A 16th cent. BC Minoan vessel found on Thera, Akrotiri, depicting (according to the museum curators) on one side wild goats and saffron crocuses and on the other side dolphins and sea grass...
According to the museum curators:
The vessel was found in the so-called "House of the Ladies", a building of both residential and ritual character...We think that the vessel had (possibly) ritual meaning and use, but we don't know what meaning and what use...
Maybe I can help here. This vessel is a ritual calendar, depicting a division of a solar year into cool/wet half of the year (goat) and hot/dry half of the year (dolphin)...
Why goat and dolphin? The beginning of the hot dry season coincides with the beginning of the mating of the dolphins (Apr/May) and the beginning of the cool wet season coincides with the beginning of the mating of the wild goats (Oct/Nov)...
I actually talked about this in detail in my post "Horned animal attacked by a dolphin" that analysis this strange Minoan seal...
Hot dry season Apr/May - Oct/Nov (Dolphin season) is also the sailing season...Extremely important if you were a Minoan...
I talked about this in my post "Minoan dolphin fresco" about the famous Minoan "dolphins fresco" from Knossos, Crete, dated to 1500BC...
What about crocuses? Well, wild Cretan crocus, the ancestor of all the saffron crocuses, starts flowering in Oct/Nov...
At the beginning of rain season, when wild Cretan Ibex goats start to mate...
Talked about this in my posts "Saffron" and "Origin of saffron"...
Which is why crocus was The Flower of The Goddess of Fertility...2nd millennium BC faience (glazed ceramic) models of female garments decorated with crocuses excavated by Arthur Evans during the excavations of the the Temple Repositories at Knossos...
This is the famous Minoan Hagia Triada Sarcophagus, a late Minoan limestone sarcophagus, dated to around 1400 BC.
On it, we see a priestess presiding over a bull sacrifice wearing a skirt decorated with crocus flowers...
I talk about this in my posts "Agia Triada sarcophagus" and "Minoan bull sacrifice"...
BTW, Apr/May, the beginning of the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean is marked with a Bull, Taurus...This is because Apr/May was the time when wild Eurasian cattle calving season used to start...I talked about the "Old Taurus" in many of my posts...
I talked about the symbolic division of the Minoan year into Goat and Bull halves in this post "Theseus ring", about Winter (Ibex) and Summer (Bull) Minoan rings. Article about the opposite goat - bull symbolism in Minoan art.
The top part: Ibex goat (ritual?) hunt
The bottom part: Auroch bull (ritual?) leaping
Why?
This is typical Cretan climate chart:
Top: Ibex goat, symbol of cool, wet half of the year. Ibex goat animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, start of the Ibex mating season
Bottom: Auroch bull, symbol of hot, dry half of the year. Auroch bull animal calendar marker for Apr/May, start of the Auroch calving season
Ritual ibex goat hunt marks the start of the cool wet half of the year and the end of the sailing season?
Ritual bull leaping marks the start of the hot dry half of the year and the start of the sailing season?
You can find more interesting things about this in my post "Goat riding thundergod"...
Because sailing was male dominated activity and saffron gathering and processing was female dominated activity, we could say that the Thera vessel is divided into male (Bull/Dolphin) and female (Goat/Saffron) halves...
Reflecting the division of the Cretan year into male (Wet, Cool, Yin, Sowing - Creating life, No Sailing, Peace) and female (Dry, Hot, Yang, Harvesting - Destroying life, Sailing, War) halves...
That's it. What do you think?
To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
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