Stone relief dated ca 50-150 AD from Croy Hill, Scotland. It depicts Jupiter Dolichenus (standing on a bull) and his wife and consort Juno Dolichena (standing on a cow). National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK...
Juno Regina is the Queen of the Gods and Queen of Heaven and the patron goddess of Rome...
Jupiter Dolichenus is a mixture between Roman Jupiter and a Anatolian sky god. Carrying a thunderbolt (Jupiter) and a double-headed axe (Teshub)...
Jupiter Dolichenus stands on a bull because the Anatolian thunder god stood on a bull...
Pics of the two stele from Tell Ahmar are from this paper...
And he stood on a bull because...Officially we don't know, but actually we do know. He stood on a bull because:
This Hittite symbol means storm god. Bottom part (Bull head) means storm, the above part means god...
The thunderstorm season in Anatolia starts in Apr/May, Taurus...Which is why Hittite Thunder God stands on a bull...I talked about this in my post "Bull god from Arslantepe"
Roman Juno was associated with cows and calves...And so was her Greek predecessor Hera.
Which is interesting considering that Apr/May, the start of the thunderstorm season in Anatolia and Southern Europe, is also the start of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle...
This is what Taurus, Bull (it really should be Calf), marks. It originally had nothing to do with stars. It was a marker for Apr/May, the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle. Talked about it in many of my posts...
BTW, Jupiter (Zeus) Dolichenus was also known as Jupiter (Zeus) Heliopolitanus. This is because the cult originated from the area between the cities of Doliche and Heliopolis, which both housed important temples of the god...
Between the two cities lies the mount Caisus, the sacred home of Ba‘al Hadad, who was the Ugaritic version of the Hurian storm god Teshub...
It is in this area that we see the local storm god, wearing local clothes...
Become Romanised/Hellenised, and starts wearing Roman military attire, and gets his lightning trident replaced with lightning bolt...
Pics again from this paper...
Here is another relief, this one from Rome, 3rd c. AD, depicting Jupiter Dolichenus and Juno Dolichena. See the eagle killing snake in the top left corner, the symbol of Zeus/Jupiter?
I love this one a lot. A sculpture of an eagle devouring a serpent from Roman London.
It depicts a snake eagle killing a snake...
Why is this a symbol of Zeus/Jupiter? Because:
Eagle-Snake struggle is a complex animal calendar marker for the thunderstorm season in Europe Apr/May - Sep/Oct, when migratory snake eagles can be seen in Europe...I talked about this in my post "Eagle snake struggle"...
Interestingly, main snake mating season, when snakes coil like this, also starts in Apr/May...
And so:
Why is Hermes, the herald of Zeus, carrying a staff with two coiling snakes, given to him as a present by Apollo, the sun god?
Cause snakes (solar animals) mate (coil) in Apr/May, (heralding) the beginning of the thunderstorm season. I talked about this in my post "Lyre of Apollo"...
So...The visual depictions of Jupiter Dolichenus and Juno Dolichena are full of animal calendar markers for Apr/May...
The time of the year when snakes start mating, snake eagles arrive back from Africa to Anatolia/Southern Europe, wild cows start calving, and when the thunderstorms (ThunderGod) arrives riding on a bull...In Taurus...
BTW, If you want to see how Teshub the thunder god is actually symbolically equated with the snake eagle check my post "Teshub killing snake" out. It gives symbolic analysis of this Neo-Hittite basalt stele from the 9th-8th c. BC and explains why is Teshub standing on a bull and why is he holding a snake in his left hand...
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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