Mother Earth from Revadim

A clay plaque of the Mother Earth, from the Late Bronze Age, Found in Revadim, Levant, dating around 1250 BC. Similar terracotta plaques have been found in archaeological excavations in sites like Tel Harasim, and Tel Aphek. 

The Revadim mother earth is depicted:

1. With a prancing Ibex goat facing a tree on each of her legs...

2.  Spreading her vagina...

3. Nursing people...

4. Wearing a crescent moon necklace pendant...

Why?

Let me try to decipher these symbols in this post:

The Revadim mother earth is depicted:  

1. With a prancing Ibex goat facing a tree on each of her legs...

The reason why rampant Ibex goats are depicted facing trees (of life) is because the climate in Levant is divided into hot, dry half (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and cool, wet half (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

The rains, which support (the tree of) life in Levant, arrive when male Ibex goats start their mating fights over females, in Oct/Nov...

So prancing (fighting) ibex goat became an animal calendar marker for the start of the rain season...

This is why we also find two prancing ibex goats facing the tree of life on this pottery vessel, a ewer, from the Fosse temple at Lachish, Levant, dated to the 13th century BC, which also bears an inscription on the shoulder which reads from left to right "Mattan (the donor), an offering to my lady ’Elat"...

I talk about this amazing animal calendar in my post Lachish animal calendar

Here is another vessel from the Fosse temple at Lachish also dated to the 13th century BC. On this vessel we see two rampant goats facing not a tree, but a vulva...Vulva is the symbol of fertility number one...Obviously...Easy to understand why...

Vulva is used on a lot of ancient artefacts to represent the fertility of the land. And here this is explicitly spelled out: mating goats of rain, rain which makes land fertile, facing vulva, symbol of fertility...

Please note that the tree of life surrounded by prancing Ibex goats is on the Lachish vessel depicted in a shape of Menorah...Just like here, on this 3,000 BCE Sumerian Stamp Seal with Impression Tree of Life with Rampant Goats. Mesopotamia. Chicago. Oriental Institute Museum...

I talk about the link between Menorah and the Tree of life and the Hanukah that is celebrated in Tevet, Dec/Jan, the "muddy month" (peak of the rain season in Levant) which is marked by the goat mazal (which marks Dec/Jan, middle of the Ibex goat mating season)...in my post The Tree of Life/Light...

The tree of life also resembles menorah here too, on this super cool Bactrian bronze stamp, dated to 2400BC-1600BC...And again it is surrounded by prancing Ibex goats...

I talk about it in my post Bactrian Bronze Age menorah...

The tree of life surrounded by prancing Ibex goats was also depicted on this seal found in Alalakh/Tell Atchana, located 20 km from Antakya (Antioch) in what is now Turkey's Hatay Province. It was found in one of the rooms of the Level VII (c. 1800BC) palace...

I talk about it and another similar find from the same site in my post Pottery shard from Alalakh...

Same climate, same animals, with the same behaviour, same animal calendar marker, which later gets deified...And eventually into a god...

Elamite bronze idol of a (goat-) man with large ibex horns, 3rd-2nd millennium BC...

I talked about this transition, which is found all over the world, in my post Kuseh Gardani about the traditional Iranian "Kuseh Gardani" ritual, which is performed by men dressed as Ibex goats, in times of drought or low rainfall...

"Kuseh" (rain god turned devil of drought)...

The Revadim mother earth is depicted:

2.  Spreading her vagina (giving birth to all things)...

Bedrock is in the Balkans known as "živi kamen, živa stena" (living stone, living rock) because it is believed to be still part of the living body of the Mother Earth which gives birth to all life...I talk about it in my post Living stone...

I think this belief was what lied at the core of all mother goddess all over the world. Because:

"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."

What is the best way to symbolically depict "Mother Earth"? Place mountains, plants and animals between eyes and  a pubic triangle. Decorated bone depicting slightly bewildered "Mother Earth", 6th - 5th millennium BC, Hagoshrim, Southern Levant. I talked about this in my post Eyes...

Or in the case of the Revadim mother earth, place the "goat of rain" and a "tree of life" on her thighs, just below here vagina, the source of all life...

This Revadim Goddess is believed to be the earliest depiction of Asherah, who herself is just another name for Inanna/Ishtar...

