ASTARTE SYRIACA - METAL PROGRESSIVE BAND OFFICIAL WEB SITE

ASTARTE SYRIACA

Astarte Syriaca: expression in painting of the poet and writer Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s obsessions (as well as of the social-ethnical and humanistic culture). Legend, Religion, Love and Art. Hence the choice of a name that, besides sounding atypical and telling, it was able somehow to represent us. Since the world began, most of "us", sooner or later, confront themselves with one of the above-mentioned "obsessions" at least, and this has been conclusive for the choice of the name.

See the painting below and read some articles about the goddess Astarte, the painting and Rossetti.

Astarte Syriaca

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The Goddess ASTARTE

The Phoenicians lived the actual zone of Syria and Lebanon (famous for the precious cedars that furnished an excellent wood) toward the 1200 b.C. People exploited in full agriculture, commerce and both the climatic (olive-trees, orchards) and naval resources of the Mediterranean sea: colonies were spread from Spain to Italy (Sicily and Sardinia), but the most important and also the most known is certainly Cartagine, that will become harsh enemy in Rome.

Greatest phoenician cities were Byblos, Tiro, Sidone and Arwad. Each one had its own pantheon with similar divinities, i.e. the dominant couple Baal (or Adon, “Lord”) and his partner-wife (Balaat, “Mistress”) who later will be identified with Astarte.

Astarte (Phoenician: ‘Ashtart) presides over fertility: sphere that goes up again to the ancestral figure of Mother Earth. This goddess was revered as Inanna-Ishtar in the Mesopotamic culture or as Hathor-Isis among Egyptians, but soon she also acquired warlike attitudes. In her cult the adoration of thrones of stone was practised to maintain constant the strong bond that united her with the king and his dynasty. It was also the sailors’ protectress.

She was usually represented on the chariot with warlike dress, but already from the II millennium was represented as naked mother goddess in the action to squeeze together her breasts or carrying in hand flowers of lotus, snakes or a disk.

Her fortune among the ancient people was such to be been approved in the Greek colonies’ pantheon, identified with Afrodite, and then to Cyprus, Malta, Mozia, Palermo and Erice (Afrodite/Venus - Ericina) and in the whole Mediterranean. In Byblos, for the strong influence Egypt practiced through commercial relationships, the goddess becomes the Egyptian Hathor, then turns herself into Isis, with the name of Baalat Gebal (“Mistress of Byblos”). Her partner was Adonis, (an echo of the Mesopotamic Dumuzi-Tammuz), who was the main character of a myth of death and resurrection.

For mourning, during the celebration of the Adonian feasts, the inhabitants shaved their hair and the refusing women were subject to the sacred prostitution in foreigners favour to gratify Astarte. In Tiro the partner of our goddess was Melqart, who was, him too, the main character of a story of death and resurrection and Astarte seems to re-bring him to life. The couple was revered in the fabulous temple remembered by the Greek historian Erodoto, who introduces it extraordinarily rich of wonderous treasures and formed by two columns (betili) respectively made of gold and emerald you can find in the mintage of the coins.

In Sidone Astarte was bride of Eshmun, healer god, who, initially misogynous, was evirated for escaping to her love but the goddess intervened before this can happen. In this city the kings are also her high priests. The cult foresaw non-bloody offers of buns, fruits and first fruits together with libations of wine and bloody offers of animals of various species (i.e. oxen, birds…).

They also practiced human sacrifices in places called tofet (in Jewish), and because of this the Phoenicians acquired bad reputation as barbarians among other peoples. Our goddess also had a oracle-like function, as shows the sanctuary in Pafo. A thick team of employees worked in the Astarte’s temple: priests, scribes, choristers, cooks, male and femal sacred prostitutes, barbers, servants, dancers, clairvoyants, employed personnel to open and to close the temple’s doors, and there was naturally who exclusively dealt with the care of the statue.

Chiara Parigi

THE PAINTING

Away from friends, away from Cheyne Walk, away from Jane, in Aldwick Lodge Rossetti will paint "Astarte Syriaca", an anxious and shut work. In his mind, in which every extreme touches itself rejoining itself, sky and earth, life and death, sex and love, they become terrible synonyms. There is just the Only One’s Mystery. Astarte, who goes to complete the reassuring face of Venus, is the ancient strength of love that penetrates the whole universe and fecundates it, according to the Phoenician cult, as you can see in the Greek myth. The Rossetti’s Astarte is a dark Oracle, who has the Jane Morris’ face: pale and distant look, sealed by an excessive and dam mouth. A face that raises on the immoderate neck, while all the body’s limbs appear lengthen, as if a strength from the sky magnetically attracted them and another one from the bottom opposed resistance…. Astarte Syriaca as "… Result of an inverted mystical experience" according to Maria Teresa Benedetti:

"The visual result dismayed, it creates a certain oppressive uneasiness, expressed also by the chromatic suggestion; the bright tear above, the lit torches and the angels’ red hair pass suits’ deep green on, a green that we often find in Rossetti’s paintings. I should say, however, we cannot consult an Oracle without a punishment. We should know how to bear the burden of the "Know yourself". Pain and darkness as terrible masks of life, don't have to frighten us. The long trip the soul crosses matters very much, from the bloody and dark depths of the subsoil - bloody struggle and cry of the ancient beast - up to the Light, to the self-recognition of the Spirit, in us. Dante Gabriel Rossetti died the 1882 Easter day".

Rosa Cassino

Dante Gabriele Rossetti (1828-1882)

He is born in London. His father, a man of letters born in Italy (Abruzzo), because of his political ideas approaching the secret society of the Carbonari, he had been forced to leave Italy and look for shelter in the English capital, where he taught - as Italian teacher - in the King's College. Fatherly influence will be remarkable for its precocious poetic and artistic formation. This way, first youth will result marked by some "fatal"meetings: Dante (the suprem poet), Edgar Allan Poe and William Blake, they will be the favorite inhabitants of an intense world, in which the young Rossetti cultivated silent passions feeding a fascinating personality. In fact Rossetti won't study regularly: he will surrender his studies when he’s thirteen to enter the Sass's Drawing Academy and, in 1845, the Antique School of the Royal Academy. One year later, finding inspiration in Goethe’s “Faust” and Poe’s “The Crow”, he will start to give himself to the illustrations of literary texts he loved so much, until the meeting with Holman Hunt - in 1848 - when he will paint “The Childhood of Mary Virgin” in his own study. For that first oil painting, his mother and his sister Christine will serve as models, and the family’s old servant as saint Joachim...

Rosa Cassino