There are many artistic representations of twinned figures who might be
interpreted as Dioskouric. They come from diverse countries and periods.
From the third-millennium Cycladic civilization of the Aegean, which has
Anatolian affinities, there is a figurine of two males closely conjoined in an
embrace that seems mutually supportive, not erotic; they are presumably a
significant pair of brothers. From the second and first millennia there are
rock drawings and decorated bronze objects from Scandinavia, some of
which show two figures in association with horses, a ship, and/or the sun.^86
Artefacts from Luristan in western Iran from the first half of the first
millennium depict the birth of twin deities from a sky- or sun-god.^87 Urns
from the La Tène period in east Silesia show riders of horses or stags linked
in pairs by a crossbar; some have connected this with the ancient Spartan
dokana, an arrangement of two parallel wooden beams joined by two cross-
bars, which represented the Dioskouroi and was supposed to symbolize their
indissoluble fraternal love.^88 A west Slavonic wooden effigy of the eleventh or
twelfth century, from an island on the Tollense-See near Neubrandenburg,
shows two conjoined male figures.^89 And so forth.
Even without this penumbral evidence we have sufficient grounds for belief
in a pair of MIE divine twins, the Sons of Dyeus, who rode horses through
the sky and rescued men from mortal peril in battle and at sea. If it be asked
what sea the worshippers of these prehistoric divinities went down to in
na ̄wes and sailed on and foundered in, the likely answer is the northern Black
Sea or the Sea of Azov.
A one-parent family?We have identified a father Heaven, a mother Earth, a daughter Dawn, and
twin sons. A nice happy family, it might seem. But the sons and the daughter
have nothing to do with Mother Earth. Their affinity is strictly with the sky.
The union of Heaven and Earth, with his fertilization of her by means of his
rain, is all to do with the production and sustenance of terrestrial plant and
animal life. They may be celebrated in general terms as the parents of the gods
as well as of mankind, but in the few cases where they are the parents of a
(^86) Güntert (1923), 272 f.; Ward (1968), 46 f.; Gelling–Davidson (1969), 126–8, 176–9.
(^87) See illustrations in R. Ghirshman, Artibus Asiae 21 (1958), 37–42. He interprets them in
terms of the later-attested myth of the birth of Ohrmazd and Ahriman from Zurvan (Time).
(^88) E. Krüger, Trierer Zeitschrift 15 (1940), 8–27; 16/17 (1941/2), 1–66, esp. 44–7; de Vries
(1956), ii. 248–50. Dokana: Plut. De fraterno amore 478a.
(^89) Vánˇa (1992), 182 Abb. 26. The twin gods Lel and Lelpol (or Polel) reported from a
sixteenth-century Polish chronicle seem to be spurious (Vánˇa, 204).
- Sky and Earth 191