''The Exaltation of the Flower'' (''L'Exaltation de la Fleur'') is the modern title given to an early

Classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...

marble fragment of a

funerary stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

from the 5th century BCE. It was discovered in 1861 by

Léon Heuzey Léon Heuzey (; December 1, 1831 – February 8, 1922) was a noted French archaeologist and historian. Life and career In 1855 Heuzey went to Greece as a member of the École française d'Athènes, and for the next two years traveled extensively ...

and

Honoré Daumet Pierre Jérôme Honoré Daumet (; 23 October 1826 – 12 December 1911) was a French architect. Biography A student at the Beaux-Arts de Paris under Guillaume-Abel Blouet, Guillaume Abel Blouet, Charles-Félix Saint-Père and Émile Gilbert, he w ...

at a church in

Farsala Farsala (), known in Antiquity as Pharsalos (, ), is a town in southern Thessaly, in Greece. Farsala is located in the southern part of Larissa (regional unit), Larissa regional unit, and is one of its largest settlements. Farsala is an economi ...

Thessaly Thessaly ( ; ; ancient Aeolic Greek#Thessalian, Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic regions of Greece, geographic and modern administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient Thessaly, a ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

.Heuzey, L. (June 1868).
L'exaltation de la fleur, bas-relief grec de style archaïque trouvé à Pharsale
''Journal des savants''. pp. 380–395. . .Heuzey, L.; H. Daumet (1876).
Mission archéologique de Macédoine
'. Volume 1. Paris. pp. 415–417. . Carved in

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

in the

severe style The Severe style, or Early Classical style, was the dominant idiom of Greek sculpture in the period ca. 490 to 450 BCE. It marks the breakdown of the canonical forms of archaic art and the transition to the greatly expanded vocabulary and express ...

, the extant upper fragment of the marble relief stele depicts two women holding what appear to be flowers or other objects. The work is held by the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

museum in the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (inv. Ma 701).

Background

French archaeologist and historian

began working with the

French School at Athens The French School at Athens (, EfA; ''Gallikí Scholí Athinón'') is one of the seventeen foreign archaeological institutes operating in Athens, Greece. History Founded in 1846, the EfA is the oldest foreign institute in Athens. Its early f ...

in Greece at the age of 20 in 1851.Monceaux, Paul (1922)
Éloge funèbre de M. Léon Heuzey, membre de l'Académie
''Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres''. 66 (1): 53–56. . . He made his most famous discovery of that period in the town of

, a city in southern

. In antiquity, the area was named Pharsalos, and became known for the

Battle of Pharsalus The Battle of Pharsalus was the decisive battle of Caesar's Civil War fought on 9 August 48 BC near Pharsalus in Central Greece. Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the Roman Republic under the command of Pompey. ...

in 48 BCE, where

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (12 or 13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caesar's civil wa ...

defeated

Pompey Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey ( ) or Pompey the Great, was a Roman general and statesman who was prominent in the last decades of the Roman Republic. ...

during the

Great Roman Civil War Caesar's civil war (49–45 BC) was a civil war during the late Roman Republic between two factions led by Julius Caesar and Pompey. The main cause of the war was political tensions relating to Caesar's place in the Republic on his expected ret ...

. Heuzey and the architect Honoré Daumet were involved in an official mission to collect objects related to Caesar's campaigns; they also were interested in other artifacts unrelated to their work. In 1861, they found this marble bas-relief embedded in the walls of a church in the neighborhood of Paleo-Loutro in Farsala and named it ''The Exaltation of the Flower''. Heuzey was informed that the stone was originally discovered in a garden, close to another stone that was not recovered. Heuzey purchased the stone and had it sent to the

in Paris. Back in France, Heuzy would become curator of the Louvre, where he would retire in 1908.

