Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say historians | Hacker News Reader

Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say historians

theguardian.com

75 pointsdiodorus59 comments

The figure may even have been cut as a motivational act by the mustering army itself. Not so far away are the Fovant monumental badges, cut for similar reasons by WW1 soldiers preparing to go to France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fovant_Badges

Thanks for sharing that link. Today I learned of the “Post Office Rifles”, which sound like something from a Terry Pratchett novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Office_Rifles

The fact they’re commemorated in the Wiltshire chalk makes it even more Pratchettian.

Also the “Bulford Kiwi” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulford_Kiwi “one of the few hill figures in Wiltshire to be neither a white horse nor a military badge”

>The fact they’re commemorated in the Wiltshire chalk makes it even more Pratchettian.

To explain, Pratchett lived in Broad Chalke, only a few miles from Fovant. As somebody curious about many things, and living so close to them, I think it's likely that he saw the Fovant Badges.

Wow thanks for sharing these, I had never heard of these!

I took a senior classics course on the ancient near East when I was in university. (It had no prereqs, and I wanted to do something that actually felt like university.)

It was fascinating. One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was potentially derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for turning this stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.

Anyways, I've never bothered looking this up further. I just loved the potential origins of things. (Another interesting one -- Jesus being in many ways derived from Baal. Given that our professor was also a priest, I thought he was surprisingly open to teaching this stuff.)

> One anecdote I remember is that Hercules was potentially derived from stories of a Phoenician hero who walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue. He was renowned for turning this stuff into purple dye that came to signify royalty.

Any more info about this? It's not clear how the two figures are related from this description, but I wouldn't be surprised if Hercules was derived from an earlier Phoenician myth. (Or did Hercules have a purple cloak I'm unaware of?)

> a Phoenician hero walked along the shore and discovered that the molluscs that crushed beneath his feet created a purple hue

This can be taken littorally, but not literally. Is clearly speech beautification.

In ancient times it was probably understood by the public that the narrator talks about a task that is impossible (or really difficult at least). Is clearly a metaphor to stress that a character has heroic qualities like strength and, in particular, a high tolerance to pain.

I didn't intend for it to be interpreted literally. I wrote "derived from stories of."

We are talking about this snail. Is related with Hercules in a different way, as some are said to be shaped like the Hercules club:

http://www.idscaro.net/sci/04_med/class/fam3/species/bolinus...

Can't fall to mention that the Cerne Abbas giant has been drawn holding a club that is spiny also.

Are you ok?

A quick search for Phoenician purple (apparently called Tyrian purple) brought up this seventeenth century painting recounting a second century AD Heracles story that may have been influenced by the Phoenician god Melqart. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules%27s_Dog_Discovers_Pur...

interesting, a couple weeks ago I learned indo-europeists think that "strong man kills snake thingy" may be a shared proto-indo-european tale[0] (think Indra, Thor, Hercules).

I wasn't too convinced and hearing now that it might be from a non-indo-european tradition is quite fun, thanks :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*Trito

There's a similar story but in Africa. Actual snake though

Also the Yamata no Orochi slain by Susanoo in Japan.

Actually looking at the page for Yamata no Orochi contains a description of both what the parent was talking about and a list of myths where man kills snake-thingy (or Chaoskampf in German, also known as Drachenkampf): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamata_no_Orochi#Mythological_...

The Indo-European one might have been an actual snake at one point, too.

Fish stories, flood stories, and snake stories all have something in common. The subjects of the stories tend to get larger and larger as the tales go down the generations.

"Jesus being in many ways derived from Baal"

I recall Baal being a daemon/devil/naughty boy - as described by followers of Christianity.

Perhaps one of us is mistaken.

Why would one of you need to be mistaken? Ba'al is just an ordinary word meaning "lord" in several Semitic languages. Various Semitic gods are given the title.

It is not surprising in the slightest that many traits of the Semitic god Jesus would derive from the traits of other Semitic gods, nor is it surprising that Christians would demonize non-Christian gods.

I’ve always found the name of the village Cerne Abbas, after which the giant is named, interesting: “abbas” is a common Arabic name, maybe an early Arabic warrior fought with the Celts? (No, but this would be a cool story)

Turns out abbas means “abbot” in Latin, derived from Greek in Septuagint, which in turn is from Aramaic abba, meaning “my father”. Arabic abbas means “lion”, from عَبَسَ‎ (ʕabasa, “to frown”): https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Abbas#:~:text=From%20Arabic....

friendly reminder Aramaic is not a dead language (at least not yet -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic)

And if you glide to the right point, you'll find a Dragon's Tear that exposes a bit more backstory.

Coincidentally I just finished listening to Dan Carlin's two-part "Hardcore History" podcast about the Vikings, Twilight of the Aesir - highly recommended and currently available for free (via podcast apps or https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/).

Why is the journal of the Medieval Academy of America called “Speculum”: A device used to “examine hollow openings in your body, like your vagina, anus, ears or nostrils”

EDIT: oh, perhaps the medieval genre of speculum literature: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature

It's a word with multiple meanings, though admittedly the one you mention is the most common modern one. Presumably, given that it's a journal and about medieval studies, it's a reference to speculum literature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_literature

Yes, it is related to the usage there (and is listed on that page).