Remember what Inanna, Sumerian Mother of Grain, said in "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi":

"...Before my lord, Dumuzi,

I poured out plants from my womb.

I placed plants before him,

I poured out plants before him.

I placed grain before him,

I poured out grain before him,

I poured out grain before my womb..."

I talked about "Mother of Grain" in many of my posts...

So I think that the Revadim goddess could be depicted giving birth to food (grain)...

This is explicitly depicted on this gold pendant, dated 1400-1200 BC. It is 4.9 cm in height and was found in Ugarit, Syria. Louvre Museum, Paris, France. See grain growing out of the Goddess's pubic area? Another very common symbol found all over Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant, Aegean...

I talked about this in my post Hathor grain pendants...

BTW, do you see how the trees (of life) depicted on Revadim Goddess's thighs, one on each side of her vulva, look like grain ears?

Just like the grain ears depicted on the (possibly) the earliest (symbolic) depiction of Demeter (Vulva/Mother surrounded with grain ears)...

This symbol is hidden in plain sight on one of many mysterious Early Cycladic "Frying Pans" found on Cycladic islands in Greece and dated to the second half of the 3rd mill BC...

I talk about it in my post The oldest Demeter depiction...

The Revadim mother earth is also depicted:

3. Nursing (her) people...

What is the milk of the Mother Earth? Spring water of course...

And considering that Asherah was called the "Divine Nurse" of gods and people...

This image shows few of thousands of similar pillar figurine of Asherah, found in house shrines from the Iron Age II period (8th–7th century BC) Levant...

I talk about "the milk of the Mother Earth" in these two posts, Mesa Mouliana vessel and Anavlochos mountain, where I talk about Cretan version of the same goddess, where similar figurines were found deposited inside cracks on limestone mountain peaks (remember living rock, the body of mother earth):

The Revadim mother earth is finally depicted:

4. Wearing a crescent moon necklace pendant...

I wonder if this is "The Wet Moon", the Winter/Spring (Wet Season) Moon...Just depicted inverted...Pouring water on the Mother Earth...

Wet Moon?

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...

I talk about the Wet Moon and why Moon Gods were so important in places where winter is the rainy part of the year, like Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant, Northern Arabia in many of my post...

Also, guess what else happens in Dec/Jan, around Winter Solstice, the peak rain season in Levant, the peak Ibex mating season in Levant, when the Wet Moon starts shining in the night sky?

Sirius, the original Star of Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah..., reaches its highest point in the night sky... 

Ever seen this symbol?

I talked about Inanna/Ishtar and why it was Sirius that was her original "star" in Sirius mother of venus, Inana and Sukaletuda, The brightest star, Inanna in Egypt, Temple of Isis on Philae Island, Apocalypse, Whore of Babylon, Dog coin...

I think this is all I have to say about this clay plaque of the Mother Earth, from the Late Bronze Age, Found in Revadim, Levant, dating around 1250 BC. And why she was depicted 

1. With a prancing Ibex goat facing a tree on each of her legs...  

2.  Spreading her vagina...  

3. Nursing people...  

4. Wearing a crescent moon necklace pendant...

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...

Medea's crocus

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Medea brews a magic potion to restore aged Aeson, father of Jason, to youth. Where drops from the cauldron fall on earth, flowers spring up. 

Later botanical lore identifies them as poisonous meadow saffron (Colchicum autumnale)...

Apparently, the claim that the flower that grew out of the drops of Medea's magic potion was Colchicum (meadow saffron/autumn crocus), actually predates Ovid.

In the Alexipharmaca (probably 2nd century BC), Nicander describes a poisonous plant as:

"the hateful fire of Colchian Medea, the famous meadow-saffron"

The Greek passage identifies the plant as ἐφήμερον (ephemeron), and explicitly associates it with Medea of Colchis. Modern scholarship identifies this ephemeron with a Colchicum species.

This is significant because it means that Medea's poisonous Colchian plant = Colchicum was already an established association before Ovid.

What is very interesting is that Medea's "saffron crocus" is not a saffron crocus at all. It is actually not a crocus at all...

Even thought it looks almost identical to the "saffron crocus", and it flowers in the autumn, just like "saffron crocus"...

