Cilician Nergal

A while back I came across this very interesting coin minted by Syennesis III who was king of Cilicia dated to 420-400 BC. On the obverse, it depicts a horse rider while on the reverse, it depicts the god of war Nergal...

Nergal, Mesopotamian god of war (death and pestilence), is depicted like a warrior, armed with a spear and a bow and arrows...We know it is Nergal because this is what is written next to him in Aramaic...

Funnily enough, @PIELexicon (great account well worth following) posted this yesterday

The gear of the Great King Šuppiluliuma (his divine identity was a protection god) tells really something about him – and the Hittites: It is exceptional how the king is portrayed with spear, bow and sword not unlike an ordinary warrior – Only the crown really tells his position

To which @ahahistory2 (another great account well worth following) replied

Tarkasnawa, king of Mira, depicted himself in a nearly identical way.

To which I replied: They are not portrayed as ordinary warriors. They are portrayed as gods of war...I am currently working on (this) thread about identical depiction of Nergal (as warrior with spear and bow and arrows) from Tartus dated to 5th century BC...

I am now convinced that these are depictions of the kings as gods, as Nergal...

Nergal was worshiped by both Hittites/Hurrians and Arzawans (Kingdom of Mira was part of Arzawa confederation) as god of plague, death and war...

Hittites/Hurrians knew him as Aplu...Basically Apollo...Yup this dude

What was the plague that Apollo unleashed on the Achaeans at Troy? This is what the authors of "The Sminthian Apollo and the Epidemic among the Achaeans at Troy" have to say about it:

"Homer gives no symptoms of the pestilence which killed the Greeks at Troy but states that the mules and dogs died before the men. The disease therefore cannot have been black plague. Man is susceptible to it but equines and dogs are not..."

"The disease which is the best candidate for killing is equine encephalomyelitis which at the present time kills equines 7 to 14 days before symptoms appear in man. The death of dogs in modern epidemics is unusual but, experimentally, young dogs are susceptible..."

"In the epidemic at Troy rodents played no part. The arrows were the direct transmitter of the disease. Mosquitoes, as we now know, can transmit a number of diseases including equine encephalomyelitis...And there are plenty of swamps with mosquitoes around Troy..."

"Since mosquitoes are the usual vectors for equine encephalomyelitis it is possible that the terrifying sound of Apollo's bow is a metaphor for the terrifying sound of myriads of mosquitoes..."

Love this. Again, remember "Lord of the Flies" (and other flying biting insects which swarm during the hottest part of the year, Jul/Aug), Nergal, Apollo?

Interestingly, equine encephalomyelitis peak season is...Jul/Aug...The time ruled by Nergal, Apollo...

From my article "Apollo Sminthius" about Apollo, the terrible archer, "...who could bring...deadly plague [disease] with his arrows"...

And Arzawans knew him as two gods:

War and plague god Iyarri, also known as Yarri, a twin of Mesopotamian Erra another name for Nergal...

And as the war god Šanta/Šanda

Šanta, who survived in Anatolia all the way through the Iron age...Where we find him as Nergal of Tartus 🙂 the dude from the original Cilician coin...

You can read about this in Gods and Languages in Ancient Anatolia...

It is the fact that all these Anatolian Nergal twins, including the one depicted this coin, were armed with a bow and arrow, that made me jump with excitement...

Why? Cause this is another proof that Apollo (the terrible archer who brings death and plague with his arrows) is in fact Greek version of Nergal (the bringer of death and plague) who now also turns out to be armed with a bow and arrow, making him too "a terrible archer"...

This transition from Nergal to Apollo went  through Hittite/Hurrian Aplu. I talked about this in my post "Palil"...

But also through Resheph, another Nergal twin, who was also "a terrible archer" who brought death to Leavnt and Cyprus and and who was in Cyprus directly linked to Apollo. I talked about this in my post "Apollo - Resheph"...

Actually I have a whole series of articles about the link between Apollo and Nergal which you might find interesting

1. "Palil". About "Palil" a nickname of Nergal, the terrible, burning, destructive sun of Jul/Aug, Leo...And about the origin of the name Apollo and its meaning...

2. "Lord of the flies". About Nergal and Apollo as "The lords of the flies"...And about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the peak of the fly and fly born diseases season in Northern Hemisphere...

3. "Lions of Delos". About the Lions of Delos, the burning destructive sun in Jul/Aug, Leo, and the fact that both Nergal and Apollo are linked to lions. 

