An Archaeology of Whales and Sea Monsters in the Greek World

A Ketos in Early Athens: An Archaeology of Whales and Sea Monsters in the Greek WorldAuthor(s): John K. Papadopoulos and Deborah RuscilloSource: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 106, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 187-227Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4126243 .Accessed: 06/05/2011 18:31

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A Ketos in Early Athens: An Archaeology of Whales

and Sea Monsters in the Greek World JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS AND DEBORAH RUSCILLO

Abstract

This article publishes a fragment of a scapula of a fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) found in an Early Geomet- ric well in the area of the later Athenian Agora. Deriving from the carcass of an immature beached whale, the bone was brought to Athens and was used probably as a cutting surface, before being discarded ca. 850 B.C. The context of this extraordinary artifact is analyzed and discussed, as are its possible functions. The occurrence of whales in the Aegean and Mediterranean is reviewed, so too the use of whales and whalebones in ancient Greece and in

other cultures. Although the incidence of whalebone is rare in archaeological contexts in the Aegean, Classical literature is full of references to both fantastic sea monsters and real whales. The words that the Greeks and Romans used for whales and the language of whales in

mythology and natural history reveal a rich and varied tradition. There is a similarly rich and long tradition of

iconographic representations in ancient art, particularly of fabulous sea monsters, one that extends from Aegean prehistory into the Classical era and well beyond. The

Agora whalebone provides a unique insight into the ar-

chaeology of whales and sea monsters in Greek litera-

ture, natural history, art, and material culture.*

How vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick.'

One of the most enigmatic objects to have been

found in the heart of Athens is the so-called bone

artifact (Agora inv. BI 115), encountered in an Ear-

ly Geometric well (well K 12:2) in the central portion of the area that was to become the Classical

Agora (fig. 1).2 So unique was the object that the

well from which it derived came to be known, for a

time, as the "well with the bone artifact." Although

unearthed in 1934, the bone languished, appar- ently forgotten for many years, first in the storerooms of the old Agora dig-house, and later in the upper gallery of the Stoa of Attalos, above the Agora Muse- um. The bone is of interest both on account of the fact that it preserves a portion of a scapula of a fin whale, a member of the Balaenoptera genus of whales, the second largest mammal to have inhabited the earth after the blue whale, as well as for the use it was put to prior to being discarded. The bone, al-

though fragmentary and now preserving only a small

portion of the original scapula, has a series of cut marks on its upper, flat surface, and a neat rectan-

gular cutting for presumed attachment to another element, now lost. While the exact function of the artifact in the context of the Early Iron Age settlement of Athens is not immediately obvious, analysis of the various cuttings, together with the wear on the bone, provide important insights into the life history of this uncommon find. The comparative rarity of whale bones in archaeological contexts in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean generally, coupled with the use that the bone was put to, warrant its detailed publication. Moreover, the physical existence of such a bone serves as a useful focus for the more numerous appearances of whales and other sea monsters in Greek literature, mythology, natural history, and art.

In this article, a detailed description and analysis of the bone is provided, which aims at establishing the salient details of its life history, including the nature of the leviathan from which it derived and the context in which it was finally deposited. From there, the incidence of both stranded and sighted

* We gratefully acknowledge our debt to our colleagues in the Athenian Agora for facilitating our work and for various types of assistance, particularly John McK. Camp II, Sylvie Du- mont, Anne Hooton, Jan Jordan, and Craig Mauzy. We are grateful to many friends and colleagues for providing illustra- tions, for allowing access to material in their care, and for discussion on a variety of topics connected with this paper, especially the following: Aphrodite Argyrakis, Mary Jean Blasdale, Laura Bonomi, David Clarke,John Clegg, Roger Colten, Simon Davis, Peter Dawson, Susanne Ebbinghaus, Sherry Fox, Michael Jehle, Hans Christian Kochelmann, Roel Lauwerier, Susan Lawrence, Nino Luraghi, Yvonne Marshall, Dave Maxwell,

Adrienne Mayor, Greg Monks, Sarah Morris,Jacqui Mulville, Tom Palaima, Stavros Paspalas, Carolyn Riccardelli, Richard Sab-

in, William Schniedewind, Gianni Siracusano, Aleydis Van de

Moortel, Cornelius Vermeule, and Jennifer Webb. We would like to record our special thanks to Adrienne Mayor for her

insightful comments and her great enthusiasm for monsters of the land and sea.

1Melville 1851, ch. 103, "Measurement of the Whale's Skel-

eton," 494-5.

2 For the topography of Athens in the Early Iron Age, see

Papadopoulos 1996, 2002.

187 American Journal of Archaeology 106 (2002) 187-227

188 JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS AND DEBORAH RUSCILLO [AJA 106

Fig. 1. General view of the area of the Athenian Agora, with the Akropolis, from the west, before the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos. (Photo by Alison Frantz; courtesy of the Agora Excavations, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

whales in the Aegean and Mediterranean are re-

viewed, and a brief overview is provided of the use of whales and whalebones in Greece, as well as in other cultures. Next, the words that the Greeks and Ro- mans used for whales and the language of whales in

mythology and natural history are discussed. Finally, an analysis is presented on the manner in which Greek and other artists represented these creatures of the deep and the iconographic traditions that were formulated and established in Aegean prehistory and in Classical archaeology.

Although Classical literature is full of references to mythical creatures of the deep-as well as to real whales-and fantastic sea monsters feature

prominently in Greek and Roman art, Classical

philologists and iconographers have been ham-

pered in their attempts to link the word and the

image, on the one hand, with the material remains of actual whales on the other. This is in part the result of the paucity of verified whalebones in ar-

chaeological contexts and the lack of general information with regard to their specific species or

genera, which has sometimes given rise to the mis- taken belief that larger whales, such as blue, fin, and sperm whales were-and are-uncommon in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. It is our aim in this paper to (re-)establish the link between

once living whales and the rich literary and icono-

graphic traditions of kete in the Greek world. The shoulder blade of the Early Iron Age ketos in Ath-

ens, together with discoveries of several other whalebones in various contexts in the Aegean and Med-

iterranean, permit an archaeology of whales and sea monsters in Greek tradition that draws on the evidence not only of philology and iconography, but also faunal remains and material culture.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT

Before describing Agora BI 115, it is important to establish the details of its context and its date. The deposit in which the whalebone was found was one of two early wells that were located near the center of the later Agora, beneath the so-called Civ- ic Offices." The stylobate of an Early Roman build-

ing intersected one of them, K 12:2 of Early Geo- metric date, in which BI 115 was found; the other,

Protogeometric well K 12:1, was located about 2 m to the south (figs. 2-3). The shafts of both wells had been cut down to the surviving level of the bedrock by early Roman times. Turkish storage pits over-

lay both wells and extended down into the ragged mouth of K 12:1, which opened in bedrock as an

irregular pit, ca. 2 x 2.4 m, narrowing to 1-1.2 m at the bottom. The shaft was about 4.8 m in depth

"The well is noted in Shear 1935, 362-3.

2002] AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF WHALES AND SEA MONSTERS IN THE GREEK WORLD 189

Fig. 2. Well K 12:1 in foreground and well K 12:2 (the Early Geometric well with the whalebone) in center during excavation in 1934. View from the south. (Courtesy of the Agora Excavations, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

from the level of the surrounding bedrock4 and lay under the porch of the Civic Offices, 17.5 m north of Middle Stoa pier 9 (from the west). The Middle Stoa terrace appears to have been built along the line of an earlier east-west road that may have been in service during the life of the well, though such a conclusion is speculative. The material from well K 12:1 can be assigned to a developed phase of the

Protogeometric period.5 Just over 2 m to the north of K 12:1 was well K

12:2 (figs. 2-3), also referred to by the excavator as "Protogeometric."6 There appears to have been no physical barrier between the two wells until the

stylobate of the Civic Offices was built between them. It is worth adding that during excavation

persistent water was met in both wells, even as high

as the level of the first meter below the surround-

ing bedrock. The diameter at the mouth of well K 12:2 as first exposed was 1.3 m, narrowing to 0.7 m at the bottom. The depth of the well below the top of the overlying wall B was 6.25 m; its depth from the preserved level of the surrounding bedrock

approximately 5.3 m (fig. 3). Well K 12:2 was one of several Early Iron Age wells that were stratified. The lower deposit (period of use) yielded com-

plete and almost-complete vessels recovered from

depths ranging between -4.2 and -5.3 m. These

vessels, used to draw water, were inadvertently dropped by their owners; a selection of some of the period-of-use pots is presented here (figs. 4-

5). The upper deposit, filling the remainder of the well, represents the fill dumped into the shaft

4That is, 54.45 m above sea level. Section M: well at 70/ME. Deposit first noted 22 and 27 March 1934; cleared 29 March- 14 April 1934 by D. Burr [Thompson]. A number of complete vessels from the deposit, primarily oinochoai, may have been part of the period-of-use material, but on account of several joins noted throughout the deposit, all of the potterywas com- bined, without a record of the depth noted. As such, it is not possible to establish beyond doubt whether the complete vessels were indeed period of use, or if the entire fill was deposited at one time.

5 Evelyn Smithson's division of the Early Iron Age into distinct phases coincides with that of Coldstream (1968, 8-28) for Early and Middle Geometric. Coldstream's division of the

Geometric period into Early, Middle, and Late, with subsequent phases follows that originally devised by Eva Brann and Evelyn Lord Smithson, see Papadopoulos 1998; see further Brann 1961, 95; Coldstream 1968, 4-5; Coldstream 1995, 391. Smithson divided the Protogeometric period into various phases on the basis of the internal evidence provided by the Agora graves and deposits, particularly the well deposits (well K 12:1 was assigned by Smithson to PG III). For further notes on these chronological phases, see Papadopoulos 1996, 119, n. 34.

6 Section M. "Protogeometric" well at 70/MH. Cleared in- termittently between 2 and 26 April 1934 by Dorothy Burr [Thompson]. See also Coldstream 1968, 10, 13.


A

TERRACE TRENCH CUTTING

eMA

ODPlan S1 2 3 4 MD

- Tr. BTurk. pit cutting TurkSection A-A

2: , K12:1

Ter, tr.

Section A-A a egg

Fig. 3. Plan and section of Agora wells K 12:1 and K 12:2. Inked by Richard Anderson, after a sketch in the excavation notebook. (Courtesy of the Agora Excavations, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

when the well had gone out of use; a selection from the more numerous and fragmentary material recovered from this level is also presented (fig. 6). Nicolas Coldstream lists the lower deposit as

one of the earliest of his significant Early Geomet- ric I deposits;' the upper fill is listed as the earliest of the Early Geometric II significant deposits on the basis of the latest diagnostic material recovered from it.' The upper deposit yielded some earlier material, including pottery deriving perhaps from disturbed tombs.9 The chronological consistency of the pottery recovered from the lower deposit would indicate that the well was open and in use for a relatively short period of time, an observation supported by the latest material recovered from the dumped filling comprising the

upper deposit. Although the well, with the possible exception of one piece (P 20618), does not contain any obvious potters' waste, a number of whole pots from the period-of-use deposit are somewhat poorly fired."' These are in addition to several handmade cooking vessels or chytrai (fig. 5), all clearly fire-stained or burnt from normal domestic use. The poorly-fired vessels, on the other hand, are all wheelmade and painted and may indicate that "factory seconds" were commonly used for more mundane purposes, such as draw-

ing water from wells, though it is worth stressing that damaged vessels sometimes occur in tombs."

The whalebone, BI 115 (figs. 7-8), was found in the upper deposit at a depth of 1.75 m below wall B and, therefore, at least 1 m in the fill as mea- sured from the level of the surrounding bedrock. Such a depth is well below the level of the intru- sive material encountered at the mouth of the well, and the bone artifact may be dated on the basis of the diagnostic pottery recovered from the upper fill of well K 12:2. This would indicate the chrono-

logical phase Early Geometric II, or ca. 850 B.C. in the conventional absolute chronology, as a termi- nus post quem for BI 115.12 How long the bone was in use prior to its having been discarded cannot be determined. It is worth noting, however, that

7Coldstream 1968, 10. Well K 12:2 is listed behind Agora graves C 9:8 and N 16:4.

'Coldstream 1968, 13.

9 Three vessels, a lekythos (P 3826), a pyxis (P 14207), and a "fruit stand" (P 3967), all clearly Protogeometric and quite early, must derive from disturbed burials, perhaps even from the same grave; this will be treated in more detail in the forth-

coming volume on the Early Iron Age tombs in the Athenian

Agora series. " See Papadopoulos 1996, 2002. P 20618 is a fragment of a

one-handled cup preserving less than one-half of body, includ-

ing handle scars, but nothing of the base. The clay body is in

part reduced and the paint has mostly fired brown, in places approaching black. It is not inconceivable that the fragment was once a test-piece. The cup is stylistically earlier than the

other material in the deposit and thus represents earlier residual material dumped into the well. Apart from the inventoried

pieces already noted, there are, among the many sherds from the deposit stored in context, a few that are very poorly fired, including some that may even be fragments from possible wasters or production discards, though their fragmentary state is such as to render any statement uncertain. The whole pots from the period of use that are poorly fired include P 3687, P 3688, P 3939; other poorly fired vessels from the lower deposit include the fragmentary oinochoe P 3941.

" See Papadopoulos 1998.

12 Many of the pieces illustrated in figure 5 from the upper fill were recorded as coming from a similar depth as BI 115; others were recorded as coming from a depth down to 1.54 m.


Fig. 4. Well K 12:2. Selection of wheelmade and painted pottery from the period-of-use deposit: inv. P 3938, P 3688, P 3687, P 3939.

although fragmentary, the state of preservation of BI 115 as an artifact is such that it is less likely to have been a residual object, kicking around for

any significant length of time. Apart from the three vessels recovered from the upper fill of well K 12:2 and believed to derive from disturbed tombs,'3 the vast majority of residual pottery recovered from this and other Early Iron Age deposits consists of small and very worn scraps of pottery. The possibility that BI 115 was deposited in an earlier tomb and sub-

sequently disturbed cannot be ruled out, nor can it be verified on account of the unique nature of the object. Here it is important to emphasize that the whalebone was not the only bone recovered from the fill of well K 12:2. The analysis of the faunal sample from well K 12:2 reveals a pattern of bone finds, the interpretation of which may assist in casting light on the use of the whalebone, and

perhaps even of the immediate surrounds, in the

Early Geometric period. Table 1 summarizes the faunal remains from well K 12:2 as they were preserved and collected in 1934.

Apart from the whalebone, which is described more fully below, at least five other species are represented in the faunal sample from well K 12:2,

including canids, bovids, and equids. Most of the

specimens in the sample represent lower extremi-

ty skeletal elements with a predominance of

metapodial bones. The significance of these particular remains is that, with the exception of the

Equus mid humerus and acetabulum fragments, there are no meat-bearing skeletal elements

present.14 There are, for instance, no elements from the trunk of the skeleton, such as vertebrae or ribs, that are typical debris from butchered portions of meat. Particularly meaty bones like sheep/goat and

Fig. 5. Well K 12:2. Selection of handmade cooking pots (chytrai) from the period-of-use deposit: inv. P 3760, P 3761.

