Ram with royal ribbon

400–699 AD Sassanian silver plate originally from Iran, currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA

What is actually depicted on this plate?

This is the official description displayed under this artefact. I want to thank @officialnhaynes for posting the picture of this description and alerting me to this amazing object...

Who (or What) is this "stately ram" with royal ribbons tied around its neck? Why is it strutting over mountain tops towards a flowering plant? Why is ram symbol of fortune in Iran? The curators don't provide the answer to these questions...

Maybe I can try...

These are the final words spoken by Kay Khosrow, a legendary king of Iran at the end of  Shahnameh, The Iranian Book of Kings:

What's between Pisces and Taurus? Aries, Mar/Apr. 

What happens in Aries? The spring floods begin in Iran...

BTW Arias is an animal calendar marker that marks the end of the lambing season of the wild and domestic sheep...And the beginning of the milking season...Very important time of the year...I talked about the origin of Aries in my post "Aries must die"... 

Here is the Ram King sitting on his Royal Ram Throne...As depicted on this late 6th or early 7th c. AD Sassanian silver bowl...

I wrote about this in detail in these two articles: "Kay Khosrow" and "Eyeballs platter"

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...

The oldest Demeter depiction

So...How old is the oldest depiction of Demeter, Greek Mother of Grain? How about 4500-4200 years old? Do you want to see it? Here she is in all her glory...

Mother (vulva) surrounded with grain...This symbol is hidden in plain sight on this strange object. This is one of many mysterious Early Cycladic "Frying Pans" found on Cycladic islands in Greece and dated to the second half of the 3rd mill BC

I talk about this particular frying pan, in my post "Tuna boats" about Bronze Age Cycladic tuna fishermen, in which I was discussing the ancient fishing/sailing calendar for the Cyclades. A lot of these "Frying Pans" depict boats, tuna fish and swirling waves...

And of course I completely missed the most important bit: vulva surrounded with grain, symbolic depiction of the Mother of Grain...

We know that this has been a grain symbol in Eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Iran, since at least Sumerian times...

I talk about this symbol being used in combination with vulva to depict the mother of grain in many of my posts. Like this post, "Arjoune Venus", about the 6th mill BC Halaf culture figurines from Syria. This one has vulva on front and ears of grain on the back...

We even have this symbol described in "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi" where Inanna, Sumerian Mother of Grain, says:

Before my lord, Dumuzi...

I poured out grain before my womb...

I talked about this in many of my posts...

BTW, we find the same symbolism (grain before womb) described in the Greek legends about Baubo and Demeter...I talked about this in this recent post "Baubo", in which I explain why she is one of the most misunderstood figures from Ancient Greek mythology. 

This is one of many "Baubo" figurines which were found in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Priene and dated to the 2nd c. BC. 

The fact that we find the earliest use of this symbolism in the Fertile Crescent is important. You'll see why soon.

Anyway, I suddenly remembered the vulva with grain "detail" from our Cycladic "Frying Pan" while I was writing my post "Poseidon pursuing demeter", in which I gave symbolic analysis of this Tetradrachm minted in Byzantium, Thrace, ca 240–220 BC, which depicts veiled head of Demeter, wreathed with corn and Poseidon seated right on rock, holding aphlaston in extended right hand and trident over shoulder. 

In it, I tried to answer the question: why were Demeter, Goddess of grain harvest (season) and Poseidon, God of sailing (season) paired together? As horses?

Basically, horse mating season, Apr/May-Sep/Oct overlaps with both grain harvest and sailing season in Ancient Greece...

Hence the link between Demeter (Mother of grain), Persephone (Grain) and horses. Here is Demeter in her horse-drawn chariot with her daughter Persephone, driving between two prancing stallions. 🙂 Selinunte, Sicily 6th c. BC

And the link between Poseidon and horses. I talked about this link in my posts "Trojan horse", "Three sacrifices", "Tetradrachm from Byblos", "Seahorse ring"...

Anyway, I expanded on it in my post "To sail - To harvest", about the heliacal rising of Pleiades being a calendar marker for the start of both harvest and sailing season in Ancient Greece...Greek name "Πλειαδες" comes from πλεω, which means "to sail"...