4. "Apollo and dolphins". About Jul/Aug, Leo being the "best time to sail in Eastern Mediterranean", and the link between dolphins and Lions...and Apollo...

5. "Marble throne of Apollo". About snakes (symbols of sun's heat), dragons (symbols of burning sun's heat) and terrible sun gods, Nergal and Apollo who are dragons themselves...

6. "Apollo and Python". About why Python followed Apollo after his birth? Cause snakes are solar animals...According to the Delphian tradition, Apollo was born on the 7th day of the month of Bysios (Jan/Feb)

7. "White raven". About the black and white raven legend which is found in both Nergal and Apollo mythology, Egyptian vultures and the twins that guard the gates of hell. And some other weird stuff...

8. "Threshing floor of Apollo". About the threshing floors as solar observatories/temples, about the threshing floor of Apollo from Delphi, about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the holy month of Apollo, and about solar bonfires...

9. "Apollo the great archer". About why Apollo was the terrible "far shooting" archer...About arrow and bow constellation from Mesopotamia, Ishtar, Sirius, and Jul/Aug, the season of Perseid meteor shower...

10. "Apollo Sminthius". About Apollo his arrows that cause plague and peak infectious diseases season, Jul/Aug

Resheph's name means "flame, fire" (important) but Phoenician texts also call him "Ba'al-chatz" (lord of the arrow), his connection to archery being deeply tied to his role as a bringer of disease...

We also find Resheph in Egypt where he is mostly depicted with a spear and a mace (important)...But was also linked with bow and arrows (important)...And was called "The Great God, The Lord of the Sky" (important)...You can read about this in The Canaanite god Rešep...

BTW, It seems that both Cypriots and Egyptians knew that when they said Resheph they meant Nergal...

Speaking of Nergal and Cyprus, in the Amarna letter EA 35 (14th c. BC) the King of Alashiya apologizes to the Egyptian pharaoh for the small copper shipment he sent, explaining that the "hand of Nergal" (a plague) had struck his country.

Egyptians had their own Lord of the sky armed with mace, bow and arrows, Horus the Elder, aka Horus of Beḥuṭet, aka Horus of Edfû...Who was depicted holding both club and bow and arrows (important)...

And as a lion (important) with falcon head...And Plutarch (40-120AD), a Greek philosopher, historian...and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi (!!!)...states that this particular Lion Horus was equated with Apollo...

I talk about it in my post "Horus the elder"...

Why all these annoying "(important)" bits?

Well let's extract them all out: "Sky god", whose name means "flame, fire", armed with "both club and bow and arrows" with "lion" body...

Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest time of the year in Eastern Mediterranean (including Greece, Cyprus and Egypt), Western Asia (Levant, Syria), Mesopotamia and Iran...

BTW, Jul/Aug is marked with animal calendar marker Leo (Lion) because this is when Eurasian lions main mating season used to start...It originally had nothing to do with constellations. I talked about this in many of my posts...

Nergal was deified destructive sun in Leo, which is why he was depicted as the Lion-Man or as a man with lion sceptre...I talked about him first in my post "Winged super human hero"...

Now, remember Anatolian Nergal twin Iyarri, who was actually just Akkadian Nergal twin, Erra? His name is derived from the Semitic root HRR, "to scorch"? Which means that Erra meant "The Scorching one". Sun in Jul/Aug, Leo...I talked about Erra in my post "Palil"...

This is also why Reshpeh's name meant flame/fire... According to the Sumerians, "the fire descends from the sky" in Jul/Aug, the month of Abu, the month of fires, torches...

Originally, I thought that "fire descending from the sky" just meant "this is when the sun is hottest", which is still true. But now I am convinced that in the past, this was truly  the time when fire literally descended from the sky...

What happens in Jul/Aug is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, which originates from the area of the Perseus Constellation...See raised hand towards the source of Perseids?

Today, what Perseus throws down on earth is bunch of shooting stars, small stone particles which burn out in the Earth's atmosphere before they reach the Earth surface...And look like shining arrows being shot at earth from the sky...

Which is why in Mesopotamia, The origin of Nergal, Sirius, which rises with the sun during the Perseid meteor shower, was seen as an arrow and the surrounding stars were seen as a bow...

And why Ishtar, deified Sirius, the lady that rides on lions (Sirius rises with the sun as a "Morning Star" in Jul/Aug, Leo), is armed with bow and arrows...Like on this 1900-1700 BC, Old-Babylonian plaque...BTW, that is sun above the lion's head, sun in Leo...