13 See n. 9. 4 The equid humerus and acetabulum bones were neither

butchered nor burnt; therefore the evidence suggests that

these bones were not meal remains. It is generally believed that equids were not considered a normal source of meat in ancient Greece.


Fig. 6. Well K 12:2. Selection of pottery from the upper deposit. Top row, P 3963, P 3964, P 3969; bottom row, P 3966, P 20608, P 20617.

cattle femora or scapulae are also not present in the assemblage. Most of the bones in the existing sample represent the mid and lower leg portions of the skeleton. Bones from the lower extremities are typical refuse from the preparatory butchering for meat, but they are also the first parts of the skeleton to be discarded during the removal of the hide. The bones do not exhibit cut marks from hasty butchery or skinning, a feature indicative of a skilled butcher. The bones in the sample could therefore be refuse from preliminary butchering for meat or for skinning, or conceivably for both. At least four equids were represented in the sample, but, as already noted, there is no compelling evidence that such animals were eaten by the Greeks. Hide removal would then explain better the deposition of the equid remains, together with the other lower extremities of different species in the sam-

ple. Although comparatively small, this faunal as-

semblage of mostly unworked metapodials might suggest that leatherworking was carried out in the immediate vicinity. As we shall see, such a scenario

may go a long way in explaining the numerous scratch marks on the surface of the whalebone (fig. 7). The possibility that part of this area northwest of the Athenian Akropolis was an industrial district in the Early Iron Age is in keeping with the copi- ous evidence for potters' activity, in addition to other industrial debris in this area, which suggest that

this was the original Kerameikos-the Potters' Quar- ter of early Athens.'5

THE WHALEBONE AND ITS POSSIBLE

FUNCTIONS

The whalebone BI 115 (figs. 7-8) is the remnant of the right articular section of a broken scapula,

Fig. 7. Whale scapula (glenoid) fragment, Athenian Agora inv. BI 115. (Drawing by Anne Hooton)

' The evidence is fully outlined in Papadopoulos 2002; for a summary, see Papadopoulos 1996. For evidence of metallur-

gy in this area, see esp. Mattusch 1977.


Fig. 8a-c. Front and lateral views of the whale scapula, BI 115. (Photos by Craig Mauzy)

also known as the glenoid. The glenoid articu- lates with the proximal humerus in the pectoral girdle in all mammalian species, and its scapula is commonly referred to as the shoulder blade

(fig. 9). Although the piece is badly fragmented, the diagnostic features indicative of a large marine mammal are still clear. The bone is lighter than one might expect for its size because of the

porosity of the spongy trabecular bone, a result of life in an aquatic environment. Body weight is reduced significantly in saline marine habitats and the bones of marine mammals acquire in- creased buoyancy rather than the weight-bearing stamina that terrestrial animals develop.

Agora BI 115 was compared with specimens maintained by the British Museum of Natural His-

tory in London, where some 66 individual whale skeletons from a variety of species are available for examination.'6 In terms of classification and

nomenclature, whales belong to the order Ceta-

cea, from the Greek word ketos (Latin cetus or ce-

tos, see below), which includes three suborders: the Archaeoceti, or "ancient whales," extinct forms known only from fossils;" the Mysticeti, or "moustached whales," which include at least 10

living species of baleen, or whalebone, whales; and the Odontoceti, or "toothed whales," includ-

ing 65 or more living species of dolphins, porpoises, and whales with teeth but no baleen.'s Because of the fragmentary nature of BI 115, species identification was not straightforward. The classification was further impeded by the fact that the scapula originated from an immature indi-

vidual, with the result that the diagnostic features of the animal had not had a chance to develop fully prior to death. The remnants of the juve- nile cortex around the glenoid cavity, as well as the exposure of the epiphysial surface of the glenoid, indicates that the bone is underdeveloped (fig. 8b). Through a comparison with modern

specimens, the bone most closely resembles the

glenoid of an immature fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus, Linn. 1758) (fig. 10), a baleen whale of the suborder Mysticeti. The individual was approximately two to three years of age at the time of death.19

16 The whalebone comparative collection is stored off-site in Wandsworth Outstation.

17For a useful overview of fossil whales, seeJones 1999, 17- 8. The evidence of fossils suggests that the distant ancestors of whales were "hyena-like beasts called mesonychids, scavengers for carrion and hunters of fish" (Jones 1999, 17). Bernadette Arnaud (http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/ whale.html) reports the discovery of a fossilized whale, probably a baleen, some 18 ft. long, near Benguela in Angola. This

is evidently the first time a dismembered whale has turned up at a Paleolithic site. For exposed Eocene whale skulls in the Mediterranean, see Mayor 2000, 160.

8 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 2. '9We are indebted to Richard Sabin, the cetacean specialist

of the Mammals Group at the Natural History Museum in Lon- don. We gratefully acknowledge his assistance in identifying the species represented by this bone and his help with the literature, particularly for earlier authors.


Table 1. Fauna from Well K 12:2

Species Element Number of Individuals

Balaenoptera (whale) 1 right glenoid fr 1 (BI 115) Canis (dog) 1 left unfused humerus 1 Ovis/Capra (sheep/goat) 1 fr metacarpus 1

2 mid tibiae Bos (cattle) 2 right metatarsi 2

1 left metatarsus 1 1 mid metatarsus 1 mid metacarpus 1 left calcaneum 1 right astragalus 1 right distal tibia

Equus (horse/donkey) 2 right metatarsi 2 (likely donkeys) 2 left metatarsi 2 (another donkey and a horse) 2 left metacarpi 1 right metacarpus 1 distal metapodial 2 metapodial frr 1 proximal phalanx 1 left tibia 1 left radius 2 tarsi 1 right mid humerus 1 fr acetabulum

The fin whale is also known as the Common

Rorqual, deriving from the Norwegian word for "fur-

row," and refers to the pleated grooves running from its chin to its navel.2" Alternative names include Finback, Finner, Finfish, Razorback, and

Herring Whale. As already noted, fin whales are the second largest mammal on Earth after the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus, Linn. 1758); the former can measure up to 27 m (89 ft.) long, the latter can reach a length of up to 33 m (109 ft.). In both species, female individuals are larger than the males by more than 10%.21 Herman Melville relates that in the days of Joseph Banks and Daniel Solan-

der, Captain James Cook's naturalists, a Swedish member of the Academy of Sciences set down certain Iceland whales-reydar-fiskur or Wrinkled Bel-

lies-at 120 yards (or 360 ft.).22 Although likely to be exaggerated, such a description ("wrinkled bel-

lies") can only refer to blue and fin whales. Here it is important to remember that in the days of

Melville, although there were stories of large levia-

thans, not least of which was Moby Dick (Mocha

Dick),2" the largest of the whales that could be

caught commercially was the sperm whale or cacha-

lot, followed by the bowhead and right whales.24 It was their size and the quality of their oil-particularly the spermaceti-that made the sperm whale one of the most commercially viable commodities of the sea in the modern era, and the lives of the whalers who hunted them hazardous (fig. 11).25 Here it is important to note that 11 of the 80 or so known kinds of whales and dolphins were discov-

20 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 52-6. The throat grooves, in addition to streamlining the shape of the whale, allow the throat area (cavum ventrale) to expand considerably during feeding, thus allowing the intake of tons of food-laden water, which is then discarded through their baleen plates, leaving the fish or krill for swallowing. This efficient system enables the largest creatures to feed on some of the smallest.

21 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 52; Wfirtz and Repetto 1998, 133.

22 Melville 1851, 501. 23 Melville 1851. For the great white whale of the Pacific,

Mocha Dick, which Melville used for his novel, see Reynolds 1932. For the story of the whaleship Essex rammed by a sperm

whale in 1820 that inspired the ending of Melville's narrative, see Philbrick 2000. See also Jones 1999, 19.

2" Melville 1851, 145-57, 194-203, 493-5. 25 One of the most highly prized parts of a sperm whale was

ambergris, a peculiar substance that occurs in the lower intes- tine in lumps weighing up to 100 kg. It is formed around squid beaks that remain in the stomach. It was once highly prized for a variety of uses, including as a fixative or base for perfume, in medicine, to spice wine and other foods, and as an aphrodi- siac. In 1912 a 1,003 lb. lump sold for $69,000. See Leather- wood et al. 1983, 87; Reese 1991, 6; Philbrick 2000, 56. For the favorite meal of the sperm whale-the giant squid-see Ellis 1998.


Fig. 9. Skeleton of a bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) exhibited at the Royal College of Surgeons, London, after a 19th-century drawing. Arrow points to scapula.

ered in the 20th century.26 Although the fin whale was known in the earlier 19th century-"a monster

which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlan-

ic"27-it was considered an unconquerable levi- athian by the whale fishery of the time. Melville describes the "Fin-Back" as a shy and solitary crea-

ture, gifted with wondrous power and velocity of

swimming, so much so "as to defy all present pur- suit from man."28

Melville's remark on the velocity of fin whales is

supported by modern research, which indicates

that they are one of the fastest of the big whales,

possibly reaching burst speeds in excess of 32 km

per hour (sei whales, Balaenoptera borealis, may be

slightly faster).29 This is a contributing factor as to

why photographs of this species are rare and perhaps why casual sightings-in antiquity as in the

present-would have been few and far between. One of the most numerically abundant of the large whales, the fin whale was the first species to be hunted with the harpoon gun and was heavily exploited by the whaling industry, particularly in the 20th

century, its population severely depleted, especially in the southern oceans.30 The head of the fin whale is flattish and can be between one-fifth and

Fig. 10. Fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus)

26Jones 1999, 50. 27 Melville 1851, 150. 28Melville 1851, 151.According to Leatherwood etal. (1983,

53) fin whales are sometimes found singly or in pairs, but more often in pods of three to seven individuals.

29 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 54. 30 See Leatherwood et al. 1983, 55-6, 24-30; Connor and

Micklethwaite Peterson 1994, 202-7. AsJones (1999, 72) has noted the steam-powered harpoon appeared in 1864 and the number of whales it killed rose from 30 in that year to 66,000 in 1961. Pre-whaling estimates suggest that there were 300,000-650,000 fin whales swimming the oceans of the world. Current figures suggest that a mere 123,000 animals are left.


Fig. 11. Aquatint, after Garneray, entitled Pche du Cachalot, the Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass. (Courtesy of the Whaling Museum)

one-quarter of the total body length. A distinctly ridged tailstock gave rise to the whalers' name "Razorback."31 Fin whales have twin blowholes with a single longitudinal ridge extending from the blowholes to near the top of the snout. The baleen plates in the mouth of fin whales (260-480 on each side) reach a maximum length of 0.7-0.9 m and a width of 0.2-0.3 m."32 Agora BI 115, when reconstructed to its approximate original dimen-

sions, suggests a total body length of an individual 10-12 m long. Fin whale calves are born at an approximate length of 6 m."33 Accordingly, the individual represented by BI 115 must have been a calf between two and three years of age when it met its demise.

The greatest dimensions of the scapula are as follows: 0.12 m preserved length on the shortest

side, 0.16 and 0.195 m on the adjacent sides, and 0.22 m on the longest side (fig. 7). The bone is

0.0675 m thick on the articular end (glenoid) and 0.015 m thick on the blade (fig. 8c). If reconstructed to its original state, the scapula from this individual would measure approximately 0.6 x 0.35 m

(fig. 12);34 consequently, the preserved portion of the scapula represents only about 20% of the original bone (fig. 12a).

The lateral surface of the scapula is marked by fine cuts made by a fine metal instrument (figs. 7,

8).3 The marks have no regular orientation and

occur in random directions of varied length mea-

suring from 2 mm to 5 cm. The marks form no pat- terns or signs but rather exhibit cut marks from fine specialized work. The palimpsest nature of the marks seems to suggest work carried out over a period of time rather than all the marks having been made at one time. On account of the irregularity of the markings, we can rule out a number of possible uses of the bone. For instance, a scapula bound to a

" On some animals the white of the right side can continue onto the upper lip and to the side of the neck giving it a characteristic asymmetrical appearance.

"32 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 53. The baleen bristles are soft in comparison to the blue whale and vary from yellowish white to grayish white.

1 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 52.

34 Dimensions were calculated on the smallest metrical figures of the Balaenopterascapula as provided in True 1904, 144.

" Microscopic analysis of the cut marks indicates that they were made by a fine metal instrument rather than a chipped stone blade. For the differentiation of metal and stone tool marks on bone, see Greenfield 1999.


Fig. 12. Reconstruction of the original shape and size of the whale scapula, BI 115, restored with three hypothetical cuttings for the attachment of legs (a, acromion process; b, glenoid fossa; c, coracoid process). (Drawing by Deborah Ruscillo)

wooden shaft and used in the fields as a hoe to till the ground would exhibit regular markings and

scrapes following a dorsal to ventral pattern on the bone surface.36 Although the complete bone would have been large and sturdy, the 0.015 m thickness of the blade renders the specimen inappropriate for certain tasks: the blade, for example, could not withstand blows from a cleaver without snapping.

The rectangular cut hole at the articular end measures 0.035 x 0.025 m and appears to have been cut by a sharp implement. The shape of the hole and the care with which it was cut suggests that it acted as a juncture between the bone and another

object, perhaps a wooden leg, thereby transform-

ing the original large scapula into a useful small table or working surface. If so, the scapula could have had similar cut holes at adjacent points for other wooden legs, no longer preserved (fig. 12). Here it is important to note the other faunal remains from the well, discussed above. A whale scapula used as a leatherworking surface appears to conform nicely with the possible hide-removal refuse implied by the other associated faunal finds,

and also accounts both for the fine cut marks on the flat surface and the rectangular cutting. The

advantages of such a whalebone in leatherworking, particularly for the cutting of leather, lie in the soft and porous yet firm texture of the bone, which provides a good surface on which to cut, but one that does not damage the cutting blade as a stone surface might. Moreover, wooden surfaces have a ten-

dency to splinter when repeatedly worked upon with sharp instruments. Bone, however, provides a hard yet elastic surface that will rarely splinter when cut repeatedly by a sharp blade. Bone is also easier to maintain and wash and will not warp when ex-

posed to frequent humidity. These traits, along with the versatility of bone to accommodate many uses in its basic form, make large bones particularly de- sirable commodities. A whale scapula, such as BI 115 in its original form, with its ample smooth and flat working surface would have appealed to industrial and domestic workers alike, a worthy commod-

ity of exchange. Unlike whalebone, the incidence of elasmo-

branch or cartilaginous fish, such as shark, ray, skate, sawfish, and guitarfish (evidenced primarily by vertebrae), is well known and fully documented in Ae-

gean and Cypriot archaeological contexts.37 In re-

viewirig the 120 or so such examples collected and discussed from approximately 40 sites, and placed in the larger context of fish bone assemblages from

Aegean and Cypriot sites, David Reese's impres- sion was that these fish were the result of chance

nettings, rather than having been specifically hunted."8 In the case of the few specimens of cetaceans or whalebones that occur in archaeological contexts in the Aegean, it is usually assumed that the mammal was stranded close to the settlement in which it was found;39 many of the larger whales, even immature individuals, would destroy most nets.

