Kriophoros

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Painted terracotta cult image of the Kriophoros from Thebes in Boeotia, ca 450 BCE (Musée du Louvre)

In ancient Greek cult, kriophoros, the "ram-bearer" is a figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram. It becomes an epithet of Hermes: Hermes Kriophoros.

At the Boeotian city of Tanagra, Pausanias relates a local myth that credited the god with saving the city in a time of plague, by carrying a ram on his shoulders as he made the circuit of the city’s walls: "There are sanctuaries of Hermes Kriophoros and of Hermes called Promakhos [champion]. They account for the former surname by a story that Hermes averted a pestilence from the city by carrying a ram round the walls; to commemorate this Calamis made an image of Hermes carrying a ram upon his shoulders. Whichever of the youths is judged to be the most handsome goes round the walls at the feast of Hermes, carrying a lamb on his shoulders." (Description of Greece 9.22.1-2). The myth may be providing an etiological explanation of a cult practice, carried out to avert miasma, the ritual pollution that had brought disease, a propitiatory act whose ancient origins had become lost but had ossified in this iconic motif. Reflections of Calamis' lost Hermes Kriophoros may be detectable on Roman coinage of the city.

In Messenia, at the sacred grove of Karnasus, Pausanias noted that Apollon Karneios and Hermes Kriophoros had a joint. cult,^[1] the ram-bearers (kriophoroi) joining in male initiation rites.

The moschophoros of the Acropolis, ca 570 BCE

Not all ancient Greek sculptures of sacrifiants with an offering on their shoulders bear young rams. The nearly lifesize terra cotta Calfbearer (moschophoros), of ca 570 BCE, found on the Athenian Acropolis in 1864 (illustration, left) is inscribed "Rhombos", apparently the donor, who commemorated his sacrifice in this manner.^[2] The sacrificial animal in the case is a young bull, but the iconic pose, with the young animal across the sacrifiant's shoulders, secured by fore legs and rear legs firmly in the sacrifiant's grip, is the same as many kriophoroi..

Lewis R. Farnell^[3] placed this Hermes Kriophoros foremost in Arcadia:

"As Arcadia has been from time immemorialthe great pasture-ground of Greece, so probably the most primitive character in which Hermes appeared, and which he never abandoned, was the pastoral. He is the lord of the herds, epimélios^[4] and kriophoros, who leads them to the sweet waters, and bears the tired ram or lamb on his shoulders, and assists them with the shepherd's crook, the kerykeion."

Free-standing fourth-century CE Roman sculptures, and even third century ones, are sometimes hopefully identified as "Christ, the Good Shepherd",^[5] illustrating the pericope in the Gospel of John. In two-dimensional art, Hermes Kriophoros transformed into the Christ carrying a lamb and walking among his sheep: "Thus we find philosophers holding scrolls or a Hermes Kriophoros which can be turned into Christ giving the Law (Traditio Legis) and the Good Shepherd respectively" (Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Classical Art and architecture, p. 475.). The Good Shepherd is a well-known motif from the catacombs (Gardner, 10, fig 54) and in sarcophagus reliefs, where Christian and pagan symbolism is often combined, making secure identifications difficult. The theme does appear in the wall-paintings of the baptistery of the house-church at Dura-Europos before 256 CE, and more familiarly in sixth-century Christian mosaics, as in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia at Ravenna, though it does not in three-dimensional free-standing sculpture.