Xoanon

"Plank figure" of chalk, Early Cypriot III to Middle Cypriot I, 1900-1800 BCE in the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens).

A xoanon (/ˈz.ənɒn/ ,[1] Greek: ξόανον; plural: Greek: ξόανα xoana, from the verb Greek: ξέειν, xeein, to carve or scrape [wood][2]) was a wooden cult image of Archaic Greece. Classical Greeks associated such cult objects, whether aniconic or effigy, with the legendary Daedalus. Many such cult images were preserved into historical times, though none are known to have survived to the modern day, except as copies in stone or marble. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias described numerous xoana in his Description of Greece, notably the image of Hera in her temple at Samos. "The statue of the Samian Hera, as Aethilos [sic][a] says, was a wooden beam at first, but afterwards, when Prokles was ruler, it was humanized in form".[3] In Pausanias' travels he never mentions seeing a xoanon of a "mortal man".

  1. ^ "xoanon". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d. Retrieved 2014-11-13.
  2. ^ Bennett, Florence M. (January 1917). "A study of the word ΞΟΑΝΟΝ". American Journal of Archaeology. 21 (1): 8–21. doi:10.2307/497155. JSTOR 497155. S2CID 193009224. Bennett appends a list of the sixty-six xoana mentioned by Pausanias, who sometimes uses the phrase xylon agalma, "sculptured image of wood"
  3. ^ Clement of Alexandria. Protrepticus. 40, 41, cited in Stewart.


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