Volume One THE EAST PEDIMENT Its Profound And Simple Meaning

1. THE PARTHENON CODESeries Volume One THE EAST PEDIMENT Its Profound And Simple Meaning The Background of Athena’s Birth Part 8The Hesperides © 2006 Solving Light BooksSolvingLight.com

2. The Hesperides—A Picture of Paradise When we look at Figures K-L-M from the right side of the pediment, now in the British Museum, and at Holmes Bryant’s magnificent reconstruction . . .

3. . . . we notice that none of them is reacting to the birth of Athena in the center. So then in what way do they relate to Athena’s birth? The answer is that their function is to show us where the Greek religious system originated.

4. These are three Hesperides, nymphs of the West, whose presence in Greek art is always associated with their garden and an apple tree with a serpent coiled around it. Their posture suggests a luxurious setting and a state of continuous enchantment and bliss. The Hesperides form a collective iconograph, or word picture, which depicts paradise—the Garden of Eden.

5. Here we see the Garden of the Hesperides depicted on a vase from Classical times. Throughout ancient Greek art, we find an apple tree, with golden apples, and a serpent wrapped around its trunk.

6. We think of Eden, and rightly so. The Hesperides, the spirit-beings associated with this tree, its apples, and its serpent, get their name from Hespere in Greek which means evening, and that signifies the West where the sun sets.

7. This accords with the Genesis account which describes civilization developing to the east of Eden. A trek back to the Garden would necessitate traveling west. The Greeks put the Garden of the Hesperides, with its serpent-entwined apple tree, as seen here on this damaged vase, in the Far West.

8. As far as we know, the first person to identify Figures K-L-M as Hesperides was Kristian Jeppesen at the Parthenon Kongress in 1982. He wrote of the Figures: “Apparently they are not involved in any kind of willful action, but seem to display some slight amazement at being disturbed in the act of performing their morning toilet. This situation agrees perfectly with representations of the Hesperides on vases, where they are always depicted as lovely fairies with little other concern than the preservation of their beauty.”

9. On this water pot from about 465 BC, Herakles, to our left, carrying his club, makes off with the three golden apples of the Hesperides. They have no power to stop him; their presence simply identifies the scene as paradise. Note that the serpent wears a beard, a symbol of age. The Book of Revelation refers to God’s Adversary as “the ancient serpent.”

10. Here, on a cosmetics container from about 460 BC, we see four Hesperides at a fountain with the apple tree and serpent. The number of Hesperides varies in pictorial art and literature.

11. Hesiod mentions three. Five were carved on a chest in the temple of Hera at Olympia. On vases from the region of Athens, there are most often three, more rarely two or four. The requirements of the artistic composition determined the number of Hesperides chosen.

12. Here, on the reverse of a Roman coin from the 3rd century AD, we see Herakles, the apple tree, the serpent, and three Hesperides.

13. Three also seems to be just the right number of Hesperides for their place on the east pediment of the Parthenon.

14. Here we see the serpent, the tree, two Hesperides, Herakles to our right, and Hephaistos to the left. An artist created this vase painting after the Parthenon sculptures were complete. The lounging Hesperid in the center, resting her left hand comfortably on the serpent, looks very familiar.

15. She looks very much like the lounging Hesperid, figure M, on the Parthenon. Note the widely-spread breasts and the thin draw-string around the waist.

16. It seems certain that the vase artist based the central figure in his painting on Figure M, the lounging Hesperid on the Parthenon.

17. Nyx . . . bare . . . the Hesperides who guard the rich, golden apples and the trees bearing fruit beyond glorious Ocean. Hesiod, Theogony As Darkness departs, the serpent’s enlightenment in paradise comes on the scene. The Hesperides occupy cornice blocks numbered 20, 21, and 22 on the east pediment of the Parthenon. The serpent’s tree, with which they are always depicted, must have appeared on cornice block 19, to their proper right, our left. The tree was most likely sculpted in marble. Let’s find out what Atlas is doing on the other side of the serpent’s apple tree.