Eileithyia

The Seba library treats Eileithyia in 6 passages, across 5 authors (including Kerényi, Carl, Burkert, Walter, Harrison, Jane Ellen).

In the library 6 passages

By the name Eileithyia, which the Odyssey mentions in connection with this grotto, the Greeks designated a goddess who presided over births and who presumably governed everything connected with the life of women even more in Minoan than in Greek times. A cult site of this goddess was a place dedicated to the origin of life.

Kerényi identifies Eileithyia as the pre-eminent Minoan birth-goddess whose cave sanctuary near Amnisos served as a sacred site consecrated to the very origin of life, with stalagmitic formations functioning as cult objects.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis

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Fileithyia as the birth goddess, 171, 173 cave of, 25-6, 40, 48 temple of, 235, 335

Burkert classifies Eileithyia definitively as the Greek birth goddess and records three distinct cult sites—her cave, her temple—as material evidence of her religious significance.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977thesis

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Right on the skirts of the hill, behind the line of the later treasuries, stood a small shrine of the Mother and Infant—Eileithyia and Sosipolis. This little temple moreover did not stand clear of the hillside; the back wall appears to have been actually engaged in it.

Harrison places the Eileithyia-Sosipolis shrine at Olympia within the oldest stratum of the Altis, embedding the goddess in the archaic Mother-and-Child complex alongside the Kouretes and identifying the site with cave religion.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912supporting

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