THE “DIVINE TWINS” IN TEXTS AND MATERIAL CULTURE
The extraordinary Nebra find combines well-known ritual practices from the Early Bronze Age with a unique object, a bronze disc depicting the heavenly realm with moon, sun and stars, and a sun-ship, all in gold (Meller 2004).
It takes the idea of the Bronze Age sun cult, as represented by the Trundholm sun chariot, one step further back in time, and it indicates that the myth about the journey of the sun (Kaul 1998: fig. 170) was anchored in complex astronomic and cosmological knowledge (Randsborg 2006: ch. X). This knowledge probably originated in the Near East, where the sun and moon are often displayed on seals, but in Europe it was wedded to a shared Indo-European religion that placed the sun cult and its practitioners in a milieu of dual gods (Gonda 1974; Olmsted 1994; Kristiansen & Larsson 2005: ch. 6.3). Most famous among them were the so-called “Divine Twins”, the Vedic Asvins and the Greek Dioscuri (Ward 1968, 1970), who were sons of the sky god and brothers of the Sun goddess, her helpers and rescuers during the night when she was taken away to the underworld. The replay of this myth is attested in Nordic Bronze Age iconography, rock art and bronze figurines dating from 1700 to 500 BCE (Kristiansen & Larsson 2005: fig. 146; Kristiansen 2010). They are also said to represent the morning and evening star, and the twin stars in the constellation of Gemini. This stellar constellation, which belongs to the winter sky, may possibly be identified in the lower part of the Nebra disc, as it consists of eight stars in a formation much like what we see on the disc.Their divine functions as rescuers of sailors, protectors of travellers, helpers in battle, healers of illness, master musicians and dancers are further testified to by recurring scenes on rock art, bronze work and figurines where they appear in pairs, as ships carrying the sun, as humans carrying cult axes and playing lurs, or as dancers with their staffs or poles, another of their attributes.
With minor changes these functions remained intact throughout the Bronze Age. Thus, the archaeological correlates of the main functions of the Divine Twins as handed down to us in texts recur consistently in hundreds of contexts during the entire Bronze Age and testify to the central role played by the “Divine Twins” for more than a millennium.The Divine Twins may also appear in their transformed shape as horses (their name “asvins” means “horse tamer”, and “possessed of horses”, and they were born as horses) pulling the sun, or they transform into twin ships with horse heads - retaining their identity - as they carry the sun safely through the sea of the underworld. Such motifs are common on Scandinavian rock art (Kristiansen 2010). However, there is a link between this iconography and its material attributes (axes, lurs), as these items are regularly found deposited, mostly in pairs, throughout central and northern Europe (Kristiansen & Larsson 2005: fig. 146). I shall now discuss the meaning of these deposits, based on the textual evidence of the Divine Twins in early Indo-European religion, the result of which will also pertain to the Nebra hoard.