And why Sumerian Nergal, and all his Akkadian, Syrian, Levantine, Egyptian, Cypriot, Anatolian, Greek...twins are all "Sky gods armed with bow and arrows" too...

Bow and arrows which bring plague, disease...Why? Cause Jul/Aug is peak infectious disease season in all these parts of the world...

I talked about this in my post "Lord of the flies"...

Basically, the shining arrows start falling from the sky, and infectious diseases start to spread. So mythology...As I said many times before, mythology is a result of people being very good at noticing patterns in nature and very bad at distinguishing between correlation and causation...

Remember Aplu, Hittite Nergal twin, the guy who gave Apollo his name? During Suppiluliuma I's reign (1344–1322 BC), a devastating pandemic spread across the region, heavily affecting Hittite lands. The Hittites attributed this outbreak to the god Aplu/Nergal...

Hittite records show extensive rituals, prayers, and offerings directed at Aplu/Nergal during this time, pleading with the god to stop his rampage and lift the plague...BTW, this is the same plague that the Amarna Letters talk about...

So now you know why "Sky (sun) god, whose name means flame, fire, and who is armed with bow an arrows" is important...And why I was so happy to discover the depiction of Nergal armed with a bow and arrows...

Interestingly, Nergal on the Cilician (Tartus) coin, also has a lion skin draped over his shoulder...Which equates him with the Phoenician god, Melqart (will talk about him soon), and the Greek god, Heracles...

Heracles, whose first labour was to kill a Nemean Lion...Ever wondered why?

Paionia 359-335 BC...

Since then Heracles wore a lion’s skin...and was also armed with a club and bow and arrows. Every wondered why?

Erythrai (Ionia), 350-300 BC...

Heracles first kills a lion and drapes its skin over his body, effectively becoming a Lion Man because he is another twin of Nergal, The Original Lion Man, The destructive sun and the deadly archer of Jul/Aug, Leo...

Nergal was actually directly equated to Heracles in Hatra, the city of the (deadly) sun. I will talk about this soon...For now check this out...

Maran (Lord) Shamash (Sun) with bull horns, the main god of Hatra, an ancient city in Mesopotamia, whose full name was Hatra (Temple) Shamash (Sun)...

Maran...Like Maran-Atha (Our Lord - has come) from the bible? Which lord? Golden calf. Sun in Taurus. 

I talk about this in my post "Maran"...

Oh and BTW, Luwian Šanta/Nergal was also equated with Heracles... 🙂

So Heracle is armed with bow and arrows because in Jul/Aug, Leo, shining arrows fall from the sky. And he is armed with a club, because in the past, in Jul/Aug, Leo, shining clubs (used to) fall from the sky too...

I discuss the true identity of the Heracles in my posts "Cetus" and "Mithras"...

BTW, Kushans had this three headed Rudra holding a trident of Shiva and a lion skin and a club of Heracles, basically symbolically telling you that they are all one and the same. I talked about this in my post "Rudra"...

Oh and you can add one more Lion Man, Deadly Archer, Wielder of Clubs, Thrower of Flaming Rocks from the Sky to this club. This dude...If you are interested in why Mithra kills a bull in Leo, read my "Mithras" about Mithras/Mithra/Mitra...

BTW, Mithras killing bull is equivalent of Lion (Autumn, Jul/Aug-Oct/Nov) killing (ending) Bull (Summer, Apr/May-Jul/Aug)". 

On this relief on a stone sarcophagus found in China and dated to 598 AD, the rider is interpreted as Iranian Mithra...And below him is depiction of lion killing bull...Why? Cause Mithra/Mithras IS the Lion killing the bull of summer. 

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

Mithra was directly associated with lotus, to the point where on the most famous relief of Mithra, the one from Taqe Bostan, he is actually depicted standing on a lotus flower, radiating light, while witnessing Ahura Mazda giving ring of power to king Ardashir II...

Mithra is associated with lotus because Iranian Mithra was originally Indian Mitra. Mitra was, in the earliest times, directly associated with Varuna, the old Monsoon good whose Vahana was a crocodile, an animal calendar marker for the monsoon season in India....

Varuna, the old Monsoon god, rides on a crocodile/Makara...In India, crocodiles hatch during the monsoon season...I talked about this in my posts "Makara" "Yakshi" "Proto Durga" and "Maruts".

Mithra was so closely linked to Varuna, that the two of them were invoked together as Mitra/Varuna...They were twinned...

And in India, lotus flowers during the monsoon season, which peaks in Jul/Aug. 

