Greek Tamata

This week I had to present a culture report for my class about Greek tamata, a subject that I knew very little about before I started researching about it. The Greek word tama means "vow" in English, and the plural tamata means "vows". Tama are used in the Eastern Orthodox church as votive offerings, meaning they are items with the sole purpose of being left in a holy place. Usually they are small metal plaques with an image embossed on them made of tin, silver, or gold depending on what you can afford.

A variety of tamata

The process is pretty simple: buy a tama, bring it to a church and hang it by an icon of the saint of your choosing, light a candle, and leave. Their purpose can be simple as well. Usually you purchase a tama in order to ask the saint to help you in some way. Even in Catholic tradition the saints are associated with certain things and are considered "the patron saint of..." The same is true in Greece. Our neighborhood is named after a saint, Saint Paraskevi, who is associated with eyes and sight. If a Greek is having an eye problem they would purchase a tama with an eye embossed on it (like one of the examples above) and hang it next to an icon of St. Paraskevi as a votive offering. Tama can also be given to a saint in thanksgiving for a blessing. That blessing isn't always related to physical ailments. It can be a prayer to find love, asking for a healthy marriage, praying for the ability to afford a house or car, etc. I think that the idea of using tama is very straightforward and fits with the Greek way of doing things. Rather than beat around the bush they are proactive and unafraid to ask for help. In America we tend to shy away from admitting when we are weak or unable to do something. The Greeks have no such reservations. It's refreshing, really.

During my research I came across an incredibly interesting story related to tama. In the late 6th century AD, St. John of Damascus was a Christian serving as vizier to the Muslim caliph in Damascus (modern Syria). He was wrongly accused of treachery relating to his defense of iconography, and the punishment was to lose his hand. After having his hand cut off, he was praying in front of an icon of the Virgin Mary. Miraculously, the Virgin restored his hand. In thanksgiving, he had a silver replica made of his hand which he then left in front of the icon. That icon, called the Tricherousa (translates as "Three-handed") is still housed in a monastery on Mount Athos here in Greece.

The Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, with the silver hand of St. John of Damascus in the bottom left corner.

I found tamata so interesting because they have ancient roots. The ancient Greeks gave them to the gods in the same way that modern Greeks give them to the saints. Apollo, for example, was traditionally associated with healing and would be given a votive offering in hopes that he would heal the supplicant. The practice has barely changed from ancient to modern times, a testament to the endurance and continuity of Greek culture. Some museums here display clay tama that have been found at ancient excavation sites which look very similar to the modern metal plaques. 

 

I was glad to have blindly picked a subject I knew nothing about and still end up with something fascinating. I learned a lot, a lot more than I can even contain in one blog post. Tama are both ancient and modern, the perfect representation for this trip. We are here immersing ourselves in the culture and learning modern Greek, but at the same time we are visiting ancient ruins and learning about parts of Greek culture that have been preserved for centuries. It's part of the unique experience while studying in Greece and I'm not sure I could find anything quite like it anywhere else in the world.