Key Symbolism is Polyvalent

In this short post, I want to share a passage from Joan Breton Connelly’s Portrait of a Priestess (pages 92-93) that I have been meaning to post here for a while. It can also enrich an offhand comment that I made in my last blog post here. Many people have an instant association between keys and the Goddess Hekate, and while a few people do know that they are symbols of other Goddesses (e.g., Frigg), there’s less awareness that they are polyvalent even within the symbolisms of closely-connected cultus in the Greek-speaking ancient Eastern and North-Central Mediterranean.

The surest signifier of feminine priestly status in visual culture is the temple key, shown as a large metal bar bent twice at right angles. This type of key would have been inserted through a hole in a door and engaged in the groove of a sliding bolt from behind. The door would be locked by pulling on a strap connected to the bolt, which could then be slipped into place. Such keys are traditionally referred to as “Homeric” keys or as the “keys of Penelope.” Traditionally, it was the woman of the house who was responsible for looking after the door keys. In time, keys became the very signifier of marriage. A Roman woman symbolically handed over the house keys upon divorce.

In cult, the key is identified with the function of the kleidouchos, or “key bearer,” the individual charged with locking and unlocking the temple. Temples functioned as virtual treasuries, filled as they were with precious metal offerings and dedications in other luxury materials. Responsibility for keeping the temple key was no small matter and represents considerable authority within the sanctuary hierarchy. We find bronze and silver keys dedicated by women in commemoration of their cult service. Stratonike, daughter of Antiphon from Myrrhinous, presented a key to Artemis at her sanctuary on Delos during the second century BC. A bronze key found in the temple of Artemis Hemerasia at Lousoi in Arkadia measures more than forty centimeters in length and bears an inscription that reads: “Of Artemis in Lousoi.”

The iconography of the female kleidouchos is established by the late sixth or early fifth century BC.The earliest surviving example is presented in an Archaic terracotta figurine from the sanctuary of Artemis on Kerkyra (Corfu). It shows a draped maiden, holding a bird in her right hand and a key in her left. A second, fragmentary terracotta in the museum at Kerkyra preserves a hand holding what appears to be the shaft of a key with a taenia, or “ribbon,” dangling from it. A small stone votive statue, once in Monaco but now of uncertain location, shows a draped maiden with a crook-shaped key in her right hand, held up against her breasts. By the second quarter of the fourth century, images of priestesses holding temple keys are carved on Attic funerary reliefs and marble lekythoi.

Although we know that men held the office of kleidouchos, images of men carrying temple keys are rare. A classical terracotta figurine from Lokroi in South Italy shows a bare-chested male figure dressed in an himation and holding a key with taenia high in his left hand. A painted image of a male kleidouchos decorates the pediment of the so-called Tomb of the Palmettes, excavated at Lefkadia in 1971. This figure, like the terracotta from Lokroi, has been identified as the god Plouton holding the keys to the underworld. It is more likely that both images show mortal men in their special cult roles as key bearers. The knife of sacrifice, however, is the attribute that comes to stand as the chief signifier for male priesthood. Men were traditionally responsible for the leading and butchering of animal victims within the ritual, and so the sacrificial knife was seen to embody their gendered agency within cult.

So what we can see first is that keys have symbolic meaning in that they open the doors to the Gods’ sacred buildings. There is an association here with Hekate, certainly, in terms of her guardianship of thresholds, and that threshold guardianship comes into conversation with the ways in which keys symbolized placing trust in someone’s piety so much that they could guard a God’s material storehouse — the place where a community tangibly created a centuries-long, and millennia-long in many cases, memory of the relationship between the people and the Gods, a place where someone could go and see the votive offering of her grandmother (in this case, to Artemis) after a successful pregnancy — a sacred memory box. The Gods need nothing, so everything that we give them benefits us in some way simply by setting these things aside in sacred conversation.

The final paragraph of this excerpt from Portrait of a Priestess was included for contrastive interest. I hope that this was an interesting (if brief!) read for exploring the rich context of the key as a symbol in polytheistic practices.