Description

A precise description and interpretation of the work has remained elusive since its initial discovery in the 19th century. Scholars agree on some aspects and disagree on others.Louvre Ma 701 (Sculpture)
Perseus Project. Tufts University. . British Greek art scholar

Martin Robertson Charles Martin Robertson (11 September 1911 – 26 December 2004), known as Martin Robertson, was a British classical scholar and poet. He specialised in the art and archaeology of Ancient Greece, and was best known for his 1975 publication, '' ...

notes that both women can be seen wearing the tubular

peplos A peplos () is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by , during the late Archaic Greece, Archaic and Classical Greece, Classical period. It was a long, rectangular cloth with the top edge folded down ab ...

garment common to the Classical period. According to the descriptive text found in the Atlas database of the exhibited works of art at the Louvre, the women also are wearing a ''kekryphalos'', a hairnet in the Greco-Roman hairstyle, and appear to hold a type of flower, perhaps poppy or pomegranate. One of the women in the stele carries what resembles a bag, presumed to be carrying seeds in the interpretation.Fragment de stèle dit "L'Exaltation de la fleur"
Atlas: the database of the exhibited works of art (in French). Musée du Louvre. Retrieved March 25, 2015. .

Analysis

In his 1868 paper, Heuzey argued that the images in the stele suggested the goddesses Persephone (Kore) and Demeter, referring to the cult of Kore and the legend of Demeter found in the

Homeric Hymns The ''Homeric Hymns'' () are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods ...

. French archaeologist and art historian

Maxime Collignon Léon-Maxime Collignon (8 November 1849 in Verdun – 15 October 1917 in Paris) was a French archaeologist who specialized in ancient Greek art and ancient Greek architecture, architecture. Biography From 1868 he studied at the École norma ...

explained, "Heuzey believes that this monument refers to the cultus of Core, daughter of Demeter, a divinity suggesting in Greek legend the ephemeral but incessantly recurring bloom of nature."Collignon, Maxime; John Henry Wright, trans. (1886).
A Manual of Greek Archæology
'. Cassell Publishing Company. pp. 142–143. . French archaeologist

Olivier Rayet Olivier Rayet (23 September 1847, Le Cairou – 19 February 1887, Paris) was a French archaeologist. From 1866 he studied geography and ancient history at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he was a pupil of Ernest Desjardins, hi ...

(1847–1887) disagreed with the interpretation Heuzy offered. While Heuzey's perspective still has adherents, it has largely fallen out of favor among art historians. According to the

Perseus Project The Perseus Digital Library, formerly known as the Perseus Project, is a free-access digital library founded by Gregory Crane in 1987 and hosted by the Department of Classical Studies of Tufts University. One of the pioneers of digital libraries, ...

at Tufts University, "It is now generally agreed ... that the figures represented are mortals rather than goddesses." German archaeologist

Heinrich Brunn Heinrich Brunn, since 1882 Ritter von Brunn (23 January 1822, Wörlitz, Anhalt-Dessau – 23 July 1894, Josephstal near Schliersee, Upper Bavaria) was a German archaeologist. He was known for taking a scientific approach in his investigations ...

believed the decorative qualities of the Pharsalos stele originated in

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

. Following this line of reasoning, Scottish archaeologist

Alexander Stuart Murray Alexander Stuart Murray, FBA (8 January 1841March 1904) was a Scottish archaeologist. He was known for excavations on Cyprus. Life Murray was born at Arbroath, and educated there, at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and at the Universities of ...

compared the facial features of the stele, such as the eyes, lips, and nose, to similar facial features found in the

Harpy Tomb The Harpy Tomb is a marble chamber from a pillar tomb that stands in the abandoned city of Xanthos, capital of ancient Lycia, a region of southwestern Anatolia in what is now Turkey. Built in the Persian Achaemenid Empire, and dating to appro ...

(480–470 BCE) relief from Xanthos in Lycia.Murray, Alexander Stuart (1880).
A History of Greek Sculpture: From the earliest times down to the age of Pheidias
'. London: John Murray. pp. 289–291. . American curator Edward Robinson notes the influence of the Ionic schools on this and other artwork from ancient Aeolia, now known as Thessaly: "It is now a question whether these works were done by local artists under this influence, or by Ionic artists who may have established themselves in Thessaly, as they did in other parts of Greece."Robinson, Edward (1896)
Catalogue of Casts Part III: Greek and Roman Sculpture
Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 32. . The Ionian style's influence also may be seen in the depiction of the hair-net worn by the women in the relief. French scholar

Charles Picard Charles Picard (7 June 1883 – 15 December 1965) was a prominent Classical archaeologist and historian of ancient Greek art. He is best known for his multi-volume, monumental survey, ''Manuel d'archéologie grecque: La sculpture.'' Volume I (7 ...

