Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Grain and lions

A shard from a Hittite vessel with a depiction of a god (?) standing on a lion with a plant above lion's head. Museum of Anatolian Civilisations, Ankara, Turkey. I'd love to know what is the official interpretation of this artefact. Here's mine:

I think that the depicted plant is not just any plant. It's grain. Mesopotamian/Levantine symbol for grain. Some posts about the symbol for grain and the Mother of grain in Neolithic Europe, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant: "Mother of grain", "Altyn Tepe mother of grain", "A person in a little boat", "Sabi Abyad venus", "Hathor grain pendants"...


Interestingly, in Anatolia, the grain harvest takes place in Jul/Aug, in Leo. Which is why, I think, the grain is depicted above the lion's head...I talked about grain/lion link in Anatolia in my posts "Eagle dude from Aleppo", "Bull god from Arslantepe", "Ulucinar stelae"


I have no idea who the god standing on the lion is...Are there any depictions of the Hittite grain deity, Halki? Considering that the sex of this deity is debated, can this help in any way settle the debate?

BTW, Leo (Jul/Aug), originally had nothing to do with stars either. It is the ancient animal calendar marker marking the beginning of the main mating season of the Asiatic lions. I talked about this in many of my posts...




That's it. 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...

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