THE SICKLE OF KRONOS
MARTIN P. NILSSON
The sickle, as attribute of Kronos, was considered by certain scholars to be the sickle with which the corn is reaped, and this would be a reliable argument for the opinion that Kronos was from of old a god of the harvest.1 Recently W. Staudacher has advanced the opinion that the harpe, as the Greek word is, is a sickle-shaped sword of Oriental origin, and uses this as an argument for deriving the myth of the separation of Heaven and Earth from the Orient 2. but he has not succeeded in proving his thesis. I have expressed doubt that the harpe of Kronos was a sickle, and said that, it may have been a sword, but I have also called attention to the fact that the harpe is said by Hesiod to be provided with sharp teeth,3 being reminded of certain implements from the Neolithic Age in which sharp chips of flint are inserted in a stick of bone or wood, as in e.g. harpoons.4 The significance of the word [...] is aptly illustrated by two Homeric passages 5; it is used of dogs, which catch their prey: having sharp teeth. That I come back to the subject may be excused because of my overlooking certain archaeological material which presents a much more relevant, in fact striking, comparison and warrants a more certain judgment on the problem.
There is another instrument, much more relevant to the question than the harpoon, which was used in prehistoric as well as in historic times, namely the sickle used for reaping corn.6 Such sickles are very widely distributed in prehistoric times. In the Neolithic Age the sickle was a blade of flint provided with a shaft, or resembled the Egyptian sickles mentioned below. Examples are found in Denmark, in Switzerland, and in Egypt.7 In the Old Kingdom the sickle was a piece of curved wood: on the interior of its curve small sharp flint chips were inserted into the wood. This primitive sickle was still used in the Middle and New Kingdoms too.8 From the Bronze Age sickles made of bronze are found all over Central and Northern Europe. Three were found at Troy by Schliemann, but unfortunately their age cannot
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be determined.9 These sickles were sometimes provided with teeth. The Danish finds are described as follows.10 They are sickle-shaped pieces of bronze with an edge on the concave side. If the implement is well preserved and not too much worn it often has teeth, and sometimes shows traces of filing on one side. These objects cannot be saws, for they have one or more mouldings on one side parallel with the edge; the blade of a saw must be of equal thickness, or it is useless. They are sickles used for reaping corn, and their prototypes were probably made of flint.
To understand why teeth were to the purpose in a reaping instrument we must realise the ancient method of reaping, which was different from ours, and known also from Classical Antiquity. The stalks were collected and grasped with the left hand, and the bundle was cut off near to the ears with the sickle held in the right hand. In such a procedure a toothed instrument was desirable.11 Sickles from the Roman age are preserved in some number; thus, with teeth of various forms, they have been found at Pompeii.12 That they were provided with teeth is known from literature also.13 Unhappily I do not know if any are found in classical Greece, for certain reasons have prevented me since many years from visiting the museums, and such simple finds are little noticed by archaeologists. The Greeks seem not to have de
IOLAUS WITH THE TOOTHED SICKLE.
(After A. B. Cook, Zeus III 796, fig. 597.)
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posited utensils of daily life in tombs.14 As a weapon the harpe is seen in vase paintings in the hands of Herakles, Zeus, and the Pygmies in their combats with, respectively, the Lernaean Hydra, Typhon, and the Cranes. In these representations it is often provided with teeth.15 Teeth are not suitable for an effective weapon, they are taken over from the instrument. Iolaus cuts the snake-bodies of the Hydra as a reaper cuts the stalks of the corn. In other paintings the harpe has the shape of the gardener’s knife, with which we are not concerned here.
No doubt Hesiod understood the harpe as the instrument for reaping corn as I remarked loc. cit. (note 4 above). He uses this word when exhorting the farmer at the beginning of the harvest to whet the sickles, 16 and instead of this word he uses elsewhere the synonymous word drepanon. 17 Thus I think we have a well-founded explanation of the curious epithet of the sickle: 'sharp-toothed ‘. Unfortunately archaeological materials from Greece are wanting to me, but perhaps others, who know the small objects of daily life better than I, can fill the gap. But as the sickle for reaping corn is so widespread since prehistoric times and in the Roman age, and as it is provided with teeth in Greek vase paintings, it seems certain that the epithet ‘ provided with sharp teeth ‘denotes the harpe as the sickle used for reaping corn.
Thus the old opinion that the attribute of Kronos shows him to be an old god of the harvest is proved by well-founded arguments. Why the other well-known myths were associated with him is a problem upon which I will not enter here.18
MARTIN P. NILSSON
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6 A. Oldeberg, Some Contributions to the Earliest History of the Sickle’, Acta archaeologica III (1932), 209
7 Gertrud Caton-Thompson, The Desert Fayoum, London, 1934
14 The sickle given as a prize at the festival of Artemis Orthia at Sparta is rather a gardener’s knife, which also is sickle-shaped.
15 E.g., the teeth appear very clearly on a Corinthian vase, figured by A. B. Cook, Zeus, III 796, fig. 597; Iolaus cuts off one of the bodies of the Hydra with a toothed sickle.
18 I mentioned in Gesch. d. griech. Religion, I 486, n. 2 that Forrer derives the myth of the emasculation of Ouranos from the Hittite myth of Kumarbi. This has been taken up with better arguments by H. Goterbock, Kumarbi Mythen sam churritischen Kronos (Istanbuler Schriften, No. 16), Zurich, 1946, and ‘The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod’, AJA LII (1948), 123; a lengthy review by A. Götze, Journ. of the Amer. Oriental Soc., LXIX (1949), 178.