In Greek mythology, the Keres (/ˈkɪriːz/; Ancient Greek: Κῆρες), singular Ker (/ˈkɜr/; Κήρ), were female death-spirits. They were the goddesses who personified violent death and who were drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields. Although they were present during death and dying, they did not have the power to kill. All they could do was wait and then feast on the dead. The Keres were daughters of Nyx, and as such the sisters of beings such as Moirai, who controlled the fate of souls, and Thanatos, the god of peaceful death. Some later authorities, such as Cicero, called them by a Latin name, Tenebrae (“the Darknesses”), and named them daughters of Erebus and Nyx.

• “Greek Spirits of Violent Death”. www.theoi.com.

Etymology

The Greek word κήρ means “death” or “doom” and appears as a proper noun in the singular and plural as Κήρ and Κῆρες to refer to divinities. Homer uses Κῆρες in the phrase κήρες θανάτοιο, “Keres of death”. By extension the word may mean “plague, disease” and in prose “blemish or defect”. The relative verb κεραΐζω or κείρω means “ravage or plunder”. Sometimes in Homer the words κήρ and moira have similar meanings. The older meaning was probably “destruction of the dead”, and Hesychius of Alexandria relates the word to the verb κηραινειν “decay”.

• “Greek Gods and Goddesses”. www.greekgodsandgoddesses.net.
• “Greek Word Study Tool”. www.perseus.tufts.edu.
• Nilsson Vol I, p. 224

Description

And Nyx (Night) bare hateful Moros (Doom) and black Ker (Violent Death) and Thanatos (Death), and she bare Hypnos (Sleep) and the tribe of Oneiroi (Dreams). And again the goddess murky Nyx, though she lay with none, bare Momus (Blame) and painful Oizys (Misery), and the Hesperides … Also she bare the Moirai (Fates) and the ruthless avenging Keres (Death-Fates) … Also deadly Nyx bare Nemesis (Revenge) to afflict mortal men, and after her, Apate (Deceit) and Philotes (Friendship) and hateful Geras (Old Age) and hard-hearted Eris (Strife).

— Hesiod, Theogony 211, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White

They were described as dark beings with gnashing teeth and claws and with a thirst for human blood. They would hover over the battlefield and search for dying and wounded men. (sounds like the Red Cross) A description of the Keres can be found in the Shield of Heracles (248–57):

The black Dooms gnashing their white teeth, grim-eyed, fierce, bloody, terrifying fought over the men who were dying for they were all longing to drink dark blood. As soon as they caught a man who had fallen or one newly wounded, one of them clasped her great claws around him and his soul went down to Hades, to chilly Tartarus. And when they had satisfied their hearts with human blood, they would throw that one behind them and rush back again into the battle and the tumult.

Though not mentioned by Hesiod, Achlys may have been included among the Keres.

• Akhlys

A parallel, and equally unusual personification of “the baleful Ker” is in Homer’s depiction of the Shield of Achilles (Iliad, ix. 410ff), which is the model for the Shield of Heracles. These are works of art that are being described.

In the fifth century, Keres were portrayed as small winged sprites in vase-paintings adduced by J.E. Harrison (Harrison, 1903), who described apotropaic rites and rites of purification that were intended to keep the Keres at bay.

According to a statement of Stesichorus noted by Eustathius, Stesichorus “called the Keres by the name Telchines“, whom Eustathius identified with the Kuretes of Crete, who could call up squalls of wind and would brew potions from herbs (noted in Harrison, p. 171).