The possibility that the Agora bone derives from a beached whale appears to be confirmed by its surface wear. The edges of the glenoid have been nat-

urally worn down and smoothed by wave action and sand friction. There are no tools marks around the

glenoid, even microscopically, to suggest that the

edges were filed down by human use. The wear found around the glenoid is typical of bone that has been tossed around the surf for quite some time. The coracoid process has been worn down

36 Cattle scapulae have been known to be used in rural Afri- ca as hoes.

37 Reese 1984. Although we refer to sharks in passing throughout this study, we have avoided more specific discussion of these

creatures. Various types ofsharks are common in the Mediterra- nean and the bibliography on them is extensive.

38 Reese 1984, 191. 39 See, e.g., Renfrew et al. 1968, 119.


Fig. 13. Stranded sperm whale on the shore near Katwyk, Holland in 1598. Engraving by Jacob Matham after an original drawing by Hendrik Goltzius. NewYork, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 51.501.6056. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of.Art)

(fig. 12) from the posterior side of the glenoid, and the acromion process broken off. The waterworn edges indicate that the whale was likely not hunted out of the waters, but was washed ashore after its death, or else stranded on the beach, where it subsequently died. The age of the individual represented by BI 115 supports such a hypothesis. Immature whales must maintain a close relation-

ship with their mothers, even after nursing for the first three or four years of life; otherwise the calf will have little chance of survival on its own. If the calf strays away from its mother, it will likely starve or fall prey to predators.40 When a whale dies in water,

provided its skin is not punctured, its body expands with decompositional gases (methane), causing the carcass to float.41 The carcass can be carried by water currents until it is ultimately washed up upon a shore. A classic illustration is the engraving, exe- cuted by Jacob Matham after an original drawing by Hendrick Goltzius, of a 21 m Sperm whale that was stranded at Katwyk in Holland in February of 1598

(fig. 13).42 The excitement and curiosity around

the stranded creature is evident in the host of spectators, from gentlemen on horseback to barefoot children. When a whale is beached, the body de-

generates within weeks, exposing the skeleton to the elements. During rough weather the skeleton is dismembered by wave action and the bones can be drawn into the surf. Sea currents can then redis- tribute the bones onto other shores. These bones are often found and collected for use as tools or

keepsakes, particularly as the time spent in salt water and on the sand exposed to the sun has minimized the fat content of the bone and the pungent scents associated with it. A classic example of part of a beached whale skeleton is illustrated in figure 14,

showing seven semi-articulated vertebrae of whale stranded on the coast of the Aegean island of Schoinousa in the 1990s and photographed by Ni- kos Panagiotopoulos.

Whale strandings are particularly common in northwest Europe, and by 1947, Grahame Clark was able to enumerate some 80 instances of archaeo-

logical sites yielding whalebone in prehistoric con-

40 Roger Crane, Cetacean Specialist, research support for IMAX documentary, Whales (1999).

41 Richard Sabin (pers. comm. 1997).

42 NewYork, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Elisha Whit- telsey Fund, 51.501.6056. See, e.g., den Broeder 1972, 82-3, no. 80.


Fig. 14. Seven semi-articulated vertebrae of a whale beached on the Aegean island of Schoinousa. (After the Greek magazine Tachydromos)

texts ranging from the Mesolithic through the Iron

Age.43 Although scholars have long been aware that whales and whale products were extensively utilized

by different peoples on the Atlantic seaboard of

Europe, it is generally assumed that stranded whales provided the main source of supply in an-

tiquity.44 The problem of determining whether stranded whales were exploited or whether live animals were hunted is not straightforward.45 This is important to bear in mind, because it is possible that coastal cultures in those parts of the world where whales are less common than northwest Eu-

rope, such as the Aegean, may have exploited stranded whales from time to time. So far as western Eu-

rope is concerned, from at least the ninth century

A.D. whaling was widespread along the Channel coast of France between Normandy and Flanders, and there is evidence of similar activity off the Bis-

cay coast of France and Spain.46 The exploitation of the whale by the inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard inspired numerous myths and motifs, but the leviathan also left its mark on the peoples of the Mediterranean.

LEVIATHANS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

For any reader of the Old Testament, the literary image of Leviathan was above all else frightening, a bold symbol of evil in Judeo-Christian literature, and a constant reminder of the wrath and omnipo- tence of God. More importantly, these massive sea

4 Clark 1947, 100-2. Although Clark listed examples from the British Isles, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and France, by far the more common occurrences were at pre- Viking Iron Age sites in Scotland. Scottish sites have produced a greatvariety of implements made ofwhalebone (see below), and the Firth of Forth has yielded numerous remains ofwhales stranded on its shores during the Stone Age (see Clark 1947, 92, fig. 3 [Firth of Forth], and pls. I-II for whalebone implements). In addition to these physical remains of whales, prehistoric representations of cetaceans are common in northwest Europe, especially in Norway (see Clark 1947, 94-8, figs. 6, 9), and more recently, Whittle (2000) has suggested that the motifs on certain Breton menhirs often interpreted as an axe or axe-plow could be representations of whales.

44 See discussion in Childe 1931, esp. 97; 1935, 248; Nord- mann 1936, 127-8. For the view that whales were hunted by the Erteb6lle, see Mathiassen 1935, 150; 1927. The evidence and much of the earlier literature is usefully presented in Clark

1947. Similarly, there is little evidence for the practice ofwhal-

ing in Anglo-Saxon or later Medieval England, although the venerable Bede, at the opening of the Historia Ecclesiastica, mentions that seals, dolphins, and sometimes whales were

caught off the coast of Britain (see Gardiner 1997, 173-4; see further Wallace-Hadrill 1988, 6).

45 In dealing with the archaeology of whaling in southern Australia and New Zealand, Susan Lawrence and others have advocated a more nuanced ethnography of place, one that meshes documents and artifacts into an integrated historical account, which is sensitive to local material horizons and cultural landscapes very different from our own. See Lawrence 1998; Mayne and Lawrence 1999.

46 The evidence is summarized in Gardiner 1997, 175. For

whaling in Normandy and Flanders see Musset 1964; Lestoc-

quoy 1948. For whaling in the Bay of Biscay see Fischer 1881; Jenkins 1971.


creatures, whatever their precise nature (see be-

low), did not inhabit some far off realm; they represented, if only in a poetic sense, a stark reality of the Mediterranean:

Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teams with things innumerable, living things both small and great.

There go the ships, and Leviathan which thou didst form to sport in it (Psalms 104:25-26).

In his seminal study on whales as an economic factor in prehistoric Europe, Clark wrote:

Several species of whale penetrate the Mediterranean and some are at home there, but there is no indica- tion that whales were economically important in ancient any more than in modern times. Dolphins are particularly numerous and were commonly depicted by the Minoans, as in the well-known fresco in the "Queen's Megaron" at Knossos; although the bar- barians of the Black Sea used their fat for oil and ate their flesh salted, the Greeks and Romans regarded Dolphins auspiciously as guardians of mariners and refrained from slaying them, except for medicinal purposes.47

Despite the fact that the Greeks enjoyed dolphin, especially pickled slices of the mammal, as much as their "barbarian" neighbors,48 it is clear that whales were not systematically exploited in Aegean prehistory and in Classical antiquity.

In modern times, a variety of whales have been recorded in the Mediterranean, but our knowledge is limited by the lack of systematic records.49 Steve

Jones notes that even today the Mediterranean has

mqre than 3,000 whales.50 Species that have been identified in the Mediterranean include the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), with stranded speci-

mens recorded from Tenos, Euboia, and Karpa- thos,51 and, more recently, a number of sperm whales

sighted in the Saronic Gulf on 20 May 1998.52 Small- er cetacean species in the Mediterranean include the Cuvier's beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris), which is quite common, as well as the Minke whale

(Balaenoptera acutorostrata), pilot whale (Globicepha- la melas), and the killer whale (Orcinus orca), all of which are rather rare.53 InJuly 1999, the Greek press carried a story of a blue whale (Balaenoptera muscu-

lus) reportedly spotted in the Gulf of Kavala, head-

ing southwest, according to fishermen who said they almost collided with the large sea mammal, which was moving between the Strymon Gulf and Mount Athos.54 The Kavala-based fishermen were fortunate in comparison to Darius's fleet, which in 492 B.C. was wrecked by the storm vividly related by Hero- dotos (6.44) in the waters around Mount Athos.

According to Herodotos, the Persians lost 300 ships and more than 20,000 men, some dashed against the rocks, others dying from exposure or drown-

ing, while many were carried off by the wild sea-

beasts, which abounded in the coasts around Athos

( yocE y&p OrqptloEo6rrqq oo60qq iijq Ozq adooqq -ra6iqq iqqf nepi i v "Ao@v).55 Most recently, in

April 2001, a rare sighting of a humpback whale

(Megaptera novaeangliae) was reported off the coast of Tolon in the Argolic Gulf.56

As for the larger fin whales, although actual sightings of these creatures are not very common in the

Mediterranean, they are not unknown, so the incidence of a Balaenoptera scapula in the Aegean could be explained either by a beached whale or by currents carrying the carcass of a dead animal. A fin

47 Clark 1947, 84, n. 1, with reference to Keller 1909-1913, 408-10.

48For pickled slices ofdolphin carried in amphoras, see Pritch- ett 1956, 202-3, n. 192; Papadopoulos and Paspalas 1999,177, n. 82. For the consumption of fish in Classical Athens, see Davidson (1997, 8), where it is clear that the dolphin was not considered among the great piscifaunal delicacies, such as tuna, sea-perch or grouper, conger eel, gray and red mullet, gilt-head, sea-bass, and various other fish. Common species of dolphin in Greece include Delphinus delphis, Tursops truncati, Stenella coer- uleoalba, and Grampus griseus. To this list, Ragnar Kinzelbach (1986b) has added Risso's Dolphin (Grampidelphis griseus), through a specimen found stranded between the mouths of the rivers Vassilipotamos and Eurotas, 5 km southwest of Skala in Lakonia, a place famous for kete (see below).

49 One of the great problems impeding a detailed analysis of the distribution ofwhales in the Mediterranean is the fact that systematic records of sightings and strandings have only been gathered annually since the early 1980s, primarily in France and Spain. In some Mediterranean countries, as Pilleri and Pilleri (1982, 49) lament, there are no national records what- soever.

50Jones 1999, 258. 51Kinzelbach 1986a, 15; Marchessaux 1980, 62; Reese 1991,

3-5. The sperm whale is also recorded in Israel (Aharoni 1944) and Egypt (Flower 1932).

52 Reported in the national news of Greece on that day. 53For these species, see Marchessaux 1980, 61-3; the Cuvi-

er's beaked whale is also discussed in Bauer 1978; Kinzelbach 1985, with recorded specimens from various parts of Greece (Rhodes, Karpathos, near Gythion, and Tilos), Turkey (near (anakkale and near Karatas), Egypt (Sabkhat al-Bardawil), and Israel (Bet Yannay, Ras Haniqra, near Tel Aviv and Tantura

[Dor]). For Israel, see further Ilani 1980. In May 1996, 12 Cuvier's beaked whales were stranded on the coast of the Western Peloponnesos (Kathimerini 6 July 1998, 3).

54 Athens News 10 July 1999, 4. The whale reportedly mea- sured over 20 m in length.

55 It was this wretched passage around Athos, with its sea monsters, which led to Xerxes' decision to cut the canal

through the neck of the peninsula of Akte in 483-481 B.C. (Hdt. 7.22-4).

56Reported in the Greek newspaper, Kathimerini 20-22 April 2001.


whale, for example, was recorded stranded by Lacepiede on St. Marguerite Island off the coast of France in 1798,57 and live fin whales have been spotted off the coast of Italy, including a splendid specimen of a Balaenoptera physalus photographed between Calvi and San Remo.58 The fin whale is especially common in the western Mediterranean, where it has been recorded all year round, with

peaks in the summer months, particularly between Corsica and the French Riviera and around the Ital- ian coasts.59 In Greece, fin whales have been sighted primarily in the continental slope area in the southern part of the Aegean, and especially around

Rhodes, Karpathos, and Crete, though in 1997 a fin whale was found stranded in the harbor of Kav- ala in the north Aegean.60 Stranded fin whales have also been reported in the eastern and southeast- ern part of the Mediterranean basin.61 Several au- thoritative guides mention the presence of fin whales in the Mediterranean,62 and Whirtz and

Repetto not only stress the incidence of Balaenoptera physalus in the Mediterranean, but assert that Med- iterranean fin whales are genetically isolated from the Atlantic population.6" Although they are most common in the Southern Hemisphere, fin whales inhabit the North Atlantic and North Pacific in smaller populations.64 Most importantly, the fin whale is the only rorqual commonly found in the Mediterranean. Consequently, the discovery of a fin whale scapula in the heart of what was to become historic Athens should not be seen as unusual, and it is even possible that the animal represented by BI 115 was stranded along the coast of the Saronic

Gulf not far from the Early Iron Age settlement of Athens.

THE USE OF WHALES AND WHALEBONES IN

THE GREEK WORLD AND BEYOND

Archaeological finds of whale remains are uncommon in Greece. The earliest extant whalebone remains from Greece were recovered from the Late Neolithic settlement at Saliagos, now a small islet between Paros and Antiparos. The two vertebrae are suspected to have originated from Pilot or Kill- er whales."65 Small cetacean vertebrae have also been recorded from the excavations at Torone in Cha- likdike, in mixed levels, but are most likely from

dolphins or small whales.66 The excavations at Phais- tos in Crete also yielded a whale vertebra, discovered under the pavement of one of the magazines of the Minoan palace.67 More recently, a massive

piece of a whale vertebra was seen by one of the authors (Ruscillo) in the storage area of the Corinth excavations. No one is sure of its provenance, but it

appears to be a modern find, since body oil was still

present in the bone. The specimen consists only of trabecular bone, with no surfaces extant. The dimensions are approximately 0.45 x 0.35 m (greatest length x width). The surviving trabecular piece seems too large to originate from a sperm whale, but reconstruction is impossible without any corti- cal surface preservation. Outside of the Aegean, the incidence of whalebone in ancient contexts in the central and eastern Mediterranean is similarly rare. Reese describes four sperm whale vertebrae from the Phoenician colony at Motya in western Sic-

5 Hershovitz 1966, 165-6. 58 For confirmed sightings of fin whales off the coast of It-

aly, see Van den Brink 1967. For the illustrated fin whale, see Pilleri and Pilleri 1982, 54, fig. 4. See further Pilleri and Pilleri 1987.

59 Duguy and Vallon 1977; Marchessaux 1980, 62-3. 60 Carpentieri et al. 1999, 72. The authors further note that

the relatively high frequency of sightings of all types of whales between Rhodes and Karpathos could be related to the up- welling phenomenon, discussed by Panucci-Papadopoulou et al. (1992), that occurs in this area at various times of the year. Marchessaux (1980, 63) lists two specimens of fin whales that were observed and photographed near the island of Gavdos, south of Crete.

61Marchessaux and Duguy 1979; Marchessaux (1980, 63) notes a fin whale of 16.5 m length found stranded at Askelon

inJanuary 1956; he further notes that Israeli fishermen sometimes pick up fin whale mandibles in their dragnets. See further Carpentieri et al. 1999, 72. At least two stranded fin whales have been reported on the coast of Egypt: one near Alexan- dria in 1860 (see Paulus 1966), another near Mersa Matruh in December 1926 (see Flower 1932).

