Birth giver from Luristan

Luristan bronze disk pin, c. 1500 to 700 BC, showing a woman giving birth while holding her breasts, between 2 gazelles, and among flowers. Louvre museum, Paris. From Iranian province of Luristan...

Archaeologists interpret this image as "depiction of Mother Goddess", basically Mother Earth giving birth to all and providing food for all...And I 100% agree with this...

I think the fact that the Birth Giver is depicted between the two gazelles (Goitered Gazelles to be more precise) and the flowers is the proof that this is indeed Mother Goddess, Mother Earth...

Here is why. This is climate chart for Luristan...You see how the year is divided into hot dry summer (May-Oct) and cool wet winter (Nov-Apr)?

Guess what happens in Oct/Nov? Goitered gazelles start mating...Which is why they are used in this part of the world as animal calendar markers for the beginning of the rain season (winter) and for the whole rain season (winter)

So this image basically means: Mother earth gets fertile and produces life and food because of the rain (and snow) which falls during winter, period between the mating and birthing of Goitered gazelles (gestation period of Goitered gazelles is 5-6 months)...

Here is the same "girl", this time holding a shawl, basically a stylised rainbow...Bronze disc from Luristan, western Iran. 8th century BC...Sold by Christies for 28,000$...

Rainbows are only visible during rain season...And this same symbol for the "moist fertile earth" was used in Iran from Jiroft culture until Sassanian culture...I talked about this in my post "Anahita" and "Jiroft flood vase"...

This link between Mother Earth's fertility and rain, depicted through the image of birth giver surrounded by plant and animal calendar markers for rain season, is what I was talking about in my previous post "Modesty", about the Indian version of this goddess, Lajjā Gaurī...

What is very interesting is that because the climate in Iran and India is different, the animal and plant calendar markers used to link the birth giver with the rain are different...Appropriate for the local climate...

If you are interested in animal (and plant) calendar markers, start here, then check the rest of the blog posts I still didn't add to this jump page (I got lazy after a while), and finally check my twitter threads @serbiaireland I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 11 months behind now...

MAMA

It is funny how lately things end up finding me instead of me finding them...Today I was trying to find the dating for the Želiezovce group which I never heard of before. When I came across this: A pot with a face placed over what looks like capital letter M...

Želiezovce group is BTW an offshoot of the Linear Pottery Culture (5500–4500 BC) which is found in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Polan...Central Europe...And they seem to have loved pots with faces placed over capital Ms...

Some of these pots have two of these faces facing the opposite directions. Again over capital Ms...

There are many shards of these so called face pots found in Želiezovce group settlements, always inside of graves and always in the most prominent place in the grave...

According to the author of "The Missing Faces" paper, this is a unique feature of the pottery from this area which is not found anywhere else...

According to the author of "Faces from the past. Some thoughts about anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and images in the neolithic period", this all somehow linked to fertility...

Which it is...But how...Like this: A stone slab from Gobekli Tepe (10,000 - 8,000 BC), with a carving depicting a woman in a birth giving position...

I talked about this image in my post "Birth giver"...

The shape of the woman's legs in the natural birthing position forms capital letter M

In the Balkans, we already find this stylised in the talismans (?) in a shape of a woman giving birth, made by the Early Neolithic farmers from. Examples: 

Ruse, Bulgaria, 5th millennium BC

Porovec, Bulgaria, 7th mill BC

Ohoden, Bulgaria, 7th mill BC.

Istria, Croatia, 6th mill BC.

Svinjarička Čuka, Serbia, dated ca 6100-5500 BC.

I talked about this in my post "Mistress of the house"

Now look again at the face over the M symbol from Želiezovce pots...What do you think? The same thing?

Not convinced? The thing is face over M seem to have been optional on Želiezovce pots...Here is one where over the M symbol we see what looks like a bellybutton...Still not convinced?

Still not convinced? What about this pot, which over the M sign has a glyph which looks very much like a woman giving birth...

Anyway, my kung fu teacher told me years ago that this is what being aligned with Tao (the way, your way) will look like...Things will happen instead of you having to make them happen...Good things...Why am I saying this? Because of this:

A while back I came across this picture. It shows the so called Myres pithos, a large vessel found in the early layers of the Neolithic Vinča culture Belo Brdo tell site near Belgrade, Serbia...

I wrote about it in my post "Myres pathos"

These large vessels are found in many Vinča settlements. But this one is a unique find in Vinča territory because of the way it is decorated: with a face over a capital M sign...

Again this was interpreted, at the time when the papers I read were written, as one of a kind thing not found anywhere else...I forgot about it until today...When surprise surprise, I stumbled across the face vessels from the Želiezovce group...

Same thing, same period, just not in Serbia. Across the river in Hungary....

By the way, does this remind you of Baubo? 

I reminds me all right...I will write about her soon...

MMMMMM - AAAAAAA!!!! - MMMMMMM - AAAAAAA!!! 🙂 Does this "sound" familiar? 

Myres pithos

Ok here is something very very interesting that I have only become aware of today. During the excavations of the Neolithic Vinča culture Belo Brdo tell site, archaeologist Miloje Vasić, among many other neolithicky things, also discovered this: the so called Myres pithos:

How is this vessel not in every history and archaeology book I have no idea...This is definitely not something you expect to find in Neolithic Europe 5200–4900 BCE. Here is the neck of the pithos with the drawing of the M design with the face above it:

This is a huge vessel, of a type found in many Vinča houses. But it is the design on this one that makes it so amazing...Picture from the Vinča exhibition catalogue:

The pithos was named after the British Archaeologist John Linton Myres, the war friend of the Serbian Archaeologist Miloje Vasić, who conducted the excavation of Vinča - Belo Brdo site between 1905 and 1932...

The Myres pithos is "mentioned" in:

"Household and Community. House and Settlement Histories in the Late Neolithic of the Central Balkans (book in Serbian)"

"Без гнева и пристрасности (sine ira et studio)"

Interestingly, we also find the same M symbol in even earlier settlements from the Balkans

Ruse, Bulgaria, 5th millennium BC

Porovec, Bulgaria, 7th mill BC

Ohoden, Bulgaria, 7th mill BC.

Istria, Croatia, 6th mill BC.

Svinjarička Čuka, Serbia, dated ca 6100-5500 BC.

This was interpreted as a stylised "birth giver" (depiction of a woman in a birthing position). I talked about this in my article "Birth giver"...

So what was depicted on the Vinča pithos? What is the meaning of the design (face over M sign)? Is that a brick, stone wall? Very strange all together...