The two plants are sufficiently similar that they have repeatedly been confused historically. The "Colchicum autumnale" acquired the names "autumn crocus" and "meadow saffron" precisely because of its resemblance to Crocus and its saffron-like appearance...

This is very important, because we don't really know what Greek ephemeron meant, and whether the ancient Medea plant could have been "saffron crocus that flowers in the autumn" or "something that looks like saffron crocus that flowers in the autumn"...

Why is this important? Cause: 

"Medea brewed a magic potion to restore aged Aeson, father of Jason, to youth. Where drops from the cauldron fell on earth, flowers sprang up"...

Remember, saffron crocus is a plant calendar marker for a start of the rain season on Crete. 

Why?

Cause right after the first rains (Oct/Nov), the wild saffron crocuses appear all over the island...

It is the Autumn Rain that rejuvenates nature in Crete and makes Saffron Crocuses grow...

You can read more about the symbolism of saffron crocuses in my posts Saffron and Origin of saffron...

This is why crocus plant was linked to "The Goddess" of fertility in Minoan culture...Here she is depicted on her throne being given Saffron as sacrifice...By a blue (water) monkey...I will talk about this more soon...

I talked about this in many of my posts, like "Minoan flying goddess with griffin" where I talk about the link between the Minoan "Goddess" (Winter/Spring - Cool/Wet/Fertile Earth) and Griffins, as part of the analysis of this Minoan gold signature ring depicting a flying griffon and goddess, from cemetery at Archanes, Phourni, in Crete, 1700-1450 BC....

Saffron Crocus was linked to another calendar marker for Oct/Nov: Ibex goat. Ibex mating season starts in Oct/Nov, right when "The Goddess" drips her "rejuvenation potion" (rain) on the almost dead, parched earth, which causes Saffron Crocuses to sprout (and the earth to get rejuvenated)...

I talk about this in several of my posts. Like this one, "Male female Minoan bowl" about this 16th century BC Minoan vessel found on Thera, Akrotiri, depicting (according to the museum curators) on one side wild goats and saffron crocuses and on the other side dolphins and sea grass...

Ibex goat was of course also linked to "The Goddess"...

I talk about this link between Saffron Crocuses, Ibex Goats and "The Goddess" (Cool/Wet/Fertile Earth) in several of my posts: Goat riding thunder god, Sanctuary rhyton, Minoan bull sacrifice...

Crocus was also linked to swallows, another animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain season on Crete. On Crete rain starts when swallows leave for Africa...

I talk about this in my post "Mesa Mouliana vessel" about this strainer found in room 3 of the Xeste 3 house in Akrotiri. It is decorated with swallows flying over flowering saffron crocuses...

Where am I going with all of this. Medea was a witch...

An illustration titled "A witch of about the middle of the fifteenth century" from Sir Walter Scott's 1830 book, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. Riding ahead of a storm...

According to folk belief, #witches, unlike fairies, are unable to shed tears. Tears were an offence to the devil who would do whatever was possible to prevent witches from crying. Recorded in Medieval witch hunter guide MALLEUS MALEFICARIUM 1486

Very interesting...I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that weather (rain/storm) magic was the main female (witches) magic? 

Witches tears = rain?

The main "Evil Magic" witches were accused of was weather magic used to cause cold, wet, stormy weather. 

Two witches conjuring a hailstorm. Did you know that the sudden climate change which resulted in the medieval mini ice age was blamed on the weather controlling witches and was the excuse for the subsequent witch-hunt? 

I talked about this in my post De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus...

I also talked about this in these two articles, Weather stones and The last megalithic ritual in Europe about the use of "weather stones" among Slavs. Like in Belarus, where women (Yin, dark, wet, cold) raise Dabog's stone during drought to get cool and wet weather...The last megalithic ritual in Europe? And could it be that (at least some) standing stones were raised as weather stones during past sudden climate changes?   

May Day Eve is across Northern and Central Europe known as Walpurgis Night, the night when everyone is trying to "ward off, scare, witches". Why? 

Maybe this has something to do with the old calendar which divided year into winter and summer...And the fact that "The Witch" here is "The Winter Earth"...

Which is why we "burn" (effigies of) "The Witch" (fire of the late spring/summer sun destroys the cold of winter/early spring earth)...

I talk abou this in my post Walpurgis night...

