Jörmungandr

The other day I came across this pendant on one of the auction sites with the description: "Medieval Period - Viking Pendant Depicting Coiled Sea Serpent - Jörmungandr". Lot closed. 145$...

In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr is a giant serpent whom Odin tossed into the great ocean that encircles Midgard.  The serpent is so large that it is able to surround the earth and grasp its own tail, receiving the name "World Serpent". It's arch-enemy is the thunder-god Thor...

The stories about Thor's encounters with this serpent are very interesting. They are full of symbols whose meaning, by the time the stories were recorded, was almost completely forgotten...Uncovering the meaning of these symbols will show us the true identity of Jörmungandr...

Before I analyse the only two preserved Norse stories about the encounters between Jörmungandr and Thor, I will first just quickly remind you all of the main thing Thor (as the thunder god) has to do in Indoeuropean mythology: he has to kill the dragon (Serpent)...

The identity of this Dragon (Serpent) can be deduced from, for instance, the Slavic myth about Perun, Thunder god, killing Veles, Great Serpent, who stole Perun's cattle (clouds). Perun kills Veles, releases his cattle (clouds), and rains return...

Snake is in Slavic mythology directly linked with the sun. It is the symbol of sun's heat. The symbol of summer. The snakes are in the underworld during the winter and are in our wold during the spring, summer autumn, when sun dominates the Sun-Earth system...

In the spring, sun's heat is a positive force which creates life. But as summer progresses, the heat gets stronger and stronger. And by the end of the summer, sun's heat becomes a negative force which destroys life. And so the snake grows into the Great Snake, The Dragon...

The dragon that has to be killed, or his fiery breath will turn everything into cinder. Ta-Dah!!! Enters The Thunder god of your choice, battle ensues...and the dragon dies...The drought ends, the rains return, the world is saved (again)...

In Slavic mythology, Thunder god Perun kills Great Snake Veles on Perun's day, 2nd of August, the day that marks the end of Summer, and beginning of Autumn. This day falls in the middle of Leo zodiac sign, when sun is the hottest...I talked about this in my post "Thundering sun god"...

So, Great Serpent, Dragon (Draught) dies in Leo :) Or to say it another way, Lion kills Serpent. This Romanesque object depicts Lion killing Snake under the head of Helios. Perun's day is in Serbia also the day of St Elijah, Christianised Helios...I talked about it in my post "Lion killing snake"...

Ok, back to Thor and Jörmungandr. This is one of only two preserved stories about the encounters between the Thunder god and the Great Serpent...You'll love it...

The part "the serpent disguised by magic in the form of a magic colossal cat" would make no sense at all, if we didn't know that in Slavic mythology, the Thunder God fights and kills the Great Serpent in the middle of Leo...

Now all of a sudden it all makes perfect sense...Including the fact that Thor can't lift the Great Serpent disguised as a Great Cat. One other story, from Egypt, can also be decoded using the same symbol dictionary: The story of Apep, Great Chaos Serpent...I talked about this in detail in my post "Apep"...

Guess what. Apep is killed by Ra (Sun) in a form of a Cat (Leo)...When the Great Serpent is killed, inundation of the Nile is at it's highest level, nature is saved, hence the tree behind the snake...

Of course this whole thing doesn't make much sense in far north, where there is little chance of sun causing draughts...

Jörmungandr and Thor meet again when Thor goes fishing with the giant Hymir. Hymir is a very interesting giant indeed. He is the father of the god Týr, whom Romans identified as Aries, the god of War...

Now in Slavic mythology, god Jarilo, is the Young Sun God, who was in Greek Mythology personified by Apollo, who replaced Helios, the old Titan (Giant) Sun God...

The root of the name Jarilo is "jar" which can mean both "green, young" and "raging heat, raging anger". Jarilo is symbol of male (and Sun) energy, which can be both creative and distructive...It is suspicious how close Jarilo is to Ares, the god of rage (jara)...

