Pomegranate

1. The Primordial Pomegranate: The Fruit in Myth

But secretly he slipped into my mouth a seed from a pomegranate, that honey-sweet food, and forced me, made me taste it against my will.

Homeric hymn to Demeter, 7th–6th century BC

Ancient Greece

Our story begins in the timeless realm of myth, through which people inspired by the pomegranate have composed fantastical accounts featuring the fruit. The pomegranate came to be an important figure in the literary lore passed down in both Eastern and Western cultures. Acting as a symbol of fecundity in both traditions, the pomegranate shows the dual nature of fertility, sometimes offering life, but also bringing about death.

The quotation at the beginning of this chapter is from one of the best-known stories about the pomegranate that comes to us from the classical world. This myth revolves around Persephone, the daughter of the Greek goddess of agriculture, Demeter. Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, the god of the dead, and taken to the underworld to be his wife and queen. Demeter, overwrought by her daughter’s untimely descent into the land of the dead, renders the earth barren, destroying all of its vegetation. This in turn causes mankind to starve, and thus Zeus intervenes and demands that Hades return Persephone. Hades, unwilling to give up his new bride completely, tempts her with some pomegranate seeds. Although Persephone is released, because she tasted the food of the underworld, she is required to spend a third of each year there. She is permitted to spend the rest of the year with the other gods above. This myth was used by its classical audience as an explanation for the changing of the seasons: the portion of the year when Persephone was absent was winter, when Demeter once again stripped the earth of life and went into mourning. Persephone’s resurrection came in the springtime, marked by rebirth in the natural world.

A mystery religion devoted to Demeter and her daughter, centred on the site of Eleusis in Attica, seems to have promoted the idea of a pleasant existence after death for initiates. Ancient sources are quiet about what secret rituals occurred there, but it is speculated that a re-enactment of the myth took place, which probably required initiates to eat or drink from a pomegranate. The pomegranate in the Persephone myth symbolizes female fertility, as well as the loss of virginity that comes with the consummation of marriage, evoked by both its red stains and its rich seeds. Imagery of the fruit functions as a reminder of what it is to be a woman, the red seeds that spill from the pomegranate replicating the blood of the menstrual cycle. Greek medicine in fact prescribed pomegranate juice as a way of stopping menstrual bleeding.[1]

The woman’s monthly bleeding was seen as her equivalent of the man’s fighting on the battlefield as a warrior, and thus the pomegranate was an attribute of the martial virgin goddess Athena, the protectress of young Athenian girls of a marriageable age. The Temple of Athena Nike atop the Acropolis housed a wooden cult statue that has long since been lost to decay, which depicted Athena with a pomegranate in her right hand (signifying the female battle), and a helmet in her left (the male battle).[2]

Athena is likewise represented with the pomegranate on several different ancient coins from Side in Pamphylia (on the southern Mediterranean coast of what is now Turkey). As well as giving its name to a place, side is one of the ancient Greek words for pomegranate, and was also personified as the name of the wife of Orion. It is thought that the wedding of Orion to Side is a mythological explanation for the ripening of autumnal fruit, which occurs during the time of year when the Orion constellation can be seen in the night sky. Not all goes well for the happy couple, however, as Side commits a grave act of arrogance, comparing her ornamental beauty with that of the queen of the gods, Hera. Side, for punishment, is sent to the underworld for eternity, hence the association between the pomegranate and that place. Another tradition refers to Side as a young virgin who commits suicide on her mother’s grave in order to avoid being raped by her father. Her blood gives birth to a pomegranate tree.

As a result of Hera’s involvement in the myth of Side, she is often represented holding a pomegranate. One such representation was created by the sculptural master Polykleitos at Argos in the fifth century BC. Being made of ivory and gold, the sculpture did not survive antiquity, but sources tell us that in one of her hands Hera held a pomegranate as a globus cruciger. Pausanias, who saw the chryselephantine statue, writes: ‘About the pomegranate I must say nothing, for its story is somewhat of a holy mystery.[3] This suggests that there existed a secret cult to Hera, requiring initiation, which revolved around the pomegranate, probably in connection with the Hera and Side myth. An important sanctuary to Hera is located in southern Italy at the Greek settlement of Paestum, where a chapel now stands to Madonna del Granato (Our Lady of the Pomegranate). The archaeologist Helmut Kyrieleis has noted that Mary, ‘by virtue of her epithet and the attribute of a pomegranate must be the Christian successor of the ancient Greek goddess Hera’.[4] The pomegranate that emphasized the fertility and domestic role of the ancient Greek mother of the gods thus came to be adopted by the virgin mother of the Christian God.

