Apollo - Resheph

Oh Hello Apollo! Or should I say Resheph?

Today I came across this article published in Cyprus Mail in 2021. which talks about the sanctuary of Apollo built in the 7th c. BC on Cyprus...

The sanctuary, located in Frangissa, near Nicosia, was used for 5 centuries, and excavation uncovered contained huge number of votive statues made of stone and clay, some of the very large, like these two...

Now, interestingly, in Fransissa, Apollo was worshiped as Apollo-Resheph...And guess who Resheph was: A Syrian god, associated with war and plague, originally worshiped in Ebla in the third mill BC...And considered to be Syrian version of...🥁🥁🥁...Nergal...

Here is Resheph on a plaque from Ebla, dated to the 3rd mill BC. Pic from this article...

The description says: "The god’s head and torso are preserved: he wears the high conic head-dress, with horizontal horns, he  has pointed nose, and chin, and features a short beard, represented by three  vertical strokes; his hair is apparently plaited, and quite long..."

"...he holds the  string of the bow, resting on his shoulder, whereas his breast is crossed by the  string of the quiver, with the arrows barbed ends appearing at the botom, between the bow string, and the god’s body; the left arm is outstretched in front  of him..."

Ha! Resheph the terrible archer who brings plague...Just like Apollo was the terrible archer who brings plague...

I talked about this the 9th and 10th articles from the series of articles about the link between Nergal and Apollo:

You should check my articles about Apollo if you want to fully understand what I am talking about here:

1. "Palil". About "Palil" a nickname of Nergal, the terrible, burning, destructive sun of Jul/Aug, Leo...And about the origin of the name Apollo and its meaning...

2. "Lord of the flies". About Nergal and Apollo as "The lords of the flies"...And about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the peak of the fly and fly born diseases season in Northern Hemisphere...

3. "Lions of Delos". About the Lions of Delos, the burning destructive sun in Jul/Aug, Leo, and the fact that both Nergal and Apollo are linked to lions. 

4. "Apollo and dolphins". About Jul/Aug, Leo being the "best time to sail in Eastern Mediterranean", and the link between dolphins and Lions...and Apollo...

5. "Marble throne of Apollo". About snakes (symbols of sun's heat), dragons (symbols of burning sun's heat) and terrible sun gods, Nergal and Apollo who are dragons themselves...

6. "Apollo and Python". About why Python followed Apollo after his birth? Cause snakes are solar animals...According to the Delphian tradition, Apollo was born on the 7th day of the month of Bysios (Jan/Feb)

7. "White raven". About the black and white raven legend which is found in both Nergal and Apollo mythology, Egyptian vultures and the twins that guard the gates of hell. And some other weird stuff...

8. "Threshing floor of Apollo". About the threshing floors as solar observatories/temples, about the threshing floor of Apollo from Delphi, about Jul/Aug, Leo, being the holy month of Apollo, and about solar bonfires...

9. "Apollo the great archer". About why Apollo was the terrible "far shooting" archer...About arrow and bow constellation from Mesopotamia, Ishtar, Sirius, and Jul/Aug, the season of Perseid meteor shower...

10. "Apollo Sminthius". About Apollo his arrows that cause plague and peak infectious diseases season, Jul/Aug

You can read about Resheph in this paper...

BTW, the Apollo sanctuary in Fransissa was originally excavated in 1885 by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, a German archaeologist and antiquities seller, who wrote this about how made the discovery in this paper...

"...While engaged in excavating for Col. Warren, I heard that a shepherd, tending his flocks, had lighted on a pile of ancient statues in a valley called Frangissa..."

"The credit opened for me by Col. Warren was almost exhausted, and his instructions were that I was to find for him only good Greek things..."

And so he rummaged through the site, picked up what to him looked like "good Greek things" and few other things he thought he could easily sell, and then reburied the site, with intention to come back later and do more digging...

Here are some "good Greek things" he found and brought with him ..." Pic from this paper...

But he never did come back and by then mythical site was only rediscovered recently and is now being excavated in detail, showing how much important stuff Max Ohnefalsch-Richter left behind thinking it was worthless...

Which turned out to be amazing...Like the inscriptions which equate Apollo with Resheph...Nergal...

And which confirm my theory that Apollo was Nergal which I formulated purely based on animal and plant calendar markers found in Apollo and Nergal mythologies...

That's that. 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...