Apollo and Artemis from Rogozen Treasure Jug

 

Amazing silver jug from Rogozen Thracian Treasure, second half of the 4th century BC, History Museum of Vratsa. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences...Pics by Daniel Nikolov...

Here is the plan of the vessel. The scene depicts two 4 wheeled carts pulled by 4 winged horses and driven by female drivers...

The passenger in the first cart is a male, holding a bow in his left hand and what looks like an arrowhead in his right hand. 

The passenger in the second cart is a female, holding a cup in her right hand while flowers grow out of the small finger on her raised right hand...

Who are these characters? If we assume that these are characters from the Greek mythology, the male could be Apollo, the god of the sun in Leo, Jul/Aug, the Greek equivalent of Mesopotamian Nergal. 

I talked about this Apollo in my posts "Palil", "Lord of the flies", "Lions of Delos", "Apollo and dolphins", "Marble throne of Apollo", "Apollo and Python", "White raven", "Threshing floor of Apollo", "Apollo the great archer", "Apollo Sminthius"

And the female could be Artemis, the old archaic Artemis, who was linked not to the moon, but to the sun in Leo, Jul/Aug, (is this why she is holding this strange "plant" with 7 "flowers"?) as well as with Sirius...The Greek equivalent of Ishtar...

They are both being driven in quadrigas pulled by white winged horses, the vehicle of choice of the sun gods (and their twin sisters)...

It is interesting that the horses pulling the quadrigas are prancing. 

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight and peaks on summer solstice. The horse mating season is characterised by vicious stag fights...

Hence solar horses all over Eurasia...

Articles about solar horse (equid):

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...