#Anatolian greeks

[gemsofgreece]

Greek embroidered scarf from Nigde of Cappadocia (Turkey).

Photo: Studio Kominis

Source: lykeionellinidon

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I used to live in Konstantinoupoli, my family had survived every genocide and pogrom until we had to flee after the 2016 coup attempt. Our house was in our family for many generations. Once when i was a kid, i layed under the coffee table and found my mom and her siblings names written there, so i added mine, and so did my siblings.

There is a new priest in our local greek church, and he found my great great grandfathers journal stored somewhere there (it dates 1912-1923), after reading it the priest decided that he wants to return it to my family, in the journal, the priest found the adress and visited the home to find the turkish family that now lived there. The family told them how long they live here, how the came to acquire the house, and that they know that a greek family lived there before them because their son had found greek letters under the table. The priest asked to take a look at them, and saw the names and matched some of them with the ones in the journals ( we are lucky we pass on our first names religiously in the family).

The church the priest belings to, that we once belinged to too, is right next to a synagogue (the place i grew up was amazing all the religious buildings are in one block, so we the jews and the armenians were extremly tight, as the 'others'). The priest spoke to the rabbi about this, and the rabbi from our home and first names remembered the surname the family survives as today and the city we had said we will move in.

Despite us not being pontiacs, the priest talks with our local pontiac community group, hoping that they will help fellow anatolians, and gives the info he has gathered about us. And they found us indeed! We came into contact with the priest that told this whole tail to our grandma, she now has her grandfathers journal where he talks about how he and his family managed to survive the genocide and stay in their land. All my family cant shut up about it. Its been an emotional month for us since we started reading the journal and how it came to our possetion again. My grandma said somehow still managed to scold her middle aged children plus us for ruining 'her table'. Not sure why i tell this, sorry for the long text, i just wanted to keep sharing this story with people, here in mainland there seems to be the idea that all modern anatolians are only distantly related to the refugees, but our community is still very alive and kicking, and pulling this kind of bullshit to keep surviving our legacies.

That's such a great story! 😭 It made my whole night when I read it, having at least one house my refugee family never returned to. It sounds like a fairlytale - for the positive things, like the family names written on the table, how people tried to find you because of this this little thing, and different communities interacting so that you get this journal!

No matter where we are, we are thriving! Our families have survived so much and we are living proof of their endurance! I'm so happy for you, guys!

(Of couuuurse the yaya scolding was inevitable 😂)

[wordsmithic]

Cultural and Ethnic groups of Greece by c.minoa

[divineintervention-comics]

ariadne, goddess of labyrinths and puzzles, and dionysus, god of wine and insanity

character reference sheets

more concept art coming out along side comic progress

[gingermintpepper]

First of all idk if anyone has told you but I love when you ramble in your tags. Like same. I love when people do that.

Secondly that Leto and Hera post goes hard and idk if you have checked the op's tags too because it goes harder. Like never knew they had this much tension wtf but Leto really is That Girl.

Thank you so much! What are tags for if not rambling excessively about thoughts I had on a post but could not structure into a coherent form LOL

And I hadn't originally checked the OP's tags but after I got this in my inbox I rushed over to check and YESSSS OP GETS IT OP GETS IT!!! In general, Leto is someone who is overlooked a lot in mythology - she's put in the same general category as a lot of Zeus' affairs where she exists to be pretty and tragic and innocent in contrast to Hera's imposingness and strict focus on order and face but considering Leto's lineage, that's simply not true. Like OP pointed out, if there is anyone who matches Hera power for power, both in terms of divine identity and regard, it's Leto. Zeus' regard and respect of her (and by extension, his love of her) I feel are extensions of that importance of Leto from a cosmic perspective. Leto, after all, was still a daughter of Coeus and Phoebe, the Titans of the heavenly and earthly centers of knowledge.

So really, all things considered, it makes sense that Leto is That Girl because only That Girl could birth and raise Him and Her respectively, let's be so for real, right now.

[pieandhotdogs]

Hail, Lord Attis, Cybele’s slain consort! We mourn your broken body, and eagerly await your resurrection. Grant us plentiful renewal and an enduring bounty, O Evergreen God. Hail, Lord Attis, son of the Magna Mater.

It was the duty of the dendrophori to cut down a pine tree in the woods and bear it with due pomp to the temple of Cybele. The perennial pine was a natural embodiment of Attis, the spirit of vegetation. According to legend, it was under a pine tree that he had mutilated himself and died. He had himself been transmuted into a pine tree and carried in this form into the cave of Cybele where the goddess mothered her dead lover; hence the pine tree borne by the dendrophori into the temple of Cybele was regarded as the corpse of Attis dead and treated with divine honors.