But the pomegranate in Greek myth wasn’t just a symbol of fertility in the feminine sense. In ancient Greek society, a woman’s body was traditionally seen as an empty vessel that needed to be filled by a man. A son was said to be a closer blood relation to his father, who planted his seed, than to his mother, who is simply the soil in which it was sown.[5] Thus it was appropriate that the creation of the pomegranate plant, with its ever-fertile seeds, should be explained in masculine terms. The first pomegranate was consequently said to have been created by Aphrodite from the blood of her dying mortal lover Adonis.[6] The fruit was one of the symbols of the sexually powerful Aphrodite, the goddess said to have first planted the pomegranate on the island of Cyprus. The fruit is often linked with depictions of Aphrodite, as on an Etruscan bronze mirror of 300 BC engraved with an image of the goddess holding a pomegranate-topped sceptre. The depiction of immortal figures on Etruscan mirrors is common, and an individual who used such a mirror would see the divine image of perfection imposed over his/her own reflection.

Adonis was not the only male figure from whose blood the pomegranate was perceived to have resulted. The same motif appeared in the myth surrounding the Phrygian great mother goddess, Cybele. Cybele is thought to derive from an earlier Hittite goddess named Kubaba, who in representations from the ninth to eight century BC is shown holding a pomegranate in one of her hands and a mirror in the other. Her tale begins with the birth of a wild man named Agdestis, who wreaks havoc among gods and mortals alike. The god of wine, Dionysus, decides to intervene and spikes the water fountain where Agdestis comes to drink. A drunken Agdestis falls into slumber, after which Dionysus uses a rope to bind his feet and makes a vine grow over his genitals. When Agdestis arises, stumbling to his feet in his hungover state, his genitals are ripped from his body by the entwined plant. From the blood that is spilled from his groin (replicating semen) onto the earth, a pomegranate tree grows. The story continues that a river nymph named Nana eats one of the pomegranates from the tree. Ripe with bloody seeds, the fruit in turn impregnates her. She gives birth to Attis, who then becomes Cybele’s lover. Throughout this bizarre myth, the pomegranate is the generative and transformative force, literally taking the role of the man in procreation.

Hittite goddess Kubaba holding a pomegranate, 9th–8th century BC.

Although grapes are the main attribute of the god of wine, Dionysus, the pomegranate is also associated with him in a number of myths. In a tale of his infancy, he is torn up and eaten by the Titans (though later reassembled). From the blood that spills onto the earth as he is cannibalized, a pomegranate tree grows. Thus certain ritual festivals banned the consumption of the pomegranate as being too sacred. Clement of Alexandria tells us: ‘The women who celebrate the Thesmophoria are careful not to eat any pomegranate seeds which fall to the ground, being of opinion that pomegranates spring from the drops of Dionysus’ blood.’[7] Later, as an adult god, Dionysus seduces a maiden under the pretence that he will give her a crown. When she badgers the god for her reward, he turns her into a pomegranate, with its crown-shaped calyx.

