Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 13 (1968) (Pécs, 1971)

Régészet - Makkay, János: The Chalcolithic Male Relief from Villánykövesd and the Earliest Male Figurines in South-Eastern Europa

CHALCOLITHIC MALE RELIEF 45 groups prefer the incised human portraits to the painted and raised ones on the sides of the vessels/'

0 Thus an early, Neolithic-Chalcolithic usage and manner of representation of general extension has three varieties: Eastern-Mediterraneanpainted, South-East European-mainly raised into reliefs, and Continental-European-mainly incised, reckoning with a partly mixed material in the areas of intercourse. This threefold distinction is perfectly in concordance with the main ways of pottery decorations in the mentioned territories. As in the case of our reliefs in general, the incised motives of the linear pattern pottery in the so-called »lying frog« situation allow several interpretations as regards their purpose.

41 Epiphany seems to be a less probable interpretation here.

42 * * * In the following we shall start from the assumption that the Villánykövesd find represents a man, surveying its parallels from this point of view. This is an important question first off all because the number of males is extremely little among the plastics and the representations of other types in the Neolithic and AeneoLithic, in fact entirely missing in several cultures which have numerous female figurines incidentally;

43 secondly, because the role of male portraits has scarcely been investigated up to our day.'

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'' Therefore one of our main taks is to reveal the regularity according to which male figures are missing in some cultures or periods while they are present in others. The almost unexplored being of these problems as regards is connected with the fact that even 40 A. Guider, op. cit., with further literature. 41 In order to support this statement we refer to the datum according to which in the fifteenth century, in course of the Turkish wars, a woman stepped out on the wall of the fortress, lifted her skirt, turned her nack to the Turks and, looking back between her legs and showing her posterior, threw curses in order to frighten the enemy. Gy. László, A magyarszentpáli oszlopfő. (The Magyarszentpál capital, Kolozsvár.) p. 14. 42 See note 30. 13 E. g. in the rich material of idols of the Körös culture as far: Í. Kutzián, The Körös culture, op. cit. passim; Cf. T. Bader, Acta Musei Napocensis 5 (Kolozsvár, 1968.) 381—388.; nor was a male idol occurring in the equally rich store of idols of Moravian painted pottery: J. Neustupny, Pravek Ceskoslovenska (Praha, 1960.) p. 114; this fact may characterize the plenty of finds in a single site: R. Vulpe, Izvoare. Sapaturile din 1936—1948. (Bucuresti, 1957.) p. 379. There is but a single male idol on the site. 44 K. Oberhuber, Sind wir berechtigt, von Muttergottheiten in den Frühkulturen des Alten Orients zu sprechen? Forschungen und Fortschritte 38 (1964) p. 55, with further literature. the one-time purpose and meaning of the actually very frequently occurring female figures are unknown. In fact we lack an absolutely necessary condition, typological arrangement, in some of the areas. Thus it would be too much to say that the research of this problem is not finished yet; it has not even been approached. Just recently an ever stronger debate went ablaze.

45 This is why we need a survey of the most important South-East European parallels of the Villánykövesd male relief (as such) and generally a view of the earliest representations of imales, both from the archaeological and religious-historical points of view. Our survey shall exclude the Palaeolithic finds. In part because their number is very low,

46 in part because, as regards the area of Europe, no genetic or typological connection can be shown between them and the Neolithic representations, at least for the time being. On the other hand in Anatolia where transitional forms have been discovered between the Palaeolithic and the art of the earliest village-farming communities,

47 these relations do not touch plastics there locally up to our day.

48 Thus it cannot be 45 E. g. K. Oberhuber, op, cit. p. 55, and notes 52—54. We enumerate some data only from the immensely rich literature of the problem: H. Möbius, AA 1954. pp. 209—216; A. Benac. 42. Bericht 1961 (1962) pp. 124—126; J. Korosec, Arheoloski Radovi i Rasprave 1 (Zagreb, 1959) pp. 61 seqq., 2 (Zagreb, 1962) pp. 103 seqq.; В. Goldman, IPEK 1960—1962. pp. 9—11; B. L. Goff, Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia (New Haven, 1963) p. 51; Faisal al-Waily — Abu es-Soof, Sumer 21 (1965) pp. 17—32, on the new idols from Tell es-Sawwan; D. Berciu, Cultura Hamangia. Noi Contributii. (Bucuresti, 1966) pp. 240, 302; J. Mellaart. Earliest Civilizations of the Near East, op. cit. pp. 42—43, distinguishing between the mainly small ex voto statuettes and the large-size cult statues in the Neolithic unequivocally for the first time. On this problem see J. Makkay, Acta Arch. Hung. 16 (1964) p. 49. 46 K. J. Narr, Weibliche Symbol-Plastik der älteren Steinzeit. Antaios 2 (1960) p. 135; P. Graziosi, Palaeolithic Art. (London, 1960.) pp. 41, 60. 47 J. Mellaart, Eearliest Civilizations.

.., op. cit. pp. 78—80; Id., The Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages in the Near East and Anatolia. (Beirut, 1966) p. 30, on painted pebbless from Beldibi and Eynan. 48 Cp. for the rest the interesting comparisons of Mellaart between the small, schematized, femaleshaped beads of a necklace from Catal Hüyük and the Upper Palaeolithic female figurines in France: Catal Hüyük, op. cit. PL 81. For a suggestion of connections, not exactly definable yet at present, between the Upper Palaeolithic female presentments as fertility goddesses or delineations connected with the cult of fecundity and the Early Neolithic female idols see: A. Beltrán, Figuras relativas al culto de fecundidad en le Portel (Ariège). Miscelanea en Homenaje al Abate Henri Breuil I (Barcelona, 1964) pp. 197—199; other connections, are suggested by M. E. P. König, Psychologische Beiträge 111:3 (Tübingen, 1957) pp. 476 seqq, but we accept these statements under