Um ... Kourotrophos?

If you're like me, you spend a meticulous thirty minutes copying the juicy details of HMEPA into your cellular phone every month so you can have the festivals and sacrifices on quick reference when all other calendars have failed and your computer is having some much-deserved rest. If you haven't, congratulations. You are now fully aware of my geek creds.

See, even if you're not like me at all, you must have noticed that 16 Metageitnion (6/7 August) contains a sacrifice labeled “Kourotrophos, Hekate, Artemis.” Perhaps you have Googled Kourotrophos to figure out which epithet this must be. And you find ... Artemis?!



Apparently, the epithet refers to her as the nurse of youths. And ... one sacrifices to Artemis twice, once as ARTEMIS, and again solely in the aspect of Kourotrophos. Right? Not necessarily ...

In the screenshot, you will also note the Google images showing large-breasted women. That's what motivated me to find out more. Sarah C. Humphreys declares that “[the demesmen] would perhaps all be back in the deme [from Eleusinion] by Metageitnion 16, when a piglet was sacrificed to Kourotrophos and a goat to Artemis Hekate in Hekate's sanctuary” (The Strangeness of Gods, 183). While deities frequently combine or answer to the same epithet, the calendar doesn't explicitly refer to Kourotrophos as an aspect of Artemis, and Humphreys indicates that the sacrifices were given to separate deities.

Using some Google-fu and state-of-the-art research technology, I have determined that we can say much, much more about Kourotrophos. In fact, someone actually did. Kourotrophos: Cults and Representations of the Greek Nursing Deities, written by Theodora Hadzisteliou Price, presents an overview of the epithet and the divinities who bore it. While you should peruse the introduction yourself (because it's well-written), I have collected some interesting points:

1. Nursing and child-rearing is present in myth/cultus surrounding Ge, Athene, Artemis, Demeter, Persephone, Hera, Aphrodite, and Eileithyia, along with some natural divinities (Kourotrophos, 2).
2. “The epithet Kourotrophos is often found alone, with the noun omitted [...] either because it is implied from the context or because every one is expected to know who the local Kourotrophos [...] is, or because it is indicated in the shrine in which such inscriptions are erected” (3).
3. “It is interesting however that in one case in this same Calendar [of the Demarchia of Erchia] there is a sacrifice to Artemis Hekate in the Sanctuary of Hekate, where Hekate is only an epithet of Artemis! [...] It is possible, but not provable, that Kourotrophos here is Ge, as usually in the city of Athens” (123).

The presence of an “Artemis Hekate” in Price's research, and considering that Humphreys was also talking about demes of Athens and an “Artemis Hekate,” leads me to understand that both are referring to the same sacrificial calendar here. Therefore, Kourotrophos may not signify Artemis as the initial Google search suggested, but Price's Ge. Worshipping Ge (or Gaia) makes some sense, as Hekate has Chthonic associations and an “Artemis Hekate” must combine the goddesses' aspects. “Um ... what?” crisis solved. (Except for the part where I wonder why HMEPA put a comma there.)

Unless you would prefer to worship another Kourotrophos, I think some serious Ge-worship is in order for 16 Metageitnion.