Figs have carried symbolic meaning across cultures and eras, representing concepts from fertility to spiritual enlightenment. But why have these sweet, perishable fruits maintained such an enduring aura of significance in mythology, religion, art, and literature?
As we explore the fig’s rich symbolic tapestry interwoven throughout human civilization, we uncover how this humble fruit became a vessel layered with meaning.
Symbolic Meanings of Figs in Ancient Cultures and Religions
Figs have been revered since antiquity for their sweet taste and connections to the life cycle. Ancient Egyptians buried figs with the deceased, signifying the promise of rebirth and revival in the afterlife. Greeks and Romans associated figs with prosperity, abundance, and peace. Evidence suggests fig cultivation in the Middle East as early as 4000 BC.
Cross-culturally, the fig tree developed as a feminine symbol of fertility and regeneration for its recurring cycles of fruiting and its sweet, sensuous, succulent fruit. The sap of the fig was equated with mother’s milk. And female deity associations arose from Egypt’s goddess Hathor to Rome’s goddess Rumia protecting sacred fig groves.
Feminine and Masculine Divine Symbolism
The fig tree’s capacity for abundant fertility and nourishment evidenced in its sweet fruit, green foliage, and regenerative cycles gained it a potent symbolic link to womanhood, motherhood, and feminine divinity. But male deities likewise bestowed fig trees.
The ancient Sumerian god Enki, god of wisdom, ruler of the sweet and life-sustaining waters of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, cultivated and gifted figs to sustain humanity. Some scholars posit Enki is forebear to the Hebrew Bible’s serpent in Eden. While Eve, the mother of humanity, takes the forbidden fruit that is often depicted in art as a fig.
The Fig in Scripture and Ancient Literature
Beyond its prominence in ancient Sumerian mythology, the fig tree emerges in Hindu texts, the Hebrew Bible, Greek epics, and the Quran as a versatile metaphor representing spiritual opportunity, divine providence, and the veil between the seen and unseen worlds.
Biblical and Hindu Symbolism
References abound in the Hebrew Bible with various allusions to figs and fig trees signifying divine providence, the line between obedience and temptation, spiritual blindness and illumination, judgment and redemption.
Similarly in the Hindu tradition, the Bhagavad Gita (Canto 15) describes the tree of life with roots above and branches below as an eternal fig tree, representing the material and spiritual worlds unified as one. Here the tree serves as a metaphor for the oneness underlying apparent duality.
From the Gita to the Greeks
This theme continues in Greek epics as figs and fig trees symbolize transitional spaces between worlds. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus finds himself trapped inside the branches of an enormous fig tree at the gateway of the Underworld. And accounts of Plato’s Academy tell of a large fig tree with pleasant shade under which students assembled outside the school.
The fig enters Roman and Egyptian mythology as well, its delightful fruit and ample shade immortalizing it as a meeting place between gods and humans. Horus the falcon God nurses underneath a holy sycamore fig. While Romulus and Remus settle to rest under a fig tree, only to be suckled by a she-wolf and fed ripe figs to nourish them into adulthood.
The Fig as an Enduring Symbolic Fruit in Art and Mythology
Beyond holy texts, fig symbology permeates mythology from East to West. The ancient Indian Ashvattha tree and Norse Yggdrasil both represent cosmic fig trees, with Yggdrasil more specifically symbolizing the tree of life. Ancient Egyptian mythology tells that the first fig grew from Ra’s teardrop, making figs themselves the mythical fruit of the gods.
Through the ages, this mythology transfers into visual art. Renaissance paintings rife with Christian symbolism portray figs subtly signifying spiritual awakening or overindulgence in earthly pleasures. Mosaics across ancient Roman villas, baths, and palaces artfully feature fig tree motifs representing prosperity, abundance, nobility, peace, and refinement.
The Fig Leaf and Artistic Symbolism
As a singular artistic symbol, perhaps none has endured in the Western canon like the fig leaf through its repeated usage in Genesis imagery. Prior to the Renaissance, Adam and Eve were often shown fully nude before the Fall. The small fig leaf emerged in Renaissance art as a shrewd nod to their prelapsarian innocence while still displaying idealized anatomy for the aesthetic delight of patrons.
This launched fig leaves’ representation of innocence, purity, humility, and modesty itself. Beyond Adam and Eve depictions, sculpted fig leaves garland across statues and frame figures in religious-themed paintings over countless generations. Like the wild foliage that strangles Orpheus and Eurydice in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as they attempt to return from the Underworld, fig leaves grew to represent the delicate veil separating innocence and decadence.
The World Tree and The Tree of Life
Two enduring motifs across faith traditions and cultures feature symbolic fig trees representing the mystical interconnectivity of the cosmos itself:
The World Tree – A colossal tree (often depicted as a fig) connecting sky, earth and the underground, while dynamically supporting the spheres of heavens, representing the axis of the universe and symbolic order amidst chaos.
The Tree of Life – A resplendent fig tree epitomizing humanity’s shared roots and the interconnectedness of all life in the web of nature. It bears the ripe fruits of sacred knowledge, with its fecund branches ever reaching heavenward while its grounds delve into the fertile soil interweaving spiritual and material worlds.
In modern symbolic interpretations, the fig retains its ancient associations with opportunity, unity, abundance, sensuality and the delicate divide between the mortal realm and the world beyond.
Prolific fig appearances in 20th century literature add contemporary undertones. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” uses a barren fig tree to portray spiritual void and emotional numbness in postwar life. While Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel “Looking Backward” reveals the protagonist Julian waking from a deep sleep of exactly 113 years to find his childhood home and beloved fig tree completely transformed in the futuristic world of 2000 AD.
Fig trees serve as symbols of creativity, artistic vision, unity, and rebirth in anime films like “Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence” and video games like “Nier.” The 1967 Academy Award-winning film “In the Heat of the Night” uses a fig tree as a meeting point beneath its expansive canopy for characters divided by race and status to profoundly connect.
Beyond specific creative works, the fig tree remains an influential cultural symbol, its image burned into jewelry, architecture, and home decor. Once deified across ancient civilizations, the fig still speaks to humanity today – holding symbolic meaning from the Old Testament to modern graphics novels, podcasts to paintings, harkening back through the ages with each succulent bite of its fruit.
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