62 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 55; Notarbartolo di Sciara and Demma 1994, 61, 69; Ridgway and Harrison 1985,176; Tinker 1988, 288. We owe many of these references to Richard Sab- in.

63Wfirtz and Repetto 1998, 133. For the differences between the scapulae of European and American fin whales, see True 1904, 142, figs. 33-6.

6 See Leatherwood et al. 1983, 55. Some populations mi- grate between warm, low latitude winter mating grounds and cooler, high latitude summer feeding grounds, but their move- ments are less predictable than other large whales. Some lower latitude populations, such as in the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) and Mexico seem to be resident year round. Fin whales are least common in the tropics and will enter polar waters, but not as often as Minke or Blue whales.

65 See Renfrew et al. 1968, 119. Dr. Frazer of the British Museum writes that it is impossible to give a specific identification to these two vertebrae.

66The identification of these was made by the late Dr. San- dor Bkonyi.

67Pernier 1935, 119; Reese 1991, 5.


Fig. 15. Campanian red-figure krater from Lipari, now in the Museo Mandralisca, Cefalui, depicting a fishmonger slicing a large fish for a customer on a table conceivably made of a whale vertebra. Name vase of the Tunny-seller Painter. (Photo byJohn Papadopoulos)

ily dating from the sixth to fifth centuries B.C. and a few possible additional fragments found at Isola

Lunga near Motya.68 It is important to note that all of these finds are vertebrae (cf. fig. 14), and similar whale vertebrae used as chopping blocks are well known in British sites, such as Maidencastle, and in Canadian British Columbia.69 Although there are no attested whale vertebrae chopping blocks in the

Aegean, a number of Archaic and Classical representations depicting fishmongers chopping or slic-

ing large fish may show tables, the upper parts of

which are composed of a whale vertebra. Scenes of the butchering of fish are relatively rare in Greek vase painting. We know of only four examples: a

black-figure olpe in Berlin with two wreathed men

preparing to cut up a tuna,70 and three representations which depict a fish, invariably large, placed on a small table, which stands either on three legs (fig. 15) or else on a conical support (fig. 16).71 In all three cases, the upper part of the table, that on which the fish is actually placed, is a circular disk of

varying thickness that could very well be part of a

large whale vertebra. Be that as it may, the few examples of whalebone

finds in the Aegean listed above, together with

Agora BI 115, represent the sum total of whalebone found in archaeological contexts in Greece. It is

generally assumed that all are likely to have derived from stranded whales, though the possibility that some may have been hunted, perhaps accidentally, cannot be ruled out. In this context, the evidence from Neolithic Saliagos is potentially informative.

There, large scombridae (tunny and albacore) account for 97% of the fish bones identified.72 These tuna bones from Saliagos are from fish measuring between two and six feet in length (a five foot tuna can weigh up to 800 lbs.), and thus represent a substantial source of food.73 The killing was per- formed by spears with obsidian spearheads, though it is possible that nets, perhaps strengthened with

leather, were used to corral the fish during their annual migration.74 In the light of this information, it is not too difficult to imagine the occasional small whale speared off the coast of Antiparos.

Against the backdrop of these few whalebones from Aegean sites, Agora BI 115 stands out both by the fact that it is a scapula, as opposed to the more common vertebrae, and for the fine cut marks on the flat side, suggesting that it was used as a cutting surface. Such a use for a whale scapula is rare even

68 Reese 1991, 1-2, 5. The Isola Lunga piece comprised two teeth identified as probably from a false killer whale (Pseudor- ca crassidens, Owen 1846) associated with the third-century B.C. Punic shipwreck; see further Ryder 1975, 213, fig. 1. For the incidence of false killer whales in the Mediterranean, see Evans 1987, 94.

69We are grateful to Simon Davis of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage for information, including illus- trations, of a whale vertebra from Maidencastle with chopping marks on it. Yvonne Marshall of the Department ofArchaeolo- gy, Southampton University, and Greg Monks of the Depart- ment of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba both gen- erously offered information on whale vertebrae used as chopping blocks from various sites on the west coast of Canada.

70 Durand 1979, 28, fig. 9.

71The three vases include: a Campanian red-figure krater from Lipari (fig. 15), Trendall 1967, 207-8 (the name vase of the Tunny-seller Painter; Tullio in Consolo et al. 1991, 68-9, fig. 55); a south Italian red-figure krater in a private collection, Bielefeld 1966, 253, fig. 1; and a black-figure kylix (Type C), theJ. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 96.AE.96 (fig. 16), True and Hamma 1994, 92-4, no. 38.

72 Renfrew et al. 1968, 118-21. 73 Renfrew et al. 1968, 119. 74 The story of the annual fishing of tuna by the tonnaroti of

Favignana, a small island off the coast of Sicily-and its associated way of life, is dramatically related by Theresa Maggio (2000) in her account of the mattanza. For the tuna runs in the Atlan- tic near Gibraltar, see Brown 1968, 56-61.


Fig. 16. Detail of Athenian black-figure kylix showing a fishmonger cutting up a fish on a biconical table, perhaps with a whale vertebra at the top. Malibu, the J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 96.AE.96. (Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum)

in cultures that extensively exploited whales and whalebones. Indeed, the only comparandum we have been able to find for this type of working surface is a scapula from a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) found on the west coast of Canada at the pre-contact period site of T'uukw'aa (1200 B.P.), a site believed to have been settled by the Nootka people. Five pieces of a left scapula blade were identified with fine cut marks over the lateral surface, with additional cut marks on the medi- al surface (fig. 17).75 The cut marks do not appear to be oriented in any particular direction, and the

glenoid has been removed. Although clearly used as cutting surfaces, the Athenian and west Cana- dian scapulae could not have been used as chopping blocks-unlike the whale vertebrae noted above-on account of the thinness of the cortex and the fragility of the spongy trabecular bone.

Leatherworking has been suggested for BI 115,

and a similar function is possible for the T'uukw'aa

scapula. The use of whale products by cultures with ac-

cess to the creatures, whether stranded or hunted, is wide ranging, since whales have an enormous number of usable parts. Whale meat was used as food both for human and animal consumption, whale oil was burned for light, as well as for lubrica- tion and soap, and even the skin of cetaceans was used.76 Of the toothed whales, particularly the

sperm whale, the teeth were used for elaborate carv-

ing (scrimshaw), while the jaws were worked in a fashion similar to ivory. In certain cultures, such as the Arctic populations of Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Greenland, whale meat was a subsistence sta-

ple, as it was in the Azores and Madeira island groups in the Atlantic, or in the Lembata and Solor Islands of Indonesia and parts of the Philippines." In other cultures, at certain times, whale meat enjoyed a

75We are most grateful to Greg Monks of the Department ofAnthropology at the University of Manitoba for sharing this information with us and for providing the photograph illustrated in figure 17, now published in Monks 2001, 143, fig.4.

76 Melville (1851) gives a wonderful overview of the enormous number of usable parts of a whale and the various uses of

whale products in the 19th century. For the curing of whale meat by the Basques, see Kurlansky 1997, 19-22.

77 Connor and Micklethwaite Peterson 1994, 208. Elsewhere, in the Faroe Islands, for example, the hunting of whale was a more seasonal activity, particularly during the summer months (see Connor and Micklethwaite Peterson 1994, 207-8).


Fig. 17. Detail of the left scapula of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), showing fine cut marks on the lateral surface, from the site of T'uukw'aa on the west coast of Canada (ca. 1200 B.P.).

symbolic value considerably greater than a subsistence resource. Mark Gardiner has argued that stranded whales in Medieval England were claimed

by the king as "royal fish," and he goes on to note that the possession and consumption of cetaceans-

whales, porpoises, and dolphins-was one arena in which social tensions and the aspirations of

groups competing for power were worked out.78 The use of whalebones, as opposed to the skin

and flesh of the animal, is even more varied and far less ephemeral in archaeological contexts. Many coastal cultures exploited whalebones in architecture. Whalebone houses, for example, can be found in abundance in the Canadian High Arctic, where alternative building resources are scarce.79 The Thule Inuit culture, ca. 1,000 years ago, built semi-subterranean houses using whale mandibulae and ribs as rafters,80 whereas whale scapulae were often set upright in the foundations to keep the ribs and jaws stable.8s For Europe, Jacqui Mul-

ville discusses the various instances where whalebone has been incorporated into Neolithic and Iron

Age sites in Scotland, especially at Skara Brae, Dun

Vulan, Freswick, Cheardach Mhor, and Scalloway Smith, and part of a blue whale humerus was incor-

porated into a stone wall at a building at the Norse site at Kilpheder.82 Although there does not appear to be a clear pattern of bone usage at these sites, whalebones seem to have been used opportunisti- cally rather than strategically, and, in some cases, for display effect. In this context it is important to note the testimony of Pliny the Elder, who mentions that the "admirals of the fleets of Alexander

[see below] have stated that the Gedrosi [the inhabitants of modern Makan] who live by the river Arabis [either the Purali or the Habb] make the

doorways in their houses out of the monster's jaw and use their bones for roof-beams, many of them

having been found that were 60 feet long."83 Whale- bones were similarly used in other parts of the world. A.B. Smith and J. Kinahan review the use of whalebones by the indigenous coastal peoples of western and southern Africa, who exploited whales for food and housing materials.84 Although most of the whalebones used for building material in the cultures noted above are typically the ready-to-use ribs, mandibulae, and maxillae, the scapula enjoys a small but important role in the archaeological record for shelter construction in a number of different cultures.

Several other uses for whale scapulae have been documented in the archaeological and ethnograph- ic literature. In the Channel Islands of southern

California, for example, whale scapulae were used as tomb covers and grave markers.85 In Ameland, off the northern coast of the Netherlands, whale

scapulae were used as doorstops and signboards on the houses of whalers in the 17th and 18th centuries.86 Whale scapulae, as well as ribs and man-

dibulae, were also hung outside town halls in whal-

ing societies in the Netherlands as a sign of policy and wisdom of the authorities.87 Scapulae of various other animals, including cattle, rhinoceros, and

7" Gardiner 1997, esp. 173, 188-9. 79 See Dawson 2001; Habu and Savelle 1994; Kershaw et al.

1995; McCartney 1979; Mathiassen 1928; Savelle 1997; Taylor 1960.

80 Mathiassen 1927, 132-55; Dawson 2001. The curvature of these elements bound together at the top resulted in a dome- shaped house that was covered with skins, turf, and moss.

81 A similar use of whalebones can be observed at archaeological sites on the Canadian west coast.

82 Mulville 2002. 83Pliny the Elder 9.2.7 (H. Rackham translation). See also

the passage in Arrian, Indica, cited below. 84 Smith and Kinahan 1984. It is likely that Polynesian and

coastal Australian indigenous peoples also used whalebones in shelter construction, and it is worth adding that there are numerous representations of whales in Australian Aboriginal rock art, particularly in the Sydney Basin (see Campbell 1899, esp. 34-5, pl. 13, fig. 4; McCarthy 1941-1947; 1954-1962, esp. 23-4, fig. 9A).

85Walker 1952; Bryan 1970. 86 Lauwerier 1983. 87 Brongers 1995, 15.


mammoth, have been found in archaeological contexts around the world, used by different cultures at various times. At prehistoric Langhnaj, in Gujar- at, India, a rhinoceros shoulder blade, with a vari-

ety of cut marks and small notches or pits, appears to have been used as an anvil of sorts by a microlith-

maker.88 Experiments conducted with the shoulder blade of a modern horse suggest that the rhinoceros scapula may have been used between the knees of microlith-maker, thus leaving the hands to be freely used. The small notches on the surface of the bone were interpreted as being the places where the blades were struck, and the cuts on the

edge the places where the "backing" operation was carried out.89 In their book on mammoths, Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn enumerate some of the uses of large scapulae found in archaeological sites, as anvils (indicated by dents and notches not unlike those on the Langhnaj shoulder blade), percus- sion instruments, and as tomb covers."9 In China, cattle scapulae were used at various times as oracle

bones,91 and a related function for incised cattle shoulder blades, for necromancy, was known in ancient Cyprus.92 In discussing the Cypriot ox scapulae, Jennifer Webb adduces examples from various

parts of the ancient Near East (Tell Arpachiyah, Byblos, Tabara el Akrad, G6zlfi Kule [Tarsos], Nuzi,

among others), as well as Italy and various Cypriot sites of the later Bronze and Iron Ages, down into the Classical period.93 In Greece, Michael Psellus described the method of divination (Opionca-- TOOKornIEca), current in the 11th century A.D., by inspecting shoulder blades, and John Cuthbert Lawson traced the same practice in parts of Greece into the 19th and 20th centuries.94

There is also the story, recorded in Pausanias

(5.13.1-7), that the Akhaians would never capture Troy until they brought a bone of the legendary Pelops to the besieged city. The bone that was ac-

cordingly sent from Pisa was a shoulder blade (-rv

60o-v litponX6Irqv), and the Greek victory was thus assured. On its return from Troy to Greece, the ship carrying Pelop's scapula was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Euboia, but it was not until many years later that a certain Damarmenos, a local fisherman from Eretria, happened to haul up the bone in his nets. Staggered by its size, Damarmenos hid the bone in the sand, but his conscience got the better of him and led him to Delphi to enquire as to whose bone this was and what he should do with it. Adrienne

Mayor speculates that the huge bone that Damar- menos netted off Euboia belonged to a Neogene mastodon, and she provides a sketch indicating its

approximate size to that of the fisherman.95 Given its

aquatic associations, might it not be possible that the creature whose bone Damarmenos retrieved was a

whale, as George Huxley first suggested?96 Whalebones could also be used as tools or as raw

material for tool production, and we wonder how

many bone tools in Greece that have not been ana-

lyzed with regard to the animal from which they derive may be of cetaceans (whales or dolphins). In Scottish, Norse, and Arctic populations, whalebone was fashioned to make a variety of tools, ranging from fine needles to the heftier blades used as blubber mattocks.97 In Iron Age Scotland and in the Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, and the Hebrides

Islands, as Clark notes, cetacean bone was used,

among many others things, for "weaving-combs, perforated mallet-heads, knife-handles and copies of metal hair-combs, keys, harness-pieces and the like" (fig. 18). Vertebral epiphyses have been inter-

preted as "pot-lids" from Scottish sites, and hol- lowed-out vertebrae have been identified as vessels

or lamps."9 Whale ribs and mandibulae were also used at various Medieval coastal European sites as

yokes and harnesses for traction animals.99 In addition to the bone, the baleen itself served many purposes, though this rarely survives in the archaeo-

logical record. Among the Inuit it is employed for a

" Zeuner 1952. 89 Zeuner 1952, esp. 182-3. 90 Lister and Bahn 1994, 108-10. In the United States, at

the Lange-Ferguson site in South Dakota, two mammoths were butchered using heavy cleaver-choppers made from the flat part of a mammoth scapula 10,670 years ago (see Lister and Bahn 1994, 110).

91 See, e.g., Chou 1976, where a wide variety of such oracle bones are illustrated. For further discussion, with references, see Webb 1977, 79.

92 See esp. Webb 1977, 1985. 93 Webb 1977, 76-9. 94 Lawson 1964, 321. Adrienne Mayor informs us that she

heard from a native of Samos that a lamb scapula was read at his

birth in the 1940s and predicted his name and occupation, an incident that shows the persistence of scapula oracles to the modem era. It is also worth adding that one of the oldest engraved bones, found in ca. 70,000-year-old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave in South Africa, probably derives from a mandibular fragment, rather than a scapula fragment (see Hen- shilwood and Sealy 1997; d'Errico et al. 2001, esp. 313-8).

