Kriophoros

In ancient Greek cult, kriophoros (Greek: κριοφόρος) or criophorus, the "ram-bearer," is a figure that commemorates the solemn sacrifice of a ram. It becomes an epithet of Hermes: Hermes Kriophoros.

At the Boeotian city of Tanagra, Pausanias relates a local myth that credited the god with saving the city in a time of plague, by carrying a ram on his shoulders as he made the circuit of the city's walls:

There are sanctuaries of Hermes Kriophoros and of Hermes called Promachos. They account for the former surname by a story that Hermes averted a pestilence from the city by carrying a ram round the walls; to commemorate this Calamis made an image of Hermes carrying a ram upon his shoulders. Whichever of the youths is judged to be the most handsome goes round the walls at the feast of Hermes, carrying a lamb on his shoulders.

The myth may be providing an etiological explanation of a cult practice, carried out to avert miasma, the ritual pollution that had brought disease, a propitiatory act whose ancient origins had become lost but had ossified in this iconic motif. Reflections of Calamis' lost Hermes Kriophoros may be detectable on the Roman coinage of the city.

In Messenia, at the sacred grove of Karnasus, Pausanias noted that Apollon Karneios and Hermes Kriophoros had a joint cult, the ram-bearers (kriophoroi) joining in male initiation rites.

A description by Pausanias of a Kriophoros dedicated at Olympia, by the sculptor Onatas, has been compared by José Dörig with a surviving bronze statuette, 8.6 cm tall, in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, as a basis for reconstructing the Severe style of the sculptor.

Not all ancient Greek sculptures of sacrifiants with an offering on their shoulders bear young rams. The nearly lifesize marble Calfbearer (moschophoros), of ca 570 BCE, found on the Athenian Acropolis in 1864 (illustration, left) is inscribed "Rhombos", apparently the donor, who commemorated his sacrifice in this manner. The sacrificial animal in the case is a young bull, but the iconic pose, with the young animal across the sacrifiant's shoulders, secured by forelegs and rear legs firmly in the sacrifiant's grip, is the same as many kriophoroi. This is the most famous of the Kriophoros sculptures and is exhibited at the Acropolis Museum

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