THE REGENERATIVE RITES OF THE GREAT MOTHER from Pagan Regeneration, by Harold R. Willoughby, [1929]

[casiavium]

I'm playing Hades for the first time (got it for free through a friend) and it's really fun! I didn't buy it because I didn't think I would like the gameplay but I'm addicted now lol. The only retelling of a Hades/Persephone dynamic that I actually like. The mythology is also pretty good and I'm trying not to classics degree the fun out of it. But why is Dionysus there and not Apollo

[thegodwhocums]

[...P]rior to 4500 B.C. (the onset of the Bronze Age), widespread cultural uniformity throughout Europe and Western Asia centered on the worship of a great-goddess figure, first in the form of a Mistress of Wild Animals (often depicted as androgynous or hermaphroditic) and later, after the invention of agriculture, in the form of a Grain Goddess. Commonly associated with this Great Goddess, especially after 7000 B.C., was a subordinate male deity, often depicted in the form of a bull or a horned figure.

Arthur Evans, “The God of Ecstasy: Sex Roles and the Madness of Dionysos,” 1988

[kallistcs]

Modern reincarnation-verse Paris plays the oud and a replication of an ancient lyre.

(He's got three; a phorminx if he's doing some Youtube video/Tiktok whatever, a straight up swan-necked Mycenaean-era style big lyre and an asymmetrical Hittite lyre. The last two he's only been able to purchase rather recently, after reconciling with his parents. He got the phorminx as a teen, before the mild estrangement when he went off to university.)

When he otherwise "professionally" performs he's "just" a singer, because he's not found any other instruments that's otherwise usually used in modern music industry performances that he actually likes or cares to play.

[indo-europeans]

from perkunos to indra & zeus

Anatolian languages:

tarhuan, tarhunna, tarhunnaradu - hittite (linked w bull in anatolia)

tarhu, tarhunz, tarhunta, tarhuwant - luwian

tarhuwanta - palaic

trqqas - lycian

taru - hattian

teshub - hurrian

turvant - sanskrit cognate for indra?

aleppo - 

hadad - mesopotamia?

iskur - sumeria?

zeus - greek

indra - vedic

trokondas - rome

jupiter dolichenus  - armenian/roman

- associated with sky, weather, lightning, thunder, battlefield, commander, mountains, helpful, slaying enemies with an axe, vanquishing, decided whether would be drought and famine or fertile fields and good harvests, thunderbolt becomes axe

religious treatment

- "Weather god of the thunderbolt, glow on me like the moonlight, shine over me like the son god of heaven!" - KUB 6.45 iii 68-70, Hittite king Muwatalli II’s personal god who he referred to as “my lord, king of heaven” (associated with Anatolia’s bulls instead of horses)

- Hittite king Warpalawas II made rock relief and animals were sacrificed to him 

- Luwian magic rituals intended to bring rain or heal the sick

- chief god of the luwians, whose chariot was pulled by horses. later depicted standing on a bull.

- cows + sheep were sacrificed to him for grain + wine to grow 

- in curses, he was called upon to “smash enemies with his axe” and gave the king royal power, courage and marched him in battle - in late Luwian texts

- Pegasus, Greek winged horse which carries Zeus’ thunderbolt name comes from one of his epithets piḫaššašši meaning “of the thunderblot”

cult sites

- Aleppo, Syria, major city of the weather god - conquered by Hittite king Suppiluluima I who installed his son Telipinu as priest-king. Temple for weather god was modified to conform to Hittite cult

snake/dragon slayer myth near Mount Kasios in Syria & Corycus in Turkey

- Illuyanka in Hittite

- Hedammu in Hurrian

- Typhon in Greek (taken from Cilicia)

- Naga in Sanskrit

[gemsofgreece]

Yoúlika Skafidá (Greek actress) can step on me with this Greek folk attire from 19th century Iconium of Asia Minor (now Konya, Turkey). From the glorious project Raiment of the Soul by photographer Vangelis Kyris in collaboration with the National Historical Museum of Greece. See more posts from this project x, x, x, x and x .

