This book discusses erotic and magical goddesses and heroines in
several ancient cultures, from the Near East and Asia, and
throughout ancient Europe; in prehistoric and early historic
iconography, their magical qualities are often indicated by a
magical dance or stance. It is a look at female display figures
both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, through texts and
iconography, beginning with figures depicted in very early
Neolithic Anatolia, early and middle Neolithic southeast
Europe--Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia--continuing through the late
Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and
Ireland, and elsewhere across the world. These very similar female
figures were depicted in Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East
Asia, in a broad chronological sweep, beginning with the
pre-pottery Neolithic, ca. 9000 BCE, and existing from the
beginning of the second millennium of this era up to the present
era. This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a
broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical
female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of
their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book
uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these
ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near
Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the
authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty
languages. The book contains many photographs of these
geographically different, but functionally and artistically
similar, female figures. Many current books (academic and
otherwise) explore some of the female figures the authors discuss
in their book, but such a wide-ranging cross-cultural and
cross-temporal view of this genre of female figures has never been
undertaken until now. The "sexual" display of these female figures
reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine,
and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and
apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic
display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and
reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient
divine feminine.
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