Insects in mythology

Gold plaques embossed with winged bee goddesses, perhaps the Thriai, found at Camiros in Rhodes, 7th century B.C.

Insects have appeared in mythology around the world from ancient times. Among the insect groups featuring in myths are the bee, butterfly, cicada, dragonfly, praying mantis and scarab beetle.

Myths

Bee

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee maidens, usually but doubtfully identified with the Thriae, a trinity of pre-Hellenic Aegean bee goddesses.^[1] A series of identical embossed gold plaques were recovered at Camiros in Rhodes;^[2] they date from the archaic period of Greek art in the seventh century, but the winged bee goddesses they depict must be far older.^[3]

The Kalahari Desert's San people tell of a bee that carried a mantis across a river. The exhausted bee left the mantis on a floating flower but planted a seed in the mantis's body before it died. The seed grew to become the first human.

In Egyptian mythology, bees grew from the tears of the sun god Ra when they landed on the desert sand. The bowstring on Hindu love god Kamadeva's bow is made of honeybees.

Mok Chi', patron deity of beekeepers, on a codex-style Maya vessel

The Baganda people of Uganda hold the legend of Kintu, the first man on earth. Save for his cow, Kintu lived alone. One day he asked permission from Ggulu, who lived in heaven, to marry his daughter Nambi. Ggulu set Kintu on a trial of five tests to pass before he would agree. For his final test Kintu was told to pick Ggulu's own cow from a stretch of cattle. Nambi aided Kintu in the final test by transforming herself into a bee, whispering into his ear to choose the one whose horn she landed upon.^[4][5][6]

In Greek Mythology, Aristaeus was the god of bee-keeping. After inevitably causing the death of Eurydice, who stepped upon a snake while fleeing him, her nymph sisters punished him by killing every one of his bees. Witnessing the empty hives where his bees had dwelt, Aristaeus wept and consulted Proteus who then proceeded to advise Aristaeus to give honor in memory of Eurydice by sacrificing four bulls and four cows. Upon doing so, he let them rot and from their corpses rose bees to fill his empty hives.^[7][8]

In Hittite mythology, the god of agriculture, Telipinu, went on a rampage and refused to allow anything to grow and animals would not produce offspring. The gods went in search of Telipinu only to fail. Then the goddess Hannahannah sent forth a bee to bring him back. The bee finds Telipinu, stings him and smears wax upon him. The god grew even angrier and it wasn't until the goddess Kamrusepa (or a mortal priest according to some references) uses a ritual to send his anger to the Underworld.

In Hindu mythology, Parvati was summoned by the Gods to kill the demon Arunasura in the form of Bhramari Devi, who took over the heavens and the three worlds. She stings him to death with the help of innumerable black bees emerging from her body, and the Gods regain control.^[9]

Butterfly

According to Lafcadio Hearn, a butterfly was seen in Japan as the personification of a person's soul; whether they be living, dying, or already dead. If a butterfly enters your guestroom and perches behind the bamboo screen, it is said in Japan that the person whom you most love is coming to see you. Large numbers of butterflies are viewed as bad omens. When Taira no Masakado was secretly preparing for his famous revolt, there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of butterflies that the people were frightened – thinking the apparition to be a portent of coming evil.^[10]

Diderot's Encyclopédie similarly cites butterflies as a symbol for the soul. A Roman sculpture depicts a butterfly exiting the mouth of a dead man, representing the Roman belief that the soul leaves through the mouth.^[11] Indeed, the ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which primarily means "soul" or "mind".^[12] According to Mircea Eliade, some of the Nagas of Manipur claim ancestry from a butterfly.^[13] In some cultures, butterflies symbolise rebirth.^[14] In the English county of Devon, people once hurried to kill the first butterfly of the year, to avoid a year of bad luck.^[15] In the Philippines, a lingering black butterfly or moth in the house is taken to mean a death in the family.^[16]

Cicada

An Ancient Greek myth tells of the cithara player Eunomos ("Mr Goodtune"). During a competition, the highest string on his five-string cithara broke. At that moment, a cicada landed on the musical instrument and sang in the place of the missing string: together, they won the competition.^[17]

Dragonfly

Dragonfly symbol on a Hopi bowl from Sikyátki, Arizona

A blue-glazed faience dragonfly amulet was found by Flinders Petrie at Lahun, from the Late Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt.^[18]

For some Native American tribes, dragonflies represent swiftness and activity; for the Navajo, they symbolize pure water. They are a common motif in Zuni pottery; stylized as a double-barred cross, they appear in Hopi rock art and on Pueblo necklaces.^[19]

Among the classical names of Japan are Akitsukuni (秋津国), Akitsushima (秋津島), Toyo-akitsushima (豊秋津島). Akitu or akidu are archaic or dialectal Japanese words for dragonfly, so one interpretation of Akitsushima is "Dragonfly Island".^[20] This is attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jinmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.^[21][22]

As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonfly is associated with autumn,^[23] and more generally dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in Japanese art and literature, especially haiku.^[19]

In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as "horse-stinger",^[24] "devil's darning needle", and "ear cutter", link them with evil or injury.^[25] Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people's souls.^[19] The Norwegian name for dragonflies is Øyenstikker ("eye-poker"), and in Portugal, they are sometimes called tira-olhos ("eyes-snatcher"). They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name gwas-y-neidr, "adder's servant".^[25] The Southern United States term "snake doctor" refers to a folk belief that dragonflies follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured.^[26]

