Asterion

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"Asterius" redirects here. See also Asterius the Sophist.

This article is about the figure in Greek mythology. For other uses, see Asterion (disambiguation)

In Greek mythology, Asterion or Asterios^[1] ("ruler of the stars"), by the Greeks called "king" of Crete, was the consort of Europa and stepfather of her sons by Zeus, who had to assume the form of the Cretan bull of the sun to accomplish his role: Minos the just king in Crete, Rhadamanthus, presiding over the Garden of the Hesperides or in the Underworld and Sarpedon, likewise a judge in the Afterlife. He was the son of Tectamus. When he died, Asterion gave his kingdom to Minos, who promptly "banished" his brothers. His Roman name is Asterius.

According to Karl Kerenyi and other scholars, Asterion, the star at the center of the labyrinth on Cretan coins, was in fact the "Minotaur", (Kerenyi 1951 p 111; Kerenyi 1976:105) which is simply a name of Hellene coining to describe his Cretan iconic bull-man image. Coins minted at Knossos from the fifth century showed the kneeling bull or the head of a goddess crowned with a wreath of grain^[2] and on the reverse— the "underside"— a scheme of four meander patterns joined at the centre windmill fashion, sometimes with sickle moons or with a star-rosette at the center: "it is a small view of the nocturnal world on the face of the coin that lay downward in the printing process, and is, as it were, oriented downward" (Kerenyi 1976:105).

As long as it is recalled that the myth of Asterion, who appears in no anecdotal Hellenic context, is Minoan, it will be perceived that the figure of Zeus is an interloper, and that rather than the "stepfather" role to which he has been displaced, Asterion is originally the father of the Underworld progeny.

There is a short tale written by Jorge Luis Borges ("The House of Asterion") about the subject.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Karl Kerenyi, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks.
• Karl Kerenyi, 1976. Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life: p 105
• Sara Douglass, 2002-6. The Troy Game Series. (Asterion referred to as the name of the Minotaur)

The asterion is also the name used to describe the place where certain cranial bones intersect. On either side of the head, located just behind each ear, three bones come together: the occiput, the parietal and the temporal bones. Each of those particular sutures, where the three come together, are called the asterion.

Ketched 02:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)ketched