Charun & Thanatos: Axe or Hammer? Sword or Torch?

Author: * Sin UtNapishtim - 14 Posts on this thread out of 23 Posts sitewide.
Date: Nov 17, 2004 - 22:05

Charun and Vanth leading a dead man into Hades. Alabaster relief panel from a 3rd century BC cinerary urn in the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum in Casale Marittimo, Volterra, Italy.*

Charun's AXE or Charun's HAMMER? Chop or Bop?

Do you see Charun, the demon on the left here in this carved alabaster relief, as carrying a double-headed axe, or a double-headed hammer?

Some say Charun always carries an axe, not a hammer; and so they see the object he carries here as an axe, too.

When I first saw paintings of Charun in Etruscan tombs, I, too, saw him as the stereotpypical executioner, and the dreaded weapon he wielded as an axe. Chop, chop, I thought. Lke the hooded executioners one sees in movies and cartoons, or in stories about English kings. he's poised to chop off someone's head.

So, the first time I saw a Charun, I thought what he carried was a double-axe, a battle-axe, not unlike the double-headed axe I once used to chop down trees in the mountain forests of New Hampshire. But hardly anyone I've read calls the thing an axe. So I started to hedge and call it a hammer or axe, and finally just a hammer or mallet.

Here's a picture of a Greek pelekus, a double-headed axe or battle-axe:

Swinging a double-headed, double-bladed axe like this in battle, a warrior could wreak havoc, lopping off heads and limbs in one direction, and then, on his backswing, lopping them off on the other side.

Note that the Greek double-axe is symmetrical not only from side to side, but from top to bottom, like a Greek shield held sideways. Its top and bottom curves are concave, and are mirror-images of each other.

By contrast, the top edge of the thing held here by Charun is convex, repeating, rather than mirroring, the concave curve of its bottom edge. Nor do its sides look thin and sharp, like those of an axe. It is, therefore, a double-headed hammer, not an axe.

And the same is true of every other image -- relief carving, tomb fresco, or vase painting -- of Charun that I have seen. Still, I will keep a sharp eye out, and hope that others will, too, for any image of Charun with a weapon that looks more like a double-headed axe than a double-headed hammer.

Suppose such a demon looks like Charun, but is not him, is not THE Charun, but merely A charun ? How do we tell which is which? Hard to tell. But if one of the charuns, or charontes, is holding up a hammer, and the other(s) not, you can bet the demon with the hammer is Charun himself.

In the Tomb of the Charuns in Tarquinia, 300 BC [See Oklahoma State University's website Etruscan Art, Tombs p 15], two red-tuniced, blue-skinned Charuns lurk on either side of the door. The Charun on the left side is so sloppily drawn that his name had to be printed above him -- twice: both from left to right and from right to left; and his hammer or axe is so badly drawn it looks more like a limp balloon than a lethal instrument. The Charun on the right is much better drawn, and his tool huge, but it's crude and blunt on its business edge, and convex on top, so it's probably a hammer, not an axe.

In the Francois Tomb in Vulci (350-300 BC) (OSU Tombs p 16), Achilles with his sword cuts the throat of the Trojan prisoners, while a large-winged Vanth looks on solicitously and a wingless blue-skinned Charun stands patiently by with his hammer or mallet, which is clearly flat on the heads or business ends, and curved on the top and bottom exactly like the hammer on our ash-urn carving.

My favorite Charun (and also the clearest view of his hammer) is in the Aninas family Tomb in Tarquinia (3rd c. BC; see my post, "Charun & Vanth Await!"). There Charun lurks with his hammer on the left side of the door, while on the other side waits his torch-bearing partner, the goddess Vanth.

Supposing Charun's weapon is a two-headed hhammer, what is it made of? Metal, stone, or wood?

Some think Charun's hammer was modelled on the wooden mallet used by gate-keepers to knock in and out the heavy wooden beam that locked the gates to a citadel or city. That would be fitting for Charun as keeper of the gates of Hell. Or indeed for any demon who might lock the dead into their cells.

But if Charun was both executioner and jailor of the dead, he was not their judge. Judgment was reserved for Aita, the Etruscan counterpart of the Greek Hades and Roman Pluto. In carrying out the sentence, however, death was clearly not an option. Since Charun had already executed the dead, some other punishment was called for. For the worst cases -- traitors or murderers, for example -- endless torture might be in order. And here Charun, with his hammer or mallet, be it metal [iron or bronze?], stone, or wood, was just the one to do it. As their punisher and torturer, he thus became twice over their executioner.

Because Charun did not himself judge the dead, we never, so far as I know, see him weighing souls with a pair of balance scales -- as we later do see Archangel Michael, and earlier, Anubis and Thanatos, Charun's Egyptian & Greek prototypes.

CHARUN & THANATOS

In some ways, however, the Etruscan Charun is more like Thanatos than like Charon, the Greek ferryman of the dead. Unlike Charon, and like Thanatos, Charun IS death: Death personified, Death incarnate. He is the Spirit of Death, the Specter of Death, the Grim Reaper -- but he knocks us down with a hammer instead of cutting us down with a scythe. Like Thanatos he appears at the very moment of death, particularly on the battlefield and at executions, including prisoners of war. And he inherited from Hermes, and even Zeus, who in Homer held the fate of two warriors in the balance, until one weighed more and had to die, the decision of who shall live and who shall die.

