 2: Mythologies of the Great Hunt).
From Artio and Artemis to King Arthur and Beowulf, both of whose names come from the roots for the word bear, Campbell traces a line of the bear cult significance in its continuity and transformation through Europe. Along the image captions he leads the thread to
- Ursa Major illustration source: Atlas Coelestis. From Johannes Hevelius’ celestial catalogue titled Uranographia, 1690.
the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the Great Bear and Little Bear, who he writes are “revolving forever as constellations around the Pole Star, axis mundi of the heavenly vault” (155) thus inviting us to behold the majesty of the bear alongside our ancestors.