I talked about lotus as a plant calendar marker in India, Mesopotamia and Egypt in many of my posts...

So lotus as a flower of Mitra and by extension Mithra...

Guess what. On the Cilician coin, both Nergal and the horseman on the obverse hold a lotus flower. To ensure we realise that Nergal is the Deadly, Death and Disease bringing Sun (Sky God) of Jul/Aug, Leo, when shining arrows (and clubs) fall from the sky...

One last thing. The Cilician coin depicts a very strange tree behind Nergal. Any idea what kind of tree that could be? To me it looks like a dead tree, which would fit perfectly with the Nergal, Sun of Jul/Aug, the hottest and driest part of the year, the time of droughts...

I think I will stop here. The original coin is from this great paper The coins of Tarsus with lots of other interesting coins from the same region and time period. I will (hopefully) get back to this page one day to analyse few more of them...

Hope you have fun reading this. Also, this thread is really important for understanding my upcoming thread about the birth of Athena...This is part of the bigger Athena story, but I just had too much material for one thread, so I split it into several "smaller" 🙂 threads...

PS: Completely forgot to mention that Luwian Šanta/Nergal was also equated with Heracles... 🙂

If you are interested in reading 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...

Whore of Babylon

Whore of Babylon on the Seven-Headed Beast, Illustration for Rev. 17:3–8. From the Las Huelgas Apocalypse, ca. 1220

I love this. The Whore of Babylon (aka Sirius, aka Ishtar) riding (in the middle of, in Jul/Aug, in Leo) seven headed beast (seven months of Mesopotamian summer Apr/May - Oct/Nov), just before she starts rising with the sun before dawn (so still invisible in the day, red sky)...

I talked about her in my post "Apocalypse" in which I give full symbolic analysis of the Woman of the Apocalypse, described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation...

The same girl...

The Woman Clothed with the Sun (aka Sirius rising with sun in Leo, aka Ishtar), an illustration from the Rothschild Canticles, c. 1300

The same girl again...

3rd mill BC Mesopotamian dragon has lion body (Jul/Aug, Leo is the hottest time of the year) and seven snake heads (one for each hot month of Mesopotamian summer, Apr/May-Oct/Nov)...Analysis of this seal dated to 2200 BC can be found in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

The "dragon" (summer) is depicted while his 4th head (4th month, Jul/Aug) is being killed (is in progress). To the left we see "The Lady" standing under a star (Ishtar -  Sirius)...

Why is Ishtar depicted standing next to the seven headed dragon? 

For the same reason she is depicted here standing on a lion. Cause she is deified Sirius, which rises with the sun (morning star) in Leo, Jul/Aug, the hottest time of the year. Which is why she is depicted standing on a lion with the sun above lion's head and is known as "The Lioness of heaven"...

For the same reason she is the one who sits on a lion throne...

I gave complete explanation of why Ishtar is Sirius and not Venus in this article containing full symbolic analysis of the Sumerian poem "Inanna and Šukaletuda"...

I talked about Inanna/Ishtar and why it was Sirius that was her original "morning star" in many of my posts...

You can start here: You know how everyone thinks that Inanna/Ishtar (Morning Star) is Venus and how I think that it was originally Sirius, and only later became Venus?

Well, it seems that Ancient Egyptians preserved the proof of this switch in their myths about Sopdet...

I talked about this in my post "Sirius mother of Venus"...

She of course has many faces and names...

Silver seal from Gonur Tepe, Turkmenistan, late 3rd-early 2nd mill BC. Depicting a winged goddess riding on a lioness...

Who could this be?

Well, of course, a Central Asian version of the "Lioness of heaven", Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah/Artemis.../Sirius in Leo...

I talk about this in my post "Silver seal from Gonur Tepe"

Back to the original Whore of Bablylon painting and why I like it so much. The same "two skies" trick was used here: Does anyone else think that this picture, allegedly showing King John on a stag hunt, looks strange, and may be hiding something in plain sight? No? 

Well I do 🙂 I explain why in my post "King John"...

In short, King John here is symbolic depiction of St John's day, Midsummer day, Summer solstice. 

White horse is a universal solar symbol. On this Celtic coin from Hungary, this is symbolically depicted through "solar rider", an anthropomorphised sun riding a horse. 

I wrote many posts about horse/equid as a solar symbol from Around the world. 

