Great Hili Tomb

Recently I came across this post on X: Did you know these ancient carvings of oryx antelopes in Hili Archaeological Park date back to the Bronze Age? What do you think they symbolised?

Hmmmm...I have a funny feeling that animal calendar markers can help us...Lets see what local climate and behaviour of Arabian oryx can tell us...

The above carving adorns one of the entrances of the Great Hili Tomb, a monumental Bronze Age communal burial site dating to approximately 2500–2000 BC...

This archaeological park is located in Al Ain, Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. So we are talking about North-Eastern Arabia...

The climatic chart for Abu Dhabi looks like this...

The climatic chart for Oman looks like this...

We can see that the year is divided into cool, wet season (Oct/Nov - Apr/May) and hot, dry season (Apr/May - Oct/Nov)

Ok, soooo....

This is Arabian orix. 

In Arabian peninsula, "most births occur in Oct-May". Right during the cool/wet season...

So I would say that the local population probably linked oryx with rain, fertility, life in some way...

BTW, it looks like one of the figures is holding something in its left hand. Grain? Why do I say this? Cause in Oman grain is sown in Oct/Nov and is harvested in Mar/Apr/May, peaking in Apr/May...

Now check this out: "As additional behavioural adaptation to the desert climate Arabian oryx exhibit a switch from diurnal to nocturnal activity in response to high ambient temperatures and water shortage"...You can read more about it here...

What that means is that oryx is in our (human) world (daytime, people are diurnal) during the cool, wet season, and  are in the otherworld (nighttime) during the hot, dry season...

The hot dry season ruled by Mot, the god of death and the underworld...

In the deserts of Levant, Middle East and Arabia, it was The Sun who was "The God of Death". It is in climate and nature it produces, that we find the root of all our religions... 

You can read more about it in my post "Oldest Arabic poem" about over 2000 years old poem about the god of death Mot...  

Sooo...What do you think? 

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...