95 Mayor 2000, 109, fig. 3.3, 268. 96 Huxley 1975, 45; 1979, 147; Mayor 2000, 300, n. 4. 97 Clark 1947, 95, 99, pl. I; MacGregor 1985; Hall6n 1994;

Mulville 2002.

98 Childe 1931; Hamilton 1968; Hedges 1987; Campbell 1991; Smith 1998; Mulville 2002.

99 Brongers 1995.


Fig. 18. Objects of cetacean bone from Scottish Iron Age sites. (After Clark 1947; courtesy of the National Museums of Antiquities of Scotland)

multitude of purposes, and was used in ancient Ireland for making saddle-trees, sieve-bottoms, and even hoops for small vessels.'00 The versatility of

whalebones, together with baleen, have made them a valuable resource throughout human history for use as tools, construction materials, objects of personal adornment, and everyday items.

FROM KETOS TO PHALLAINA: THE LANGUAGE OF WHALES IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Despite the rarity of whales in the Mediterranean as opposed to the Atlantic seaboard of Europe and the great oceans of the northern and southern

hemispheres, it is not uncommon to find references to whales in Classical literature. We even know the personal name of one particularly belligerent later Roman whale-Porphyrios ("Purple")-a wor-

thy successor of Hesione's ketos that terrorized the coast near Troy (see below). Porphyrios, according to Procopius (7.29.9-16), annoyed the city of Byz- antion and neighboring towns for some 50 years, "eluding all means devised by the Emperor Justin- ian for its capture.""'' Procopius adds that Porphy- rios's reign of terror was not continuous; the whale

occasionally disappeared for long periods of time. In the end, however, the great Porphyrios met his demise: pursuing a large group of dolphins that had gathered near the mouth of the Euxine Sea one day, the whale came too close to land, found itself stranded in deep mud, and was dragged to shore by the local people and finally killed. The carcass of the creature was placed on wagons, and it was found to be 30 cubits (about 15 m or 45 ft.) long and 10 cubits (5 m or 15 ft.) broad. Its length and color could refer to any number of whales, includ-

ing mysticeti, such as blue or fin whales, or odontoceti, such as sperm whales. Porphyrios's size, longevity, color, and temperament are all, however, in keeping with male sperm whales, which can reach a

length of 18 m, with current averages of slightly more than 15 m, and are characteristically a dark brownish gray.102 Identifying Porphyrios, however, as a male sperm whale remains, at best, a tentative

guess, since Procopius's account gives no more useful details to assist in determining species or genus, but Melville himself was strongly inclined to believe that Porphyrios was a sperm whale.'03 The incidence of whales in the area of Istanbul is also recorded by later authors, not least of which is Ev-

liya Qelebi, the 17th-century Ottoman Pausanias, also known as Dervi? Mehmed Zilli. In his description of the fishmongers of the city (Bailiksatajian), Evliya (elebi writes: "The fishermen [many of whom are Greeks from Kaissarieh, Nikdeh, and Mania] adorn their shops on litters with many thousand

fish, amongst which many monsters of the sea are to be seen. They exhibit dolphins in chains, sea-hors-

es, beavers, whales, and other kind of fish of great size, which they catch."'04

In describing the antics of Porphyrios, the word that Procopius uses to describe the creature is ketos

(I6 K?IoS; plural KlIl- or Kfl[Ea). It is from the Greek word ketos (Latin cetus) that the order Ceta-

cea-referring to both whales and dolphins-is de-

100 Clark 1947, 99; see also Joyce 1903, 288. '01 The story of Porphyrios is eloquently told byJocelyn

Toynbee (1973, 208). 102 Leatherwood et al. 1983, 84-6. For the character of sperm

whales, see further Philbrick 2000, passim, esp. xiii, for a sperm whale with the vindictiveness and guile of a man, and 224-5.

10' Melville 1851, 228-9. 104 Evliya Qelebi, section 14 (210), see von Hammer 1834,

160. We are grateful to Speros Vryonis, Jr. for assistance with Evliya Celebi and for allowing us to use his forthcoming paper on the Greeks and sea (Vryonis forthcoming) prior to its publication.


Fig. 19. Detail of Corinthian black-figure amphora, depicting Andromeda and the ketos, with Perseus to the rescue. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, F 1652, from Cerveteri. Second quarter of the 6th century B.C. (Drawing after Pfuhl 1923, fig. 190)

rived. The word is found in Greek literature as early as Homer, and normally refers to any sea monster or

huge fish. In his account of Odysseus's adventures with the Sirens, Skylla and Charybdis, Homer provides a particularly gory description of Skylla (Odys- sey 12.85-100). In that description we hear of

"6eA(iv6q IcT KiUVq ITE, KCtt Ei no0t P•ieTov iEn KqTlOCq" ("dolphins and dogfish or anything bigger, some sea monster").105 A similar usage of ketos is found elsewhere in Homer, both in the Odyssey and

Iliad.o06 In one only Homeric passage (Odyssey 4.446, 452), the word ketos is used specifically for seals, but this is for poetic effect, and the normal word for a seal in Homer, as in Greek generally, is phoke ((46K'jq).107 Ketos is also the sea monster to which An- dromeda was exposed, a story that led to no shortage of iconographic depictions of beauty and the beast,

ranging from the Archaic (fig. 19) through Roman

(fig. 20) periods and into the modern era (fig. 21).~10 The association of the sea monster and Andromeda extends to the very heavens, for KIf[OC in Greek was also the name of a constellation.'09 In Hesiod's Theog- ony (238) we find a certain fair-cheeked Keto

(Kqr(ib), who, when paired with Phorkys, begat such

quintessential Greek monsters as the Gorgons and, in subsequent generations, Kerberos, Hydra, Pegas- os, Chimaira, Sphinx, and the Nemean lion, to mention only a few."1

As for a huge fish, as opposed to a sea monster, the word ketos is sometimes used to refer to a tuna, as in Archestratos (Fr. 34.3). Oppian, writing in the third century A.D., in his Halieutica (or Fishing) uses the word ketos to refer generally to any large

Fig. 20. Andromeda exposed to the ketos, with Perseus flying to the rescue. Roman wall painting from Pompeii (1.7.7). (After Blanckenhagen 1987, pl. XXVII:2)

105 Od. 12.96-97. 106 Od. 5.421; Il. 20.147. 107 LSJ sv xOjKq. 108 See, e.g., Euripides, Fragmenta 121;Aristophanes, Clouds,

556; Thesmophoriasouzai 1033. For the iconography ofAndrom- eda and the ketos, see Schauenburg 1981. Figure 19 is a detail of a Corinthian black-figure amphora from Cerveteri, now in Berlin, Staaliche Museen, F 1652; see Pfuhl 1923, fig. 190; Boardman 1987, pl. XXIV (top left). For the Roman wall painting from Pompeii (fig. 20), see von Blanckenhagen 1987, 85, note 4 (=Pompeii 1.7.7). Andromeda and the ketos is a popular theme in European art from the 16th century on. Rubens

painted a version in 1636 (see Held 1980, 291-2, no. 209, pl.

218) and Van Dyck in 1637-1638 (see Price 1988, 74), both of which appear to have been inspired by Titian's Perseus and Andromeda, of ca. 1562, now in the Wallace Collection in Lon- don (fig. 21; see Wallace Collection 1968, 318-22, P11).

109See Aratus 354; Eudoxus (Astronomus) apud Hipparchos (Astronomicus) 1.2.20. See further Manilius Astromica Book V, and esp. Coleman 1983.

1"oAs West (1966, 235) notes, Kqrxb is probably formed sim-

ply from KqTflO(Apollodoros 1.2.7 actually has a Nereid called Keto). As for genealogy of the offspring of Keto and Phorkys, the details are not quite certain, but West (1966, 244) provides one likely stemma.


Fig. 21. Andromeda and the ketos by Titian, painted for Philip II about 1562, now in the Wallace Collection, London. (Courtesy of the Wallace Collection)

creatures of the sea."' These include a variety of whales (among which are the dashing Physaloi), as well as a number of large fish, some of which are

specifically named (e.g., tuna, sawfish, the Lamna, and the Maltha), as well as different types of sharks,

dogfish, and rays, including ycakeot."2 Oppian also includes among his kete those animals that leave the salt water and come forth upon the land, such as eels, turtles, and seals."31

In Classical literature, two locations of kete are

preeminent in Greek-especially Aegean-geog- raphy: Athos and "hollow Lakedaimon." With re-

gard to the former, Emily Vermeule wrote: "As in the sad tale of the Deacon and the Shark, an en- counter the abbots of Mount Athos remember well,

though it happened in the ninth century-A.D. or B.C.?-certain places were always hunted by theria, the wild animals of the sea. Herodotos knew that the waters off Mount Athos were packed with sea-

monsters, long before the deacon took his

plunge."114 The monster-infested waters around Athos are

well reflected in a series of engravings (XaAKo- ypa(qiS) depicting the various monasteries of the

Holy Mountain."15 Of the many such paper icons, we present here only one example, dating to 1850 and illustrating the Monastery of Esphigmenou, on the east coast of the Akte peninsula (fig. 22). It

depicts, in the lower left corner, a sea-creature described as a "fantastic ketos.""6 The kete on some of the Athos engravings are truly fantastic creatures of the imagination; others, however, more closely resemble real whales. The double spouting creature in figure 22, with its huge body, strange mouth, and flukes takes certain elements from the real world, others from a more imaginary realm.

The second geographical topos for kete in the

Aegean is the Lakonian Gulf between Malea and

"1 Halieutica 1.48, 1.360-408; 5.21, 5.71. 112 Halieutica 1.360-82. 113 Halieutica 1.394-408.

114 Vermeule 1979, 183. 115 For these, generally, see Mylonas 1963; Papastratou 1990. 11"6Baltogianne 1997, 86-7, no. 36 (inv. XAE 3052).


Fig. 22. Paper icon depicting the Monastery of Esphigmenou on the Mt. Athos Peninsula, with a whale in the left corner, ca. 1850, Byzantine Museum, Athens, XAE 3052 (0.42 x 0.27 m). (Courtesy of the Byzantine Museum)

Tainaron. In the Homeric poems, the kingdom of Menelaos is twice introduced with a formulaic de-

scription that has inspired scholarly comment since

antiquity."117 In the Catalogue of Ships (Iliad 2.581) the allies of Menelaos are introduced thus:

Oi 68' EtXOV KOLfrlv AQaK•Xt4POV

KrflTOoa(V

The same line, with a change of verb, announced the arrival of Telemachos and Peisistratos at Sparta (Odyssey 4.1):

Oi 6' ikov KoiArlv AaKE.citaOV KlrTO[oavo np6S 8' 6pa 6px 1a' Ayov MevwAXoU KUClhi1pOlO

As Sarah Morris has shown, the prevailing inter-

pretation derives from an understanding of KohAqv

as the "hollow" valley of the Eurotas River, and stan- dard translations provide variations of "hollow Lake- daimon." Rather than "hollow," Morris goes on to show that the passage refers to the sea monster- bound shores (Kqr-feoocuv) of Lakedaimon."11

As Emily Vermeule so cogently expressed, the Homeric kete, like Herodotos's theria, sounded more dangerous for not having specific names; they were nameless monsters, which perhaps grew less

threatening as the science of marine biology devel-

oped, studying, classifying, and perhaps dissecting them."9 It is not until the fourth century B.C., how-

ever, that we find the word ketos associated with natural history, generically referring, in the modern

"117 Morris 1984, 1-2.

118 Morris 1984. I"Vermeule 1979, 183.


sense, to the spouting cetacea. Aristotle, in his Histo-

ria Animalium (6.12 [566b, 2]), writes:

AAXtiAq &6 K' 4dXkLXACtlvQ KIi Icl t Axc Kflrl, 6ocL pil ~EXt 3pdPYXta &AXA •Uorlrppc, (cOOIOKOOOlV....

The dolphin, the whale, and the other Cetacea, as many as have no gills but a blowhole instead, are vi- viparous. ...

Elsewhere in Aristotle we read:

avcxnvi 6 8E t piv nE_(J ndv-rc, ivta F Kc't i•JV Fv'L6p(ov, oiov 6XAhhctvca Kai 5EA ic KXi T

tvac+uo~vizrt KlyTl ndHvca"

All land animals breathe, as do some of the water animals, such as the whale, the dolphin, and all the spouting cetacea.'"2

Although the ketos is used to refer to all the

spouting cetecea, the word that Aristotle uses specifically for whale is phallaina ( 6AAactva or

46Atxtvcx), hence the Latin bal(l)aena (whale), and

ultimately baleen. From the fourth century B.C. on- ward, phallaina is a common word for whale in Greek, found in authors as varied as Aristotle, Strabo, Ae-

lian, Philostratos, Nonnos, Babrius, Galaenus, Por-

phyrius Tyrius, and others (some of these authors also used ketos with specific reference to whales).121

Although we have now entered the world of scientific enquiry, the word phallaina could occasionally be used to denote any devouring monster. Indeed, one of the earliest uses of the word, in Aristophanes' Wasps (35, 39), has precisely such a meaning.'22 In

Oppian (Halieutica 1.404), the word phallaina is used only once to refer to the whale (Oppian com-

monly uses ketos when referring to whales), which "leaves the sea for the dry land and basks in the sun." This reference, together with Porphyrios's last

charge through the Bosphoros, is one of a number of passages in classical literature that alludes to the

stranding of whales, even though Oppian is mis- taken in his belief that whales basked in the sun.'":1

In Strabo (16.3.7) we hear of a whale some 50 cubits (25 m) in length that was stranded on a beach in the Persian Gulf (cf. Arrian, Indica 39.4). Arrian

(Indica 39.5) further reports that the whale's hide was as much as a cubit thick, and that it had many oysters, shellfish, and seaweeds growing on it, a feature common to many varieties of whales. The word that Arrian and Strabo use in this context is Kq-Toq, and it is clear that both

words-KIfTOO and

6dAAXcvau-were interchangeable, up to a point, so far as whales were concerned.

One of the longest and liveliest accounts in Greek of the sighting of whales is to be found in Arrian. The report, which was used by Pliny the Elder (see above), is all the more vivid as it evocatively relates the surprise and wonder of Alexander the Great's men when they confronted large whales (KqiLl). Arrian's account is of interest not only for the information it offers on living whales, but also for the architectural use that the bones of stranded whales were put to by the indigenous peoples of the outer ocean (Arabian Sea).'24 Arrian (Indica 30.1-9) writes:

Monstrously large sea animals feed in the outer ocean, much larger than those in our inland sea. Nearchos says that when they were sailing along the coast from Kyiza, about daybreak they saw water being blown upwards from the sea as it might be shot upwards by the force of a waterspout. They were astonished, and asked the pilots what it might be and how it was caused; they replied that it was these great animals spouting up water as they moved about in the sea. The sailors were so startled that the oars fell from their hands. Nearchos went along the line encouraging and cheer- ing them, and whenever he sailed past them he sig- naled them to turn the ships in line towards the animals as if to give them battle, to raise their battle cry in time with the plash of oars and to row with rapid strokes and with a great deal of noise. So they all took heart and sailed together according to signal. But when they were actually nearing the beasts, then they shouted with all the power of their throats, the trum- pets gave the signal, and the rowers made the utmost

120Arist. Part.s qofAnimals 3.6 (669a, 7-9). See also 4.13 (697a, 16).

