Hoplite Shield Designs

[PMBardunias]

Evidently there is a wide ranging connection between Artemis and bees. Below is pasted from a paper titled "The bee of Artemis" The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 60, No. 2

The early association of the bee with the cult of Artemis isattested by varied evidence. It appears not only upon the strange polymastoid statue of the Ephesian goddess but upon the earliest coins of her city. As the owl was the emblem of Athena at Athens, so the bee seems to have been the emblem of Artemis at Ephesus. Although the extant examples of the polymastoid statue are all of late date, it is hardly possible that the type with its medley of elements can have been a late Hellenistic creation. So important was the bee in the cult of Artemis that her priestesses received the name of Melissa, "Bee." There is no direct evidence that the Ephesian priestesses of the goddess bore that title, but the assumption that she did is justified by the monuments cited. Another such title was "bee-keeper." At Delphi there was a melissa delphis The first priestess with this title probably served in the temple of Apollo there which bees had made of wax. These Apolline " bees " must have had some relation to the " bees " of Artemis, the twin sister of the god.
Particularly significant is the part played by the bee in Cretan tradition, where it appears in the name of Artemis. The Cretans called her Britomartis a title which was anciently defined as dulcis virgo. Since the Cretan word for "sweet" was Brito-, the initial element of the name Britomartis was correctly translated dulcis. The closeness of britto the verb blittou, " to take the honey from the comb," and to the name of the nymphs, Brisai, who were said to have taught the Thessalian Aristaeus bee-culture, led Cook to the very reasonable conclusion that brito- is a variant of melissa. Thus the name Britomartis meant originally "bee-maiden" in view of the prominence of the bee in the cult of the goddess but acquired a secondary meaning of "honey," "sweet." That the Cretan Artemis had close ties with Delphi is indicated by the tradition that Cretans participated in the colonization of Delphic territory. Perhaps the "bees" that built the second temple of Apollo at Delphi were Cretan. A number of references attest the ancient prestige of the bee in the island. One states that the infant Zeus had been nourished by bees, whence perhaps came his title Melissaios. A second mentions a son of Zeus named Meliteus who, when exposed in the woods, was likewise nourished by bees.' Melissa, the daughter of the Cretan king Melissos, reared the new-born Zeus, the same Melissa who became the first priestess of the Magna Mater and bequeathed her title to her successors.12 To the literary references are to be added the monumental. A curious ritual vessel imitating a honey-comb was found at Cnossus, and Evans cites the honey-comb of gold which Daedalus wrought for Aphrodite of Eryx. Further the bee is a Minoan hieroglyph, which Evans compares with another in a royal Egyptian title where it means " bee-keeper."