Landscapes of Memory:  Topographical Imagery
in the Orphic Gold Tablets

Jacquelyn H. Clements (Florida State University)

The so-called “Orphic Gold Tablets,” a group of over forty fragmentary gold plates found scattered throughout the Mediterranean, appear to provide insight in regards to the initiation rites and funerary rituals of practitioners of Orphism from the 4^th to 2^nd centuries B.C.E.  Although variable in size, inscription, and format, the majority of these texts provide detailed instructions for the deceased that facilitates their journey into the afterlife.  In particular, a number of the tablets, including ones from Petelia, Thurii, and Hipponion, incorporate descriptions of the landscape of the Underworld that are to be encountered by the deceased, including cypress trees and springs.  While varying slightly in their physical depictions, the landscape motifs described in the Orphic gold tablets function as prominent visual indicators of a complex Underworld landscape.

Past scholarship has noted these landscape elements, offering a variety of opinions as to their functions.  The cypress tree, for one, has been seen as a “symbol of immortality” (Guarducci 1972), while for others it is merely a landmark (Zuntz 1971).  The spring of Mnemosyne from which the deceased is instructed to drink has received more attention, generally seen as a process of initiation (Cole 2003) and a way of avoiding Forgetfulness (Lethe), the spring that the initiate is told to avoid, in order to reach a type of divine transcendence (Albinus 2000, Janko 1984).  Thus, these vivid images of the topography of the Underworld are anticipatory in nature, providing signs for the deceased that will guide them into the afterlife.

This paper seeks to explore the importance of these imaginary landscapes as described in the gold tablets. In general, I contend, the landscape elements found within the gold tablets are presented as topographical indicators, and serve as both obstacles and aides to the journey of the deceased.  In addition, by building upon previous scholarship (Edmonds 2004, Cole 2003), this paper attempts to link the Underworld topography of the Orphic gold tablets to both that of the landscape Odysseus encounters in Book XI of the Odyssey, as well as that which Er encounters in Book X of the Plato’s Republic.  These “landscapes of memory” are crucial, I argue, as integral components in the journey of the initiate, at once providing a physically familiar topography, as well as subsequently serving as portents to a successful passage into the afterlife.