Horse and boar

Today by pure fluke I came across this group of Celtic coins depicting on one side a boar and on the other side a horse. Together with pile of solar symbols. They were minted by Corieltauvi and Iceni tribes in Britain 1st c. BC and 1st c. AD... 

A Corieltauvi one:

Why boar and horse and solar symbols?

Well, because boar and horse are two opposite animal calendar markers...

Boar is an animal calendar marker for the (beginning  of) winter.

Horse is an animal calendar marker for the (beginning of) summer.

Another Corieltauvi one:

Boar is an animal calendar marker for for the (beginning  of) winter, because wild boar mating season starts in Oct/Nov and ends in Jan/Feb, spanning the whole of winter...I talked about this in many of my posts...

Hers is an Iceni one:

Horse is an animal calendar marker for the (beginning of) summer because wild horses mating season starts in Apr/May and ends in Aug/Sep, spanning the whole of summer...I talked about this in many of my posts...

Another Iceni one:

Basically these coins depict this: Celtic (solar) year divided into dark and light half, demarcated by boar and horse. With Winter solstice falling within the boar mating season and summer solstice falling within the horse mating season...

Now look at these three Corieltauvi coins. Look at the horse's tail. 

On this one it ends in a deciduous tree (most likely linden) leaf...

Symbol of summer...

Was that a mistletoe above the boar? Symbol of winer...

Look at this one. On it the horse's tail ends in grain...With a blazing sun right above it...

Another symbol of summer...

Another grain tail one...

I can't see any other reason why would these coins depict these two animals in this way, except to symbolically, with a summer and winter side of the coin, mark summer and winter half of the year...

For those interested in my other posts about Celts and Celtic culture go here...

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...

Piglets poglets everywhere

Achaemenid cylinder seal with piglets, lots and lots of wild boar piglets...See the horizontal stripes...

Why piglets? 

Well, have you ever tried piglet roasted on a spit? Maybe the guy owned a barbecue place...

Or maybe...

Nooo! Not animal calendar markers again!!!

To understand what these little piglets could symbolise (not saying that they do, but could), we need to look at the climate in Iran. 

Climate in Iran is divided (roughly) into hot, dry half (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool, wet part (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)...

Wild boar start mating at the beginning of the cool, wet half of the year, in Oct/Nov. 

The gestation period lasts 120 days. Which means that the piglets are born starting from  Mar/Apr...See, stripy...🙂

Guess what happens in Mar/Apr in Iran...The most important annual event, the annual snowmelt, which kick starts the annual flood starts...

So, lots of piglets = annual flood = fertile soil = fertility... 

I talked about this in my post "Zodiac from Isfahan".

In Isfahan zodiac the same period (Mar/Apr) is marked by a ram, Aries...

See, ram, Aries, flood...

Here is Aries, marking the same time period, and the same annual event, the beginning of the annual snowmelt which kickstarts the annual flood, in ancient Mesopotamia...I talk about this in my posts "Goatfish with ram's head"...

BTW, why is Ram marking Mar/Apr? Cause this is the time when lambing of wild (and domestic) sheep stops and milking starts...

I talk about this in many of my articles...

Anyway, I am not saying that the little piglets on that seal were used as animal calendar marker. But maybe they were. Have you seen my "Achaemenid lion boar seal" article?

Send fighter jets!!! It's an Iranian flying saucer!!! 

Achaemenid cylinder seal, 6th–4th c. BC, Iran. 

The depicted scene makes very little sense, unless you view everything on this seal as a calendar marker. Then it all makes a lot of sense...

So maybe all these piglets are animal calendar markers, or...

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...

Wolf?

Plaque in the shape of a wolf (?)

Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Warring States Period, 8th-6th c. BCE, Ordos Region. Bronze with malachite inlay. The Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin. Inv. Nr. 1965-69

But is it possible that this is not a wolf, but a composite "beast"?

The first thing that looked weird to me was the hair on the animal's back and neck...I have seen this before and not on a depiction of a wolf.

Celtic Bronze boar statue from the sanctuary at Neuvy-en-Sullias (1st c. BC)...

And the real thing

Of course, wolves can also be seen with their hair standing up on their back when they are about to attack...So...

The second thing that looked weird to me was the tail...It didn't look like a wolf tail at all...

It looked like a snow leopard tail...

Or a Siberian tiger tail...

And the whole body,  kind of looked cattish not wolfish...

Of course, wolves also wag their tails, but according to this wolf tail dictionary, not when they are snarling and ready to attack...So...

The only kind of wolfish part of the animal could be the head, with the gaping snarling jaw...But then that could also be actually a leopard or a a tiger head too...

So not sure what is actually depicted on this plaque...

So maybe this is a composite animal, with wolf, wild boar and a leopard parts. Or maybe this is just a very very stylised depiction of a wolf with an aggressive arousal 🙂...

