A person in a little boat

Proto-Elamite tablet, Iran 3400-3100 BCE...Interestingly, the other side depicts "A person in a little boat" with a giant fish swimming underneath...Pic by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin.

Soooo what is depicted on this tablet?

Well, this must have been something important, cause there is another tablet with the same scene imprinted on it...Pic by Jacob L. Dahl

First a thought that the "person" is Enki (or his local equivalent), the god of fresh water, and annual flood, in his little boat, the symbol of the annual flood of the rivers in Mesopotamia and Iran. I talked about it in my post "Feast plaque from Louvre"...

This would tie with the giant fish, which would then be a giant Mesopotamian carp, which swims upstream during the annual flood to its spawning grounds in the upper reaches of Tigris and Euphrates and their tributaries...

I talked about this in my post "Apkallu"...

But something was funny about the "person" in the boat. The position of the arms is commonly seen on mother goddesses squeezing their breasts. Like this Elamite one from the 2nd millennium BC from Met Museum...

Also, is this a "pregnant" belly? So could this "person" in the boat be a female? And what is that sticking out of the person's butt (sorry back 🙂)? Is this symbol for grain? This thing

So how does this "grain goddess" fit into the "boat floating on the carp flood"? Well this is the water level chart in Tigris and Euphrates system...The water level peaks in Apr/May...

And this is Mesopotamian grain harvest calendar...

This is Inanna/Ishtar speaking: 

"...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 this in my article "Mother of grain"...

BTW, every year during the harvest, a man and a woman performed ritual sexual act on a threshing floor, imitating Inanna (earth, womb) and Enki (sweet water, seed) consummating their holy marriage. I talked about this in my article "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...

Soooo...Is this Inanna (or some local equivalent) arriving in Enki's little boat floating on the waters of the "carp flood"? I would love to know what is written on this tablet...Do we know how to read Proto-Elamite script?

That's it. 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...