Slavs have preserved the true nature of this ritual, because they don't burn "The Witch". They burn "Marzana" (Frost Goddess, Winter Earth) or "Morana" (Goddess of Death)...

Slavs equated The Goddess of Death, Morana (mor=death) with The Winter Earth, Marzana (marz=frost). She is ceremonially burned (warmed) or drowned (thawed) or both (to be sure to be sure 🙂) during Slavic spring festivals...

This painging called "Maslenitsa" by Simon Kozhin depicts exactly that, people celebrating the burning (ending) of Winter Witch (by the spring sun)...  

Here are some articles in which I talk about this ritual and related customs and beliefs in Slavic, Germanic, Celtic Europe: Gryla, Party, Bannock, To kill a witch, Baba's day, Living stone, Baba - cold, winter...

Slovenians preserved the actual origin of "The Witch"...

Originally people believed that it was Mother Earth that controlled the Yin half of the climate (Dark/Cold/Wet) half...

This bedrock outcrop near the village of Rodik in Slovenia is known locally as "Baba" (Grandmother)... Locals believed that "Baba" controls the (bad) weather: Baba’s urine turns to rain, her fart to wind, and when she raises her skirt, the weather gets nice...🙂

Bedrock is in the Balkans known as "živi kamen, živa stena" (living stone, living rock) because it is believed to be still part of the living body of the Mother Earth which gives birth to all life...

I talk about it in my post Living stone...

This pic is a great illustration of this fact...

Mother Earth has been symbolically linked with women for who knows how long...

They both give birth to living things.

They both produce life giving liquid (water/milk).

Which is why (dark/wet/cold weather and fertility) magic became female magic...

The knowledge how to perform this magic was passed from mother to daughter...

Originally it was all the old women that preserved and performed the weather magic...

In Serbian we have these words: nevesta (ne vešta) = not skilful (knowledgable, wise) = maiden, vešta (the skilful one, married woman, the one who "knows") and veštica (the witch, the old woman, the one who knows everything, the preserver of sacred knowledge)...

And this is how "The Witches" were born...

I talked about this in my post The skillful one and Wrach...

So, as I said, my question is how old is the Medea myth? And where did it originate...And what does it actually mean? 

Particularly when you read this bit: 

"She stirred it all [the cauldron] with a long-dry branch of a fruitful olive, mixing the depths with the surface. Look! The ancient staff turned in the hot cauldron, first grew green again, then in a short time sprouted leaves, and was, suddenly, heavily loaded with olives."

Remember this blog post Shaking the olive tree in which I talked about Olive tree as being The Tree of Life of the Minoans? 

And how it was associated with The Goddess, Winter (in case of Crete Rain, Rejuvenation Season) Mother Earth, The Witch, because olives are ripe and start falling off trees in Oct/Nov, when the rain starts falling...

And how it was associated with The Goat of Rain (Ibex goats start mating in Oct/Nov, start of the rain season)... 

And how it was associated with Saffron Crocuses (they start flowering in Oct/Nov, start of the rain season)...

The fact that the witches staff, made of dead olive, turns green and full of ripe olives when put into her rejuvenation potion, I think, just confirms my interpretation, which I presented in this article, that the Medea's myth is actually very old and probably doesn't originate in Colchis but most likely originates on Crete...

Blinding of Polyphemus

This image shows an ancient Greek Laconian black-figure cup depicting Odysseus and his men blinding the giant Cyclops, Polyphemus. It was Made in Sparta, Greece, around 560–550 BC, and is currently in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Cabinet des Médailles) in Paris.

Official scene description:

Odysseus and four companions drive a long stake into the eye of the seated Cyclops, who holds a human leg, while a snake arches above them and a large fish is painted beneath the figures. 

Why is there a snake above and tuna below this image?

🙂

I would here like to present my argument that everything depicted on this black-figure cup, is a calendar marker for Apr/May, and that this is when the blinding of the giant Cyclops, Polyphemus took place...

So I will start my symbolic analysis with the snake:

Snake is a pure solar animal. It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...

I talked about snake as the solar symbol from around the world in many of my posts...

Apr/May, the beginning of summer (bright half of the year), is when most common Eurasian snakes, vipers, start mating, and fighting...

I talked about this in many of my posts...