(1883–1965) argued that if the stele fragments were reconstructed,A scanned image hosted by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne extrapolates the reconstruction of the missing bottom fragment. It is availabl
here
For the main object record, se
here
the bottom missing fragment would have shown the figure on the left standing, and the one on the right seated:

Neither can the oblique trend of the drapery, belt-high in the silhouette (in profile) of the elder, be explained … without accepting that she was seated, her left forearm resting on her thigh. Only thus could the dice be handled. Only thus, moreover, can so extreme a slope in the pleats coming away from the shoulder, pleats that would have to fall vertically in a non-seated figure, become understandable. On the right, let it not be readily forgotten that all the pleats turn strongly forward, so that they pass the centerline of the stele, marked by the high, triumphant flower and the mingled group of hands. For the maiden on the left, although the cascade of pleats is generally much more direct—as appropriate to a standing posture—some of them, curiously arched, turn forward as well, for example at the left armhole. They can scarcely be understood without again invoking the supporting effect produced by the leg of the seated woman. The folds of Kore’s sleeve, which in 1939 I drew a little too short in the descent, carry on to Demeter’s lap, where they spread out.

German classical archaeologist

Roland Hampe Roland Hampe (2 December 1908 - 23 January 1981) was a German classical archaeologist. From 1959-1975 he was a professor at Heidelberg University.Hölscher, Tonio.Hampe, Roland" '' Brill's New Pauly Supplements'' I - Volume 6 : History of classica ...

(1908–1981) disagreed with Picard's hypothesis, saying that the size of the stele should demonstrate that both women were standing, not sitting. Le exaltation de la fleur.jpg, ''Mission Archéologique de Macédoine'' (1876), plate 23, drawn by Honoré Daumet LéonHeuzey.jpg, Léon Heuzey c. 1883

Flowers, fungi, or bones

It is generally agreed that the plants depicted in the stele fragment are either poppies or pomegranate flowers, however, classical archaeologists and historians of ancient Greek art discuss different species in the literature: German scholar

Ernst Langlotz Ernst Langlotz (6 July 1895, in Ronneburg – 4 June 1978, in Bonn) was a German classical archaeologist and art historian, who specialized in Greek sculpture of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. He studied classical archaeology, philology and ...

(1895–1978) thought that the women were holding a type of rose; Picard recognizes the symbolism of Demeter and Kore and identifies the flowers as a species of poppy, possibly the

opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum'', commonly known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Papaveraceae. It is the species of plant from which both opium and poppy seeds are derived and is also a valuable orname ...

, the

Oriental poppy ''Papaver orientale'', the Oriental poppy, is a perennial flowering plant native to the Caucasus, northeastern Turkey, and northern Iran. Oriental poppies grow a mound of leaves that are hairy and finely dissected in spring. They gather energy ...

, or the Iranian poppy.Picard, Charles. (1953)
Die Stele aus Pharsalos im Louvre by Roland Hampe
''Gnomon'', 25 (2): 82–85. . Careful examination of the thick 'stems' fails to resemble that of the flowers. German scholar

Eugen Petersen Eugen Adolf Hermann Petersen (16 August 1836 in Heiligenhafen – 14 December 1919 in Hamburg) was a German classical archaeologist and classical philologist, philologist. He studied classical philology at the universities of University of Ki ...

