DIVINE TWINS AND TWIN KINGS: A BRONZE AGE INNOVATION
The material and iconographic correlates of the myths of the Divine Twins are most clearly represented during the Bronze Age. In the Vedic texts they are among the most popular of gods, and they were also very popular in Greece.
In India they helped Indra, their mother’s brother and thus uncle, to get the soma from Tvastar, the sky father, which suggests their importance in the second and third generation of gods. Therefore, they are constantly referred to as young. Based on archaeological evidence from Europe, it is clear that the Divine Twins were dominant gods during the second millennium BCE and well into the early first millennium BCE. Their popularity is linked to the expansion of the war chariot after 2000 BCE, which they used to drive around the earth with the sun. However, in the Vedic texts this vehicle is often described as a cart with three wheels (or sets of wheels/axles), and in this it corresponds to the sun chariot from Duplje, which has three wheels (Kristiansen & Larsson 2005: fig. 139), but the cart carrying the horse and sun in the Trundholm miniature could also be considered to be a three-axled cart. These examples suggest that the Vedic texts refer to the use of miniatures that were to be rolled in rituals, and therefore needed an extra set of wheels.Based on their close connection with the technological innovations of the late third and early second millennium (chariot and horsemanship), as described in the Rig Veda and later European sources, the Divine Twins cannot be much older than ca. 2000 BCE. By this time the second and third generation of young gods, headed by the Divine Twins, had taken precedence. More complex Bronze Age societies with a new warrior class, chariots and horses demanded new gods with new functions, which also redefined the role of an earlier pantheon of first and second generation gods, as we have seen.
These new gods are often referred to as young and shining with many roles. By acting as mediators between the sky and the earth, between the divine and the profane, they instituted a divine, ritualized leadership based on dual kings or twin chiefs. In 1960, Norbert Wagner had already pointed out this relationship, and also the role of the Divine Twins in training young warriors, as they were supreme sportsmen, winners of running and boxing contests in the first Olympic games, but also dancers and leaders of the weapon dance (a training programme). Thus he links them to the training and initiation of young warriors, which would then be in the hands of their earthly representatives: the twin kings. Wagner further points to several examples from later Germanic sources of twin or dual leadership, the best known being Horsa and Hengist of the Jutes who migrated to Kent in England in the fifth century, and whose ritualized names refer to horses. Among the Greeks we also find dual kingship, most famously in Sparta, where it was traced back to the Dioscuri, their national gods (for discussion, see Miller 1998). The Spartans were originally migrants, just like the Jutes in Kent. Wagner therefore points to a possible relationship between dual leadership and conquest migrations, leading to the foundation of new royal lineages and chiefdoms.If this holds true, we should expect dual kingship to have played an important role during the expansion of the social and religious institutions of early Indo- European-speaking societies both during the third and second millennia BCE. And that is indeed the case, as I have demonstrated for the second millennium BCE. Consequently both the institution of dual leadership and the institution of young war-bands were an essential feature of early Indo-European societies as we know them archaeologically during the third and second millennia BCE, but later textual evidence also points to the role of groups of youth organized in warlike brotherhoods (Sergent 2003).
The introduction of innovations was another characteristic feature of the Divine Twins. This can be linked to travelling, and therefore they are also the protectors and rescuers of sailors and travellers. The Divine Twins were eternal travellers in their golden chariot, and thus epitomized the importance of speed and travelling in the new, more international and interconnected, Bronze Age world. That is part of their dominant position. Their chariot further represented the new warrior aristocracy that rose to power throughout Eurasia after 2000 BCE, one that was often based on dual leadership.