Following the Path Never Completely Erased: Marija Gimbutas and Momolina Marconi

Luciana Percovich

Abstract

Marija Gimbutas and Momolina Marconi are presented by the Italian researcher and writer Luciana Percovich as two great women of the twentieth century whose work focused on the deep cultural roots of the European and Mediterranean regions. Through the study of the linguistic and religious survivals within Mediterranean and Indo-European Italy, Marconi restores the features of the pre-Hellenic Pelasgian civilization. The main figure who emerges is a powerful female she calls “Potnia,” wonderfully skilled in magic and medicinal arts, the untamed Lady of the Wild, the Animals, the Flowers, Herbs and Trees, from which developed all the Italian goddesses―Marica, Feronia, Angizia, Kirke, Mestra, Agamede, Bona Dea, Hygieia, Diana, Flora. Marconi was the first to focus on the term Potnia as distinct from Goddess, a later term that enters history with the disruption of her world.