(1837–1919) proposed that the figures were holding knucklebones (

talus bone The talus (; Latin for ankle or ankle bone; : tali), talus bone, astragalus (), or ankle bone is one of the group of Foot#Structure, foot bones known as the tarsus (skeleton), tarsus. The tarsus forms the lower part of the ankle joint. It transmit ...

s from goats or sheep used to play the game of jacks) in their left hand and roses in the right hand; Hampe argues that the stele depicts only knucklebones, not flowers.De Ruyt, Franz. (1952)
Roland Hampe, Die Stele aus Pharsalos im Louvre
''L'antiquité classique'', 21 (2): 544. . In 1911, Greek scholar and archaeologist Rufus B. Richardson, formerly of the

American School of Classical Studies at Athens The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA; ) is one of 19 foreign archaeological institutes in Athens, Greece. It is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). CAORC is a private not-for-profit federat ...

, observed that what was being described as flowers in the relief, looked similar to mushrooms.Richardson, Rufus Byam (1911).
A History of Greek Sculpture
'. American Book Company. pp. 73, 96. . English classicist

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were b ...

and Italian ethnobotanist

Giorgio Samorini Giorgio Samorini (born 1957 in Bologna, Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Medit ...

both have referred to the fragment as evidence for the

entheogen hypothesis Entheogens are psychoactive substances used in spiritual and religious contexts to induce altered states of consciousness. Hallucinogens such as the psilocybin found in so-called "magic" mushrooms have been used in sacred contexts since ancient ...

, speculating that the significant items depicted in the work are a type of

psychoactive mushroom A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or another food source. ''Toadstool'' generally refers to a poisonous mushroom. The standard for the name "mushroom" is t ...

that was used in the

Eleusinian Mysteries The Eleusinian Mysteries () were initiations held every year for the Cult (religious practice), cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are considered the "most famous of the secret rel ...

.Samorini, Giorgio (1998)
The Pharsalus Bas-Relief and the Eleusinian Mysteries
''The Entheogen Review'', 7(2): 60–63. . Graves even featured the image as the cover of one edition of ''

The Greek Myths ''The Greek Myths'' (1955) is a mythography, a compendium of Greek mythology, with comments and analyses, by the poet and writer Robert Graves. Many editions of the book separate it into two volumes. Abridged editions of the work contain only ...

'', noting that although it might be depicted in artwork, it would remain unnamed in texts because of its sacredness. American classicist

Carl A. P. Ruck Carl Anton Paul Ruck (born December 8, 1935, Bridgeport, Connecticut) is a professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. He received his B.A. at Yale University, his M.A. at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. at Harvar ...

has made similar arguments. Although the entheogen hypothesis is controversial and generally rejected by mainstream scholarship,Samorini (1998) writes: "This bas-relief takes us to the very heart of the 'Eleusinian question,' its mysteries, and the controversial issue of the Eleusinian entheogen’s psychopharmacology. Researchers have recently cast doubts on and rejected the hypothesis put forward by Wasson, Hofmann & Ruck in 1978 that presents ergot and its visionary alkaloids as the psycho-pharmacological key to the Eleusinian Mysteries..." in a review of Hampe's ''Die Stele aus Pharsalos im Louvre'' (1951), Picard notes that "one may be increasingly reminded that Pharsalos was indeed an Eleusinian center".

Alternate titles

The work is referred to by many different titles in contemporary literature. These include: *Adoration of the Flower *Demeter and Kore Exalting the Flower *Demeter and Persephone *The Elevation of the Flower *Maidens Enjoying Flowers *Pharsalos Bas-Relief Ruck, Carl A. P. (2006). ''Sacred Mushrooms: Secrets of Eleusis''. Ronin Publishing. p. 49. . . *Pharsalos relief *Relief of Demeter and Kore *Stele of Pharsalos *Stele of the Two Sisters *The Uplifting of the Flower Vitry, Paul (1922). ''The Louvre Museum''. Morancé. p. 62. .

Notes

References

External links

Entry in the Louvre collection database (inv. Ma 701)
(French) {{DEFAULTSORT:Exaltation of the Flower, The Funerary steles 5th-century BC Greek sculptures Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the Louvre Marble reliefs 1861 archaeological discoveries Flowers in culture Greek artifacts outside Greece Sculptures of women in Paris Marble sculptures in France Reliefs in France Archaeological discoveries in Thessaly