So is Giant Hymir, the father of Týr (Ares, Jarilo) actually Titan Helios? After all Perun kills The Great Serpent on the day of Helios, the hottest day in the northern hemisphere...And here in this story Thor kills Jörmungandr while fishing with Hymir (father of Ares)...

This story is great. The part: "Hymir refuses to provide Thor with bait, Thor strikes the head off Hymir's largest ox to use as his bait" makes no sense unless we know that Summer which is ruled by The Great Serpent, starts in Taurus, Bull...

In Slavic mythology, Perun kills the Great Serpent at the end of summer. At the end of the season whose symbol is The bull...So Bull also dies on Perun's day...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

That there is a direct link between bull and dragon can be seen from some legends preserved in the Balkans, in which young girls were sacrificed to the Giant Bull rather than to the Dragon...I talked about this in my post "Water bull"...

So Thor kills the bull to kill the Dragon...This is the Altuna Runestone showing Thor fishing for three headed dragon using a bull head...With his hammer on the ready to strike the final blow...

What is interesting is that in the Balkans, the day of Perun, the day of Helios, is the day when people organise Bull fights. I talked about this in my post "Alidjun"...

This is also the day when bulls are ceremonially slaughtered, roasted and eaten...Historical sources tell us that Slavs sacrificed bulls to Perun...So these bull fights were originally probably a ritual in which the best bull was chosen to be sacrificed to Perun...

I talked about ritual slaughtering of Bulls in Slavic culture, and the meaning of this ritual, in my  post "Bull of Grom Div"...

But it wasn't just Slavs who sacrificed bulls, symbol of summer which starts in Taurus, at the end of summer...The Old Gaels (The Irish) did it too. I talked about this in my post "Bull of Crom Dubh"...

So what are we to make of all this? Well, well done Thor, you are truly Indoeuropean Thunder god now. You killed your Great Serpent, Dragon...But why is it that this Norse legend can be explained through Slavic folk tradition, but not through Norse folk tradition? Or can it be?

Also, as I already said, the story makes no sense in the far north. In the far north the Thunder god has no need to kill the heat of the summer. The opposite is the case...In the far north you want sun to be hot and the summer to last as long as possible...

There is one more thing that can be decoded once we know what does the cat represent. Why is Freya riding around in chariots pulled by cats...She is just another representation of Virgo, the feminine, yin, earth influence which becomes ever stronger from the middle of Leo...

I talked about this ubiquitous Lion Lady in my post "Assumption of Mary"...

One other thing. Why is The Great Serpent Jörmungandr biting its tail? Enters Ouroboros. This symbol of the serpent biting its tail was first seen in Egypt. There it is linked to deity Mehen, who in other funerary texts protects Ra in his underworld journey...

Ra spends every night in cold watery underworld. In order to emerge bright and shining in the morning, Ra's fire, his heat, needs to be preserved. By coiled snake... Symbol of sun's heat in Slavic mythology...

Ra's heat also needs to be preserved during the winter. According to the 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius who was aware of the Egyptian use of the Ouroboros symbol, the image of a snake biting its tail represented the cyclical nature of the year...Solar wheel...

That Ouroboros did represent the solar year, the ever turning (changing) life creating solar wheel, can be seen from Gnostic Pistis Sophia (c. 400 AD), which describes the ouroboros, the soul of the world, as a twelve-part dragon, surrounding the world with its tail in its mouth

In my post "Yin and Yang", I talked about this ever changing, life producing interplay between the Earth and the Sun...

One thing that most people don't know, is that the Yin-Yang symbol is spinning and ever changing. The Great serpent, the Sun, The Yang, is constantly oscillating between its minimum (in the middle of maximum Yin) to it's maximum (where we find minimum Yin in the middle of it)...

This is what "Serpent biting it's tail means". Dragon, The Great Serpent doesn't get killed by Thor or Perun or any other Thunder god. It kills (eats) itself. Spring-Summer-Autumn-Winter-Spring...The ever spinning Ouroboros, the solar wheel...

And this is why the end of the world will come when Jörmungandr spits its tail...Because that means that the Earth-Sun system has gone out of balance. The heat will either increase so much that the world will burn, or will decrease so much that the world will freeze...