1' For Aristotle, in addition to the passages already cited, see, e.g., Hist. an. 1.5 (489b, 4), 3.20 (521b, 24), 4.10 (537a, 31). See also Strabo 3.2.7; Ael. NA 9.50, 16.18; Philostr. VA 2.14; Nonnos, Dion. 6.298; Babrius 39.1; Galenus 6.728, 737, also De UsuPartium3.12; Porphyrius Tyrius, DeAbstinentia3.20.

122 The normal translation of the Aristophanic 6rXXacnvac varies. In some English translations it appears as "grampus" (e.g., in Rogers 1924 Loeb edition), and thus could refer to any of the smaller cetaceans commonly found in the Mediterranean, such as a variety of dolphins, perhaps also some of the smaller toothed whales, such as the killer whale.Jeffery Henderson in his 1998 translation translates phallaina as a "ravening drag-

on." In Aristophanes, 6dX?Acavu is used as a comic devise in the place of Kleon, both for his greed ("with scales in hand weighing pea pulse") and for his voice ("holding forth in tone and accents like a scalded pig"). For a related meaning of phallaina, see also Lykophron 841. Another meaning for phallaina, but one that is very rare, is moth, LSJ sv 6AXcatva.

"3 Elsewhere, Oppian (Halieutica 5.70-71) refers to a com- panion fish, referred to as 'Hyqfljpa (Guide), which was especially close to whales (KjTq), i.e., the pilot-fish or whale- guide.

124 In the passage that follows and in Pliny 9.2 (7) on the Gedrosi, both authors have clearly whales and whalebones in mind. Mayor's (2000, 331) suggestion that these are fossil bones seems, in this case, unlikely.


splashing with their oars. So the animals, now visible at the bows of the ships, were scared and dived into the depths; then not long afterwards they came up to the surface astern and again spouted water over a great expanse of sea. The sailors clapped at their unexpected escape from destruction and praised Nearchos for his courage and cleverness. Some of these large creatures go ashore at many parts of the coast, and when the ebb comes are caught in the shallows, while some are cast on the dry land by heavy storms and as a result putrefy and die; their flesh rots away and the bones are left, to be used by the natives for their huts. In fact the bones in their ribs served for the larger beams of their dwellings, the smaller for rafters and the jawbones for doorposts, since many of these creatures reached a length of five-and- twenty fathoms.

A range of meanings similar to those in Greek is found in Latin for cetus and bal(l)aena. Cetus in Latin can refer to any large sea animal, such as a whale,

dolphin, or porpoise; it can also refer to the sea monster to which Andromeda was exposed, as well as the constellation "the Whale."125 As with the Greek )6AAXatva, the Latin ballaena (sometimes ballena) referred more specifically to "whale."'26 In Petronius's Satyricon (21.2) we even find the adjec- tival ballaenaceus-"made of whalebone"-as in

Quartilla's whalebone rod ("Quartilla balaenaceam tenens virgam").

Latin authors located whales in different seas.

Juvenal (10.14), for example, locates whales in the waters around Britain ("ballaena Britannica"), while

Pliny (Naturalis Historia 9.2) discusses the whales of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, where the ballaena can reach sizes of over four iugera (one iuger is about two-thirds of an acre!).27" Pliny marveled that the same region produced lobsters that grow to four cubits (six feet) in length, and he even tells us of eels in the River Ganges that can grow to "tri- cenos pedes" (300 ft.). Pliny's three-acre Arabian Sea whales bring to mind the massive leviathan on which the Irish Saint Brendan, the noted traveler, built a chapel.128 After the massive whales of the

Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, Pliny (9.3 [8]), notes that the largest creature in the Gallic ocean

(Bay of Biscay) was the physeter, almost certainly a whale, often translated as a sperm whale, "which rears up like a vast pillar higher than a ship's rig- ging and belches out a sort of deluge."'29 In modern taxonomy, physeter (to which was added macro-

cephalus) became the species name for the sperm whale. Closer to home Pliny (9.5 [12]) notes that whales penetrated the Mediterranean ("Ballaenae et in nostra maria penetrant"), a fact corroborated

by several other authors, not least of which was Dio Cassius. In Book 75.16.5, Dio recounts how a huge whale (KqfToc 6npprye0sq) in the reign of Septi- mius Severus was washed up on shore in the Portus

Augusti near the mouth of the Tiber River. Dio goes on to relate that a model was made of the ketos for

display at a wild beast show; the model was large enough to accommodate 50 bears that were driven into it.'"o Somewhat earlier, in the reign of Claudi-

us, Pliny (9.5.[14-15]) tells of an orca in the harbor of Ostia. Although Pliny specifically uses the word orca, often translated as a grampus or killer whale (in keeping with the species name for the killer whale in modern taxonomy) -correctly in our estimate-some translators prefer to envisage a larger whale.•"' Be that as it may, the emperor ordered a barrier of nets to be stretched out at the mouth of the harbor, and setting out in person with the prae- torian cohorts made a spectacle for the Roman people by attacking the stranded creature. The orca, however, did not go down without a fight, and man-

aged to sink at least one of Claudius's boats with its

spouting. Pliny's use of terms such as orca and physetershows

an interest in describing different species of cetacea in the Mediterranean. Such an interest goes back at least as early as Aristotle. In Book 3.12 (519a, 24), Aristotle refers to a

pUo•o( K6KqTOg, or "mous- tache-whale." Alternatively given as puo06KrzTOg or pUOTOKrTOq, 6 'Of)q T,

Kf•TOc refers to the fact that

125 See, among many others, Pliny, HN 32.10, 32.83, 9.78; Vergil, Aeneis 5.822; Manilius 1.433, 5.15, 5.500, 5.656; Vitr. De arch. 9.5.3; Plaut. Aulularia 375; Captiui851; Celsus 2.18.2; Sta- tius, Achilleis 1.55; Silius 11.480; Varro, Menippeae 406.

126 See, for instance, Plaut. Rud. 545; Ov. Met. 2.9; Pliny HN 9.4, 11.235;Juvenal 10.14.

127 Pliny also notes in the same passage the smaller pistris, perhaps a smaller whale or shark that can measure over 20 cubits (10 m) in length. See further Toynbee 1973, 208.

128 See Little 1945; Selmer 1959; Ashe 1962. For an illustration of St. Brendan and his monks celebrating mass on the back of the giant whale,Jasconius, on the 1621 map by Hon- orius Philoponus, see Nigg 1999, 172-4; see also 135-6.

129 Pliny HN9.3 (8), translated by H. Rackham, who translates the physeter or physteras "sperm whale."

130 Toynbee 1973, 208; Mayor 2000, 138-9. 3' Rackham, for example, in his Loeb edition of Pliny, trans-

lates orca as "killer whale," but adds that this is unlikely, and

goes on to state that it was probably a cachalot (sperm whale). There is enough internal information in Pliny, however, to

suggest that the creature he refers to as an orca is indeed a killer whale (Orcinus orca). At 9.5 (12-13), for example, Pliny notes that orcas attack other whales (ballaenae), often in a

group, a pattern of behavior that is well known for killer whales, but not for sperm whales, nor any of the baleen whales.


such whales lack teeth in their mouths, and "have instead hairs similar to pigs' bristles." Aristotle's

meaning here is perfectly clear, as he is describing the characteristic baleen plates of the whalebone whales (blue whales, fin whales, etc.). Indeed, the term for the mysticeti sub-order of whales (i.e., baleen whales) is derived from Aristotle's puo- -caK6KIIrtO (cf. the musculus marinus qui ballaenam in

Pliny, Naturalis Historia 11.62 [165]).132 Such usage highlights the importance of the original texts, as

opposed to translations, and it is our experience that certain misunderstandings that have crept into the literature concerning whales are sometimes at the level of the translation. The natural historians, like Aristotle and Pliny, go to some length to describe the physical characteristics of whales and other cetaceans, descriptions that are based on direct observation or secondhand testimony from mariners and others. Aristotle speaks about various as-

pects of the lives and habits of cetaceans, details

ranging from their milking habits (3.20 [521b]) and copulation (5.5 [540b]), to the manner in which the animals sleep: "there are people who have actually heard a dolphin snoring" (4.10 [537b]). Such information, however, is only as good as its observer. Even in those instances when classical authors state a physical characteristic of a cetacean that seems clearly wrong, a closer reading will

point to some illuminating detail. For example, in

describing various cetaceans, Aristotle (7 [8], 591b, 24-30) states: "Generally the other fishes catch the smaller ones in their mouths while swimming straight ahead in their natural attitude. But the se- lachians and the dolphins and all cetaceans

(ndvTrE oi KqTI()&tq) turn over on their backs to take them, as their mouth is placed down below, thus allowing a fair chance of escape to the smaller fishes."'13

Dolphins do not have to turn on their backs to consume fish, and this rather strange mis-description of the dolphin has troubled classical philologists, so much so that several editors have suggested deleting it altogether. The baleen whales, how-

ever, have the characteristic mandible that closes

uniquely upward toward the dorsal side of their cranium (fig. 10). If one expected the mouth to curve downward on the ventral side of the body like most fish, it would appear as if a baleen whale was

feeding upside-down. Similar disorientation is ex-

pressed by Pliny (9.6 [16]):

Ora ballaenae habent in frontibus, ideoque summa aqua natantes in sublime nimbus efflant.

Whales have their mouths in their foreheads, and consequently when swimming on the surface of the water they blow clouds of spray into the air (Rack- ham translation).

In a similar vein, we have heard many modern whale-watchers express doubt or reservations as to which side of the animal is up or down at the sight of a breaching humpback whale. Although the dol-

phin was well known to Greek artists and a popular iconographic subject from prehistory through late

antiquity, the baleen whales, particularly those of the Balaenoptera genus (e.g., blue, fin, sei, Bryde's, and minke whales) are more difficult to observe because they surface less frequently and rarely frol- ic on the surface. Actual sightings of this genus in the eastern or central Mediterranean would have been few and far between (see above).

There is one other Latin text that deserves special mention with regard to cetology: Manilius's

description of the sea monster- Cetos-both as a

heavenly constellation and, especially, as the mythological monster associated with Andromeda. In a

paper fully devoted to Manilius's monster, Kathleen Coleman cogently unravels a baleen whale from Manilius's text, a creature that lies in contrast to the more poetic sea monsters of Ovid and Vergil.134 As Coleman has shown, Manilius described his Cetos

directly, treating it as a creature in its own right. The arrival of this Cetos is presaged by the swelling surface of the water (5.579-581) and by a mouth full of water (5.581-583). According to Coleman, "the picture of sea foaming inside toothed jaws is an accurate reflection of the feeding-habits of the

mysticeti," and she goes on to describe the baleen

plates and feeding habits of the whalebone

whales.135 The picture that emerges is not quite pure scientific description: in addition to its enormous size and jaws, the creature does have scales and it is described as "coiled"; but Manilius was, after all,

dealing with a mythological creature. As Coleman concludes, Manilius's Cetos is all the more menac-

ing for being recognizable as a whale, but with nightmarish additions.'36 In this, it is little different to

'"' See also Coleman 1983, 230. '3. Cf. Arist. Parts ofAnimals 4 (696b, 24). A similar descrip-

tion is echoed by Pliny (9.7 [20]) who writes: "The swiftest of all animals, not only those of the sea, is the dolphin; it is swift- er than a bird and darts much faster than ajavelin, and were

not its mouth much below its snout, almost in the middle of its

belly, not a single fish would escape its speed." 134 Coleman 1983.

135 Coleman 1983, 229-30. 136 Coleman 1983, 232.


the kete with which the monks of Mount Athos adorned their paper icons (fig. 22): part fact, part fantasy.

We have already discussed several instances of stranded whales in Greek literature, but some of the most spectacular stories in Classical literature of stranded sea animals are to be found in Pliny. In Book 9.4 (10), Pliny reports that during the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 14-37), in an island off the coast of the province of Lyon (Lugdunensis), the reced-

ing ocean tide left more than 300 monsters at the same time, of marvelous variety and size, and an

equal number on the coast of Saintes (Santonum litore).'" The word that Pliny uses to describe these creatures is belua, which simply means "beast." We cannot be sure what sort of animal Pliny had in mind, but the passage is concerned with possible sightings of Nereids and a Triton. Reports of stranded sea creatures that are not whales are well known in Greek literature. In the Anthologia Graeca, for ex-

ample, there are at least two reports of the body of a

skolopendra (oKoA6nrEv6pa) washed ashore. The first

(6.222 [Theodoridas]) is described as a thousand- footed shkolopendra, found on the rocks of lapygia in south Italy; the mutilated body of a second such creature (6.223 [Antipater]) was discovered by Hermonax. The skolopendra found on land is clearly a millipede, and the sea-skolopendra must be a related worm-like creature of enormous size."13 The creatures of the Anthologia Graeca, however, are not

your average millipede: both are described as sea

monsters, and one even had a vast rib (pFcyac nAeupbv), which was dedicated to the gods, a fact which led Adrienne Mayor to suspect the possibility of a fossil.'•"

Pliny's beluas do not end with the strandings off

Lyon and Saintes. Pliny (9.4 [11]) mentions Turra- nius's report of an enormous sea monster cast ashore on the coast at Cadiz (Gadir, on the Atlantic coast of Spain near the Strait of Gibraltar), which had some 120 teeth ranging in size between six and nine inches long. But the most fabulous of

Pliny's stranded sea beasts was at the far eastern end of the Mediterranean, and none other than the skeleton of the monster to which Andromeda

herself was exposed. In Book 9.4 (11), Pliny relates

that Marcus Scaurus, aedile in 58 B.C., brought the skeleton from Jaffa (Joppa) to Rome to be shown

among other marvels collected during his aedile-

ship. The beast-also referredL to as belua-was 40 ft. long, the height of the ribs exceeding the ele-

phants of India, and spine being 1.5 ft. thick. The fact that this skeleton was brought from Jaffa is in-

triguing, because it was atJaffa that Andromeda was said to have been fettered, and it was at Jaffa that

Jonah boarded a ship,'14 bound for Tarshish, in order to escape the Lord's command for him to go to Nineveh. Once at sea, the story is well known (fig. 23): "And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights" (Jonah 1:17).

The small book ofJonah, unique among the pro- phetic books of the Old Testament, has as its principal figure an obscure Galilean prophet from Gath-

hepher who counseled Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.). The "great fish" was not the principal item of the

story; just like the tempest, the plant, and several other natural devices, it was an obedient agent of God's purpose. The word that is used for the animal in Hebrew is dag gadol, which is a rather generic reference to a big sea creature, usually taken to be a whale, with some justification.'4' There is not much development of Hebrew vocabulary for creatures of the sea. The generic word for fish (dag) is sometimes modified, as in the "big fish" of Jonah 1:17, but the Israelites' lack of firsthand familiarity with fish is reflected by the fact that not a single species name is preserved in the entire Old Testa- ment. In Jonah, we are dealing with a large fish,

probably a great whale. This is not, however, the Biblical Leviathan that looms large in the Old Tes-

tament, the archetypal sea monster found in different cultures throughout the world.142

According to John Day, Leviathan (Hebrew liw-

ytn) is the name of a mythological sea serpent or

dragon, personifying the chaos waters, mentioned in the Ugaritic texts, in the Old Testament, and in later Jewish literature.143 Leviathan appears six times in the Old Testament: Job 3:8, Job 40:15-24, Job 41:1-34, Psalms 74:14, Psalms 104:26 (cited above), Isaiah 27:1. In Job 41:1, the passage: "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down his

"' Pliny's text continues: "and among the rest elephants, and rams with only a white streak to resemble horns, and also many Nereids" (Rackham translation).

