Man in the Moon

[porphyry]

here is the earliest known depiction of the man in the moon, from a second BC Cuneiform astrological handbook. The Babylonians believed that the moon was a male god called Sin (the co-incidence with the English word is just that); he is known to the Greeks as Men (hence menses).

Comments

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I love that picture, thank you.

And I just wanted to add the obvious that "Men" (male) is the Anatolian divinity; and "mene" (female) the moon (e.g. Ilias 19.374*). Another word derived from "men": "meniskos" (anything in the shape of the lunar crescent), hence the name of that bit in the knee.
__
*I've looked it up in Liddell-Scott's dictionary.

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

Fascinating, thank you.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Indeed, the god was propagated to the Greeks through Anatolia, the word men, i beleive, is of Greek origin. Eugene Lane has a mongraph on the subject I read long ago. The Indo-european moon is strictly feminine, but in Semitic cultrue is was mostly masculine--in some cases anthropomorphic depcitions of Men seem to be drag.

The main use of meniscus in English (such as it is) is to descibe the crescent-shaped cross section water makes in a narrow mouthed contianer such as a test-tube owing to surface tension.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Also the stuff about the English use of "meniscus". (In German it's pretty much exclusively associated with runners overdoing it and ruining their knees.)

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity - how did the moon end up masculine in the Norse mythology, but feminine in the Greek? I always wondered about that ...

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Contact with Finno-Ugaritic culture, perhaps?

The moon as the source of decay

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In some classical texts, mention is made that it was believed that meat decays more quickly by moon light. It was also believed to be the source of humidity. In the Grimm's collection, a reference to the Sun, Moon, and Stars characterizes the Sun as harsh, the Moon as evil, and the Stars as friendly. The evil characterization of the moon relates to the decay of flesh, "I smell human flesh."

Re: The moon as the source of decay

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

you don't say? I only have about 60 mms. pages on this topic--its the backgroud of the astrobolein that afflicted Plotinus at V. Plot. 10

Re: The moon as the source of decay

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

The fairy-tale is retold in a strange and sad way in Georg Büchner's "Woyzeck" (the source of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck"):

GROSSMUTTER. Es war eimal ein arm Kind und hat kei Vater und kei Mutter war Alles todt und war Niemand mehr auf der Welt. Alles todt, und es ist hingangen und hat greint Tag und Nacht. Und weil auf der Erd Niemand mehr war, wollt's in Himmel gehn, und der Mond guckt es so freundlich an und wie's endlich zum Mond kam, war's ein Stück faul Holz und da ist es zur Sonn gangen und wie's zur Sonn kam, war's ein verreckt Sonneblum und wie's zu den Sterne kam, warens klei golde Mück, die waren angesteckt wie der Neuntödter sie auf die Schlehe steckt und wie's wieder auf die Erd wollt, war die Erd ein umgestürzter Hafen und war ganz allein und da hat sich's hingesetzt und geweint und da sitzt es noch und ist ganz allein.

[GRANDMOTHER. Once upon a time there was a poor child that had no father and no mother. All dead, and there was no one else on earth. All dead, and it went and wept day and night. And because there was no one else on earth, it wanted to go to the sky, and the moon looked at it in such a friendly way, and when it finally came to the moon, it was a piece of rotten wood, and then it went to the sun, and when it came to the sun, it was a dead sunflower und when it came to the stars, they were little golden gnats, stuck like the red-backed shrike* sticks them to the sloe, and when it wanted to go back to earth, the earth was a turned over pot, and it was all alone and sat down and cried and there it still sits and is all alone.]

*Neuntöter = Ninekiller in German; the shrike family are called Würger = strangler

Re: The moon as the source of decay

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Alas, poor Plotinus. I'm happy to have not known him well.

Re: The moon as the source of decay

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

A rather Gnosticisizing version.

More simply the ancients--and this is in Babylonian sources as well as Pliny and Plutarch, believed that dew was a liquid deposited on earth after being exhaled by the stars and planets. They also believed it was destructive. The 'proof' was 'Just look at rotting meat--its covered with droplets of water.' Further, if one cuts open a log set aside for timber and finds it has rotted it will be wet inside but dry outside. This was 'proof' that dew can be deposited inside things as well as outside. Pliny adivises girls who want to slim down for their weddings to go out in the morning and lick dew off the leaves, because it will make their fat waste away. What happens randomly in nature can be controlled by magic. If the moon goes into an elcipse while in a certian contellation, that was 'known' to cause a frost that could wipe out a whole crop--so when that is going to happen the farmer spends the night out in his fields burning special incense and reciting prayers to drive the frost away. Want someone dead? There are other prayers and rituals that will make evil dew be deposited inside him. And it will kill him too, unless he is the greatest living philosopher, in which case he only gets a stomach-ache and a bad pun on Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium.