Shard from Mehrgarh

A ceramic fragment, found in Mehrgarh, Indus Valley, Pakistan. The fragment was found in the layer IV, dated to around 2800BC. I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini for posting the pic...

The fragment is decorated with depictions of:

Horned animals: Ibex goats, Goitered gazelles

Birds: Old world vultures

Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini says that this fragment closely resembles the earliest stamps from Dilmun adds that "this testifies once again to the close ties between the regions of the Persian Gulf and Indus Valley...

I would suggest that this ceramic fragment most likely comes from Persian gulf. Why? Because of the climate in Persian gulf and the annual lifecycle of the depicted animals and how they correspond to one another...

This is climate in Dilmun (today Bahrain). 

You can see that the climatic year is divided into hot, dry summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and cool, wet winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

This is more or less the same climate we find in the rest of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia...

It just so happens that Ibex goats, Goitered gazelles and Old wold vultures all begin to mate at the beginning of the cool/wet season in this part of the world. Making them animal calendar markers for rain season...A very important event in this part of the world...

So I don't think finding these three animals depicted together like this is random...You can read a lot more about these animal calendar markers and their link with rain/snow and water in general in my post "Kassite seal with Apkallu", in which I give symbolic analysis of this amazing Kassite seal (18th-12th centuries BC) from Syria. National Museum of Damascus. 

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...

Drinking from the Nile

An Ancient Egyptian wall painting depicting a man kneeling under a date palm tree full of ripe fruits, and (seemingly) drinking water (from a river?)...

The tree is Zaghloul, or red dates palm, with fruits with a deep red to burgundy skin – resemble giant red grapes. They are native to Egypt and are synonymous with Egyptian autumn...

The harvest season for Zaghloul dates starts in September...

Just before that, while the date trees are still laden with fruit, Nile flood peaks...

I talk about Nile Flood mythology in many of my posts...

I talk about another tree calendar marker for Nile Flood, Sycamore fig, in my post "Sycamore tree goddess"

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...

Phoenician rain dish

Phoenician dish (?), National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta, Malta. Pic by Merike Joosep.

It is "decorated" with a very interesting design: A wild goat, followed by a wild cat followed by a wild goat followed by a wild cat...

Is this just a meaningless "nice" design?

Well, of course, this is possible. Not every object has a "meaning". But let's play a game "what if the maker of this dish wanted to convey some message through the choice of animals and the way they were ordered"...It'll be fun...For me at least🙂...

The goat is an Ibex goat...In Fertile Crescent, which includes Levant, Ibex was the Goat (calendar marker) of Rain (season)...Because in Fertile Crescent, the start of the mating season of Ibex goats (Oct/Nov), coincided with the start of the rain season. I talk about goat of rain in many of my posts...

So the wild goat's identity is certain...

But the wild cat is not so easy to identify. The body shape could be that of

Asiatic lioness

Asiatic leopard

Asiatic cheetah

All three of these wild cats were common in Levant when Phoenician civilisation flourished there...

Depending on which cat is depicted, the meaning of the "decoration" changes...Why? Because if we want to look at the depictions of these animals as animal calendar markers, we need to know when they either mated or gave birth, cause this is what animal calendar markers marked...

Asiatic lions mating season started in Jul/Aug and spanned the whole of Autumn (Aug/Sep/Oct)...

You can find relevant data here...

Which is why autumn starts in Leo (Jul/Aug). And why lion is the symbol of autumn...You can read more about these four symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

I talk about the use of lion as a mythologised animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, the hottest/driest time of the year in Europe, Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia, in many of my posts...

So lioness would also be an animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...

When I first saw this Phoenician dish, I was convinced that the wild cat was indeed an Asiatic lioness, because it has no spots of any kind...

Which would make the message encoded in the "decoration" of the Phoenician dish:

Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows...

But then something caught my eye: the dots and circles...

Which look very much like cup marks...

Which look very much like this...

I talked about this in my post "Lapis Manalis"...

Now apparently, dots and circles were used in the past to represent rain. I talked about this in my posts "Malatya relief", "Lapis lazuli water seal"

As I already said, Ibex goats have mating season which starts in Oct/Nov, the beginning of winter. And both Asiatic leopards and cheetahs have mating season which starts in Jan/Feb, beginning of spring...

Now if we look at the climatic charts for Levant again (it is pretty much the same all over Fertile Crescent), we can see that Winter (Ibex, Nov/Dec/Jan) and Spring (Leopard/Cheetah, Feb/Mar/Apr) is the cool, wet, rainy, green season in this part of the word...

Rainy season which can be symbolically depicted by "Ibex followed by Leopard/Cheetah among the dots with a green tree (of life) behind them"...

Just like on this 3200-3000 BC seal from Late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr Period...I talked about this in my post "Ibex and leopard"

Or even more explicitly on this vessel from Tepe Hissar, dated to 4500-4000 BC...Both Ibex goat and Leopard/Cheetah are actually ejaculating rain...I talked about this in my post "Vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

So is it possible that the animals on the Phoenician dish were depicted as silhouettes, and that the wild cats depicted with wild goats among the raindrops are not Asiatic lionesses but instead Asiatic leopards/cheetahs?

Just like on this Greek Hydria. Kerameikos,  Athens, Archaeological Museum in Athens. 660-580 BC. Where we see a leopard paired with boar, another animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, and lion paired with fallow deer, another animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...I talked about it in my post "Sirens"...

In which case the message encoded by the maker of this amazing Phoenician object would be "rejoice, it's raining (wild) cats and (wild) goats" 🙂...

Anyway, we will never know, but I think musing over this was fun...At least it was for me...How was it for you? 🙂

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...