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The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall (4.4 in) Venus figurine estimated to have been made c. 30,000 years ago. [1] [2] It was recovered on 7 August 1908 from an archaeological dig conducted by Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier, and Josef Bayer at a Paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria.
It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function. There are widely varying and speculative interpretations of their use or meaning: they have been seen as religious figures, [5] an expression of health and fertility, grandmother goddesses, or as self-depictions by female artists. [6]
The Germanic goddess Eostre, whose themes are fertility and rebirth, is often surrounded by hares in art. In Christianity, white rabbits are considered to be symbols of rebirth and fertility and are seen on a wing of the high altar in Freiburg Minster , where they are playing at the feet of two pregnant women, Mary and Elizabeth .
The exact role in cult and the purpose of the votive figures is unclear. It has been suggested that the figures represent a mother/fertility goddess, sacred prostitutes, or were charms to protect women during pregnancy. [3] Dea Gravida figures have occasionally been found together with a statue of a bearded male wearing an Atef crown. [4]
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The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is similar to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, [4] of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BC.
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Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber. Each of these three deities occupied their own cella at the temple. Their cults were served or supervised by a male public priesthood.