lucyclairedelune:cthonisprincess:boricuan-moonbaker:via-appia:Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica / Perseus a
lucyclairedelune:cthonisprincess:boricuan-moonbaker:via-appia:Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica / Perseus and Andromeda, 1918Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867)It baffles me that almost every interpretation (and yes, that includes modern) Andromeda is decipted as a pale, light haired white chick, despite being an Ethiopian princess and her parents as well.Clearly it’s because you honestly have no idea that Aethiopia (not Ethiopia) was an Asian exotic country that the ancient Greeks used as an alternative to Greece.With the solo exception of Ovid, who wins best prize for pulling shit out of his own arse, Andromeda is exclusively described as being white-skinned.In Heliodorus’ tale the “Aethiopica” a white skinned girl is born despite having black parents; to make a really long story short it’s revealed at the end of the tale that the girl was born white because her mother had gazed upon the image of Andromeda the father impregnated her, and the daughter was born in a similar likeness to Andromeda. A single black spot on the girl’s elbow confirms the mother’s story.In Philostratus’ Imagines, it is mentioned that the inhabitants of Aethiopia had ’strange colouring’, but Andromeda was “charming in that she is pale of skin though in Aethiopia, and charming is the very beauty of her form; she would surpass a Lydian girl in daintiness, an Attic girl in stateliness, a Spartan in sturdiness.”Ironically, Ovid in his Metamorphosis mentions that Perseus initially mistook her for a statue made of marble until he realised that it was actually a young woman chained to the rocks.Manilius in his Poetica Astronomica describes Andromeda as ‘nivea cervice’ meaning white-throated.Moreover, Andromeda and her family had Greek names, and never, in every single piece of ancient Greco-Italian artwork, is she portrayed as being anything other than Caucasian.Maybe that’s why Andromeda is portrayed as white- because the ancients themselves saw her that wat.If we want to get technical, Aethiopia in the ancient world was said to be ‘east of the Nile’ meaning somewhere in or near the Arabian Peninsula. There’s reason to believe Andromeda’s Aethiopia was actually Jaffa in Israel, known for originating the story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a sea monster, which could tie it to Cetus, the sea monster Andromeda was sacrificed to.But the myth does say Andromeda was tied to a rock off the coast of her kingdom as a sacrifice after Poseidon flooded the coast to punish her mother for insulting the Nereids–sea nymphs. Poseidon was the god of the Mediterranean, how is he flooding Ethiopia, which is landlocked and near the Red Sea? She had to be in an Asian kingdom facing the Mediterranean and off the coast of a (Greek-related) place Perseus passed as he flew back from killing Medusa. Medusa was in Cisthene, which is on the Aegean coast of modern-day Turkey. We know Perseus was flying back to his mother and King Polydectes on Seriphos, an island in the Aegean. Why would he go all the way past Egypt on his way home when he could just cross the sea? That makes no sense.If Perseus was taking the long-route home from Turkey, circling the Mediterranean, he must have found Andromeda off the coast of Byblos, Tyre or Sidon in Lebanon or Tartus and Latakia/Laodicea in Syria.So, Andromeda’s Aethiopia either didn’t exist, or was in Phoenicia/the Levant. It’s like how Libya used to mean the Maghreb, and Ethiopia itself was called Abyssinia into the 19th Century, and before that was Axum and Sheba. Pretty sure the term Ethiopia began to be used to refer to the lands below Egypt after the Romans became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.TL;DR Andromeda was a Phoenician. -- source link
#andromeda#greek mythology#ancient greece