An intriguing cosmogony survived in a papyrus scrap about the early Spartan poet Alkman. He is commenting on a lost poem, and most of his commentary is lost as well. What remains is a creation story: the goddess Thetis emerges from primordial unformed matter and shapes it as a craftsman gives form to metal. She brings into being two principles, Poros (variously translated as Path, Resource, Possibility) and Tekmor (Limit, Binding Definition). In this way begin light and darkness, day and night. [Knox, 179]
Other translations for Tekmor are “marker,” which seems to have been the name for a racing post, or “ordinance.” Poros is also rendered as “Contriver.” [Alkman Fragment 5 (from Scholia) Greek Lyric II Alcman, Fragments, in http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Thesis.html ]
Knox relates this shred from Alkman to another ancient fragment in which “we can recognize the same cosmogonic concerns in the gnomic generalization at the end of the myth in the Louvre Partheneion (1.13f), for here Aisa and Poros, 'Destiny' and 'Path,' called 'the oldest of the gods,' have an important role as embodiments of the moral order. We can now make better sense of the scholiast's comment on this passage, 'By Poros [Alcman] means the same being as that represented by Chaos in Hesiod's mythology'…” [Knox, 180]
So in the primordial Chaos, Thetis sets things in order. “And Poros is as a beginning, Tekmor like an end.” The third element was Skotos, Darkness, and after it came Day and Moon and Flashings. Knox remarks that this cosmogony in Alkman is not unique: “Sea-goddesses elsewhere in early Greek literature, as Vernant has shown, serve as cosmogonic deities,” and he compares Thetis to the Babylonian sea-dragon Tiamat. [Knox, 179]
Knox also draws attention to Alkman's divine geneology which is different (and older) than Hesiod's. The Muses are daughters of Sky and Earth (Ouranos and Ge), not Zeus and Mnemosyne. (The (Olympian patriarchy is not established yet.) “Tyche, Chance, is sister to Eunomia and Peitho, 'Lawfulness' and 'Persuasion,' and the daughter of Prometheia, 'Forethought.'” [Knox, 180]
The Orphic cosmogony resembles that of Thetis, beginning with the protogena (ancestress) Thesis who is first to emerge along with Hydros, the Waters. Thesis is sometimes linked to Tethys, the female of the original pair, with Oceanos. Homer calls them the first beings, “whence the gods have risen.” [Iliad 14.200ff] In the 5th century CE, at the edge of the Christian curtain, Nonnus calls on “Tethys! Agemate and bedmate of Okeanos, ancient as the world, nurse of conmingled waters, selfborn, loving mother of children.” [Dionysiaca 23. 280, tr. Rouse, in http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Thesis.html ]
Going back to the Orphics, Ge solidified from Water and Mud. A third being emerged, Drakon, with heads of serpent, bull, lion and a god's face, also called Khronos, Time. He was partnered with Ananke, Inevitabilty or Necessity, who was of the same nature. She was also called Adrastea, “incorporeal, her arms extended throughout the universe and touching its extremities.” Ananke shows up in Plato as well, where she is connected to the Moirae.
I did some searches and discovered a translation of a better-preserved papyrus of Alkman's poetry, though still fragmentary: Guy Davenport, “And she with her lovely fair hair: The Partheneia or “Maiden-Songs” of Alcman celebrate love between young Spartan women”
Alkman wrote choral poetry for young women's rituals at Sparta. Davenport notes that only fragments survive but: “there is no mistaking the language of homosexual love used by the maidens of the choir.” Plutarch back this up in his reference to erotic love between older and younger women in Sparta: “This love was so approved among them, that even the beautiful and good women loved maidens.” [Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus, 18.9, in Davenport]
So this poem of Alkman is another testimony from Sparta to what we know already from Sappho on Lesbos: women's ritual communities with erotic attraction and lovemaking and longing.
There are ten maidens who compete as two choirs in a daybreak ceremony to dedicate a new plough before a goddess called Aotis, “she of the dawn.” The leader Hagisichora adored by all, and she and her second are compared with horses. The maidens sing of their leaders as champion race-horses, comparing them to light, the sun, the rising star Sirius
Plus a Fates connection: the beginning of this women's chorus calls “Destiny and Providence/ the oldest of all the gods”
Alcman also composed a Hymn to Artemis of the Strict Observance. (Ortheia, the goddess of Sparta.)
Sources for the above:
Knox, Bernard M. W., “Archaic Choral Lyric,” in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, Vol I. Greek Literature, ed. P.E. Easterling. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 1989
Guy Davenport, “And she with her lovely fair hair: The Partheneia or 'Maiden-Songs' of Alcman celebrate love between young Spartan women” <http://www.connellodovan.com/parth.html> Accessed Aug 1, 2009
http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Thesis.html
The demotion of Thesis by sexual assault