A toast to Inanna

A small lapis lazuli disc, 2100-1900 BC, Trans-Elamite period, Southeastern Iran. Currently in Louvre...

What does it depict? Some say "a pair of lovers sharing a drink"...I would disagree. Here is why:

One side of the disc depicts a bare chested woman seating on a stool. She wears a skirt with a hatching pattern. Facing her, a kneeling bare chested man wearing a plain skirt who presents her with a cup...

Crescent moon and star above...

The other side of the disc depicts the man, now seating on a stool. Facing him is the same woman, kneeling on the ground and drinking from the same cup...

Star and crescent moon above...

Now what is interesting is that as the star is always above the woman and the crescent moon is always above the man. Which I think identifies these figures as 

Star - (Elamite version of) Inanna

Crescent moon - (Elamite version of) Sin

Another interesting thing is that the man (Sin) gives the cup to the woman (Inanna) and that she then drinks from it...What could that mean?

To figure this out we need to look at the climate in Mesopotamia/Iran and the way crescent moon sets during the year. 

In Mesopotamia/Iran the climatic year is divided into a hot dry half (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool wet half (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)...

During the winter, the ecliptic plane intersects the western horizon at its steepest, most vertical angle at sunset. Because a waxing crescent Moon follows right behind the Sun along this steep line, it sits directly above the Sun. This makes the crescent look like a upright bowl (the "wet moon") that sinks straight down into the horizon...

So basically, in Mesopotamia/Iran, the crescent moon points upwards during the wet season, the season which turns parched, dry wasteland into fertile grazing and farm land. This is why Moon god Sin was so venerated. I talked about this originally in my post "Moon god Nana - Sin"

BTW, Jan/Feb, when the Wet Moon starts approaching it's most vertical position is also the beginning of the snowmelt in the Iranian mountains...And snowmelt is the main contributor to the annual flood of Tigris and Euphrates...

I talk about the Wet Moon and why Moon Gods were so important in places where winter is the rainy part of the year in many of my other posts too...

Inanna was directly linked to land fertility, particularly with cattle, grain, date fertility. I talked about this in my posts "Inanna in Egypt", "Chalcedony stamp", "Rhomb", "Mother of grain", "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...and many others...

"Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."

So, for (Mother) earth to become fertile and to produce grain and grass/cattle it needs (to drink) water (rain/snow melt). And I think that this is what is symbolically depicted through "the woman (Inanna) drinking from the cup given to her by the man (Sin)"...

I already talked about this symbolism of drinking from a cup in my post "Tulip goddess", in which I give symbolic analysis of this cool seal depicting a seated female figure (goddess? ) drinking out of a goblet - next to a tulip, bronze seal, late 3rd - early 2nd mill BC, (BMAC), Afghanistan. Currently in a Private collection Linenthal, San Francisco. Tulips as calendar markers for snowmelt/flood season in Central Asia... 

And in my post "Lapis lazuli water seal", in which I analyse the scene depicted on this amazing Lapis lazuli seal from the point of view of the local climate and animal calendar markers. The seal was made between 2400BC and 2000BC in Eastern Iran. Currently in the British Museum...

Oh and the fact that the disc we are talking about was made from lapis lazuli (water stone) is another indicator that the scene we are seeing depicted on it is not just a depiction of a couple having few casual drinks...

Tigris and Euphrates annual flood (fed by snowmelt caused by the sun) peaks in Taurus, beginning of summer...

So golden bull's head (sun) with lapis beard (flowing water)  

I talked about this in my posts "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up to heaven", "Problems of Abzu", "Butt chewing", "Maran", "Lyres of Ur", "Solar bull"...

So, to conclude, the disc depicts the symbolic drinking of the cup (rain, snowmelt) by Inanna (Earth) filled by Sin (Wet Moon)...

PS: The goddess is probably Proto Anahita who was linked to Isthar/Inanna. Talked about her in my post "Rainbows and peacocks", in which I provide symbolic analysis of this Sassanian dish, 400-600AD, Iran, Currently in Al Thani collection. 

Half way down the post you will see the same Elamite goddess in a skirt with a hatching pattern resembling sheep skin kaunakes holding a rainbow...Proving (at least) 3000 years cultural continuity in Iran...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Shard from Mehrgarh

A ceramic fragment, found in Mehrgarh, Indus Valley, Pakistan. The fragment was found in the layer IV, dated to around 2800BC. I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini for posting the pic...