• Telchines (Ancient Greek: Τελχῖνες, Telkhines) were the original inhabitants of the island of Rhodes and were known in Crete and Cyprus. Their parents were either Pontus and Gaia or Tartarus and Nemesis or else they were born from the blood of castrated Uranus, along with the Erinyes. In another story, there were nine Telchines, children of Thalassa and Pontus; they had flippers instead of hands and the heads of dogs and were known as fish children. In some accounts, Poseidon was described as the Telchines’ father. The Telchines were regarded as the cultivators of the soil and ministers of the gods and as such they came from Crete to Cyprus and from thence to Rhodes or they proceeded from Rhodes to Crete and Boeotia.The Telchines abandoned their homes because they foresaw that the island would be inundated and thence they scattered in different directions; The Telchines were also regarded as wizards and envious daemons. Their very eyes and aspect were said to have been destructive. They had it in their power to bring on hail, rain, and snow, and to assume any form they pleased; they further produced a substance poisonous to living things. Thus, they were called Alastores for supervising the ceaseless wanderings of people and Palamnaioi for pouring the water of Styx with their palms and hands in order to make the fields infertile. The Telchines were described to have stings and being rough as the echinoid and thus, their names teliochinous that is “having a poisonous telos like an echinoid”. The Telchines were said to have invented useful arts and institutions which were useful to mankind and to have made images of the gods. Telchines were regarded as excellent metallurgists; various accounts state that they were skilled metal workers in brass and iron and made a trident for Poseidon and a sickle for Cronus, both ceremonial weapons. Together with their help and the Cyclopes, the smith god Hephaestus forged the cursed necklace of Harmonia. Because of their excellent workmanship, the Telchines were maligned by rival workmen and thus received their bad reputation. The gods (Zeus, Poseidon or Apollo) eventually killed them because they began to use magic for malignant purposes; particularly, they produced a mixture of Stygian water and sulfur, which killed animals and plants (according to Nonnus, they did so as revenge for being driven out of Rhodes by the Heliadae). Accounts vary on how exactly they were destroyed.
• According to Greek mythology, the Korybantes or Corybantes (also Corybants) were the armed and crested dancers who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. They are also called the Kurbantes in Phrygia.The Kuretes or Kouretes (Κουρῆτες) (see Ecstatics below) were nine dancers who venerated Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybele. A fragment from Strabo‘s Book VII gives a sense of the roughly analogous character of these male confraternities, and the confusion rampant among those not initiated: Grant Showerman in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition addressed the confusion, stating that the Korybantes “are distinguished only [from the Kuretes] by their Asiatic origin and by the more pronouncedly orgiastic nature of their rites”.Ovid, in Metamorphoses, says the Kouretes were born from rainwater (Uranus fertilizing Gaia). This suggests a connection with the Hyades. The scholar Jane Ellen Harrison writes that besides being guardians, nurturers, and initiators of the infant Zeus, the Kouretes were primitive magicians and seers. She also writes that they were metal workers and that metallurgy was considered an almost magical art. There were several “tribes” of Korybantes, including the Cabeiri, the Korybantes Euboioi, the Korybantes Samothrakioi. Hoplodamos and his Gigantes were counted among Korybantes, and Titan Anytos was considered a Kourete. Homer referred to select young men as kouretes, when Agamemnon instructs Odysseus to pick out kouretes, the bravest among the Achaeans to bear gifts to Achilles. The Greeks preserved a tradition down to Strabo‘s day, that the Kuretes of Aetolia and Acarnania in mainland Greece had been imported from Crete.

The term Keres has also been cautiously used to describe a person’s fate. An example of this can be found in the Iliad where Achilles was given the choice (or Keres) between either a long and obscure life and home, or death at Troy and everlasting glory. Also, when Achilles and Hector were about to engage in a fight to the death, the god Zeus weighed both warriors’ keres to determine who shall die. As Hector’s ker was deemed heavier, he was the one destined to die and in the weighing of souls, Zeus chooses Hector to be killed. During the festival known as Anthesteria, the Keres were driven away. Their Roman equivalents were Letum (“death”) or the Tenebrae (“shadows”).

• In the second century AD Pausaniuas equated the two (x.28.4). “Here and elsewhere to translate ‘Keres’ by fates is to make a premature abstraction,” Jane Ellen Harrison warned (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, “The Ker as Evil Sprite” p. 170. See also Harrison’s section “The Ker as Fate” pp. 183–87).
• This Kerostasia, or weighing of keres may be paralleled by the Psychostasia or weighing of souls; a lost play with that title was written by Aeschylus and the Egyptian parallel is familiar.
• The subject appears in vase-paintings, where little men are in the scales: “it is the lives rather than the fates that are weighed”, Harrison remarks (Prolegomena p. 184).