Horse is a solar symbol because horse fertility is governed by sunlight and peaks on Summer solstice. St John (day), Summer solstice is in the middle of the solar horse, going from red sky (increasing sunlight, before summer solstice) to blue sky (decreasing sunlight, after summer solstice)...

John is riding after (towards) a stag, (the symbol of) winter...

Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way...Bronze stag pendant with bell feet, early 1st mill BC, Transcaucasia or Iran. Currently in the Met Museum...

Stag is a symbol of winter because it is through the winter that stags have their full grown antlers. 

I talked about the stag as the symbol of winter in my posts "Winter deer"  and "Deer kills snake" 

What is very interesting is that deer antlers are fully grown in Sep/Oct, right in time for the start of deer mating season and the end of the horse mating season. The old antlers fall off, and the new ones start growing, in Mar/Apr/May right in time for the start of the horse mating season. 

This means that deer and horse are natural animal calendar markers for the opposite halves of the year...Which is why King John on his white horse will (symbolically) never catch the deer... 

So, (never ending) stag hunt..Talked about it in my post "White stag"...

If you are interested in reading 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...

Charioteer

Wow...This turned out to be even cooler than I thought it was when I first saw it: 

Proto Slavic word for man, čelověkъ, is derived from Proto Slavic and further down Proto Indo European words for wheel/cart/chariot and child/clan member/soldier...

Proto-Slavic čelověkъ (man), from...Proto-Balto-Slavic *kelawaikas, (child of a clan).

The first part is from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kwel- (crowd, people), from *kʷel- (to turn, roll > to travel on wheeled vehicles, settle, cultivate; town)...

In Lithuanian we have

kelias (road)

vaikas (child)

What's interesting is that vaikas comes from the PIE root weyk meaning to separate, fight, conquer, overcome...

Now in Slavic languages and Proto-Slavic we have these two words

kolo (spinning circle, wheel), kola (cart, chariot, literally wheels) 

vojakъ (soldier) which comes from PIE root weyh meaning to chase...

Put this all together and in Proto Balto Slavic you end up with

men = wheel/cart/chariot + clan members/soldiers/warriors =  Indo Europeans...

How old are Balto-Slavic languages again?

Min

This is my 6th Horus post...

Pleased to meet you. Actually very very pleased to meet you, as you can clearly see. The name is Min. I am Ancient Egyptian god of fertility, but you have probably already guessed that from my main "attribute"...

My skin is usually painted black, which symbolises the black silt brought to Egypt by the river Nile from the Ethiopian highlands...the thing that makes Nile valley fertile...

You can read more about the Nile, the black soil and fertility in the post "Horizon" about the "Horizon" hieroglyph, a hieroglyph which we find often associated with Horus, but whose meaning is much more complex than most people think...This hieroglyph actually depicts the sun over the Nile valley, Sun over Egypt... 

Anyway, this is why I am depicted holding my erect penis...To emphasise that I am the source of life (giving black silt)...I ejaculate it in the Ethiopian highlands and it flows down to Egypt with the rising Nile waters until it spills everywhere during annual Nile flood...

This great ejaculator symbolism is ancient...In places where land fertility is the result of rain, the grain ejaculator is the sky father...You can read more about this in the post "Oldest narrative scene", which provides symbolic analysis of this 11,000 years old relief from Anatolian PP Neolithic...

And in the post "Ultime grida dalla savana" about this cool petroglyph from Wadi Mathendous, Libya, in which after the mandatory giggle, you can read about the symbolic link between men and sky gods...

But in places where land fertility is the result of annual floods, the great ejaculator is the source of the flooding rivers. Like in Mesopotamia...Where this role is "filled" 🙂 by Enki/Ea...

You can read about it in the post "The Great imposter" which explains why so many Mesopotamian supreme gods had an attribute "The Great Mountain". Cause they all wanted to be Enki. But there is only one Enki, who is (in) Abzu, "place that is a big mountain". All the others are just imposters...   

In "Enki and the world order" we read:  "...Father (Ea)/Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris [and Euphrates] with flowing water...You can read about Enki in many other posts not just the above one...

BTW, why like a bull?

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

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

You can read about Utu/Shamash as the great bull in "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Butt chewing", "Maran"...

Anyway, back to me Min the merciful. I am normally depicted wearing a crown with ostrich feathers. Why?

Well ostrich mating season in Ethiopia begins in March or April and ends sometime before September. During that time male ostriches become aggressive, fight with each other for harems and make loud booming mating sounds...

This is exactly the period when rain season starts in Ethiopian highlands. We see increase in rainfall starting from March, and then the arrival of the full blown monsoon starting from April/May/June, peaking in Jul/Aug...