I think we find proof for this link between the goddess of grain (harvest) and god of the sea (sailing) in Minoan Crete in the 2nd mill BC.

Actually goddesses of grain, Persephone (grain seed) and Demeter (grain harvest)...

Here they are, in a horse drawn chariot, depicted on a late Minoan limestone sarcophagus, dated to around 1400 BC, excavated from a chamber tomb at Hagia Triada, Crete, Greece...

I just remembered I wrote a whole post, "Agia Triada Sarcophagus", about this a while back where I actually talk about this link between Poseidon, Demeter, Persephone and horses in detail. I am getting old and forgetful...

This link between grain harvest season (Demeter) and sailing season (Poseidon) is I think what is depicted on our Cycladic "Frying Pan":

Tuna fishing boat (Poseidon)

Vulva surrounded with grain (Demeter)

What do you think?

But 🙂 there is something that makes me wonder...

This stele, most likely from the ancient city of Mari in Syria, depicts the Mother of Grain in exactly the same symbolic way...And dates from...🥁🥁🥁...the beginning of the third mill BC...Pretty much the same time as our Cycladic "Frying Pan"...

I talk about this amazing object in my post "Mother of grain from Mari"...

So what I am wondering is, does the vulva surrounded with grain depicted on our Cycladic "Frying Pan" depict Demeter...Or maybe her Levantine double, Inanna/Ishtar/Asherah/Astarte...

I already talked about the possibility that the 2nd mill BC Mycenaean Greeks worshipped Asherah who eventually turned into Demeter in my post "Cup of Nestor"...

Cup from Mycenae with doves. 

And the lions flanking a pole depicted above the main gate of the Mycenae fortress.

Interestingly, Asherah, who was symbolically depicted as an Asherah Pole, was associated with both lions and doves...And so were Inanna and Demeter...

Asherah the goddess represented as a wooden pole erected on "high places". We have no idea what this means, but I have a hunch that the "high places" were threshing floors and that Asherah poles were central poles of the threshing floors...

I talked about this in my post "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...

And this is what Homer says about Demeter and threshing floors:

"And even as the wind carries chaff about the sacred threshing-floors / of men that are winnowing, when fair-haired Demeter / amid the driving blasts of wind separates the grain from the chaff"...

Which is why Eugene Vanderpool in "ΕΠΙ ΠΡΟϒΧΟΝΤΙ ΚΟΛΩΝΩΙ: The Sacred Threshing Floor at Eleusis" proposes that threshing floors were sacred to Demeter and were in fact her temples...I talked about this in my post "Demeter riding panther"...

But as we can see from the our "Frying Pan", I think that this "Mother of Grain" from the Fertile Crescent came to Greece much earlier...In the 3rd mill BC. Via Greek Islands...Already linked with the god of the sea...

Look at this:

Asherah's son is Yam, god of the sea, or more precisely Yam, deified sea itself. And because of all this, Asherah's title "Rabat Athirat Yam", found in the Baal Cycle, can be translated as "Lady Aṯhirat (Asherah) of the Sea"...

The same sea god Yam, who in Phoenician and Canaanite mythology, was associated with horses?🙂

Phoenician ships often adorned with horse heads as tributes to Yam, who was believed to be appeased with such offerings to prevent destructive storms.

Reproduction of a Phoenician ship from the Archaic era, called a hippoi by the Greeks (due to the horse head at the bow), carved in bone, c. 11th-9th centuries BC, Ifergan Collection, Malaga, Spain (2019)

I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse", in which I asked a question: was Trojan horse "hypos" - a wooden horse left as tribute, or  "hypos" - a wooden boat with a horse head used for transporting tributes...

And in this article I also pointed at this "coincidence":

In the Phoenician religion, there was a tripartite division of power between Baal (Storm god), Mot (God of death) and Yamm (Sea god)...

This "seems to have" (first understatement of a millennium) influenced the Greek division between Zeus (Storm god), Hades (God of death) and Poseidon (Sea god)...