I love Jörmungandr...

Legendary battle

The so called "The Griffin Warrior" is a person buried in the Bronze Age, Mycenaean shaft tomb dating to around 1450 BC, which was discovered near the ancient city of Pylos in Greece. This is what the content of the tomb looked like:

This warrior was buried in his best clothes and with all his best weapons and jewellery and status objects. This burial practice stems from the ancient belief that the things buried with the dead will be transferred with the dead from "this world" to "the other world"...

All the weapons were positioned to the right of the body: a magnificent one meter long sword with a golden hilt, under which lay a similarly designed dagger...

A classic Mycenaean boar tusk helmet was also found. The helmet was made from about 20 or more wild boar tusks which were split lengthwise. This is another boar tusk helmet found earlier in another Mycenaean burial, so you can see what these helmets looked like in real life...

We were able to reconstruct these helmets because we have found many depictions of them being worn by Mycenaean warriors...Like this one from the silver battle krater from shaft grave IV at Mycenae...

Have you ever thought how would you make a helmet like this? Well first you would have to kill at least 10 wild boars...Have you ever seen what a fully grown wild boar looks like? This is the beast you had to kill WITH A SPEAR...10 OF THEM!!!

Do you think that each warrior wearing one of these helmets had to kill the wild boar himself in order to have the helmet made? I think so. Which leads me to believe that these boar helmets were a status symbol which meant: I am a tough mother f*cker...

"Wild boar mating season is November to January... Prior to mating, the males develop their subcutaneous armour (!!!) in preparation for confronting rivals". If you went to kill wild boar during the main hunting season, winter, you were confronting an armoured killing machine...

"The boar's testicles double in size during the mating period, and the glands secrete a foamy yellowish liquid" I would say that if you were a Mycenaean hero, you were definitely going to be hunting boar then. To show you have "bigger balls" than the beast... :)

Griffin Warrior was buried with 50 seal stones, made of semiprecious materials, with Minoan designs (!!!) 

Most of the stones were found on the warrior’s right side, some probably worn as part of bracelets, and others gathered in a bag or pouch that decayed long ago...

The seal stones were originally used by the Minoans for administrative purposes. They were used as personal (family) stamps. 

Why was a Mycenaean Griffin warrior buried with a collection of Minoan seal stones???

I believe that each one of these seals was a war trophy. Each one represented a dead Minoan warrior...Killed personally by this man...

A war trophy brought to Mycenae from Crete during a war that was fought to avenge a defeat of the Mycenaeans by the Minoans depicted on the now famous Combat Agate seal stone from the Griffin warrior tomb...

E what??? 

Ever since I saw the Combat Agate, a magnificent Minoan made (according to all archaeologists) gem, found in a Mycenaean warrior grave, I was troubled by what I was looking at...

Because what I was looking at was a Minoan warrior (judging by the way he is dressed and by his hairstyle), killing a kilt wearing Mycenaean warrior (judging by his helmet), while another kilt wearing Mycenaean warrior lies dead...This made no sense to me at all...Until today...

These kind of gems (according to archaeologists) were worn like bracelets. They were drilled through and a string or a leather strip was pulled through and tied around the wrist. Combat agate was one such gem...

Well, Minoans seemed to have worn them like this. As can be seen on the Combat agate. Here is a detail of the scene depicted on it. The Minoan warrior wears a gem bracelet around the wrist of the hand grabbing the Mycenaean warrior's helmet crest (according to archaeologists)...

By the way, this is a perfect example why having anything that sticks out of your helmet in order to make it look cool, is really really bad idea in combat. The warrior on the left has grabbed the really cool looking crest on the helmet of the warrior on the right and has twisted his neck around. If the guy on the right is not already dead because his neck has snapped, he will be, when the guy on the left stabs him. Which is why any helmet that is not for show has nothing sticking out, as anything sticking out can be used as a leaver to twist your head around or sideways and basically break your neck or put you into disadvantaged position...

