Barbery lion

Now here is something very interesting I just found out today...The Lion calendar marker for end of Jul beginning of Aug, hottest part of the year, Leo, was derived probably in Mesopotamia, from the beginning of the mating season of Eurasian lions...

African lions are different...Their mating season peaks in winter, starting in November in the Southern Africa and in January in the Northern Africa...Now extinct Barbery lion, which once lived in Tunisia, mated in January...

The mating behavior of Barbary lions would explain something that I couldn't explain until today. Things like this: Roman mosaic, 2nd century AD, Tunisia. Dionysus riding a lion, followed by Silenus riding a camel, followed by a leopard on a leash...

We all know that Dionysus was linked with winter, the period after the grape harvest...His main celebration was Winter Dionysia, which is what is depicted on the above mosaic...

Now let's have a look at the animals depicted on the above image as animal calendar markers: 

I talked about leopard symbolism and its link to winter, the rain season in both Middle East, Central Asia, Levant and North Africa in my posts "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", "Ibex and leopard", and its link to Dionysus, the god of rebirth (of nature), and Rural (winter) Dionysia in my posts "Maenads with hare", "Furious Maenad", "Leopard and tiger"...Basically, leopards mate in Jan/Feb, at the end of winter beginning of spring...

In this article I talked about Bactrian camel, and how it became a calendar marker for winter in Bactria. Basically, wild Bactrian camels mating season overlaps with the rain season in Central Asia... 

But the camel ridden by Silenus is Arabian camel, Dromedary...What about its mating season? Well, Dromedary mating "peaks in the rainy season". Winter... So camel is then exactly what you would see in the winter procession of Dionysus next to leopard...

But you wouldn't expect to see Dionysus riding on a lion. Dionysus is normally depicted riding either on a leopard or tiger. Both animals mate in winter, both are used as animal calendar markers for winter... 

I thought that this was because the mosaic artist didn't know "that Dionysus, winter god, should only ride on winter mating wild cats"...

Weeeell...I was wrong...The lion on which Dionysus rides on mosaics from North Africa is Barbary lion...Another winter mating cat, worthy of bringing god of winter, rain and life giving winter...God of rebirth (of nature) indeed...

You can see how the same animal, lion (two subspecies), with two opposite mating habits in two different parts of the world, can become a calendar marker for two different things, and cause complete confusion when it comes to interpreting its meaning on ancient artefacts...

But it wouldn't be fun if everything was obvious...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...