[alatismeni-theitsa]

wrt to the ask before this about Greek nationalism, I feel so, sooooo out of the loop in terms of having a connection to Greece like that because my dad, grandparents, and both sides of their entire family are from Istanbul/Cappadocia and left in the 60s for Canada, rather than to Greece with the rest of the 1920s population exchange. No one in my direct family has ever lived in Greece!!! My cousins' grandparents were exchanged so their memories are pretty typically Greek (to me) but my dad/grandparents NEVER lived in Greece as adults, never had Greek citizenship even(!!!), despite being Greek enough to be targets of rising Turkish nationalism. so I'd be at diaspora events and people were like yeah we go to Athens every other summer, the iiiiiiiiiiislands, etc. and I'm like uh....so what's up with Prinkipos :D and no one could relate. i'm also gay so between the not!Greek-ing correctly and the not!religiously accepted, it's kind of very awful :)

many Greeks in Greece 🤝 you: not traveling outside our country of residence and only seeing the Greek islands on posters + not accepted by the religion + feeling strangers to their Greekness/tradition (because of modernization and Americanisation)

Bonus round:

many Greeks in Greece 🤝 you: not having visited the places our family were expelled from

hope that made you feel right at home.....? /j 😂

(I assume you didn't travel there by the ask's wording. Please correct me if I am wrong)

It could be worth visiting north Greece if you can. Since many cities there have 70-80% descendants of Anatolian immigrants, you might feel some connection and build something on it for your identity.

I understand that even Greeks in Greece are at least united by a few more things (hatred for Koulis let's say) and don't face the same identity crisis as you. Yours doesn't sound like a nice predicament to be when you are searching for your identity and not even "your community" can provide a sense of belonging :/ So you are kinda "on the air", as we say here.

Your family is also more "Greek Anatolian" (incl. East Thrace) than "Greek from the mainland/islands" or "Greek from Cyprus", hence that makes you a minority from what I gather. Which is kinda similar to Anatolian Greeks coming to the mainland in 1920 and finding themselves among people they couldn't relate to in many ways. Only you are experiencing it on veeery foreign soil a few generations later, so extra suffering points for that 😬

The good thing is, the Anatolian Greeks made it. They built a future out of nothing in an environment that called them "Turk seeds", and their children lacked nothing in education and upholding Greekness compared to the rest of Greece. Their offspring is also rumored to be the most courteous, generous, cosmopolitan and laid-back people in the country. I don't think it has so much to do with the soil the Anatolian Greeks went after their expulsion because with these qualities you have the potential to excel anywhere. I trust there were some of these good elements in your upbringing (even subconsciously). So you will, too, shine with your type of Greekness and with whatever you have in your arsenal, even when your environment looks estranging.

[covenawhite66]

It is believed that the Greek term Asia (Ἀσία) arose from Aswiya/Assuwa. This has been argued by some as a record of an offering made to a foreign deity holding a place of worship in Messenia, perhaps in connection with the associated women of Aswiya now working for Pylos.

A significant number of deities are attested on Mycenaean tablets, usually in contexts of dedication of sacrifices and goods. Some of these deities are known to us from the 1st millennium BC, while others are specifically Mycenaean.

Assuwa is a geographical term used in Hittite documents for a region in Western Anatolia (Asia Minor), most famously it was used as political term to describe the “Assuwan Confederacy” formed by 22 states against the Hittite king Tudhaliya I/II.

One of the most frequent Mycenaean theonyms is "Potnia" which probably represents more than one female deity, heirs of the Great Mother. Thus we have Potnia daburinthoyo (lady of the labyrinth), Potnia Aswija (lady of Asia), Sitopotnia (lady of grain), Potnia hikkweia (lady of horses). Kwerasia (Therasia) must be equated with Potnia of beasts (lady of wild beasts), while Thehia Mater (Divine Mother or Mother of the gods) must also belong to the same religious sphere.

[kaleidoscope1967eyes]

FUCKING HELL YEAH PASTITSIO THAT SHIT IS BALLER AF

BUT MAKING IT WAS VERY STRESSFUL AND IT MADE ME CRY

Dan and I bought a thing called “long ziti” from the local Weird Bargain Store, largely as a joke, but…. I have never had a more unsettling pasta experience in my life. They wouldn’t bend enough to cook from top to bottom simultaneously, and while they were cooking boiling water kept spouting out from the tops of them out of the pot, like a boiling pipe organ. Then they were so long and floppy and hoselike that we couldn’t pick them up with anything other than tongs, and then they were so long and unwieldy that it was basically impossible to sauce them without them all slithering out of the bowl like wet snakes. They then proceeded to cool down almost completely within the the seconds it took to walk to the living room. Eating them was like eating a bowl full half melted drinking straws.

[tsubasaclones]

it's possible they got the number from a dna test because you don't get an even 25% from each grandparent etc like you get 50 from each parent but that 50 is randomly selected from all of their dna or whatever