In the apparent chaos of nature, early humans recognised recurring shapes and signs. They identified geometries that revealed the presence of a divine order. Circles, triangles and squares defined the structure of matter, as seen in flowers, mountains and living beings. Figures combining with each other reached increasing degrees of harmony, constituted the hidden seeds of an intelligence that governed the universe. Our ancestors identified the geometry of the spiral in seashells, the growth of shoots, the coiling of snakes, and the wave-like movement of water.
The spiral of life
The spiral was especially found in living things, in movement, in what was in evolution. To Neolithic men, therefore, it expressed the generative force of nature, it was a symbol of life. Moreover, the sun, the source of light and of the warmth necessary for survival, in their eyes seemed to follow a spiraling celestial trajectory1. Indeed, the star rises in the east and sets in the west each day, appearing at different points on the horizon throughout the year. On the summer solstice, it travels along a high arc in the sky, providing the longest day. Then, this orbit gradually declines until, on the winter solstice, the sun takes its shortest path. After this, the process reverses and the duration of daylight hours begins to increase again.
For our ancestors, it was the sun that appeared to move relative to the earth. They believed that, at night, star passed beneath our planet, as the points at which it rose and set might suggest. The sun thus appeared to travel along a double spiral path that alternately wound and unwound. This trajectory established the cycles of life. Neolithic people, who practiced agriculture, well knew that nature flourishes most in spring, when the solar spiral is at its widest, and is at its least active during the winter solstice.
Symbol of death and rebirth
Thus, the ancestors adopted the symbol of the spiral to represent life, evoking it through rituals and signs. We can only speculate about the sacred spiral dances performed to ensure a good harvest and fertile land. In contrast, there is abundant evidence of the use of spirals in necropolises and burials belonging to many different cultures. It was indeed believed that the symbol could promote the rebirth of the deceased in the afterlife.
Spirals were usually engraved on burial chamber walls. In the Newgrange tomb complex in Ireland, which dates back to around 3200 BC, it was drawn near the entrance and aligned with the direction of the rising sun at the winter solstice. Similar depictions have been found at the temples of the Tarxien culture in Malta, which were built between the fourth and third millennia BC. The Maltese slabs feature long decorations adorned with spiral motifs, from which sprouts, buds, and branches unfold.
The spiral and the Mother Goddess
The symbol also appears inside the domus de janas, the hypogeic burials of pre-Nuragic Sardinia. Here it evoked the Mother Goddess, a deity who guaranteed the fertility of the soil and the generation of life.
A double spiral is often observed in these graves: a recurring motif in which Marija Gimbutas recognizes the eyes of the Goddess, depicted as the coils of a serpent or the horns of a ram3. The scholar then highlights the linguistic connection between the “eye” and the “sun” across different cultures:
“Linguistic evidence also reflects the peculiar interchangeability of the eyes and the sun. In Old Irish súil is “eye,” while in other languages it means “sun”4.
M. Gimbutas, The language of the goddess, Foreword by Joseph Campbell, Harper & Row, 1989.
People of Cucuteni-Trypillia (5500 BC – 3000 BC) depicted the spiral on the waist and buttocks of their female deity statuettes.
In Castelluccio di Noto, a Sicilian settlement where an important culture developed in the Early Bronze Age (2300-1700 BC), a number of burial slabs shows the symbol, now housed in the Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum in Syracuse. Notably, a double spiral with an extension containing a phallic element decorates the slab of tomb 31. Bernabò Brea speculated that this image might represent the sexual act of procreation5. In fact, symbolically the bas-relief recalled the generation of new life that awaited the deceased.
The spread of the symbol
It has been hypothesised that the spiral spread from Egypt to the Mediterranean cultures of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age6. In fact, the earliest recorded examples of the symbol include those found on pottery artefacts from the Predynastic period. From the Naqada II period, which spanned between about 3500 BC and 3200 BC, there is fine pottery production with geometric decorations, including the spiral.
From the land of the pharaohs the spiral came to Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean art. Then, it become widespread in the Mediterranean, through the maritime trade of that time. Wherever it appeared, the spiral represented the life-generating mechanism of the universe, making it real and present to humanity.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- G. Cossard, Il significato astronomico delle incisioni a spirale, in Atti del XVI congresso nazionale di storia della fisica e dell’astronomia, Centro Volta, Villa Olmo, Como, 24-25 May 1996 ↩︎
- By Archeologosardos – CC BY-SA 3.0, image. ↩︎
- M. Gimbutas, The language of the goddess, Foreword by Joseph Campbell, Harper & Row, 1989. ↩︎
- E. P. Hamp, Indo-European *āu̯ before consonant in British and Indo-European “sun”, The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 1975. ↩︎
- L. Bernabò Brea, La Sicilia prima dei Greci, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1982. ↩︎
- P. Barocelli, Enciclopedia Treccani, the spiral. ↩︎