1's For the land version, see Arist. Hist. an. 1.5 (489b, 22); 4.7 (532a, 4). For the sea-skolopendra see, e.g., Arist. Hist. an. 2.14 (505b, 13), which is different to the sea snake; 621a, 6; Ael. NA 7.26; Oppian, Halieutica 2.424.

"' Mayor 2000, 264, no. 10.

140 Boardman 1987, 77; Mayor 2000, 138-9. 141 We are grateful to Professor William Schniedewind for

assistance with the Biblical passages cited in this paper. 142 See Thompson 1955.

14"3 Day 1992a, 295; with further details in Day 1985. Etymo- logically, the name means "twisting one," as befits a serpent.


Fig. 23. '"Jonah and the Whale," shown as a great fish. Persia, Herat, ca. 1425. New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pulitzer Bequest Fund, 1933. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

tongue with a cord?" is often equated with a crocodile. Similarly, the Behemoth in Job 40:15-24, "he who eats grass like an ox," is usually under- stood as a hippopotamus, but there are good rea- sons against these identifications, particularly the

equation of Leviathan with crocodile.144 The fact, for example, that Leviathan breathes out fire and smoke (Job 41:19-21), coupled with his seven heads in later Jewish literature, suggests a mythological creature. The Leviathan in Psalms 104:25-26 is often supposed to be the whale, but

again, Day believes that it is rather a mythological creature that is in view.145 The discovery of the

Ugaritic mythological texts also allude to a conflict between Baal or Anat and Leviathan, this in addition to the more detailed account of Baal's defeat of the sea-god Yam. The Ugaritic texts

point to a possible Canaanite background to Le- viathan.146 A related Biblical creature is Rahab

(Hebrew rahab), a mythological sea serpent or

dragon-literally the "boisterous one"-that functions similarly to Leviathan.147 Rahab appears

a number of times in the Old Testament in two distinct contexts: as the sea monster defeated at the time of creation and as a metaphorical name for Egypt.148 There is also in the Bible Tannim

(Hebrew tnyn), first appearing in Genesis 1:21, often translated as "dragon," but sometimes as

"sea monster, serpent," occasionally as a snake

(as in Exodus 7:9-12), and sometimes associated with Rahab. In Isaiah 27:1 this serpent is mentioned in parallel to Leviathan: "In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Levia- than the twisting serpent, and he will slay the

dragon that is in the sea." Whatever the precise nature of the Biblical Le-

viathan (and Rahab and Tannim), the narrative of the Old Testament required, at various points, particularly in Jonah and in Psalms 104:26, the Medi- terranean to be infested with creatures of enormous proportions. As we have seen above, the Med- iterranean was no stranger to more gentle leviathans every bit as real as fin and sperm whales.

144 Day 1992a, 296.

145 Day 1992a, 296. 146 Gunkel (1895) argued that the Biblical allusions to a

conflict between Yahweh and the dragon and the sea consti- tuted an Israelite appropriation of the Babylonian myth, re-

counted in Enuma Elish, of Marduk's victory over the sea monster Tiamat. Day (1985) points to the Canaanite background suggested by the Ugaritic texts.

147 See Day 1985; Day 1992b for a useful summary. 148Job 9:13, 26:12; Psalms 87:4, 89:10; Isaiah 30:7, 51:9.


TRYING TO PICTURE THE WHALE:

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF GREEK SEA MONSTERS

The power of the sea, as Emily Vermeule noted so well, to swallow and conceal a human completely and the numerous flesh-eating creatures under its

surface-stealthy and voiceless hunters-made the sea a focus for poetic death in Greek tradition.'49 The poetic phrase "food for fishes" was, as Vermeule

explains, "worse than for birds and dogs, because it is harder to find the body again, and bury it proper- ly."150 In one of his weaker moments Homer's wily hero Odysseus laments:

I fear that once again the whirlwind will snatch me and carry me out on the sea where the fish swarm,

groaning heavily, or else the divinity from the deep will let loose against

me a sea monster

(Kqof•O), of whom Amphitrite keeps so

many.151

A few millennia later a similar sentiment per- vaded modern Greek Rembetika-the once under-

ground songs of love, sorrow, and hashish-and nowhere more evocatively than a song, first recorded by Katsaros and later immortalized by the

great Rembetissa Sotiria Bellou, about dying on a

ship. The second stanza of the song goes:

"Av-r, odv neW06ve o6 Kapdflt, p•iT lE P~S ( o6 ytCA6,

civie, v6 }I ECvC c Ua6pCa tdpta KC( M 6 dpTup6 vwp6-4Pav, a1P6v.

Ah, if I die on the boat, throw me into the sea So that the black fish and the salt water can eat me,

Aman! Aman!152

The waters of the sea were not for cheerful swim-

ming, unless they were not much more than an-

kle-deep; "a hero might step into the waves to wash the worst of his sweat off, as Odysseus and Diomedes do at the end of the Doloneia, but only as far as the hip-joint and thigh."'15 It was this

frightening aspect of the sea-a sea full of coop- erating sea monsters ready to mete out death in a

single gulp-that determines and defines the

iconography of kete, generically, in classical art. This is nowhere better captured than in the scene of a capsized ship and drowning men on the well known Late Geometric krater from Pithekoussai

(fig. 24), painted just over a century after the Ag- ora whalebone was discarded.'54 Two of the men

Fig. 24. Late Geometric krater from Pithekoussai, inv. 168813, depicting capsized ship and sailors

drowning, some swallowed by fish. (After Buchner and Ridgway 1993)

149Vermeule 1979, 179-209, esp. 184-5.

150Vermeule 1979, 184. 151 Odyssey 5.419-422, Richmond Lattimore translation. See

also Odyssey 14.133-6; 15.477-80; Combellack 1952-1953, 259- 60.

152 Petropoulos 1979, 159 (with annotations for the Greek

text); the English translation follows that of Holst 1975, 85. 153Vermeule 1979,183. See further Couch 1935-1936; Scott

1936-1937; Combellack 1952-1953, with references to the earlier literature; Brown 1968; Hall 1994.

154 Buchner 1953-1954; Brunnsviker 1962; Buchner and

Ridgway 1993, 695, pls. CCIV-CCV, 231.


immediately under the capsized ship, those with arms bent in different directions, appear to be alive, as if trying to swim. Of the drowned men, one has lost his head, another is in the process of losing his; some of the men appear to have lost their genitals. All around swarm fish-over 20 of them-ranging in size from man-eaters to "little spectators.""55 The scene on this fragmentary krater could have served as a useful illustration of Herodotos's account of the plight of Darius's men wrecked by the storm off Mount Athos some 200 years later.

In the mythological and heroic realms only the occasional Ubermensch, such as a Herakles (see be-

low) or Perseus (figs. 19-21), stood any chance

against the creatures that the sea could summon. So while classical natural historians like Aristotle and Pliny described a variety of whales, sometimes

quite accurately, Greek artists never depicted a

clearly recognizable whale, though a few representations come close. The relative rarity of whale sightings and strandings in the Mediterranean (most sightings offer only partial glimpses of whales, while the flesh of stranded animals decays rather quick- ly), coupled with the fact that whales were never

actively hunted in the Greek and Roman worlds, was not conducive to artistic photorealism.

The iconography of the classical sea monster (ketos) has been a popular subject of modern scholar-

ship, and there is no shortage of useful overviews of

Greek, Etruscan, and Roman representations.'"6 Our purpose here, therefore, is not to review what is a rich iconographic tradition that has been much commented on, but rather to point to certain salient aspects of that tradition, with particular reference to the iconography-or lack thereof-of whales. We have already illustrated a number of Ar-

chaic, Classical, and Roman kete. By the time that Aristotle and Pliny were writing there was no short-

age of fantastic dragon-like monsters with all sorts of hideous addenda that appear on later Classical

through Roman representations of the Andromeda

story (fig. 20), beasts that any St. George would be

proud to slay.15' But in essence all Classical kete, however fabulous, were depicted in one of several

characteristic ways. The first is the most straightforward and least imaginative: a large fish, such as the

dag gadol of the Old Testament. This is the easiest

way of rendering a large sea monster, such as a man-

eating fish on the Pithekoussai krater (fig. 24), or the 15th-century A.D. Persian Jonah in the mouth of the "whale," shown as a large scaly fish (fig. 23). A related representation is that of the man-eating ketos (misspelled Ki-LO along the lower border) on a Roman sarcophagus in the Konya Museum, miles from any sea (fig. 25). The center of the sarcophagus is occupied by a wreath that encloses a cruci- form object, conceivably a ship's mast, with sails (?) suspended from the horizontal beam; the base of the vertical beam splays out to form two foot-like

projections, each of which appears to be nibbled at

by a fish. Below, and to one side, an enormous fish has engulfed the head of Jonah (the inscription below reads: KITOE KIK2NAZ, one way of writing Jonah in Greek) who is about to be swallowed whole.

Although about a millennium later than the Pithek- oussai krater, the Konya (Iconium) ketos carries on a well-established tradition. The representation does not allow for species identification-shark, tuna, whale?-nor does it matter: image and word combine to convey ketos.

An alternative manner of representing the ketos is as a large serpent-like creature: a snake by any other name. Like the big fish, a suitably massive snake was one, relatively straightforward, way of giving iconographic substance to a massive sea creature that was, above all else, mysterious and frightening. One of the earliest such representations, dating to ca. 520 B.C., is that on the Athenian black-

figure cup in Taranto showing Herakles fighting a sea monster with mouth wide open; Hesione stands behind the hero, out of harm's way, while he dan-

gerously clutches the tongue of the beast, as if ready to cut it off (fig. 26).'58 Scholars have attempted to see elements of certain land animals on this monster's head, but we are essentially dealing with a

large serpent. A clearly identifiable snake's head, albeit one with a curly nose, is found on the fourth-

century B.C. Etruscan red-figure krater in Perugia (fig. 27), the name vase of the Hesione Painter.15"' Here the hero proceeds solo, without the damsel

(Hesione or Andromeda) in distress, although he

does appear in the company of Hesione on the other side of the vase. In another place and time, Her- akles or Pereus could easily replace Marduk (fight-

'55 Vermeule 1979, 184.

156Among many others, see, in particular, Shepard 1940; Vermeule 1979, 179-209; Boardman 1987, 1997; von Blanck-

enhagen 1987, all with further references. See also Rumpf 1939, esp. 112-20; Keller 1909, 409-14; Thompson 1947; Lattimore 1976; Boosen 1986.

'7 For these see Boardman 1987, esp. pls. XXI-XXIII; von

Blanckenhagen 1987, pl. XXVII.

1"'58Taranto, inv. 52155; see Boardman 1987, 80, n. 49 (with full references).

159Beazley 1947, 124, no. 1; Boardman 1987, 80-1, pl. XXV, fig. 16.


Fig. 25. Ketos andJonah (inscribed: Kioco Ktvcvaq). Roman sarcophagus, Konya Museum. (Photo by Sarah Morris)

ing the sea monster Tiamat), or Baal or Anat (do- ing battle with the sea-god Yam or Leviathan) or Yahweh pitted against the dragon and the sea. The kete on the Taranto and Perugia pots are all the more frightening for their gaping mouths and, es-

pecially on the Taranto cup, scaly bodies, as befit

both a snake of the land and a large sea creature. These are worthy opponents for a Herakles or a

Perseus, and their association with such heroes has the effect of removing them to an otherworldly realm. However much they resemble the serpentine bodies of real creatures of the sea, such as the

Fig. 26. Athenian black-figure cup, ca. 520 B.C., showing Herakles clutching the tongue of the sea monster, with Hesione behind him. Taranto, Museo Nazionale, inv. 52155. (After Boardman 1987, pl. XXV:15)


Fig. 27. Etruscan red-figure krater, name vase of the Hesione Painter, Perugia, Museo Archaeologico Nazionale (Museo del Palazzone all'Ipogeo dei Volumni), from Perugia. (Courtesy of the Museo Archaeologico Nazionale)

oarfish (Regaleus glesne) about 2 m long caught in

Sydney harbor in June 1954 or that illustrated by Vermeule,160 mythological kete could not be caught by average mortal hands.

Among the numerous serpentine sea creatures in Greek art, one of the most menacing is the ketos on the Caeretan hydria dating to ca. 520-510 B.C.

(fig. 28). The naked hero-Herakles or Perseus or

Anonymous-pitted against the monster seems es-

pecially focused, particularly as his weapon of choice, a small sickle, seems grossly inadequate for the task

at hand.16' The ketos has a pointed muzzle, horn- like ears resembling fins, and sharp glittering teeth,

picked out in added white. Its body, however, lacks

scales, and the animal enjoys a number of features that seem-to quote Shakespeare (Hamlet, act III, scene II)-"very like a whale." These include cetacean-like flippers, one prominent on either side of the body, and flukes, plus what looks suspiciously like a whale fin about two-thirds down the body.'62 The overall effect, however, is not of a real whale, and the contrast between the mythological and natural worlds seem all the more stark on account of the careful rendering of the dolphins, octopus, and seal. Indeed, the vase painter has gone to great lengths to draw these smaller creatures as accurate-

ly as possible, and it is worth stressing that this is

one of the very few representations of the seal in all

of Classical art.'63 Generally speaking, Greek and

Fig. 28. Caeretan hydria, ca. 520-510 B.C., private collection, showing hero fighting ketos, with a seal (phoke) behind the sea monster.

160 See the photograph published in National Geographic, August 2000,120. A somewhat larger example, photographed at Yarmouth in 1897, was published in Vermeule 1979, 183, fig. 5. Oarfish can grow to a length of over 12 m and weigh as much as 650 lbs.; specimens up to 17 m in length have been reported. Oarfish are found worldwide in all tropical and tem- perate waters.

161 Hemelrijk 1983, 45-6, no. 29, pls. 103-4; Isler 1983, 18- 28, figs. 1-11; Boardman 1987, 80, pl. XXIV, fig. 14; Board- man 1997, 732, no. 26; Marangou 1995, 124-33. Although both Herakles and Perseus have been suggested, it is possible that

the scene is related to a myth, lost from tradition, of the city nymph of Phokaia, personified by the seal (phoke) and the

anonymous hero. 162 As Leatherwood et al. (1983, 13) explain, the horizon-

tally flattened tail flukes of cetaceans have no skeletal support, while the rear third of the body is a powerful tail (tail stock or caudal peduncle) that is laterally compressed to reduce drag during swimming.

163 This is the only representation of the seal in Greek art that we know of, apart from the seal (phoke) on the coinage of Phokaia, for which see Kraay 1976, pl. 3, no. 70.