Thanatos from Ephesus

On one of the enormous pillars from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (325-300 BC) is carved a statue of a large-winged, languid, naked youth. He gazes down thoughtfully,
even wistfully and regretfully, at something (now lost) in his left hand. It may have been a dead butterfly, symbol of the fleeting nature of life (rather than, on modern gravestones, immortal life). More likely he held a pair of scales, in which the winged souls of two young warriors were placed; and he watches as one, sinking lower, must be the one to die. Onto the young god's naked body, beside his left hip, and sheathed inside a huge scabbard, is strapped a sword. On his damaged right side and from his damaged right arm one can make out the remains of an upside-down, extinguished torch -- a sure-fire sign of a life snuffed out.

The eternally young and deathless youth in that Hellenistic sculpture is Thanatos, the Greek god of Death. In earlier accounts he was a fierce, bearded, older man, much like Charun. But by Hellenistic times, with Rome gone soft and sybaritic, and dreaming of a lovely afterlife in Elysium, he is portrayed as he was at Ephesus, as a lovely young man. That is how he is portrayed in the so-called Boston Throne, a large relief of Thanatos weighing the souls of two prisoners of war to decide which one must die. In Boston he looks even younger, svelter, almost feminine. So much so, some believe he isn't Thanatos at all, but his opposite, Eros!

Similar confusion reigns on Roman coins struck for the Greek provinces in the early third century AD.

Here's one such coin, a bronze coin from Hadrianopolis, in Thrace. showing Thanatos snuffing out the torch of life. (A bad omen for Geta, the Roman emperor whose head is on the other side? In 211 AD Geta and thousands of his followers were murdered by his brother Caracalla.) Coins of this type were often minted to commemorate the death of an emperor's young son and heir, which may explain why on several of them the angel of death has become a chubby little baby boy. Collectors go nuts trying to decide which one they've got: a Thanatos or a Cupid?

SWORD OR TORCH? CHARUN OR VANTH?

By a somewhat roundabout route, we can now return to our Etruscan ash urn, and ask: Why is Charun carrying a sword in addition to a hammer? Who or what is the daemon on the right? And what is he, or she, carrying? A sword or a torch?

Because of his hammer, we know that the figure on the left, guarding and maybe goading the dead warrior on horseback into Hades, is Charun. But, like Thanatos, he also carries a sword. Why the sword? If his chief weapon were an axe, he would not need it. But if it's a hammer, and made of wood, maybe he would -- to finish the job, to deal the fatal blow, the coup de grace? Of course the hammer could be metal or even stone, and that would suffice.

Some believe Charun carried an axe to cut or chop off people's heads to free their souls from their bodies. An interesting idea. But
a sword would do as well. And since our urn artist added one, if he believed Charun decapitated his victims, then he thought he was carving a hammer.

Or maybe the artist just wanted to portray all three figures as warrior-types, so he just added a sword? And did symmetry play a part?

This leads us to the figure on the right. And may lead some to see not only another charun there, but to see the thing in his hand as another sword. But if you look closely, you will see it is not a sword, but a torch. A torch just like the one that Thanatos turns upside down and stomps out to indicate that the life of a mortal, be he old warrior or young child, is now extinguished.

In Etruscan tomb paintings, where Charun and his female counterpart, the goddess Vanth, appear, it is Charun who carries the hammer or axe, and Vanth who carries the torch -- almost always upright and still lit, still flaming and alive. (See my post "Charun and Vanth Await!") Except here, in this relief. IF this daemon or angel of death is Vanth. (As I argued in my post, "Charun & Vanth on an Ash Urn" Now I'm not so sure.)

It is as if Thanatos, never growing old, yet, in men's eyes, particularly in Roman times and eyes, began growing backwards, from a grizzled old warrior into a beardless, hairless young man, into an epicene, even effeminate youth, nearly an hermaphrodite -- but was split in two among the Etruscans, into male and female, Charun and Vanth.

It is as if Thanatos, or Death, with his sword and torch, became a divided spirit among the Etruscans, who allotted his death-dealing role to Charun, on the one side, and his life-bearing torch to Vanth, on the other. As if, so long as Vanth could, or would, keep the torch of life aflame, they still had a glimmer of hope for some sort of life in the next world? Or as if, their souls divided in two, like two souls hanging in the balance held by Thanatos, they could not divine, let alone decide, which one might live on?

POSTCRIPT on the AFTERLIFE:
I would like to see some evidence (artefacts, hopefully) for the claim that Charun cut or chopped off peoples' heads to free their souls from their bodies. If so, the soul would have rushed out, not from the severed head, but in the blood pouring out the neck. Ancient peoples felt the soul resided in the body, in the chest or diaphragm, or maybe even in the guts, but never in the head, and certainly not in the brain. This is why Egyptian embalmers never saved the brain, but drew it out the nostrils, and threw it away. Even Aristotle thought the brain was nothing but a cooling organ. But never mind. If the Etruscans thought chopping off peoples' heads would free their souls, wouldn't that have been a regular procedure in their burials?

How do we know the Etruscans believed body and soul are separated at death? And if so, in what way? Did they follow the Greeks in imagining the soul or spirit as a shadowy double, a "ghost" image (eidos) of one's bodily self? This notion, which we find in Odysseus' visit to the dead in Hades, seems to have been passed on to the Romans, and later to the Christians, as we see in Dante's Divine Comedy, where he and Virgil visit the "shades" of the dead. And it's still alive in many Christian heads today, in the notion of a ghostly self or "spiritual body" that precedes the resurrection of the physical body. Aren't these also, in a kind of dress rehearsal for that great event, the ghostly bodies that rise from graves on Halloween (All Hallows Eve) and that materialize in the seances of spiritualists and other necromancers who emulate the Witch of Endor?

Thanks to Tanaquil Sergius and Lucius Licinius Sempronius for their challenging comments and queries, and to Ioannis Nestor for his pic of the axe..