But here's the definitive answer from the publication itself:

"SPECULUM, this mirror to which we find it appropriate to give a Latin name, suggests the multitudinous mirrors in which the people of the Middle Ages liked to gaze at themselves and other folk — mirrors of history and doctrine and morals, mirrors of princes and lovers and fools."

From the preface to the first volume, linked at the top here:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/MAAHistory

Ps: word origin:

from Latin: mirror, from specere to look at

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/speculu...

I guess we can only speculate.

The paper is open-access: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/727992

There is an awful lot of the usual "I think that ...", which is fine, but probably bollocks.

The big lad is there on the hill near to Cerne, why or when is largely immaterial but it is there. Unless or until some actual datable evidence becomes apparent then everything is speculation.

I personally think it is medieval or later in origin but I would love to be wrong and it to be say pre Roman Britain, so roughly before Christ (BC) or whatever you call 2024 years ago.

> until some actual datable evidence becomes apparent then everything is speculation.

The 10th century date is supported by evidence

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/cerne-giant-...

Then research led by the National Trust that examined sediment and snail shells came to the surprising conclusion that the giant was late Saxon, possibly 10th century.

Just because the art is crap doesn't mean it's neolithic!

> Cutting a chalk figure of Hercules as fighting warrior, with club poised to strike, would have served as a fine rallying point (...)

Are we really going to describe this figure with no mention of the giant erection? Talk about an elephant in the room.

Especially since it's unclear if the ancient warriors actually fought like this[1]. Plus, the phallus was not present in the original drawing according to the 2020 lidar scans[2]:

"From a review of historical depictions, the Giant's current large erection has been identified as the result of merging a circle representing his navel with a smaller penis during a 1908 re-cut: the navel still appears on a late 1890s picture postcard. Lidar scans conducted as part of the 2020 survey programme have concluded that the phallus was added much later than the bulk of the figure, which was probably originally clothed."

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6mwsbg/did_t...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_Giant

I'm going to headcanon -- you can headcanon reality, right? -- that that was just one in a series of events, of mischievous soldiers/maintainers adding the erection and generals/the local clergy ordering the giant clothed, with no way to know the original state of the giant.

What is the past anyway? If something happened far enough back that all that we have left of it is stories and architecture, what is the reality, as separate from those stories?

It seems like the sort of thing soldiers probably did.

Reality is what actually happened and we can view different past events with different levels of accuracy /certainty.

It's fun to think that someone at some point decided to just add a phallus to the drawing as an act of vandalism and that's what the giant is now best known for.

But note that "probably originally clothed" cites an article that merely argues the figure was originally "wearing trousers" because the phallus was not present. It doesn't elaborate beyond that. Notably "trousers" in the modern sense didn't exist at the time so the speculation about clothing seems dubious without evidence of lost outlines.

Turns out humans have been drawing dicks on things basically forever.

Long before we had dictation, we had dicktation

They're talking about its function, so an appendage added 100s of years after the original was being used isn't very relevant.

The only argument given that the figure is Hercules is "clearly, it's Hercules". I am not making this up.

Why even bother writing the article?

Heracles holding a club and a lion's skin is a bit of a trope. Do a quick search and you'll find dozens of etchings and statues.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/372746

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lansdowne_Herakles_G...

Wikipedia has an illustration of the cloak outline but the reference is to a book I don't have access to.

> Heracles holding a club and a lion's skin is a bit of a trope.

But this one does not have a lion’s skin. Maybe a man with a club is just a man with a club.

This kind of thinking would lead a historian living in 3k to identify a picture of an astronaut as the mythical hero of Ironman.

Note that they also mention the missing mantle. The paper linked from the article elaborates, compares it to other representations of Hercules holding a mantle in his left hand.

The paper says that because the giant has a club, it is generally accepted to be Hercules. It notes that an image of Hercules should also have a lion skin, but -- despite extensive discussion of LIDAR scans showing what the image would have been in the past -- presents no evidence that the giant ever had one; it just says that, because the giant is obviously Hercules, there must have originally been a lion skin too.

The club isn't a euphemism is it?

Yeah I was wondering about this as well. To what extent were the greek myths known in that part of the world at that time? A brief googling suggests that from the 6th century onward there were various transcriptions of greek texts (Boethius, for example), but it's not 100% clear to me what was known / available in Britain in the 10th century, specifically.

Apparently Irish monks preserved some ancient Greek texts after the collapse of Rome. Interesting stuff!

Roman culture was well-known and venerated among the Anglo-Saxons and Hercules was venerated among Romans as much as the Greek Herakles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/72f794/in_th...

If you need more dirty puns about the figure, the Metro has you covered.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/29/volunteers-polish-giants-erec...

They polished the erection...by hand? Tell me more about the precise logistics of that operation.

I think it is an Eastern European thing in general, not just Poland.

If you missed some of the less obvious ones or are just interested in helping with the restoration, the National Trust is always looking for new members.

Outstanding!

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