Read more about Demeter at: Wikipedia Official Site: Public Domain In ancient Greek religion and myth, Demeter ( ; Attic Dēmētēr. Doric Dāmātēr) is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grain and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito ( : wheat) as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros ( , thesmos: divine order, unwritten law) as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sanctity of marriage, the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of circa 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos, the "two mistresses and the king" are identified with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. Her Roman equivalent is Ceres. Demeter's character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter ( ) derived from Proto-Indo-European *méh₂tēr (mother). In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that Da ( ) (which became Attic De ( )) is the Doric form of Ge ( ), "earth", the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is "Mother-Earth". This root also appears in the Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne, "earth-shaker", as an aspect of the god Poseidon. However, the dā element is not so simply equated with "earth" according to John Chadwick. The element De- may be connected with Deo, a surname of Demeter probably derived from the Cretan word dea ( ), Ionic zeia ( ) meaning "barley", so that she is the Corn-Mother and the giver of food generally. Arcadian cult to Demeter links her to a male deity (Greek: Πάρεδρος, Paredros), who accompanied the Great Goddess and has been interpreted as a possible substitution for Poseidon; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess.
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Demeter