Check this post "Ennead" and linked posts if you are interested in the significance of the ostrich headdress...It talks about one of the most popular creation myths featuring the Ennead, a group of nine ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses...Which together literally depict the annual (re)creation of the (Egyptian) world...

As a god of male sexual potency, I am honoured during the coronation rites, when the Pharaoh is expected to hold his penis just like I do mine, and sow his seed...

You might like an explanation of the symbolic meaning of this ritual, which you can find in this post "Sceptre". In it, the author postulated that the first rulers held their penises as sceptres. What he didn't know was that in Sumerian "ñišuš-bar" meaning ruler's staff, sceptre, literally means "penis" + "to see, show"...Which confirms the hypothesis that penises were the original ruler's staffs, sceptres...

Male semen (seeds) are in agricultural magic linked with grain seeds...

You can read about this in this post, "Sowing", which talks about a strange custom from Serbia. There, in the past people lived in extended families called "zadruga". When grain needed to be sown, the family would choose one man to do all the sowing. He had to abstain from sex from that moment until all the seeds were sown...

This is why in my right hand I am holding a flail (tool for threshing grain)...Threshing is extracting grain seeds...For food but also for next sowing...Hence flail as symbol of fertility of the land and ability to provide food...See, it's all symbolically linked...

This is also why at the beginning of the harvest season, my image is taken out of my temple and brought to the fields to bless the harvest in the "festival of the departure of Min". Why departure of Min? Departure of what from where?

Well, as I said, I ejaculate the (water carrying the fertile) black silt in the Ethiopian highlands...And this ejaculation starts in Mar/Apr...Because this is when the Ethiopian monsoon season starts...And it is this monsoon that feeds the Nile...

It is this monsoon that provides the water of life, which carries the black silt to Egypt...So if anyone is looking for me between Mar/Apr and Sep/Oct, I will be standing in the Ethiopian highlands, wanking...

So the black silt (my spank), that will refresh the black soil of Egypt for the next year sowing, departs Ethiopian highlands for Egypt during the Egyptian grain harvest...All very symbolic...

Which is why Ethiopia is called "Land of the God" (that would be me) in Egyptian records...The land I "come" from...Now apparently "there is a dispute over" where this "Land of God" (also known as Land of Punt) actually was...

Ok apart from the fact that this is where I do most of my flute playing, based on Egyptian records, this Punt place was the major source of all these things: myrrh, frankincense, ebony, giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, leopards...

Now if you google:

"In which current country in Africa can we find all these: myrrh, frankincense, ebony, giraffes, baboons, hippopotami, leopards?"

You get: "Ethiopia and Somalia."

And because of the Nile, it can actually only be Ethiopia...

I mean this is not rocket science, but it is science, and for some reason science seems to be ignored when it comes to me...Everyone thinks I am just a figment of perverted imagination...

Anyway, I talked enough about myself. I am hungry. I need some lettuce, the food of the gods...Not any lettuce. The Lactuca serriola, the wild lettuce, also called prickly lettuce, also called milk lettuce...

Here it is depicted on the north wall in the Chapel of Amun, one of the seven chapels that are located directly west of the Second Hypostyle Hall of the Seti I Temple at Abydos...This relief detail shows two lettuces separated by a fan...

Egyptians believed the prickly lettuce is an aphrodisiac, as it was tall and straight and released a milk-like substance which resembled semen, and they associated it with me, THE GOD of male sexual potency...

This is why I was often depicted with "sacred" lettuces standing behind me....

Silly Ancient Egyptians...Prickly lettuce is not an aphrodisiac. It does not contain sexual stimulants. It doesn't give you a boner. It is an anaphrodisiac. It contains opiates and actually suppresses erection...

Ancient Greeks knew this...

So why would Egyptians associate prickly lettuce with me? And depict it behind me? Cause prickly lettuce flowers between Jul and Sep producing pile of bright yellow sun like flowers...

Jul-Sep...During the peak of the annual Nile flood. When I spill my semen all over Egypt...Basically the prickly lettuce is a plant calendar marker for the climax of my ejaculation (the Nile flood), the source of all fertility in the Nile Valley, in Egypt...

How cool is this?

You might want to also read my first Horus post "Great duel" and my second Horus post "Horus the Elder",  my third Horus post "Horizon, my fourth Horus post "Nut" and my fifth Horus post "Ennead"...

If you are interested in reading 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...