The fragment is decorated with depictions of:

Horned animals: Ibex goats, Goitered gazelles

Birds: Old world vultures

Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini says that this fragment closely resembles the earliest stamps from Dilmun adds that "this testifies once again to the close ties between the regions of the Persian Gulf and Indus Valley...

I would suggest that this ceramic fragment most likely comes from Persian gulf. Why? Because of the climate in Persian gulf and the annual lifecycle of the depicted animals and how they correspond to one another...

This is climate in Dilmun (today Bahrain). 

You can see that the climatic year is divided into hot, dry summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and cool, wet winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

This is more or less the same climate we find in the rest of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia...

It just so happens that Ibex goats, Goitered gazelles and Old wold vultures all begin to mate at the beginning of the cool/wet season in this part of the world. Making them animal calendar markers for rain season...A very important event in this part of the world...

So I don't think finding these three animals depicted together like this is random...You can read a lot more about these animal calendar markers and their link with rain/snow and water in general in my post "Kassite seal with Apkallu", in which I give symbolic analysis of this amazing Kassite seal (18th-12th centuries BC) from Syria. National Museum of Damascus. 

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Drinking from the Nile

An Ancient Egyptian wall painting depicting a man kneeling under a date palm tree full of ripe fruits, and (seemingly) drinking water (from a river?)...

The tree is Zaghloul, or red dates palm, with fruits with a deep red to burgundy skin – resemble giant red grapes. They are native to Egypt and are synonymous with Egyptian autumn...

The harvest season for Zaghloul dates starts in September...

Just before that, while the date trees are still laden with fruit, Nile flood peaks...

I talk about Nile Flood mythology in many of my posts...

I talk about another tree calendar marker for Nile Flood, Sycamore fig, in my post "Sycamore tree goddess"

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Phoenician rain dish

Phoenician dish (?), National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta, Malta. Pic by Merike Joosep.

It is "decorated" with a very interesting design: A wild goat, followed by a wild cat followed by a wild goat followed by a wild cat...

Is this just a meaningless "nice" design?

Well, of course, this is possible. Not every object has a "meaning". But let's play a game "what if the maker of this dish wanted to convey some message through the choice of animals and the way they were ordered"...It'll be fun...For me at least🙂...

The goat is an Ibex goat...In Fertile Crescent, which includes Levant, Ibex was the Goat (calendar marker) of Rain (season)...Because in Fertile Crescent, the start of the mating season of Ibex goats (Oct/Nov), coincided with the start of the rain season. I talk about goat of rain in many of my posts...

So the wild goat's identity is certain...

But the wild cat is not so easy to identify. The body shape could be that of

Asiatic lioness

Asiatic leopard

Asiatic cheetah

All three of these wild cats were common in Levant when Phoenician civilisation flourished there...

Depending on which cat is depicted, the meaning of the "decoration" changes...Why? Because if we want to look at the depictions of these animals as animal calendar markers, we need to know when they either mated or gave birth, cause this is what animal calendar markers marked...

Asiatic lions mating season started in Jul/Aug and spanned the whole of Autumn (Aug/Sep/Oct)...

You can find relevant data here...

Which is why autumn starts in Leo (Jul/Aug). And why lion is the symbol of autumn...You can read more about these four symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

I talk about the use of lion as a mythologised animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, the hottest/driest time of the year in Europe, Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia, in many of my posts...

So lioness would also be an animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...

When I first saw this Phoenician dish, I was convinced that the wild cat was indeed an Asiatic lioness, because it has no spots of any kind...

Which would make the message encoded in the "decoration" of the Phoenician dish:

Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows...

But then something caught my eye: the dots and circles...

Which look very much like cup marks...

Which look very much like this...

I talked about this in my post "Lapis Manalis"...

Now apparently, dots and circles were used in the past to represent rain. I talked about this in my posts "Malatya relief", "Lapis lazuli water seal"

As I already said, Ibex goats have mating season which starts in Oct/Nov, the beginning of winter. And both Asiatic leopards and cheetahs have mating season which starts in Jan/Feb, beginning of spring...

Now if we look at the climatic charts for Levant again (it is pretty much the same all over Fertile Crescent), we can see that Winter (Ibex, Nov/Dec/Jan) and Spring (Leopard/Cheetah, Feb/Mar/Apr) is the cool, wet, rainy, green season in this part of the word...

Rainy season which can be symbolically depicted by "Ibex followed by Leopard/Cheetah among the dots with a green tree (of life) behind them"...

