Editing Persephone (section)

===Origins===
[[File:P1010629 crop.png|thumb|left|Gold ring from Isopata tomb, near [[Knossos]], [[Crete]], 1400–1500 BC. Depicted are female figures dancing among blossoming vegetation; [[Heraklion Archaeological Museum]]]]

The myth of [[Rape of Persephone|a goddess being abducted and taken to the underworld]] is probably Pre-Greek in origin. [[Samuel Noah Kramer]], the renowned scholar of ancient [[Sumer]], has posited that the Greek story of the abduction of Persephone may be derived from an ancient Sumerian story in which [[Ereshkigal]], the ancient Sumerian goddess of the underworld, is abducted by [[Kur]], the primeval [[dragon]] of [[Sumerian religion|Sumerian mythology]], and forced to become ruler of the underworld against her own will.<ref>{{harvnb|Kramer| 1961|p=76–79}}: "Moreover, the crime involved is probably that of abducting a goddess; it therefore brings to mind the Greek story of the abduction of Persephone."</ref>

The location of Persephone's abduction is different in each local cult. The ''Homeric Hymn to Demeter'' mentions the "plain of Nysa".<ref>{{harvnb|Evelyn-White|1914|p=17}}</ref> The locations of this probably mythical place may simply be conventions to show that a magically distant chthonic land of myth was intended in the remote past.<ref name="Nilsson 1967 463">{{harvnb|Nilsson |1967|p= 463}}</ref>{{efn|name=Sherwood217|"In Greek mythology [[Nysa (mythology)|Nysa]] is a mythical mountain with unknown location, the birthplace of the god [[Dionysos]]."<ref>Fox, William Sherwood (1916), ''[[The Mythology of All Races]]'', v.1, ''Greek and Roman'', General editor, Louis Herbert Gray, p.217</ref>}} Demeter found and met her daughter in Eleusis, and this is the mythical disguise of what happened in the mysteries.<ref name="Burkert285">{{harvnb|Burkert|1985|pp=285–290}}</ref>

[[File:Persephone krater Antikensammlung Berlin 1984.40.jpg|thumb|[[Rape of Persephone]]. [[Hades]] with his horses and Persephone (down). An Apulian red-figure volute krater, {{circa|340 BC}}. [[Antikensammlung Berlin]]]]

In his 1985 book on Greek Religion, Walter Burkert claimed that Persephone is an old chthonic deity of the agricultural communities, who received the souls of the dead into the earth, and acquired powers over the fertility of the soil, over which she reigned. The earliest depiction of a goddess Burkert claims may be identified with Persephone growing out of the ground, is on a plate from the Old-Palace period in [[Phaistos]]. According to Burkert, the figure looks like a vegetable because she has snake lines on other side of her. On either side of the vegetable person there is a dancing girl.<ref name="Burkert42">{{harvnb|Burkert|1985|p=42}}</ref> A similar representation, where the goddess appears to come down from the sky, is depicted on the Minoan ring of Isopata.

The cults of Persephone and Demeter in the Eleusinian mysteries and in the Thesmophoria were based on old agrarian cults.<ref>{{harvnb|Nilsson |1967|p= 470}}</ref> The beliefs of these cults were closely-guarded secrets, kept hidden because they were believed to offer believers a better place in the afterlife than in miserable Hades. There is evidence that some practices were derived from the religious practices of the [[Mycenean Greece|Mycenaean age]].<ref name="Dietrich-origins-220">Dietrich (n/d?) ''The origins of the Greek Religion'', pp 220, 221</ref><ref name="Burkert42" /> [[Karl Kerenyi|Kerenyi]] asserts that these religious practices were introduced from Minoan Crete.<ref name="Kerenyi24">{{harvnb|Kerenyi|1976|p=24}}</ref><ref name="Kerenyi31">{{harvnb|Kerenyi|1967|p=31f}}</ref> The idea of immortality which appears in the syncretistic religions of the [[Near East]] did not exist in the Eleusinian mysteries at the very beginning.<ref>{{harvnb|Burkert|1985|p=289}}</ref>{{efn|"According to the Greek popular belief, {{math|{{lang|grc|ἕν ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν γένος}}}}".(One is the nature of men, another one the nature of gods)<ref>{{harvnb|Rohde|1961|loc=Psyche v. I, p. 293}}</ref>}}[[File:Relief_depicting_Persephone_as_an_Hydranos.jpg|thumb|right|Votive relief of Persephone as a hydranos, 5th century BC [[Eleusis]], [[Archaeological Museum of Eleusis]].]]