Back to the main theme of the article.
It is kind of obvious that if this gem was made by Minoans that it depicted Minoan victory...Which is the main reason why I think that Combat Agate and all the other Minoan gems found in Mycenaean Griffin Warrior grave were war trophies...Taken off dead Minoans...

And Combat agate was a very special gem stone. Because the scene depicted on it is not any random Minoan victory over Mycenaeans. It was a "famous", "legendary" Minoan victory over Mycenaeans. Why? Because this is not the only depiction of this scene found so far...

The combat scene in this gold cushion seal (from Grave III of Grave Circle A in Mycenae) closely resembles the one in the Pylos Combat Agate...Again we have long haired Minoan warrior killing Mycenaean warrior wearing helmet...

We find the same scene depicted on this gold seal ring with military scene, from tomb IV of mound A of Mycenae, 16th century BC...

This was not just any battle between any two heroes. This was a stuff of legends. A legendary victory for Minoans. And a legendary defeat for Mycenaeans...

The defeat which Mycenaeans could not forget and which they had to, and they did, avenge one day. And I believe that the Griffin Warrior was one of the avengers. Maybe even the leader of the avengers...At least judging by the fact that one of the objects found in the "Griffin warrior tomb" was a staff with a bull's head top...Status symbol definitely. But what kind of status? Priest? King? Priest King?

And taking the Combat agate, which celebrated that legendary defeat of the Mycenaeans, off the dead cold hand of the Minoan warrior who wore it as a symbol of the legendary victory of the Minoans, was the ultimate symbol of revenge...

Now here is something very interesting. In "Mycenæ: a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenæ and Tiryns" published in 1880, Schliemann talks about this legendary duel of heroes. Except he doesn't see Minoan and Mycenaean warriors. He sees this:  

Ha!!! 

What are we looking at here? Was there another much older legend talking about Minoan-Mycenaean wars which later became Iliad? Was there another legendary battle between (to us) unknown Minoan hero and unknown Mycenaean hero which later became battle between Achilles and Hector? 

We know that legends, as they are passed from generation to generation, change with times. New elements are added, names, identities, religion, reason for existence and actions of heroes change to reflect the identity, beliefs, hopes and fears of people who retell these legends..

Is this what we have here?

Seven seals

In the Book of Revelation, the Seven Seals are the seven symbolic seals that secure the book or scroll that John of Patmos saw in an apocalyptic vision. The opening of the seals of the document occurs in Revelation Chapters 5–8 and marks the Second Coming of the Christ.

At the time when Revelation was written, important documents were sent written on a papyrus scroll sealed with several wax seals. Wax seals were typically placed across the opening of a scroll, so that only the proper person, in the presence of witnesses, could open the document.

But there is another possible meaning of the "Breaking of seven seals which announces the second coming of Christ". 

It has to do with Christ being "the bread of life"...

Since Neolithic times, in Fertile Crescent, farmers stored their grain in storage vessels which were they sealed using stone seals imprinted on clay.

The earliest evidence for this practice was found in Syria and dates to the seventh millennium B.C. You can read about this in "Deciphering Later Neolithic stamp seal imagery of Northern Mesopotamia" and "More Seals and Sealings from Neolithic Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria"...

At Arslantepe, a store room was found in the palace containing sealed containers...You can find the details in "THE ORIGINS OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES AND THEIR DEVELOPMENTS IN GREATER MESOPOTAMIA. THE EVIDENCE FROM ARSLANTEPE, ARCHÉO-NIL Revue de la société pour l'étude des cultures prépharaoniques de la vallée du Nil, 26, 2016"

And we know that palaces and temples were used as grain stores...

Storage vessels from the store room

Seals imprints. 

This is the table showing articultyral year in Levant. 

You can see that grain (barley and wheat) was sown by December and was harvested by July. 

When grain was harvested, it was stored in storage jars and was used for food until next harvest. Now if I was a grain farmer from Levant, I would have divided my grain into 13 jars. The grain in 12 jars would be used for food. Why 12 jars? Well this way you will know exactly how much you can eat each month so that you can ration the grain and not run out of it half way through the year. The 13th jar would contain seeds for the next sowing. 