Are you kidding me? How many other tripartite divisions of power like this do we have?

It "is possible" (second understatement of a millennium) that Poseidon/Neptune was directly inspired by a Phoenician counterpart Yam...

Is Asherah/Astarte then "inspiration" for Demeter? I just realised I wrote another post, "Goddess on a horse", about this 13th c. BC levantine gold plaque, depicting a lady on a horse, probably Astarte or Anat (according to Israel Museum), who was linked to grain and sailing...

Sooooo...What do you think of all this? 

The oldest symbolic depiction of Demeter and Poseidon? 

Or 

The oldest depiction of Asherah and Yam?

Or both?

I hope you had fun reading this thread. I definitely had a lot of fun researching it, thinking about it and writing it...

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...

Golden men

One of two golden men with large erect penises found in the settlement of Tell el-Farcha, located in the Nile Delta, Egypt, and dated to c. 3000 BC...Pic from this article...

This is the second, smaller figurine...

The figurines had a core made of probably wood, which was then covered with thin gold foil, which was fastened by golden rivets, 4 mm long and 1 mm in diameter. Whoever made these figurines was a seriously good goldsmith...

The archaeologists who found these figurines believe that "It is possible that the golden figurines, depict...a Predynastic ruler...and his son"...

I have to disagree with this. I believe that they depict a god (not sure which one) linked to the sun and the flood...

The reason why I believe this is because figurines were made of gold (sun), had huge penis (fertility), and had eyes made of lapis-lazuli (water)...And in Egypt, the flood which makes the land fertile arrives during the sunniest and hottest time of the year (Jul/Aug)...

But that's just my opinion...BTW...lapis lazuli used for the eyes of the golden figurines was was imported from the area of today’s Afghanistan!!! How cool is this? 3000 BC...

Mesopotamian god Utu/Shamash was depicted as a golden bull (Sun in Taurus) with flowing lapis lazuli beard (flowing water)...This object was found in Ur and dates to 2450 BC. It is currently in the Pen Museum...

Why lapis lazuli beard on the solar bull? Cause flood, caused by the snowmelt in the North-Eastern Mountains, caused by sun's heat, arrives there in Taurus...

I talked about this in my posts: "Solar bull", "Water bull",  "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Shamash young and old", "Butt chewing", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Maran", "Sun god tablet", "Gisgis relief", "Lyres of Ur"... 

Hmmmm....

Osiris and Horus, Father and Son?

I talked about Osiris and its link to flood in my posts "Braided beard" and the "Beard of Osiris"...

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...

Agia Triada sarcophagus

The other day I posted this article, "Minoan bull sacrifice", with the analysis of the bull sacrifice scene from the Minoan Hagia Triada Sarcophagus, a late Minoan limestone sarcophagus, dated to around 1400 BC, excavated from a chamber tomb at Hagia Triada, Crete. 

And it went completely unnoticed??? 

In this article I want to present the full analysis of all 4 sides of this sarcophagus. Honestly this is as cool an example of symbolic religious calendar art as they come.

First, I definitely don't think that these panels depict funerary rituals, which is the most common interpretation of the scene, like in this article.

I think that they could be depicting religious rituals related to Proto Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. The "two queens and the king" mentioned In the Mycenean Greek tablets dated 1400–1200 BC.

They are also a religious calendar closely linked to the climatic calendar.

So let start with this panel. It is clearly divided into two halves, with two sets of people, facing opposite directions performing two different (and I would say opposite) ceremonies. 

I would start with the right side of this panel, with the calf and boat offering ceremony.

The climatic year on Crete is divided into two halves: Hot/Dry half, Summer, Apr/May - Oct/Nov and and Cool/Wet half, Winter, Oct/Nov - Apr/May. Which is why we find bull associated with the sun (gods). I talk about this in my articles "Solar bull", "Water bull",  "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Shamash young and old", "Butt chewing", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Maran", "Sun god tablet", "Gisgis relief", "Lyres of Ur"... 