I personally think this is a composite animal calendar marker for winter, cause all of the above animals mate during winter:

Wild boar mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Tiger mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Wolf mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

Leopard mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

That's that. 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...

Monkey from the Erin forest

Babylonian baked clay tablet found in Iraq and dated to 2000-1600 BC. It depicts a man, with an assistant kneeling behind him, shooting with a composite bow at a monkey sitting in a tree. On the right, is a wild boar facing the base of the tree. Interesting. Here is why:

Monkeys are often depicted on Sumerian clay plaques. Like this one from Ur III (2200-2100BC), depicting a monkey wallah, a performer who trains monkeys to dance or perform tricks for an audience...

One of the most interesting things about this plaque is that on all of them a monkey is playing the flute, something it would not be likely to do in real life...

According to this paper "More Monkey Business" by Carole Mendleson, this may illustrate a fable, now lost, perhaps Elamite, perhaps Indian or perhaps even Sumerian...

Further on, the paper also says that monkeys and a word for monkeys came to Mesopotamia from Indian via Elam (Iran) during the Ur III period...

And that originally "monkey" was used as a derogatory term for Elamites. When describing an Elamite incursion, a Sumerian text states that "monkeys descended from their mountain", meaning they came from the east, from Elam, Iran...

So monkeys and a word for monkeys came to Mesopotamia from Elam (Iran) during the Ur III period...

And originally "monkey" was used as a derogatory term for Elamites. When describing an Elamite incursion, a Sumerian text states that "monkeys descended from their mountain", meaning they came from the east, from Elam, Iran...

Is it because Elam was "The land of the monkeys" figuratively but also literally? Did monkeys live in the forests of Elam during the 3rd millennium BC?

I think so. 

Ever heard of a mythical Erin forest?

My friend!  We have reduced the forest to a wasteland...How shall we answer God Enlil in Nippur?

Enkidu talking to Gilgamesh, after they have killed Humbaba, the guardian of the Erin forest, and have cut all the trees down...

I while ago I wrote this article "Humbaba" about the identity of Humbaba, the guardian of the Erin forest. I postulated that Humbaba (left) was a deified tiger who once lived in this forest...

Based on the known tiger habitats and where they intersect with Euphrates river, I proposed that the original location of the Erin forest was in Armenian highlands...

After they have cut the Erin trees down, Gilgamesh and Enkidu and their men lashed the trees together into rafts to transport them down the Euphrates river back to Nipur...

Rafts? Like this? Cool...

Then later, new data I found, suggested I might have been wrong about the Erin forest location. It looks like tigers once lived in Elam, Iran, and it is therefore possible that the mythical forest might have been located there:

How far south in Iran did tigers live during Neolithic...This article, "Tigers tigers everywhere", asks his question...And few others...

A Neo Assyrian tablet currently in the Museum of Suleimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, contains a passage from the Gilgamesh Epic with the description of the Erin Forest, which is the most detailed description of nature and its soundscape in the literature of Mesopotamia...

And guess what, the description, published in this paper, contains the following lines:

The Erin Forest had monkeys living in its trees. And Elam was the monkey land...

Sooo...

The monkey hunt tablet could actually be describing an actual monkey hunt in the Erin forest...

And so the two men could be Enkidu and Gilgamesh...

Cool, right?

But this tablet is also interesting from the animal calendar markers point of view.

"Now seriously, why do you always think about animal calendar markers when you see depictions of animals?" I can hear you say. "Couldn't this be just a depiction of a hunting scene?"

Of course it could. But hear me out.

If the forest was indeed located in Elam, then the monkey has to be macaque, the only species that once lived in "areas with cold winters"...

And in the areas with cold winters macaque mating season starts in Oct/Nov...

Ok, so? Question: why did the maker of this tabled decide to depict a wild boar, just casually standing under the monkey tree? Considering that wild boar mating season is also starts in Oct/Nov?

This could of course be just a random choice of animals.  But look at this: This is the climatic year in Iraq/Iran.

The rains arrive in Oct/Nov, when macaques and wild boar start to mate, making both of them animal calendar markers for the rain season...

I talked about wild boar, archer and rain in my post "Achaemenid lion boar seal", where I give symbolic analysis of this Achaemenid cylinder seal, found in Iran and dated to the 6th–4th century BC is currently kept in the Met Museum...

BTW, in Iraq/Iran, the beginning of the rain (cool, wet) season that ends (kills) sun (hot, dry) season, coincides with the Orionid meteor shower...

Just before the rains arrive to Mesopotamia, the rains that end the drought, the arrows start shooting from the sky announcing the arrival of the Sky/Rain god, the great archer...I talked about this in my post "The invisible archer"...

Hence archer? And monkey and boar? But who knows. I am just putting it all out there, and you can decide for yourself. We'll never know.