Each storage jar would then be closed and sealed probably with a family seal...

Now if the grain was indeed kept like this, then a family would open a new storage jar every new month, and would use the grain contained inside during that month. To to that they would have to break the seal...

Now what is the second coming of Christ? The Second Coming is a Christian belief regarding the future (or past) return of Jesus after his ascension to heaven...Basically, Christ dies, he gets buried, he ascends (Empty grave)...Now we wait...For Christ's resurrection basically...

You know how Grain is used as a symbol of resurrection? It gets killed (harvesting), buried (planting) and resurrected (sprouting and growing)...Year after year after year. 

Now what if "the bread of life" should be taken literally? How long should we wait for the "second coming", "resurrection" of grain? Well, 7 months, from the end of sowing (beginning of December) to the end of the Harvesting (beginning of July). The longest 7 months in the life of any grain farmer whose life depends on the good harvest...

And every one of these long 7 months begins with opening one of the last 7 jars of grain...By breaking the seal which protected it...When the 7th seal is broken, the harvest is finished and the storage jars are refilled...

Was this the root of the 7 seals "vision" about the Second coming of the "Bread of life"???

Cornucopia

Twelfth Century stone relief, thought to represent Slavic Sun God Svetovid (Svantovit) holding cornucopia (horn of plenty). The stone was found in Altenkirchen, Rügen, Germany...

German chroniclers recorded that the main annual religious ceremony performed by the Baltic Slavs was performed at the end of the harvest at the beginning of November (Samhain?). And it involved Svetovid, his "drinking horn", and giant breads...Probably like this one still made in Serbia for Christmas...

The priest looked at Svetovid's horn to see if the drink in it was evaporating. If so, the harvest would be poor the next year, and the people should save something of their current harvest for next year. If the drink did not disappear, that foretold a bountiful year...

There was also there as an offering an oval-shaped honey cake which stood "almost as tall as a man". The priest would stand behind it and would ask the people if they could see him. When they answered "yes", he would then wished them that next year they should not see him at all...Meaning that the honey cake (bread) offered to the god next year would be even bigger, because the harvest would be even better... More in my post "Can you see me".

From this ritual we can clearly see that the Slavs saw the horn as "cornucopia", the horn of plenty. The ritual was Slavic thanksgiving. The time when Slavs threw sacrificial feasts for their gods. And made human sacrifices to them too... More in my post "Thanksgiving".

Cornucopia is still associated with thanksgiving. Except it's not a horn any more, but a horn like wicker basket...But the idea of the symbol is the same: the bountiful harvest comes from the horn...Why?

Cornucopia is latin name for the symbol of abundance and nourishment, which in classical antiquity was commonly depicted as a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers or nuts...

This is Roman Era Fresco, Primavera aka Flora with Cornucopia, Excavated in Stabia...

Originally though, cornucopia was an actual horn and was not called cornucopia. It was called Keras Amaltheias (Horn of Amalthea)...Who was Amalthea? Remember the Ibex goat that suckled infant Zeus on Crete that I talked about in my post "Goat riding thunder god"? This is Minoan seal where swastika is formed by four Ibed goats...Ibex was venerated as a holy animal of the thunder god by the Minoans:

Apparently, one day, as young Zeus played with Amalthea, he accidentally broke off her horn. To make up for it and as a sign of gratitude, Zeus blessed the broken horn, so that its owner would find everything they desired in it...

The best bit: "How Amalthea’s horn came to be associated with an overflowing horn of plenty...is not quite clear in classical Greek mythology, although it is a common motif in Greek art..." Darkness in "our current understanding of our mythology" is scary...

Soooo. Here we are again. Tapping in the darkness. How did Amalthea's horn become The Horn of Plenty? Well, if you read my post about "Goat riding thunder god" you will see that the Amalthea and Zeus story takes place on Crete...