Roman artists were very careful to depict a variety of sea creatures, including different species of fish,

octopus, kalamari, various crustaceans, and so on, as accurately as possible on diverse media ranging from red-figure fish-plates to mosaics.164 As for the Caeretan hydria, do we have here, like Coleman's

literary analysis of Manilius's sea monster, the core of a real whale, with the addition of nightmarish elements for artistic effect?

The third manner of representing kete in Classi- cal art was to place the head of a clearly-sometimes less clearly-recognizable land animal onto a fishy or scaly body. Such an ingenious scheme led to a

great deal of variety, and, once established, there was no shortage of other bodily parts that could be add-

ed, as individual artists saw fit. The animal-headed beast depicted in figure 19, identified in the idio-

syncratic epichoric alphabet of Corinth as "ketos,"

appears on the left; Andromeda stands on the far

right, while Perseus, at center stage, hurls stones at the monster. We already know that the action takes

place atJaffa. The head of this ketos is typical of one of several distinctive ways that Greek artists represented sea monsters with the head of a terrestrial animal. John Boardman has discussed this type at some length.'"" There appear to be a variety of different quadruped heads: lion or dog are often identi-

fied, or thus claimed, and occasionally the head is that of a boar, such as the fragmentary ketos on the west pediment of the Parthenon, which accompa- nies Amphitrite.166 In some representations the head resembles that of a crocodile, in others we find kete with multiple heads, of whatever animal.'67 Occasion-

ally, a well-established ketos in Greek art has been

partly deconstructed, or shown for what it really is. The best example is the late Corinthian column- krater depicting Herakles and Hesione confront-

ing the legendary monster on the coast of Troy, near

Sigeion (Sigeum), now in Boston. As Adrienne May- or has shown, rather than a scary white monster's head painted by a naive artist, the "Monster of Troy

vase" is a more realistic expose of a large fossil skull

emerging from the earth.'68 In contrast to it, the ketos in figure 19 is not only more fleshy and alive, it

clearly emerges out of water. This third category of iconographic representa-

tions, quadruped head on a fish-like body, is in many ways the most interesting: part land animal, part sea

creature, what else is a whale? In 1859 a confident Charles Darwin discussed his Leviathan thus: "I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered,

by natural selection, more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."'169

To pose the question differently, how would a Greek artist depict a whale, especially given the

rarity of large cetacean sightings in the Mediterra- nean? The vast majority of the assembled representations of kete show the creature either alone, usu-

ally stressing its frightening attitude, or in some

mythological context, such as with Perseus and

Andromeda, with Herakles (with or without He-

sione), with Thetis and the Nereids, or with Posei-

don, Amphitrite, Skylla, Triton, or Eros, to mention

only some.170 Among this wealth of representations, there is, however, one that stands alone, outside the established canon. It is an Athenian red-figure cup, attributed to the manner of the Epeleios Paint-

er, now in the Allard Pierson museum in Amster- dam (fig. 29).1~7 Dating to about 500 B.C., it depicts a young man or boy climbing onto the head of a

ketos, which is partly in the water. This is not a men-

acing ketos of myth, but an evidently benign animal. If anything, the iconography of the scene appears to be related to a number of genre scenes, such as an early fifth-century B.C. Athenian cup by the Ambrosios Painter showing a boy perched on a rock fishing.'72 Although the head resembles the muzzle of a land animal, as some scholars suggest, it also resembles the heads of a number of beaked whales of the genus Mesoplodon, some of which occur in the Mediterranean.'73 The size of the crea-

164 For fish-plates, see McPhee and Trendall 1987; for fish mosaics, see, e.g., Meyboom 1977-1978 (with references); for mosaics with real, as well as unreal, creatures of the deep, see, e.g., Szabados 2000. For a glossary of Greek fish, see Thomp- son 1947.

65 Boardman 1987, esp. 81; see also Boardman 1997. 166Yalouris 1984, pls. 28-9. '67 For the crocodile headed ketos, see Boardman 1987, 81;

for kete with multiple heads see Boardman 1997, 731, nos. 1-2. 168 Mayor 2000, 158-162, figs. 4.1-3. The vase is Museum of

Fine Arts, Boston, 63.420; see further Boardman 1987, pl. XXIV, fig. 10; 1997, 732, no. 24.

"9 Darwin 1859; quoted and further explained inJones 1999, xxvi. By the sixth edition of On the Origin of the Species in 1872,

Darwin added an apologetic "almostlike a whale." AsJones (1999, 17) goes on to explain, the extant fossil evidence suggests that the distant ancestors of whales were hyena-like beasts called mesonychids, scavengers for carrion and hunters of fish.

170 See the useful overview of mythological representations in Boardman 1997.

'71 Inv. 3702: Para 336; Boardman 1997, 732, no. 27. 172 ARV2, 173. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 01.8024; Ver-

meule 1979, 180, fig. 1. For later, Hellenistic, representations of fishermen, see Laubscher 1982.

173 See Leatherwood et al. 1983, 122-51, especially Gervais's Beaked Whale (131-2), with a close-up detail of a stranded creature published in Connor and Micklethwaite Peterson 1994, color pl. 4 (top).


Fig. 29. Athenian red-figure cup, ca. 500 B.C., attributed to the manner of the Epeleios Painter, now in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, depicting a young man or boy climbing onto the head of a ketos. (Courtesy of the Allard Pierson Museum)

ture precludes the possibility of a dolphin: this is no boy-on-a-dolphin. Rather than a ketos, this picture could be one of the very rare representations of a phallaina-a whale-painted at about the same time that the word first appears in Greek literature.

Thus far we have been concerned with historic

representations of kete in the Classical world, but what of older, prehistoric, pictures of the ketos or

phallaina? The Aegean Bronze Age is full of images of all sorts of wondrous sea creatures, despite the fact that there is nothing referring to any fish or sea mammals in the extant corpus of Linear B tab-

lets, with the exception of a solitary squid. It appears as po-ru-po-de-qe (that is, polupodeikwe, referring tb its many legs) mentioned in a tablet (Ta 722.1); this squid, however, was not a living creature, but

part of an inlaid ornament on a sitting stool.174 Some

of the most enduring images of dolphins, cephalo- pods, a wide variety of fish, not least of which are the flying-fish, come from the prehistoric Aegean, whether depicted on palace or house walls, on pottery (not just the Late Minoan "Marine Style"), on

engraved gems, or on other media. In addition to what could be called the commonly edible species, there are representations of more frightening sea

creatures, such as dragons, crocodiles, and possible sharks."75 Some of these creatures, such as the

crocodile, are not native to the Aegean, and point to the movement of people, commodities, and ideas between the Aegean, Egypt, and the Levant. In dis-

cussing the Minoan and Homeric Skylla, Spyridon Marinatos illustrated an intriguing Minoan sealing from Knossos (fig. 30),176 showing a man on a boat threatened by the emerging head of a sea monster,

'74We are grateful to Tom Palaima for this information. Ventris and Chadwick (1973, 345, Pylos 246), translate the word as "octopus," but Palaima prefers squid.

175 For "dragons" and crocodiles, see Poursat 1976; for a like-

ly Minoan representation of a shark, see Marinatos 1926, 61, fig. 4.

'76Marinatos 1926, 58, fig. 2:1; Marinatos 1927-1928, 53- 4, figs. 1-2.


Fig. 30. Drawing of a Minoan clay sealing from Knossos depicting a creature of the water pitted against a man on a boat. (After Marinatos 1927-1928)

originally described as a dog-headed beast

(KuvoK"4)xAOV -pcxq), and anticipating later representations, such as some of those discussed above. In hindsight, and with a better drawing, Marinatos

reinterpreted this beast as a hippopotamus, but the

image of sea monster pitted against man is a famil- iar story. The name of the Minoan-looking man on the boat confronting the creature is not known, and if the animal is a hippopotamus,'77 then we can place the action-the story--on the Nile. Like later natives of the Aegean-Herakles who fought the ketos on the Anatolian coast near Troy, and Perseus who saved Andromeda on the Levantine coast at

Jaffa-this Minoan fought a fabulous creature in a

foreign context, a worthy prehistoric ancestor of Herakles and Perseus. Although this Minoan seal-

ing anticipates later Classical representations, and

despite numerous realistic renderings of fish and other creatures of the sea in the Bronze Age Ae-

gean, the rich iconography of the Minoan and Myce- naean worlds has failed to produce any clearly rec-

ognizable whales. In this, too, the prehistoric Ae-

gean anticipates iconographic developments in the historic period. There is, however, one Mycenaean image that cannot go unmentioned: the scene on a Pictorial Style krater from a tomb in Enkomi, Cy- prus, depicts charioteers chased by (or hauling) a

strange large-eyed creature on either side of the vessel (fig. 31).178 What creature, real or imaginary, the potter had in mind, we do not know, but it is

reasonably clear that a terrestrial quadruped was never intended. Occupying the available space below each of the handles, the creatures on this

Mycenaean vase look distinctly like sea mammals. The fluke-like tail, albeit diminutive, the stumpy legs suggesting flippers or fins, the beaked head with striations (an allusion to baleen?) and stream- lined body, all seem suggestive. The words for sea mammals such as dolphins, whales, and seals, have not survived in Linear B, but as Kquog is used more than once in Homer, a good case can be made for the existence of the word in the Late Bronze Age Aegean. As for the prehistoric and historic images, they were drawn, painted, or engraved by artisans whose knowledge of whales would have been, at

best,"very limited.

Many of the ancient kete illustrated or discussed above are not all that different to some later representations of whales. The ketos on the Caeretan hydria (fig. 28), for example, is in essence not that far removed to what seems, at first sight, like a similarly menacing creature on the map of Iceland in the The- atrum Orbis Terrarum by the Flemish cartographer Abra- ham Ortelius, first published in 1570 (fig. 32).'79 The

Fig. 31. Mycenaean Pictorial Style amphoroid krater from Enkomi, Cyprus, tomb 11, no. 33. (After Sj6qvist 1940, fig. 20, no. 1)

"'77 The possibility that the monster's head represents the prow or ram of a ship seems, in the case of this sealing, unlikely. For kete as ship's rams from the later Archaic through Ro- man periods, see Boardman 1997, 734-5.

178 Sj6qvist 1940, fig. 20, no. 1.; Vermeule 1972, pl. XXXII:B. 17'9 Detail taken from the 1603 edition of Ortelius 1570. For

a lucid and compelling account of sea monsters and other imaginary-and real-creatures in modern cartography, see Har- vey 2000, esp. ch. 2, including an illustration of Sebastian Miin- ster's fantastic sea monsters published in the 1550 edition of Cosmographia.


Fig. 32. Detail of the Steipereidur, "the tamest of the whales," by Abraham Ortelius, FlemiSh cartographer, from his map of Iceland in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first published in 1570 (this detail taken from the 1603 edition). (Photo courtesy of the Whaling Museum, New Bedford, Mass.)

accompanying text, in Latin, proclaims that this is the Steipereidur, the tamest of whales (the word in Lat- in is cetus), which "fights other whales on behalf of fishermen. Public laws forbid anyone to harm it. It is a hundred cubits long." This rather fabulous-look-

ing whale of the 16th century A.D. was never depicted as a mythological creature, but a purportedly "known" type of whale, illustrated only a few decades before Hendrick Goltzius and his followers were il-

lustrating accurately rendered sperm whales (fig. 13). The Steipereidur on Ortelius's map warns us that what may seem to modern eyes-who know whales and other cetaceans from cinema, television, and a

variety of documentaries-as a representation of a rather fantastic sea creature was, in the context of its own time, an image rendered after a real animal.

CODA

The fin whale scapula thrown into a ninth-centu-

ry B.C. well in the area that was to become the Athe- nian Agora has a complex and extraordinary cultural biography and the potential to tell many sto-

ries.180 It derived from the carcass of a young beached whale, where exactly we cannot tell, but the bone had been worn by the action of waves, and

perhaps further bleached by the sun and wind (cf. figs. 13-14). Picked up, it was brought to Athens,

perhaps directly, conceivably indirectly, a large and unusual bone. Once there it was put to use, probably as a cutting surface, perhaps supported by legs, thus forming a small table of sorts, and conceivably used for leatherworking in an area that was, at the

time, an industrial district, surrounded by several cemeteries. We do not know precisely how long the bone saw service, but it is difficult to imagine any significant length of time, particularly as the bone was used as a cutting surface. As for its deposition, this can be pinpointed with greater precision: some- time in the course of the Early Geometric period (ca. 850 B.C.), a large fragment of the broken scapula was thrown into its not-so-ultimate resting place in the fill of a well.

Sightings of whales, together with stranded cetaceans on the vast coastlines of the Aegean and Ion-

180 Cf. various papers in Appadurai 1986, and esp. Kopytoff 1986.


ian Seas, as well as waterworn bones found on a

beach, not unlike our scapula, inspired natural historians like Aristotle, and later Pliny, among many others-the forebears of Carolus Linnaeus and Charles Darwin-to enquire into the nature of whales and other cetaceans. In time, they learned of the character and habits of these gentle levia-

thans, and preferred to refer to them, in certain

contexts, as U6AAc•Xtva

or ballaena, instead of ketos. Stories of large animals inhabiting the Mediterra- nean inspired a rich oral and literary tradition ex-

tending from the Old Testament and the earlier

Ugaritic mythological texts, to Ovid and Vergil, and in the Greek world from Homer to Procopius and far beyond. Well before many of these stories were ever written down, Aegean artists were depicting fabulous sea creatures, monsters of the deep, wor-

thy opponents of Herakles, Perseus, Marduk, Baal, and Yahweh. This was the beginning of what was to

develop into a rich iconographic tradition in the

Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods, a tradition that extended far beyond Late Antiquity into the modern era. Occasionally, a sighted or stranded whale may have inspired a more realistic

rendering of the creatures that have enjoyed a special place in human cultural history and memory, not only of maritime communities.

As we have seen, the literary and iconographic traditions of kete in the Greek world and in the greater Mediterranean beyond were not totally human creations that inhabited an imaginary realm: they were very much the product of a fascination with

living creatures of the sea. As one of the largest and best dated whalebone finds in the Aegean-indeed, one of the very rare examples of a whalebone in a

good archaeological context anywhere in the Medi-

terranean-the significance of the Agora whalebone lies in the fact that it provides a cogent link between the material remains of real animals and their representations in art and literature, which form the basis of this study. The date of the Agora whalebone-and of the short life of the young fin whale from which it derived-was to coincide with one of the most ex-

perimental and formative periods of Greek art, a

period when Greek artists were to forge a renewed

interest in human and animal figures. Moreover, the whalebone dates a century or so before the traditional date of Homer, precisely at the time when the Greeks were adopting and adapting the Phoenician

alphabet to create an enduring literature of epic,

mythology, human and natural history, as well as scientific enquiry.

The wonder and allure of whales continue to this

day.18' We will never know what the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Athens who came across this bone

thought of it; we can only recall our own wonder and astonishment when we first sighted it, through a dusty vitrine, on the first floor of the Stoa of Atta- los above the Agora Museum.

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS AND

THE COTSEN INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

A2 10 FOWLER

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1510

[email protected]

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

CAMPUS BOX 1114 ONE BROOKINGS DRIVE

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63130-4899 [email protected]

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