A]lmost 20 years in the making, this is a remarkable book. It is easy to believe that al1 anyone has ever wanted to know about priestesses in the ancient Greek world is contained here. . . . Connelly's achievement is to put between two covers of an attractive book a storehouse of data." ---Robin Osborne, Cambridge Archaeological Journal T]his book is useful for its wide-ranging collection of evidence, good photographs, and some observations. It gives a good stimulus to recognize the public visibility of priestesses."—Eva Stehle, Journal of Religion

It was common for the priestesses to be commemorated in public portrait statues at the temple in which they served, as well as elaborate public state funerals. [14] Career [ edit ]The Word [Λόγος] was the real light that gives light to everyone; he was coming into the world. He was in the world that had come into being through him, and the world did not recognize him. He came into his own and his own people did not accept him. But to those who did accept him he gave the power to become children of God. (John 1:9-12a) In this sphere of polis life the priestess clearly played a leading and fundamental role. This makes it all the more astonishing that Joan Breton Connely's Portrait of a Priestess is, as she rightly claims, the first full-length work to take the Greek priestess specifically as its subject. . . . Connelly has run down inscriptions—honorific, funerary, financial, or cult-related—all over the Mediterranean. She has studied a plethora of statues and vase paintings in collections from Samos to St. Petersburg, from Messene to Munich, from Thebes to Toledo. Her indexes of monuments and inscriptions testify to the prodigious amount of work that has gone into this volume. . . . Portrait of a Priestess is a remarkable triumph against heavy odds."—Peter Green, New York Review of Books T]his book is useful for its wide-ranging collection of evidence, good photographs, and some observations. It gives a good stimulus to recognize the public visibility of priestesses." ---Eva Stehle, Journal of Religion Hiereiai (singular: hiereia) was the title of the female priesthood or priestesses in ancient Greek religion, being the equivalent of the male title Hierei. Ancient Greece had a number of different offices in charge of worship of gods and goddesses, and both women and men functioned as priests. While there were local variations depending on cult, the Hiereiai had many similarities across ancient Greece. Normally, their office related only to a specific sanctuary or Greek temple.

Until Joan Breton Connelly's wonderful volume, Portrait of a Priestess, was published the prominent role of Greek priestesses in ancient Greek society was ignored, or even denied, by most (male) commentators. . . . Her compelling book challenges our assumptions about the role of priestesses, and more generally the role of women, in a far-off world that retains the fascination of countless readers." After an introduction outlining theoretical and methodological issues, Connelly takes the reader along women’s path through priesthood, covering the preparation for the office, its requirements, and the manner of its acquisition; the performance of priestly duties, including costuming, the use of ritual implements, and the execution of ritual; the exercise of priestly privilege and authority; and the commemoration of priestesses after death. One chapter focuses on the female priesthoods for which we have the most evidence: Athena Polias at Athens, Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, Hera at Argos, and Apollo at Delphi. A fascinating coda to the book looks at the evidence for the leadership roles of women in the early Christian church and suggests comparisons with the role of the Greek priestess. Fragments of pottery vessels in the shape used for dedications to Artemis from the late 5th century, called krateriskoi, which have been excavated in the sanctuary provide visual evidence for the ritual of “playing the bear.” They show girls naked or wearing short tunics as they dance, run, or process to an altar. They often hold wreathes or torches, and the occasional presence of a palm tree points to the worship of Artemis. Some feature bear imagery, depicting either an adult wearing a bear mask or a bear chasing a girl toward an altar. In addition to the ritual activities of girls, older women appear to help to prepare the girls for their ritual activities, perhaps their mothers, as well as one or more priestesses. The rituals may have culminated in the shedding of a saffron garment to mark the final stage of the transition. Scholars have interpreted these activities as a rite of passage that marked the physical maturation of girls and prepared them for marriage by reinforcing their identification with animals in need of domestication. 3 Women also made dedications of clothing to Artemis at Brauron after childbirth, in celebration of a successful labor and delivery. These offerings are recorded in inscriptions which have been excavated from the Brauroneion branch at Athens. From the late 5th and mostly 4th centuries bce, these inscriptions yield valuable insights into the types of votive offerings, including garments and jewelry, accomplished by women. Since only the first names of the women are usually recorded, without the names of fathers or husbands, it is likely that they acted on their own, without the oversight of a male family member. Another problem is that Connelly is extraordinarily broad in defining her subject matter. As she notes in her introduction (6), she includes “examples of girls, maidens, and women who are not, strictly speaking, priestesses, but whose engagement in cult activity sheds light on the broader system within which priestesses functioned.” I am concerned, however, that the inclusion of a wide variety of female “cult agents” obscures significant differences in their respective levels of authority, power, and responsibility. Connelly considers such widely disparate women as the kanephoroi, who carried baskets in religious processions, and the Pythia, who gave prophecies at Delphi to representatives from city-states throughout the Greek world. The respective positions of these women in the hierarchy of Greek cult were considerably different, and neither of them are what one would traditionally term a “priestess.” The kanephoros is a cult attendant and the Pythia a prophetess. To treat them both in a study of the Greek priestess may be broadening the category to such an extent that it no longer has meaning. The problem with the breadth of Connelly’s approach is particularly apparent in her treatment of the visual evidence. A significant number of the representations that Connelly discusses could be understood as either priestesses or female worshippers performing ritual actions. Because Greek religion permitted anyone to perform cultic actions such as libation or sacrifice on his or her own behalf, in the absence of further context it is often difficult to determine whether a particular representation shows a priestess acting for others, such as the state, or a female worshipper acting for herself or family members, a distinction highly significant for determining the level of women’s cultic agency in ancient Greece.The reason supporting this practice turns out to be as simple and logical as could be: a male divinity ought to be served by male priests, while a female divinity, by female priests. Connelly covers all aspects of priestesses in the ancient Greek world in ten thorough chapters accompanied by a rich selection of glossy photographs of cultic objects depicting priestesses going about performing the duties of their office, in ceremonial processions, sacrifices, benedictions and the like. Thus, descriptions of their recruitment and typical duties, depending on degree of initiation. The well-known institution of the college of Vestal virgins in Rome, who took a thirty-year vow of celibacy, saddles us moderns with a somewhat misleading portrait of what priestesses would have been like across the rest of the Mediterranean world. Indeed girls as young as nine would be inducted into service at the temples but their virginity was temporary and once the young women had concluded their delimited term, returned to secular life and married, they could become eligible to resume office as priestesses in more senior positions appropriate to a matron or to an elderly widow. Another theme Connelly is concerned to draw out is that of the social significance of women’s priestly functions having to do with the education of the young in girls’ choruses, protection of the city’s fortunes by placating the goddess and winning her favor etc. Far from looking down on women’s integral role as priestesses in the religious culture of the polis, Greek society memorialized them by erecting monuments and statues (as we know from their inscriptions) and often accorded them civic recognition and honors, such as the right to be seated in the front row of the amphitheater. Connelly's landmark study is a must-read for any scholar of ancient religion, art, or gender studies." ---Laurie A. Kilker, Religion Journal