And on Crete, the year is divided into two parts: hot, dry part (April-May to October-November) and cold, wet part (October-November to April-May). It doesn't rain at all during the dry part. And it rains pretty much all the time during the wet part...

And the arrival of rainy season coincides with the beginning of the mating season of Cretan Ibex goats. Year after year, Cretans would see Ibex goats start their annual mating dances and fights and then the clouds would gather and the rain would start falling...

Almost as if the Ibex goats somehow made the rain come...Rain which makes crops grow, abundantly, plentifully. Almost as if the Ibex goats brought abundance, plenty...What is the most striking characteristic of Ibex goats, which makes them instantly recognisable?  Their horns...

So if you wanted to have an object that represents abundance, plenty...And you were from Crete? Minoan Crete...What would you use? Well the horn of the Cretan Ibex goat, the bringer of rain, course...

And of course it wouldn't be any goat. It had to be Amalthea. The nurse (provider of life giving liquid) of Storm god Zeus (provider of rain, life giving liquid)...By the way remember that it was Zeus "who blessed the horn"...Ha ha ha...Rain brings abundance, plenty...

So this wasn't that difficult, right? It's kind of obvious in the end. But here is a really interesting question: why were Slavic priest, in November, checking whether drink evaporated from their "horn of plenty" to see if the next year's harvest would be good?

So. In my post about the Minoan artefact called Sanctuary rhyton, I mentioned that it could have been used as a rainfall measuring device. If it was left opened during the winter, it would tell Minoans how much rain fell during the winter...I talked about this in my post "Sanctuary rhyton". 

If by springtime the rhyton was full of rain water, the next year would be bountiful, plentiful. There would be no hunger as the soil would have been well irrigated and there would be no thirst as the rivers, streams, springs and cisterns would have been full of water...

But if in November the water in the rhyton was getting lower (evaporating because the weather was hot and dry) instead of getting higher (accumulating because the weather was cool and wet), then that was the sign that the next year will be one of restrictions, hunger and thirst..

Why would Slavic priests from the temple of Svetovid, the sun god, in the Baltic, use evaporation of liquid from the horn of plenty in November as the indicator of the quality of the future harvest? When in Baltic, wet winter means lower yields...You can read about the effect of the rainfall on the grain yield in Northern Europe in this article. 

But remember how Germanic, Slavic and Baltic thunder gods flew up north from Crete during Bronze Age on their ibex goat drawn chariots? Did they bring with them this November, horn of plenty, grain yield divination???

And somehow, Slavs, the conservative, backward fuckers that they are, managed to preserve it, until medieval time...

Another interesting thing: In Ancient Greek depictions, Amalthea's horn was held by one of two gods of wealth: Pluto (otherwise known as Hades god of the underworld) or Plutus, who was either son of Pluto (Hades) and Persephone or Iason (??) and Demeter...You can read more about this in my post "Pluto".

Pluto (Hades) with Persephone holding cornucopia

Plutus with Demeter holding cornucopia

Why is it the god of the underworld, the god of the dead, the one that gives wealth? Well because the wealth is in the ground...Right? You heard this many times before...Interestingly Slavs believed that it was their dead ancestors who determine the fortunes of the living...

They believed that the happy, well fed and watered ancestors give fertility and health to fields, animals and people and that the pissed off ones turn on their descendants and punish them with failed harvests, plagues, death and ruin...

Interestingly, in Slavic folklore, the time of the year linked with the dead is winter...The dark, wet, cold part of the year, the time of death...Also interestingly, in Crete, winter is the time of life...

I will soon write an article that proves that God Hades was originally a god associated with winter. For now, chuck that god to Crete, put shades and swimming shorts on him, and suddenly he turns from god of winter death, need and poverty to god of winter life, bounty and wealth

This definitely requires more talking about. Specifically how the Hades, the tourist from the north, abducted the local Cretan goddess of vegetation, Persephone, Mother Earth...and stole for himself her magic winter life giving powers...

For now I am leaving you with this image. 25,000 years ago, in the Dordogne, a pregnant woman holding a horn was sculpted on a limestone block in the rock shelter of Laussel...