Just like on this 3200-3000 BC seal from Late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr Period...I talked about this in my post "Ibex and leopard"

Or even more explicitly on this vessel from Tepe Hissar, dated to 4500-4000 BC...Both Ibex goat and Leopard/Cheetah are actually ejaculating rain...I talked about this in my post "Vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

So is it possible that the animals on the Phoenician dish were depicted as silhouettes, and that the wild cats depicted with wild goats among the raindrops are not Asiatic lionesses but instead Asiatic leopards/cheetahs?

Just like on this Greek Hydria. Kerameikos,  Athens, Archaeological Museum in Athens. 660-580 BC. Where we see a leopard paired with boar, another animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, and lion paired with fallow deer, another animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...I talked about it in my post "Sirens"...

In which case the message encoded by the maker of this amazing Phoenician object would be "rejoice, it's raining (wild) cats and (wild) goats" 🙂...

Anyway, we will never know, but I think musing over this was fun...At least it was for me...How was it for you? 🙂

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Bird hills

A map from "Tičnice iz naravoverja: zanesljivi kažipoti v slovensko prazgodovino" [Bird-hills from Natural Religion: Reliable Waymarks of Slovene Prehistory] self published book by Leopold Sever in 2013. 

It is showing "gradišča" [hill-forts] (blue circles) and "tičnice" [bird-hills] (red circles) in the historical  Slovene regions in Slovenia and southern Austria...

In Slovenia, there are currently more than 200 hill-forts known as (gradišče) and more than 200 bird-hills known under various names (Tičnica, Tičn’ca, Tičistan,  Tičerca, Tičnik, Tičevo, Na tičnici, Tičjak, Tičjek, Križ na tičnici, Ptičjek, Za tičnico, etc).

According to local lore, these were the hills where people once performed religious ceremonies (???), fed birds (???) and "exposed their dead to the birds so that the birds could carry the soul of the  deceased into the sky" (???) before burials...Oh and they believed that these hills were haunted and should be avoided after dark...

Thanks to @another_barbara for alerting me to this.  The book is mentioned in this paper:

Staroverstvo - the Old Religion - the Slovene Pre-Christian Religion

In several parts of Eastern Bosnia and Hercegovina, at the end of the wheat harvest, a patch of wheat is left unharvested "for God's birds". 

In pre-Christian times, Slavs believed that souls of their dead entered birds and through birds entered heaven, Iriy. So feeding birds with grain was basically a form of feeding the ancestors, sacrificing to the ancestors...

Scandinavians did the same, although they don't seem to remember why...

I talked about this in several of my posts: Nav, Bird wedding, Julenek...

Slavs also believed that the bountiful grain harvest was direct result of the good will of the dead ancestors...

And that good will was the result of their descendants remembering them and providing them with food (grain, bread) and drink (water, milk, red wine).

So...

I talked about the importantce of feeding the dead with bread in several of my posts like "Soul breads" "Dead man loaf"... 

According to the Serbian folklore, it is important that the food served to the dead contains "a bit of everything that land gives birth to". It was believed that the dead are the source of life and that they give back manyfold what we give to them...

It is important that the food for the dead contain especially "a bit of all the grains" again because the dead will give us back manyfold of what we give them... 

This is the root of "Koljivo" the meal made from boiled grains, nuts, raisins and sugar used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for commemorations of the dead...

The origins of koliva predate Christianity. In the Ancient Greece, panspermia, a mixture of cooked seeds and nuts, was offered during the pagan festival of the Anthesteria, which was primarily concerned with placating ancestral spirits...  

So when a priest tells you that you should not bring food to the grave for your dead, because that is a pagan custom, and that instead you should make koljivo, which is Orthodox Christians custom...

Serbian ethnographer Veselin Čajkanović believed that originally the sacrifice offered to the dead included blood sacrifice as well. The meal contained not just plant food, but also one of each type of farmed animal, ritually slaughtered, drained of blood, and roasted...

Blood was given to the dead, as it was their favourite drink...I talked about blood sacrifices in many of my posts...

 And the meat was eaten by the living...

Again all of this was done because people believed that their dead are the ones who "make the crops (and especially grain) grow"...

Depiction of Diduch (grandfather), symbolic representation of the ancestral spirit which governs the lives of the living (and most importantly determines how good grain harvest will be). From Central European Slavic mythology / folklore. 

I talk about Diduch and it's symbolic representation in my post "Diduch"...