Two final incidents in classical myth that allude to the pomegranate have the fruit as the catalyst for great suffering. The first concerns Tantalus, a mortal figure punished by the gods to suffer an eternal torment in the underworld. His name is the source of the English word ‘tantalize’. Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. Different sources depict him reaching out for different fruit; some (Homer’s Odyssey included) appropriately choose the pomegranate, the plentiful seeds of the desired fruit contrasting with Tantalus’ torment of emptiness that makes him hunger and thirst eternally in the underworld. The other myth that contains a fruit which can be interpreted as a pomegranate is that of the Judgement of Paris. The story goes that in a beauty competition between the Greek goddesses, the Trojan prince, Paris, awards Aphrodite a prized ‘golden apple’, that is, a pomegranate.[8] The ancient Greek word for apple, mêlon, was also sometimes used to describe pomegranates, which were much more common in the Mediterranean. The pomegranate, after all, was one of Aphrodite’s attributes, as well as being associated with both Athena and Hera, who also vied for the fruit in the competition. The pomegranate was considered an aphrodisiac with magical properties, and thus, for Paris, the fruit allows for the wish-fulfilment of gaining Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris awards the fruit to Aphrodite after she offers him Helen, wife of the king of Sparta. Helen’s abduction inevitably causes conflict. The fateful fruit, inscribed with the words Ti Kallisti (For the Fairest), thus becomes responsible for the start of the Trojan War. The pomegranate’s red, spilling seeds appropriately forecast the bloodshed that will result.

Arabia, Persia and Turkey

Centuries later, another literary tradition that was similarly obsessed with the pomegranate developed in the Middle East. Under an Islamic backdrop, the pomegranate remains sexually charged.

Limestone hand clutching a pomegranate, all that survives from a large Cypriot statue, 6th century BC.

The One Thousand and One Nights is an anthology of many tales from Arabian folklore, structured within the framework of the story of Scheherazade, who uses her ability as a storyteller to avoid execution. The pomegranate appears in many of her tales. One story concerns the son of the king of Yemen, Sayf, who on his adventures meets a man without arms and legs who has been fed pomegranate seeds by mice for 700 years while he waited for the prince’s arrival. This link between the pomegranate and the infinite is also found in another tale relating to Hayid, a prophet to whom God grants a pomegranate with an unending amount of arils that will feed him perpetually. The ‘Tale of the Young Nur and the Warrior Girl’ contains several short songs in praise of various fruits. The hymn relating to the pomegranate compares the fruit’s shape to the alluring female form:

Polished delicates are we,

Ruby mines in silver earth,

Maidens’ blood of high degree

Curdled into drops of worth,

Breasts of women when they see

Man is near, and stand them forth.[9]

A very fertile pomegranate occurs in an Arabian Nights tale revolving around the sultan of Diyarbakr. The story begins by noting the sultan’s inability to produce any children. He has a dream in which he is told to go to his garden and request a pomegranate from his gardener. He does as the dream commands. The Sultan eats fifty seeds from the pomegranate he is given and promptly all fifty of his wives become pregnant. One of the concubines, a woman named Pirouze, does not appear at first to be with child, and is sent away, but is later discovered to be pregnant anyway.

Another transformative pomegranate is to be found in the ‘Twelfth Captain’s Tale’. Our hero is a prince by the name of Muhammad who comes up against an evil sorcerer Moor. Muhammad is able to escape and overcome the Moor by transfiguring into a pomegranate:

To escape his persecutor, the prince used the virtue of the cord to change into a large pomegranate … as soon as the Moor touched it, it burst asunder, and all the grains were scattered on the floor. The sorcerer picked them up, one by one, until he came to the last grain … which contained the vital essence of Muhammad. As the vile magician stretched out his neck towards this final grain, a dagger came up out of it and stabbed him to the heart, so that he spat out his unbelieving soul in a stream of blood [10]

The blow to the Moor is fatal, the blood-evoking pomegranate bringing about his bloody end.

The Shahnameh, Iran’s national epic by the poet Ferdowsi, narrates the lives of the Persian kings from the beginning of time until the seventh century AD. It is a conglomeration of a vast amount of mythology, legend and history that includes among its tales several references to the pomegranate. The fruit is used in a description of the physical beauty that first attracts the warrior Zal to his future wife Rudabeh: ‘Her mouth resembles a pomegranate blossom, her lips are cherries and her silver bosom curves out into breasts like pomegranates.’[11] Zal and Rudabeh have a son, the great Persian hero Rostam. Rostam would eventually take up arms against another Persian hero, Esfandiyar, who had previously been rendered invincible from eating a pomegranate. Esfandiyar, however, like Achilles, has one vulnerable spot: his eyes. The pomegranate’s power cannot defend him from an arrow from Rostam’s bow, shot straight through Esfandiyar’s pupil. The Shahnameh again associates the fruit with death following the beheading of Siavash. The text notes how the pomegranate trees of the forest withered in sorrow after the wrongful execution of the Iranian hero.