Australian aborigine insects

The Australian aborigines both ate insects and told fables about them. A tale tells how giant men who found bee honeybags, and taught the aborigines how to find them. in another tale, a man builds a shelter for his sick son; when he returns with food, his son has vanished, but up in a tree is a cocoon around a pupa.^[27]

Praying mantis

The mantis was considered a god in southern African Khoi and San tradition for its praying posture.^[28] Several ancient civilizations considered the insect to have supernatural powers; for the Greeks, it had the ability to show lost travelers the way home; in the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead the "bird-fly" is a minor god that leads the souls of the dead to the underworld; in a list of 9th-century BC Nineveh grasshoppers (buru), the mantis is named necromancer (buru-enmeli) and soothsayer (buru-enmeli-ashaga).^[29][30]

Scarab beetle

Commemorative Marriage Scarab for Queen Tiye from Amenhotep III

In ancient Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra is seen to roll across the sky each day, transforming bodies and souls. Beetles of the Scarabaeidae family (dung beetle) roll dung into a ball as food and as a brood chamber in which to lay eggs; this way, the larvae hatch and are immediately surrounded by food. For these reasons the scarab was seen as a symbol of this heavenly cycle and of the idea of rebirth or regeneration. The Egyptian god Khepri, Ra as the rising sun, was often depicted as a scarab beetle or as a scarab beetle-headed man. The ancient Egyptians believed that Khepri renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon, then carried it through the other world after sunset, only to renew it, again, the next day.^[31]

See also

• Insects in religion

References

1. Scheinberg, Susan 1979. "The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes". Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83(1979), pp. 1–28.
2. One was illustrated in a line drawing in Harrison 1922:443, fig 135
3. Cook, Arthur Bernard. "The bee in Greek mythology" 1895 Journal of the Hellenic Society 15 pages 1–24
4. McLeish, Kenneth (1996). Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-2502-8.
5. "Kintu the Person vs Kintu the Legend". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
6. "Kintu – The First Human in Buganda". Retrieved 19 April 2014.
7. McLeish, Kenneth (1996). Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-2502-8.
8. "Aristaeus". Retrieved 20 April 2014.
9. "The Devi Bhagavatam: The Tenth Book: Chapter 13". sacred-texts.com. Retrieved 2016-03-26.
10. Hearn, Lafcadio (1904). Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Dover. ISBN 0-486-21901-1.
11. "Butterfly". Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
12. Hutchins, M., Arthur V. Evans, Rosser W. Garrison and Neil Schlager (Eds) (2003) Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 3, Insects. Gale, 2003.
13. Rabuzzi, M. 1997. Butterfly etymology. Cultural Entomology November 1997 Fourth issue online
14. "Church Releases Butterflies as Symbol of Rebirth". The St. Augustine Record. Retrieved 8 September 2015.
15. Dorset Chronicle, May 1825, reprinted in: "The First Butterfly", in The Every-day Book and Table Book; or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, etc. Vol III., ed. William Hone, (London: 1838) p 678.
16. "Superstitions and Beliefs Related to Death". Living in the Philippines. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
17. Egan, Rory B (2011). "Cicadas in Ancient Greece. Ventures in Classical Tettigology". Cultural Entomology Digest (3).
18. "Beads UC7549". Petrie Museum Catalogue. The Petrie Museum, UCL. Retrieved 10 June 2015. There is a photograph in the catalogue; it is free for non-commercial usage.
19. Mitchell, Forrest L.; Lasswell, James L. (2005). A Dazzle of Dragonflies. Texas A&M University Press. pp. 19–27, 38. ISBN 1-58544-459-6.
20. Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric; Käthe Roth (2005). "Akitsushima". Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 20.
21. Nihonto
22. 杉浦洋一 (Youichi Sugiura); John K. Gillespie (ジョン・K・ギレスピー) (1999). 日本文化を英語で紹介する事典: A Bilingual Handbook on Japanese Culture (in Japanese and English). 日本国東京都千代田区 (Chiyoda, JP-13): 株式会社ナツメ社 (Kabushiki gaisha Natsume Group). p. 305. ISBN 4-8163-2646-4. Retrieved 2010-04-26.
23. Baird, Merrily (2001). Symbols of Japan: Thematic Motifs in Art and Design. New York: Rizzoli. pp. 108–9. ISBN 0-8478-2361-X.
24. Trueman, John W. H.; Rowe, Richard J. "Odonata: Dragonflies and Damselflies". Tree of Life. Retrieved 27 February 2015.
25. Corbet 1999, pp. 559–561.
26. Hand, Wayland D. (1973). "From Idea to Word: Folk Beliefs and Customs Underlying Folk Speech". American Speech. 48 (1/2): 67–76. doi:10.2307/3087894. JSTOR 3087894.
27. "Use of Insects by Australian Aborigines". Cultural Entomology Digest. Insects.org (1). Retrieved 4 April 2016.
28. "Insek-kaleidoskoop: Die 'skynheilige' hottentotsgot". Mieliestronk.com. Retrieved 9 October 2015.
29. Prete, Frederick R.; Wells, Harrington.: Wells, Patrick H. (1999). "The Predatory Behavior of Mantids: Historical Attitudes and Contemporary Questions". In Prete, Fredrick R.; Wells, Harrington; Wells, Patrick H.; Hurd, Lawrence E. The Praying Mantids. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 3–8. ISBN 978-0-8018-6174-1.
30. "Mantid". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
31. Ben-Tor, Daphna (1989). Scarabs, A Reflection of Ancient Egypt. Jerusalem: Israel Museum. p. 8. ISBN 965-278-083-9.