The Laughless Rock
"Not every version of the holy story puts Demeter's act of mourning — her sitting in silence — in the palace of Keleos. There was another and perhaps older version according to which the goddess sat on a rock. There she sat 'without laughing.' [In the Mysteries] this 'laughless rock — agelastos petra — was seen only by those who entered the sacred precinct. Warned in a dream not to mention anything he saw in the inner sanctum, the pious Pausanias omitted to mention this rock in his description (I 38 7). The present-day visitor must look for it, within the Lesser Propylaia [17: 5], to the right of the Sacred Road. There, according to an old story, sat the goddess, not far from the Well of the Beautiful Dances, near the hollowed-out place in the mountain slope which was dedicated to the god of the underworld and sheltered the little temple of Pluto. [...] In various periods the Eleusinians knew of, and pointed out, at least three entrances to Hades: one through the well, a second here, and a third near the wild fig tree at Kephisos. As the goddess sat there unlaughing, in Metaneira's quarters, or on the rock, a hearty serving maid, stepped into her role. Her name was Iambe, like the meter of iambic, that is, satirical poems, but in the feminine rather than the masculine form."

from "Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter," p.38, by Carl Kerényi (1991)
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Recognition & Humility
"Demeter reaches the door of the house; as she sets foot on the threshold a brief epiphany occurs, filling the doorway with divine radiance (L-189 ). Metaneira, Celeus' wife, responds appropriately, being seized by αἰδώς σέβας and δέος [awe, reverence and fear] (L-190); she offers her κλισμός [seat / couch] to the goddess, but Demeter refuses. Implicit in Metaneira's offer is the recognition of the goddess' superior status. This is not to say that Metaneira becomes aware of Demeter's true nature; for the remarkable thing about this passage is that, while there are all the elements of a full-scale epiphany in the doorway, there is only a partial comprehension on the part of the household of Celeus of the presence of divinity. Metaneira's emotional response is appropriate to divinity but intellectually she merely infers that Demeter is high-born [...] (L-213-14 ). [...] Demeter refuses the κλισμός [couch] and will only sit when offered the πηκτὸν ἕδος [jointed seat = humble stool] by Iambe. [...] In this light, we are meant to see the πηκτὸν ἕδος in opposition to the κλισμός, and so Iambe stands in opposition to Metaneira as [humble] servant to mistress."

from "A companion to the Greek Lyric Poets," pp. 17-18, by Douglas E. Gerber (1997)
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Heqet = Baubo/Iambe in Egypt
"Fertility figures of various kinds are common throughout the world, [...] it becomes clear that they can be divided into at least three groups. 1. The Universal Mother or Isis type. 2. The Divine Woman or Ishtar type. 3. The Personified Yoni or Baubo type. [...In Egyptian mythology] the legend of Baubo is known only through the Greek accounts. This legend says that when Isis was mourning for Osiris, Baubo assumed the [squat] attitude represented in tlle figures, and thereby made Isis laugh and cease from lamenting. The legend is clearly late, for Baubo is called indifferently the hostess of Isis, the nurse of Isis, and is even one aspect of Isis herself. She had a definite role in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were, according to Diodorus, the same as the Mysteries of Isis, while Herodotus (II, 59) says that in Greek Isis was called Demeter. The Egyptian origin of Baubo is accepted by classical scholars, who equate Baubo-Phryne (Frog-Baubo) with the frog-goddess of birth Heqt."

from "Female Fertility Figures," in "The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland," Vol. 64 (1934) by [Margaret Alice] M. A. Murray.

^{Cup or small mixing bowl,
Ialysos, Rhodes, illustrated in Edith Hall Dohan's "Decorative Art of Crete in the Bronze Age" (1907)
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^{Late Minoan, decorative plant forms, from Arthur Evans, The Palace of Minos (1921).}

Something Secretive
(e.g., Conceive)
"In Achaia, a seven-day festival to Demeter was celebrated at the sanctuary of Mysian Demeter, where a man from Argos named Mysius was said to have given Demeter welcome (during her earthly wanderings). For the first few days, men and women participated, but on the third day, men withdrew, and women performed some secret ritual. On the following day, the men returned, and the women and men took turns laughing and jeering at one another. It is tempting to see these rites as a metaphor for procreation, seen from a male perspective: a man and woman do something together; the man withdraws; the woman does something secretive (e.g., conceive); the man then returns. Whether or not this is the case, the rites in Achaia seem to resemble those of the Thesmophoria and other known women's festivals of Demeter."

from "Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World," p. 27, by Ross Shepard Kraemer (1994)
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Demeter & Sarah's Laugh
in the Hebrew Scriptures —
the human kind
"Demeter responded to Iambe by laughing, drinking the kukeân (the 'mixed drink' described in the Hymn), and then treating with fire and ambrosia Demophoon, Metaneira's infant son, while remaining among the women of Eleusis. [...] Just as Demeter's bereavement had brought her to the mortal world, so her laughter was the human kind, not Olympian. It recalls the laughter of Sarah, Abraham's eighty-year-old-wife, when she discovered that she was pregnant. When Demeter laughed, together with mortal women she celebrated life's renewal in the face of age and death. Demeter saw women — like herself — whose sexual and reproductive powers belied appearance. Like Queen Metaneira, who had borne a son — 'late born, beyond all hope' (219) — like decorous Iambe, surprising in her mocking humor, so this decrepit old woman revealed incongruous energy."

from "Women's Cultic Joking and Mockery: Some Perspectives," by D. M. O'Higgins, in "Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society," p. 138, ed. by André Lardinois and Laura McClure (2001)
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^{Knossos, decorated ceramic jug, bronze age
Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete}

Sappho's Accessible
Female Sexuality
Sappho's great poetic achievement, I believe, was to articulate a female desire so compellingly as to make it at once emotionally acccessible to men as well as women — although men's responses to it were shaped by far different relations of gender and power. [...] Consequently, as we learn from ancient critical pronouncements, anecdotal evidence and visual representations of the poet as cultural icon, male listeners and readers cherished Sappho's works as a socially permissible escape from the strict constraints of masculinity. In the symposium, singing one of [Sappho's] compostions — songs charged with the comforting presence of benign divinity and flooded with aching but sweet reciprocal desire — would have allowed men momentarily to "play the other."

from Marilyn B. Skinner, "Woman and Language in Ancient Greece, or, Why is Sappho a Woman?" in "Feminist Theory and the Classics," ed. by Rabinowitz and Richlin, 1993
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