One final story of the pomegranate in the Persian epic concerns a man named Farhad who becomes the lover of King Khosrow’s wife, Shirin. As punishment for his transgression, he is exiled to Mount Behistun (known to us for its famed inscription by Darius the Great, which was later the key to the decipherment of cuneiform in the nineteenth century). He is given the task of clearing away the mountain with an axe, and told that if he successfully finds water he will be allowed to marry Shirin. Many years go by. It is not until Farhad has removed half the mountain that he does in fact find water. Khosrow approaches him with the (false) news that Shirin has died. Farhad goes mad with grief, throws his axe down and dies. Where the thrown axe falls, a pomegranate tree grows that bears fruit with the power to cure sickness.

In a fairy tale from Turkey, the son of a king desires a certain princess. After completing several challenges set by her father in order to gain an audience with the princess, she sets the youth a task herself: to retrieve a singing pomegranate branch from the Garden of Reh-Dew. Facing adversity along the way, the prince finally arrives at the garden and sees the pomegranates hanging from a tree like lamps. He picks off a branch with some fifty pomegranates on it, ‘each of which sang a different song, as though all the music of the world were brought together there’.[12] On retrieving the branch he is told by the guardian of the garden: ‘never let it out of your sight. If you can listen to it throughout your wedding day the pomegranates will love you; you need fear nothing, for they will protect you in any distress.’[13] The princess becomes aware of her champion’s return when she hears the many tunes of the fifty fruits echoing through her city. As she meets the prince, ‘the pomegranate branch chanted the union of their two hearts in such exquisite strains that they seemed to be lifted up from this earth to the Paradise of Allah.’[14] Throughout their lengthy forty-day wedding, the couple continuously listen to the singing of the pomegranates. An imposter prince tries to claim the princess for himself, but the sound of the pomegranates that the prince and princess heard during their wedding keeps evil at bay. Although the true prince is beheaded, he is restored back to life and the pretender is overcome. In this tale, the princess’s requirement for her suitor to retrieve the pomegranate branch is most interesting. As the branch has the power to guarantee a positive marriage experience, it functions like a dowry and alleviates the uncertainty that comes with being a bride. In traditional Turkish culture (and in other parts of this region, such as Armenia and Iran) the pomegranate is associated with weddings. Following the service, a bride may choose to toss a pomegranate on the floor. The number of seeds that spill out of the fruit are playfully considered to indicate the number of children she will have. Surely a choir of fifty pomegranates would grant the prince and princess an abundance of children.

The pomegranate occurs alongside this literary motif of the suitor’s challenge in another fairy tale known as ‘The Parrot Shah’. The story relates that an overprotective father makes use of a pomegranate to protect his daughter:

The king was very possessive and wanted to keep Gala all to himself, and with the help of a wizard, he had thought up a plan to discourage her suitors. A magic tree was planted in the garden, a huge pomegranate that had three fruits. At sunset, the branches bent over to touch the ground and the fruit split open. Inside each lay a soft feather bed. Gala, the princess, slept in the middle one, with her servants on each side. The fruit closed over the maidens and the branches swung back to the sky, carrying the princess high above all danger. Seven walls were built round the garden, each studded with thousands of spikes which nobody could ever cross.[15]

The challenge of wooing the princess is eventually achieved by a shah of distant Persia who is able to transmigrate into the body of a parrot and fly off with the pomegranate. The sexual implications of the imagery in this tale are implicit. The desirable virgin, lying on a bed inside a red and seeded fruit, represents one thing for a man: sexual potential. The father’s attempt to use a feminine fruit, which splits open and closes up again, to obstruct masculine advances on his daughter makes her all the more enticing. A similar story is found in the beginning of the Persian legend surrounding the Simurgh bird:

In the garden of the palace there grew a pomegranate tree with only three pomegranates; their seeds were fabulous gems that shone like lamps by night. When ripe, the pomegranates would turn into three beautiful girls who were to become the wives of the three princes.[16]

The pomegranates are likewise stolen, only this time by a malevolent hand that descends from a dark cloud.