Hunger, pestilence, madness, nightmare have each a sprite behind them; are all sprites,” J.E. Harrison observed (Harrison 1903, p 169), but two Keres might not be averted, and these, which emerged from the swarm of lesser ills, were Old Age and Death. Odysseus says, “Death and the Ker avoiding, we escape” (Odyssey xii.158), where the two are not quite identical: Harrison (p. 175) found the Christian parallel “death and the angel of death.

Keres and Valkyries

Mathias Egeler suggests a connection exists between the Keres and the Valkyries of Norse mythology. Both deities are war spirits that fly over battlefields during conflicts and choose those to be slain. The difference is that Valkyries are benevolent deities in contrast to the malevolence of the Keres, perhaps due to the different outlook of the two cultures towards war. The word valkyrie derives from Old Norse valkyrja (plural valkyrjur), which is composed of two words; the noun valr (referring to the slain on the battlefield) and the verb kjósa (meaning “to choose”). Together, they mean “chooser of the slain”. The Greek word “Ker” etymologically means destruction, death.

• Egeler, Mathias (2008). “Death, Wings, and Divine Devouring: Possible Mediterranean Affinities of Irish Battlefield Demons and Norse Valkyries”. Studia Celtica Fennica. 5: 5–25.
• Byock, Jesse (2005). The Prose Edda. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 142–43. ISBN 978-0-14-191274-5.
• Lidell.Scott: Greek-English Lexicon

For other uses, see Keres (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Ceres (mythology). Hm…

See also

• Badb

Notes

1. Hesiod, Theogony 211
2. Hyginus, Fabulae Preface; Cicero, De Natura Deorum 3.17
3. “Greek Spirits of Violent Death”. www.theoi.com.
4. “Greek Gods and Goddesses”. www.greekgodsandgoddesses.net.
5. “Greek Word Study Tool”. www.perseus.tufts.edu.
6. Nilsson Vol I, p. 224
7. Akhlys
8. In the second century AD Pausaniuas equated the two (x.28.4). “Here and elsewhere to translate ‘Keres’ by fates is to make a premature abstraction,” Jane Ellen Harrison warned (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, “The Ker as Evil Sprite” p. 170. See also Harrison’s section “The Ker as Fate” pp. 183–87).
9. This Kerostasia, or weighing of keres may be paralleled by the Psychostasia or weighing of souls; a lost play with that title was written by Aeschylus and the Egyptian parallel is familiar.
10. The subject appears in vase-paintings, where little men are in the scales: “it is the lives rather than the fates that are weighed”, Harrison remarks (Prolegomena p. 184).
11. Egeler, Mathias (2008). “Death, Wings, and Divine Devouring: Possible Mediterranean Affinities of Irish Battlefield Demons and Norse Valkyries”. Studia Celtica Fennica. 5: 5–25.
12. Byock, Jesse (2005). The Prose Edda. Penguin Books Limited. pp. 142–43. ISBN 978-0-14-191274-5.
13. Lidell.Scott: Greek-English Lexicon

References

• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion 1903. Chapter V: “The demonology of ghosts and spites and bogeys”
• Hesiod, Theogony from The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• March, J., Cassell’s Dictionary Of Classical Mythology, London, 1999. ISBN 0-304-35161-X
• Marcus Tullius Cicero, Nature of the Gods from the Treatises of M.T. Cicero translated by Charles Duke Yonge (1812-1891), Bohn edition of 1878. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
• Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum. O. Plasberg. Leipzig. Teubner. 1917. Latin text available at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Unknown. “Greek Gods and Goddesses”.

External links

•  The dictionary definition of Keres at Wiktionary

Ancient Greek deities by affiliation

Ancient Greek religion and mythology

Categories: 

• Greek death goddesses
• Greek war deities
• Personifications in Greek mythology
• Women in Greek mythology
• Children of Nyx