Kriophoros

In ancient Greek cult, kriophoros (Greek: κριοφόρος) or criophorus, the "ram-bearer," is a

figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram. It becomes an epithet of Hermes:
Hermes Kriophoros.

Painted terracotta cult image of the Kriophoros from Thebes in Boeotia, ca 450 BCE (Musée du Louvre).

Myth

At the Boeotian city of Tanagra, Pausanias relates a local myth that credited the god with
saving the city in a time of plague, by carrying a ram on his shoulders as he made the circuit
of the city's walls:
 There are sanctuaries of Hermes Kriophoros and of Hermes called
Promachos.[note 1] They account for the former surname by a story that
Hermes averted a pestilence from the city by carrying a ram round the
walls; to commemorate this Calamis made an image of Hermes
carrying a ram upon his shoulders. Whichever of the youths is judged
to be the most handsome goes round the walls at the feast of Hermes,
carrying a lamb on his shoulders.[1]

The myth may be providing an etiological explanation of a cult practice, carried out to avert
miasma, the ritual pollution that had brought disease, a propitiatory act whose ancient origins
had become lost but had ossified in this iconic motif. Reflections of Calamis' lost Hermes
Kriophoros may be detectable on the Roman coinage of the city.

In Messenia, at the sacred grove of Karnasus, Pausanias noted that Apollon Karneios and
Hermes Kriophoros had a joint cult,[2] the ram-bearers (kriophoroi) joining in male initiation
rites.

The Moscophoros of the Acropolis, c. 570 BC

A description by Pausanias of a Kriophoros dedicated at Olympia, by the sculptor Onatas, has

been compared by José Dörig[3] with a surviving bronze statuette, 8.6 cm tall, in the Cabinet
des Médailles, Paris, as a basis for reconstructing the Severe style of the sculptor.

Not all ancient Greek sculptures of sacrifiants with an offering on their shoulders bear young
rams. The nearly lifesize marble Moscophoros ("The Calf Bearer") of ca 570 BCE, found on
the Athenian Acropolis in 1864 is inscribed "Rhombos", apparently the donor, who
commemorated his sacrifice in this manner.[4] The sacrificial animal in the case is a young
bull, but the iconic pose, with the young animal across the sacrifiant's shoulders, secured by
forelegs and rear legs firmly in the sacrifiant's grip, is the same as many kriophoroi. This is
the most famous of the Kriophoros sculptures and is exhibited at the Acropolis Museum

Lewis R. Farnell[5] placed this Hermes Kriophoros foremost in Arcadia:

As Arcadia has been from time immemorial the great pasture-ground of Greece, so
probably the most primitive character in which Hermes appeared, and which he never
abandoned, was pastoral. He is the Lord of the herds, epimélios[note 2] and kriophoros, who
leads them to the sweet waters, and bears the tired ram or lamb on his shoulders, and
assists them with the shepherd's crook, the kerykeion.

The Kriophoros figure of a shepherd carrying a lamb, simply as a pastoral vignette, became a
common figure in series denoting the months or seasons, characteristically March or April.[6]

Late Roman marble copy of the Kriophoros of Kalamis (Museo Barracco, Rome)

Kriophoroi and "The Good Shepherd"

Free-standing fourth-century CE Roman sculptures, and even third-century ones, are

sometimes identified as "Christ, the Good Shepherd",[7] illustrating the pericope in the Gospel
of John, and also the second-century Christian literary work The Shepherd of Hermas. In two-
dimensional art, Hermes Kriophoros transformed into the Christ carrying a lamb and walking
among his sheep: "Thus we find philosophers holding scrolls or a Hermes Kriophoros which
can be turned into Christ giving the Law (Traditio Legis) and the Good Shepherd respectively"
(Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Classical Art and Architecture, p. 475.). The
Good Shepherd is a common motif from the Catacombs of Rome (Gardner, 10, fig 54) and in
sarcophagus reliefs, where Christian and pagan symbolism are often combined, making
secure identifications difficult. The theme does appear in the wall-paintings of the baptistery
of the Dura-Europos church, a house-church at Dura-Europos before 256 CE, and more
familiarly in sixth-century Christian mosaics, as in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at
Ravenna, and there is a famous free-standing sculpture, said to be of about 300AD, and made
for a Christian, in the Vatican Museums.

Not every Kriophoros, even in Christian times, is Christ, the Good Shepherd: a Kriophoros
shepherd, fleeing with his flock from the attack of a wolf, was interpreted as a purely pastoral
figure rather than as Christ, the Good Shepherd, when it appeared in the refined late fourth-
early fifth century floor mosaics of a colonnade round a courtyard in the Great Palace at
Constantinople.[8] Nonetheless, "the shepherd must have been the picture most frequently
found in [Christian] places of worship before Constantine,"[9] as the most common of the
symbolic depictions of Jesus used during the persecution of Christians under the Roman
Empire, when Early Christian art was necessarily furtive and ambiguous. By the fifth-century,
the relatively few depictions leave no doubt as to the identity of the shepherd, as at Ravenna.

Notes

1. Promachos, "first in battle, champion"; compare Athena Promachos.

2. This epithet belonged to Apollo at Camirus.

References

1. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.22.1–2.

2. Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.33.4.

3. Dörig, Onatas of Aegina (Leiden:Brill) 1977.

4. Orell Witthuhn, "Der Kalbträger von der Akropolis in Athen" (http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/%7eaegy

pt/ow/kalbtr.htm) .

5. The Cults of the Greek States 1896, vol. I, part I, p. 9.

6. Noted by Brett 1942:39.

7. Two statuettes found in Thessalonike, for example.

 8. Gerard Brett, "The Mosaic of the Great Palace in Constantinople" Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942:34-43) p. 39 and pl. 10c.

9. Eduard Syndicus; Early Christian Art; p. 23; Burns & Oates, London, 1962

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kriophoros.

(Cleveland Museum of Art) Archaic painted terracotta warrior kriophoros, Crete, seventh
century BCE (http://www.clevelandart.org/collections/collection%20online.aspx?pid=%7B9
1ADCD8F-992A-45A5-8599-70835467DF5E%7D&coid=5717716&clabel=highlights) Acc.
no. 1998.172

(Acropolis Museum, Athens) Archaic moscophoros, ca 570 BCE (http://www.athensguide.o

rg/acropolis-museum.html) , acc. no. 624

(Museo Barracco, Rome) Late Archaic marble Hermes Kriophoros (https://web.archive.org/

web/20070303060514/http://en.museobarracco.it/percorsi/percorsi_per_sale/sala_v/her
mes_kriophoros) , first half of the fifth century BCE - The page is no longer existing, the
piece was likely moved to an alternate location, but the information taken should still be
creditable.

Perseus Sculpture Catalog: Hermes Kriophoros (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/pte

xt?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0041&query=Boston%2099.489) : the Archaic or archaizing
bronze Hermes Kriophoros in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, acc. no. 99.489.

Wilton House Stables, archaizing marble Hermes Kriophoros with a wedge-shaped beard.
(Cornelius Vermeule and Dietrich von Bothmer, "Notes on a New Edition of Michaelis:
Ancient Marbles in Great Britain Part Two" American Journal of Archaeology 60.4 (October
1956:321-350) p 347 and pl. 105, fig. 6.)

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