The hot dry season in Crete starts in Apr/May, in Taurus, when wild Eurasian cattle used to start calving. I talked about this in my articles "Cow and calf ivory", "Foundation peg of the goddess Nanshe", "Elamite water bull", "Human bull hybrid", "White calf", "Calydonian boar", "Cypriot stamp seal with cow and calf"...

 

Hence the offering of calves. 

Apr/May is also the beginning of the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean. I talked about this in these articles "To sail - To harvest", "Coin from Byzantion", "Tetradrachm from Byblos", "Swallow tattoo", "Tuna boats", "Anat"...

Hence the offering of a boat model. 

I talked about Minoan sailing calendar in my article "Minoan dolphin fresco", about the famous Minoan "dolphins fresco" from Knossos, Crete, dated to 1500BC...

Who is the dude to whom these offerings of calves and boat models were made? The most common interpretation is that this is the dead person whose funeral ceremony is depicted??? 

I would say that it is much more likely that this dude is some kind of deity, and he could be Proto Poseidon...

From here we proceed to the small panel depicting the two goddesses riding in a chariot pulled by a horse...

There is a reason why horse was the sacred animal of Poseidon (Greek) and Yamm (Phoenician) sea gods. Horse mating season overlaps with the sailing season in Eastern Medterranean.

I talked about this in my articles "Trojan horse", "Three sacrifices", "Seahorse ring", "Tetradrachm from Byblos", "Poseidon pursuing Demeter"

Apparently, the horse pulling the chariots with two goddesses could actually have ibex horns??? Check the image, it does look like it does...Like this one from Scythia???

A horse wearing reconstructed 2,500 year-old Scythian horse decorations which were unearthed in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. 

Why horse with ibex horns? Maybe a complex calendar marker for the period between Apr/May (beginning of the horse mating season) and Oct/Nov (beginning of the ibex mating season). Which is the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean.

BTW, I already talked about these kind of complex animal calendar markers in my article "Mythical beast from Xian", in which I presented the analysis of the symbolism of this "mythical beast", stag with eagle's head, and ten further eagle heads in the antlers. 4th-3rd century BC. Nalinggaotu, Shenmu County, Xi'an, China...

But maybe, this horse with ibex horns actually depicts the grain agricultural season. Which starts with grain sowing in Oct/Nov, when ibex goats start to mate, and ends with grain harvests in Apr/May, when horses start to mate???

Are these two women riding on the horse pulled chariot then Proto Demeter and Proto Persephone? I think so...I talked about the link between Poseidon, Demeter, Persephone and horses in my article "Poseidon pursuing Demeter"...

The same grain agricultural calendar depicted using plant calendar markers. I talked about this in my article "Poppies and pomegranates", in which I answered the question: Why are opium poppies sacred to Demeter, goddess of grain harvest, while pomegranates are sacred to her daughter, Persephone?

Anyway, where are the two goddesses driving to? Well, towards the other main panel, which depicts bull being sacrificed on a table above two ibex goats...

In "Aegean Prehistory: A Review", in in the chapter, "Neopalatial, Final Palatial, and Postpalatial Crete", Paul Rehak and John G. Younger note that:

"A major development of the Final Palatial Period is the evidence for bull sacrifice..."

"It is possible that the killing of the animal became the final feature of the Minoan bull-games, perhaps under Mycenaean influence. It also may be significant that the bull sacrifice is attested at exactly the moment when Minotaur appears on Minoan/Mycenaean stamp seals."

Hmmm...Amazing. But when did the bull-games, which ended in the bull sacrifice, take place? I think that this 1700BC Levantine seal can help us determine that. You can find the full symbolic analysis of this seal in my article "Bull leaping in Syria"...

Summer, which started with the calving of Wild Eurasian cattle, ended with mating of Wild Eurasian cattle...Mating which was marked by vicious bull fights...Where bulls charged at each other...Like this...

On this levantine seal, the bull leaping is depicted right under the charging bull, which means that the ceremony was most likely performed in Jul/Aug, at the time of charging bulls, the beginning of the Wild Eurasian cattle mating season...

The charging bull is charging towards the lion, Leo, Jul/Aug...

