The Ever-unfolding Marriage of
Loewenmensch and Venus of Hohle Fels
What Happened?
What happened after Loewenmensch’s transition? In a sense he was suddenly gone! Hohle Fels was confused about her connection to whom she had married: The Loewen? The Mensch?
It is difficult to know for sure what exactly occurred during that densely transitional time between the wedding and, perhaps, around 3,000 BC. Authorities and experts disagree, but it feels like Hohle Fels ultimately went inside – inside herself, and inside the family compound with Mensch – by his side in his role as her king; and amid the work being accomplished at home.
At first, as her immediate world became dense, with the populations of settlements increasing, she worked as a co-equal partner with Mensch in the process of developing their estate, but time separated their roles, as the administering of State and religion diverged from the maintenance of home. She might have divined a sense of this future had she closely read the laws of her wedding officiant, Hammurabi.
We may also never know the purpose for which those first likenesses, of the women of the wedding party, were created. But now, in this end of Neolithic time, we, and maybe Hohle Fels as well, miss the perception of ebullience that we enjoyed when we first saw them. In the later stages of the Neolithic she rarely appears as a visible or equal consultant about administrative operations. The images we see of her and her descendants seem to convey the notion that she ultimately became circumscribed within her dual abstract roles in the quasi-human domain; goddess of desires and crops, and caretaker of her personal domicile. Roles that have continued almost consistently until this day.