I want to thank @NkayaMuhittin for posting the picture and the info about this tablet. Great account worth following if you like archaeology...

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...

Eyeballs platter

I while back I came across this late 6th or early 7th c. AD Sassanian silver bowl. 

It shows a king sitting on a throne, feasting, surrounded by musicians and servants. We can see a platter with two boar heads in front of the throne and...What the hell is this??? A plate of eyeballs??? 🙂

I suggested that these were not in fact eyeballs, but Naan Gerdooee ~ Persian Walnut Cookies, or some similar type of pastry

Then, @Nazdorove posted a comment to my post reminding me of animal and plant calendar markers 🙂 and telling me that maybe I should check this plate and see if any are present in the depicted scene...Maybe that could help us determine what the mystery balls stacked on the plate are...

So I looked at the scene more carefully, and, I could see something very interesting: The "king" was seated on a throne whose legs are shaped like rams...

And the harp played by one of the musicians also has a ram's head. Why? I think this is a ceremonial throne and a ceremonial harp...What ceremony are we talking about here? Well...Ram...Aries...Arrives after Spring Equinox...Nowruz...Persian New Year...

Kind of an important event in the Persian calendar...Actually, the most important event...Ram is the animal calendar marker for spring, cause it is in the spring that sheep lambing season takes place...

This is why Aries marks Mar/Apr. Cause this is when the lambing season ends and milking season starts and the flocks are moved to the highland pastures. I talked about this in my posts "April" and "Aries must die"...

Why are these animals found as symbols of the seasons in Eurasia and North Africa, since Neolithic, despite Precession? I talk about it in my post "Symbols of seasons"...

But in Iran, one more thing happens in Mar/Apr...The river discharges suddenly start to increase, as a result of spring rains and snowmelt.

Hence Ram depicted lying in water from the "Zodiac from Isfahan". I talked about it in my post "Sagittarius from Isfahan"...

BTW, we find the same animal calendar marker, with the same meaning, in Ancient Mesopotamia too...Goatfish marks the wet half of the year, from the start of the mating season of ibex goats (Oct/Nov) to the start of the mating season of giant Mesopotamian carp (Apr/May) which is when the annual flood peaks. 

The water level in Tigris and Euphrates starts to increase in Mar/Apr, when wild sheep lamb season ends. I talked about this in my post "Goatfish with ram head"

The "King" sitting on the ram throne is having drink poured into his chalice...This could be wine, which becomes ready for drinking at the end of spring, beginning of summer (Mar/Apr/May)...Right on time for New Year festival...

Or it could be water...Symbolically depicting flowing water season...

The other servant is bringing a platter, with what looks like a cockerel, with all its feathers...Definitely not intended to be food...

If it is a cockerel, then it's another animal calendar marker for Mar/Apr.

Europe...

Cockerel was the sacred bird of Perun, Slavic thunder god, used in magic rituals for protection agains lightning.

Why? Maybe cause chicken main mating season is during the period of 14+ daylight hours.

Which is the main thunderstorm season in Europe??? I talked about this in my post "Pero"...

India

Red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), the ancestor of the domestic chicken...

Has a fixed annual mating season, which overlaps with the Zebu cattle mating season...

Hence, on Indus Valley civilisation pot, it is placed on the Zebu bull's back...I talked about this in my post "Kharif and Rabi season"...

China...

The real reason why The Lord of Thunder, was depicted as a cockerel is because of the China's latitude and the reproductive cycle of wild chickens, which is governed by the amount of sunlight, and at China's latitude starts in Apr/May...

Which is when the thunderstorm season starts too...

I talked about this in my post "Lei Kung"...

Interestingly, the platter placed before the "King" sitting on his Ram (spring) throne, contains two Boar heads (winter)...

Wild boar is one of the symbols of winter...Cause they mate during the winter...I talked about this in my posts: "When fish swim up Danube", "Achaemenid lion boar seal", "Souvetaurilia", "Sirens", "Summer and winter BMAC seals"...

So how can any of this help us to figure out what is on the front platter? We all know these are not eyeballs 🙂 I was joking...But what are they?

Fruit? Most people suggested pomegranates, which originate in Iran. But pomegranates season is winter...Not spring...

The fruits which are in season during Nowruz (Persian New Year festival) are bitter oranges (narenj). These things...

They are used for making sirups and in cooking and are not eaten as fruit...

So what are these round things neatly piled on the platter? I went to see what traditional cookies are made for Nowruz, and this pic popped out 🙂 Toot, Persian Mulberry Marzipan Candy...Looks familiar? 🙂

Today it's made with sugar, but originally it could have been made with crushed nuts, dates and honey...Similar to these Italian pistachio cookies...

 

And so...Thanks to @Nazdorove we might have solved the mystery of the "eyeballs" platter...What do you think?

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...