The Spartans worshipped the goddess Artemis Ortia. In mythology and legend, the image of the goddess Artemis Ortia is terrifying, demanding human sacrifice, requiring human blood, and is a very barbaric image.
Posannias records the goddess Artemis Ortia, who was called for human sacrifice in the ancient Spartan sanctuary. He associates the barbaric worship of the region with the statue of the goddess brought by Orestes from Tauris.
According to Euripides, Orestes and his friend Piladis went on an adventure to Tauris, where they met Iphigenia, a priestess who acted as the goddess Artemis, and the siblings eventually brought the idol of Artemis to the Greek peninsula of Attica with the help of the gods.
Bosanyas believed that the local image of the goddess of Sparta was the embodiment of the image of the goddess brought from Tauris after the localization of Sparta. The reason is that: First, when Astrabacus and Alupekus saw the idol, they immediately went crazy. Astrabacus and Alupecus found a tying idol, which surrounded the willow tree that kept the statue of Artemis upright, so she was called "upright goddess".
The goddess Artemis thus received the title of Lygodesma, meaning "goddess of willows". Second, the four major tribes of Sparta quarreled while offering sacrifices to Artemis, resulting in bloodshed, with many killed in front of the altar and some dying of disease. They went to the oracle, and the oracle asked them to sprinkle human blood on the altar, so Sparta held a human sacrifice.
And the legendary Spartan legislator and founder of various institutions, Lykugu, changed this habit and instead whipped young boys so that the altar would have human blood. In the ceremony, the priestess holds a wooden idol, which is small and light at first, and if the whipper is impressed by the beauty of the adolescent or because of the noble birth of the adolescent during the ceremony, the idols will become heavier, and the priestess will complain about the whipper's favoritism. Therefore, this idol has always loved human blood since the beginning of the sacrifice on the land of Tauris.
In fact, exactly where the woodcarved idols of Artemis were taken by Orestes and Iphigenia is uncertain. In Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, Athena explicitly instructs Orestes to bring the idol to Halle and subsequently Iphigenia to Braulen.
Both Plutarch and Bosannias also mentioned idols. Plutarch records that the idol was found in Limonet of Blaulen, as well as that the Piracis "kidnapped" the women of Braulen during the celebration of Artemis' festival and took away the idol of Artemis brought from Tauris, and the descendants of the Piracis brought the idol to Crete. Bosannias records that there was an ancient wooden idol of the god in Brolen, called Artemis of Tauris. He noted that the statue is associated with Artemis Ortia's barbaric worship.
Artemis Ortia was worshipped in Sparta, and the sanctuary of the goddess was located northwest of the ancient Spartan city-state, near the Eurotas River.
According to archaeological findings, the early remains of the sanctuary date no earlier than 950-900 BC. Around 700 BC, the sanctuary was enclosed by a wall with cobblestones on the floor and an altar and temple built on it, and the sanctuary has maintained this form ever since.
In the first half of the 6th century BC, the entire sanctuary was filled with river sand and the terrain was raised, on which a limestone altar and temple were built, as well as a new enlarged enclosure. The second temple was rebuilt in the 2nd century BC, but the altar remained largely unchanged. In the 2nd century AD, the Romans built a small theater around the temple.
The archaeological investigation of the sanctuary has gradually made it clear when it was founded, and the artifacts unearthed in the sanctuary have made the image of the goddess Artemis Ortia clearer. At the beginning of the 20th century, British archaeologists discovered a large number of sacrifices inside Artemis Ortia's sanctuary. There are a large number of masks, ivory carvings and bronzes, terracotta figurines and thousands of lead statues, testifying to the existence of an early Spartan artistic atmosphere.
Regarding the origin of masks, Jane Boul Carter believes that masks came from the East. The Canaanites learned how to use masks from Mesopotamia and brought them to Cyprus in the late 2000s BC. The Phoenicians continued to use terracotta masks and followed the practice as they traded and established colonies in the western Mediterranean. Between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, during trade and colonization, the Phoenicians introduced terracotta masks to Sparta.
Jane Boul Carter drew an analogy between the mask of Mesopotamia and the mask of Sparta. As early as the 2000s BC, in the Mesopotamian iconographic system, the mask represented a grotesque image. The mask shows his hair resembling an upside-down bowl, his lips retracted and his face grotesque. More than a thousand years later, in the sanctuary of Artemis Ortia in Sparta, masks made of terracotta took on the same bizarre faces. Carter points out similarities between the grotesque faces of Mesopotamia and Sparta, arguing that the prototype of the Spartan mask came from the Near East.
Regarding the specific uses of the mask, Beausanquit believes that the mask was used in some kind of ceremony; Robert Parker believed that the mask was worn by the boy while he was tortured on the altar. In addition, there is also a theory that the mask was worn while dancing during the festival commemorating Artemis. Since wearing clay masks is very strict and impractical during dance performances, Jonah Lloyd Rosenberg also tends to believe that the masks are used in some kind of ceremony. Picard believes that these masks are undoubtedly those worn by some actors, worn in ceremonial dances in honor of Artemis Ortia.