Leo (Jul/Aug), originally had nothing to do with stars either. It is the ancient animal calendar marker marking the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian lions.

In the "THE ASIATIC LION: A study of ecology and behaviour" by Paul Joslin we can read that based on the observation of the large number of wild lions, the mating season of the Asiatic lions starts in August and lasts until October. 

Which is why autumn starts in Leo (Jul/Aug). And why lion is the symbol of autumn...I talked about this in my article "Symbols of the seasons"...

Another clue that bull leaping was performed in Jul/Aug can be found on the so called Theseus ring, gold "Mycenaean" signed ring from the Acropolis of Athens, 15th c. BC. Currently in NAM Athens. where we also see that a charging bull is charging towards a lioness...

Was bull leaping a popular activity in Mycenae? Or is this just another looted Minoan treasure? I talked about this ring in my article "Theseus ring"...

So if the bull sacrifice was performed in Jul/Aug, in Leo, maybe it was performed as part of this sailing ceremony depicted on Minoan frescoes. I talked about it in my article "Minoan dolphin fresco".

In this article, I explained why lions were depicted on the sides of Minoan ceremonial ships:

Writing in the 8th century BC, Hesiod says that:

"Fifty days after the solstice, 

when the season of wearisome heat is come to an end, 

is the right (best) time for men to go sailing"

This is at the end of July beginning of August. In Leo...At the beginning of the mating seasons of lions 🙂

This is the time when Romans celebrated the Neptunalia. Apparently the authorities are not sure why Romans celebrated Neptune at exactly that time of the year. I will let authorities ponder this further... 

Here I will propose that maybe Minoans also celebrated sea god in Leo...And that they sacrificed bulls to their sea god, Proto Poseidon...

That the bull sacrifice was indeed performed in Jul/Aug, at the beginning of autumn, can be seen from the fact that the next panel depicts the two goddesses riding on a chariot pulled by a griffin.

Now griffin is a complex animal calendar marker for autumn. I talked about this in my article "Minoan flying goddess with griffin", in which I analyse this Minoan gold signature ring depicting a flying griffon and goddess, from cemetery at Archanes, Phourni, in Crete, 1700-1450 BC.

After this small panel, we arrive back to the original panel where according to the common interpretation, we see "what could be continuation of the bull sacrifice scene, where the bull's blood is poured into a cauldron, standing between two poles, topped with labris and a bird".

This could be the case, but this could also be symbolic closing of the water flowing season in Crete, which takes place a the end of the wet season in Apr/May. This is an annual flow rate chart for the Koiliaris River Basin near Chania, Crete from this article...

You can see that the water flows through the river during the wet season. The flow suddenly increases in Oct/Nov, when the first rains arrive and suddenly decreases in Apr/May, when the rains stop.

After that the only water that is available is the water that comes out of the low elevation karst springs, or the water that was collected in cisterns, like this one...Pic from this article... 

I wonder if the horns of consecration are actually bull horns at all, or more precisely, if they are only bull horns? Could they be symbolic depiction of dry river beds during the hot dry half of the year which starts in Taurus, Apr/May?

The Cretan gorges, like Samaria gorge, are open for hiking only during the period May to Oct, when they are completely dry...

I wonder if this pouring of blood ritual is symbolically sacrificing the (summer) bull (blood) for winter rain?

BTW, a guy playing a 7 string lyre is also another calendar marker for Apr/May, Taurus. And another symbol for the hot dry season, which according to Sumerians lasted 7 monts...I talked about it in my article "Lyre of Apollo", about animal and plant calendar markers, tortoise, bull, ram, snake, embedded into the story about the birth of Hermes, particularly the part related to him making the first lyre, which he later swapped with Apollo for the caduceus...

And in my article "Lyres of ur" in which I analysed the symbolic significance of the ceremonial Sumerian bull headed lyres. A lyre player from "The Standard of Ur", a Sumerian artefact found in one of the largest royal tombs in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, associated with Ur-Pabilsag, a king who died around 2550 BC. Now in the British Museum...

This concludes my analysis of the sarcophagus. What do you think? Cool? I think so...

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...