Mother earth holding a horn of plenty? Did our palaeolithic ancestors already have this symbol?

Double headed eagle

This amazing object is a silver gilt cast shaft-hole axe head, made between 2500-1500 BC in the area along the Oxus and Murghab rivers in modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. This is one of my favourite ancient objects. Why? Because it made me realise what double headed eagle means...

The axe head is currently kept in Met museum. The description reads shaft-hole axe with "bird-headed demon, boar, and dragon". The accompanying short article points at the Western Iran as the possible origin of the mythological scene depicted on the axe... 

To understand what we are looking at here, we need to try to identify the animals depicted on the axe head, and we need to answer the question: why is the double headed eagle "hero" separating the dragon (actually winged lion) and the boar?

I talked about winded lions (dragons) in my post about Entemena vase, the most beautiful example of the Sumerian metalwork...  

Dragon represents the destructive power of the sun, which during the summer, burns in the sky threatening to turn everything into cinder. Hence fire breathing dragons...I talked about this in many of my posts. For instance "Dragon that stole the rain" 

The hottest part of the year in the northern hemisphere, including the Western Iran, is the end of the summer beginning of Autumn (August - September)...Which is represented by Leo. Why? Because Eurasian lions mate during that time...I talked about this in my of my posts. For instance "Cylinder seal with a monster" 

So our "dragon" (winged lion) represents August-September, end of summer, beginning of autumn. What about wild boar? This is a wild boar from Tajikistan. Wild boar mating season, across Eurasia, starts in November...At the the end of autumn beginning of winter... 

Sooo. Our double headed eagle "hero" is separating lion (beginning of autumn) and boar (end of autumn)...So if we want to understand what the double headed eagle "hero" means, we need to look at autumn and eagles. More precisely, based on the look of the eagle heads, vultures...

Considering that lion marks the beginning of the lion mating season and that boar marks the beginning of the boar mating season, it would be kind of logical to assume that eagle marks the beginning of the eagle (vulture) mating season. But which vulture?

I believe that our suspect is Gyps bengalensis. This species is found in Iran, Afganistan, Pakistan, India, China and south east Asia...Why? Because of all Western Asian vultures, it alone starts mating in autumn. It breeds from October to March... 

But why double headed eagle? Well, because all vultures, at the beginning of their mating season, perform courtship aerial displays. And the most important part of this display is synchronous flying, wing to wing or one under another...

Vultures only fly together like this at the beginning of their mating season. Vultures flying one above each other, can actually look like this from the ground. Like a double headed eagle...

Interestingly, in Zodiac, Scorpio marks the period between 23 October and 22 November. And guess what. This is the only period in the solar year, which has two symbols. The other one is Eagle...Why? I talked about the zodiac eagle in my post about "Four living creatures". 

Different species of vultures mate at different times at different locations. European Griffon Vultures breed from December. Occasionally birds start breeding earlier and copulation has been recorded in October-November... 

Now bronze age Europe had different, much warmer climate...

Did Griffon Vultures mate earlier then? Say October-November??? They still do in the warmest part of Europe...If so, that wold explain why we find Eagle marking end of October beginning of November...Remember, I postulated that the Solar zodiac, which predates stelar zodiac, was developed in Europe during late Neolithic, early Bronze Age...

By the way, I forgot the best bit... Why would people in Western Iran, Eastern Iraq, give a shit about copulating vultures? Because right at the time when the "double headed eagle" appears in the sky, the rains arrive. The rain season starts in October-November... 

Now that is worth noting and marking, right? Oh, what was the favourite bird of the thunder gods??? You know, the guys that bring rain? Just asking...

And so this finally gives us the identity of the double headed eagle "hero": He is the Thunder God...

If we look at the axe head again, we see that the double headed eagle "hero" is pushing the boar (winter cold is yet to come) but he is strangling the dragon, winged lion (he is killing, ending the summer heat, drought)...

Neat, right?

And here is another, this time Elamite axe head with Lion (Autumn) and Boar (Winter). So this seems to have been a common motif...