Scorpion man

Official description of this seal: "During Middle Assyrian period, seal carvers expanded their repertoire of fantastic and mythical creatures. On this seal, a bird-man with a scorpion tail aims a bow and arrow at a winged lion-griffin standing on a hillock". 1400-1200BC.

I have to say I love this description. It says that officially we have no idea what this all means...

So let's try to make some sense out of this scene...

Scorpion men appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where they stand guard outside the gates of the sun god Shamash at the mountains of Mashu. These give entrance to Kurnugi, the land of darkness...

Now when we talk about the sun god and the land of darkness that usually means winter. Which in Mesopotamia climatically starts at the beginning of November. In Scorpio...When the first rains arrive...And the temperature drops...

I talked about this in my post "Queen Puabi’s cylinder seal"... 

But before people start complaining about precession and constellations and such stuff, I am not talking about stars at all. Or stellar zodiac. I am talking about solar year markers...

The scorpio I am talking about marks the time when temperature in the northern hemisphere falls below what scorpions consider nice. And they decide to retire. Underground or inside people's houses. Where it's warm...

By the way I am not the first one to link these scorpion men to the zodiac sign of scorpio. I am just not sure if they understood why scorpio is where it is on the solar circle...I didn't until recently. Oh and this behaviour of scorpions is not affected by the precession...

BTW, we find the same thing in Egypt, where we also find The Scorpion King...

Who turned out to be just another version of the same animal calendar marker, marking the time when scorpions disappear...Which is also the time when plowing and sowing of grain takes place...I talked about this in my post "Scorpion king"...

BTW, the scorpion archer has a body and wings of a raptor...So this is an Eagle/Scorpion...Interestingly, Zodiac sign Scorpio, which marks Oct/Nov, is the only double sign...The other sign that marks the same period is Eagle...Cool...

I talked about this in my article "Four living creatures"...  

Ok. What about the other mythical creature? Lion. Well, have a look at this. This is zodiac, with the cross marking the signs in which the seasons start. Spring starts in Aquarius, Summer starts in Taurus, Autumn starts in Leo and winter starts in Scorpio. 

And because Scorpio is a double sign, Scorpio/Eagle...

Oh BTW, the eagle marks Oct/Nov, because this is when the mating season of Old World vultures starts. I talked about this in many of my posts...For instance "Eagle dance"...

In my other article "Symbols of the seasons", I talked about why these four animals were used as symbols of the four seasons: 

The Leo is where it is on the solar zodiac because this is when the mating season of the Eurasian lions started...

So for winter to start, autumn needs to end...So winter (symbolised by scorpion/eagle) kills (ends) autumn (symbolised by lion/eagle)...It's kind of obvious...Or not...

Oh...One other thing...Autumn in Mesopotamia is the time of droughts...Which start in Leo...Which is why a winged lion is the symbol of Nergal, the God of Death, the Destructive Sun...I talked about this in my post "Winged super human hero"... 

Wait!!!! If this is the case, shouldn't there be goat on the seal, to symbolise the end of summer, beginning of autumn?

Well glad you said it 🙂. Because actually, if you look at fine print, you can see a tiny Markhor goat standing right under the scorpion man's tail...

And as we all know, Markhor goat was with Ibex (Bezoar) goat symbol of rain season...The Goat of Rain...Before there was a God of Rain...You can read more about this in my article "Goat in a tree"...

The "stars" which frame the scene are actually just one "star" just impressed twice...It's a circular seal 🙂 Originally I thought it represented our sun, but now I know it represents Sirius. Which is at the time when Scorpion kills Lion, visible in the night sky...But which also in Leo (Jul/Aug) rises with the sun...

I talked about this in more detail in my article "7 stars of scorpio"

So there you have it...Neat right?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...