Sunday 23 August 2020

Who is this guy?

Syro-Hittite relief, "believed" to be depicting the ancient Sumerian hero-king Gilgamesh as master of animals, holding the horn of a bull and the leg of a lion. From Gaziantep, c. 900-700 BC. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey.


Again we see marking of the moment when bull (summer) ends and lion (autumn) begins (end of July beginning of August)...You can read more about the animal symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons". 


The deer is Persian deer, whose mating season starts at that exact moment. I talked about this in my post "Entemena vase". 

So this is another example of the use of animal solar year calendar markers...

What does this tell us about this relief? And who is the figure depicted in the relief really? 

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