Which is why snake is a common animal calendar marker for Apr/May...

Now, I am not the first to notice that a single eyed giant with a "round eye" sounds very much like a depiction of the Sun (God)...

Wilhelm Grimm in his 1857 "Die Sage von Polyphem" says

"If these indications establish a deeper meaning of the Polyphemus saga, then perhaps we can come still closer to its original form. What else do the mythical songs of ancient times sing about than the origin and destruction of the world, and, for as long as it endures, the never-resting movements of mighty but hostile forces? They are the struggles of the elements with one another, of heaven and the underworld, of summer and winter, of day and night, which are reflected again in moral oppositions of blessing and destruction, love and hatred, joy and sorrow. The opposition between the external, terrifying forces of nature and those that work quietly in secret, or, in moral terms, between brute force and cunning agility, is expressed in the myths of giants and dwarfs. In this I find the original content and meaning of the Polyphemus saga."

The paper is referenced in the 1860's "Der ursprung der mythologie, dargelegt an griechischer und deutscher sage"...

where the author states:

"He [Grimm] too understands the eye of Polyphemus, on p. 27, as the world-eye of the Sun itself."

In Ovid's Metamorphosis, Polyphemus, when talking to Galathea, says himself: 

"Upon my brow I have one single eye, but it is huge, like some vast shield. What then? Does not the mighty sun see from the sky all things on earth? Yet the sun's orb is one."

As I said, snake is a solar animal. And because it is in our world when the sun is war, it is also a symbol of sun's heat. 

BTW, do you see how the snake is crawling towards Poliphemus's eye (The Sun???) basically mimicking the movement of the spear that is blinding him? There is a Slavic belief that snakes "can bite Sun's eye and blind it"...

I talked about this in my post "The enemy of the sun"...

I wonder if such belief existed among Ancient Greeks, at the time when this cup was made?

So, next, let's have a look at tuna. 

The tuna fishing season in Mediterranean, is from Apr/May to Oct/Nov...With the peak in Jul/Aug...I talked about this in many of my posts. You can start here, my post "Tuna boats", about Early Cycladic "frying pan" (a type of artifact made in the Aegean Islands between c. 2700 and c. 2200 BC) depicting a boat and a tuna fish...

So we have Polyphemus (The Sun???), the son of Poseidon, being blinded in Apr/May, the beginning of bright hot half of the year, and the beginning of the tuna fishing season in Mediterranean...And the beginning of the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean, where Poseidon originated in Early Bronze Age...

I talk about the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean and animal calendar markers for for its start, its peak and its end in many of my posts...

For instance, there is a reason why horse was the sacred animal of Poseidon (Greek) and Yamm (Phoenician) sea gods. Horse mating season, marked by vicious stallion fights over mares, overlaps with the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean.  I talk about this in my posts Trojan horse, Three sacrifices...

Anyway, finally we come to sheep...and lambs...

Natural lambing season of both wild and domestic sheep spans which spans the whole of spring (Feb/Mar/Apr) ands in Apr/May, when the milking season begins...

I talked about this in many of my posts...

What does this have to do with Polyphemus?

Well Polyphemus was a shepherd, and his flock definitely contained lambs, and Homer is quite explicit about this.

When Odysseus and his men first enter Polyphemus' cave, they find:

"pens crowded with lambs...firstlings, later ones, and newborn separated..."

So the flock contains lambs of different ages, including newborns.

Homer then says:

"He [Polyphemus] drove his well-fed flocks into the wide cave, the ones he milked, leaving the rams…and then he milks the ewes and puts their young with them..."

This means that Polyphemus also milks the ewes, putting their young to them, which confirms that the lambs are actively suckling.

After Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, Homer says:

"The males of the flock hastened forth to pasture and the females bleated unmilked about the pens, for their udders were bursting..."

All of this, together with no mention of pregnant ewes, points at Polyphemus being blinded in Apr/May, the end of lambing and the beginning of the milking season...

So we have 

snake, animal calendar marker for Apr/May.

suckling lambs, animal calendar markers for Apr/May.

tuna, animal calendar marker for Apr/May.

So I will ask my question again: Why is there a snake above and tuna below this 560–550 BC depiction of the blinding of Polyphemus by Odysseus?  

🙂

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...