Eyes

What is the best way to symbolically depict "Mother Earth"? 

Well, place mountains, plants and animals between wide open eyes and vulva...Simple...

Decorated bone depicting slightly bewildered "Mother Earth", 6th - 5th millennium BC, Hagoshrim, Southern Levant.

Decorated bone depicting Mother Earth with a stern "I am watching you!" expression, 6th - 5th millennium BC, Neve Yam, Southern Levant...

Reconstruction of a stone palette depicting Mother Earth who...well...had enough and is ready for bed...6th - 5th millennium BC, Ein Zippori, Southern Levant...

This symbolic depiction of the Mother Earth later found its way to Upper Euphrates. Stele of Mari, found in a pit at the temple of Ninhursag...

Now remember this? 6th mil BC, Balkans. No eyes, but the "important" bit, plants growing out of the vulva, is there...Early Vinča Culture terracotta figurine from Jela, Iron Gate region of the Danube, Serbia, c. 5200 BC...

The oldest European one from Lepenski Vir is from c. 8000BC. Anyone knows of any Levantine examples from before 8000BC?

These Levantine Mother Goddess depictions are from this article:  "Iconographic motifs from the 6th–5th millennia BC in the Levant and Mesopotamia: Clues for cultural connections and existence of an interaction sphere"...

BTW, these guys were farmers, grain farmers...This is very important...So this Mother Earth is Mother of Grain...This girl

Left: Anthropomorphic vessel with breasts, Neolithic Lengyel culture (5000-3400 BC)

Right: Anthropomorphic vessel with breasts and grain ears (?) instead of hands, Chalcholitic Baden culture (3600–2800 BC) which developed from Lengyel culture.

Both from Central Europe...

I talked about this in my post "Femal pots from Europe"...

Baal from Cornwall

Bronze figure of god Baal dated to 14th-12th c. BC,  found in Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit), located in today's Syria. 

In simple terms, bronze is the mixture of two metals: 

copper

and tin

When the Bronze Age arrived to the Eastern Mediterranean, the copper-rich region was able to quickly source copper at mines like Timna...

But where tin came from has been a lingering mystery for scholars. A new paper from an international team of researchers proposes a surprisingly faraway source,  Cornwall and Devon...

In a paper "Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance?" published in June , the authors analyze 27 tin ingots, or blocks, from five sites bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. 

Now this is very interesting indeed. The strong connection between Eastern Mediterranean and British Isles during the 2nd millennium BC could bring back the cultural diffusion theory as the explanation for all the similarities between far flung Bronze Age cultures...

Like for instance why the "Celtic" (actually specifically Insular Celtic) year has two seasons: winter (Nov-Apr) and summer (May-Oct). Climatically this makes no sense in Ireland and Britain. But it makes a lot of sense in Levant, where the climatic year is divided into two seasons: winter, wet and cool season (Nov - Apr) and summer, dry and hot season (May - Oct)...

We shouldn't really be surprised that there was a maritime link between Britain and Eastern Mediterranean during the late early 2nd millennium BC....The Irish Annals, oral histories written down in early medieval time, talk about the first metalworkers arrived to Ireland during mid 3rd millennium BC, from Black Sea, via Mediterranean, by boat...

And opened the oldest copper mine in Ireland, Ross Island copper mine, the remains of which are still visible very near to the place where the Irish Annals say these foreign metalworkers landed...

I talked about this in my post "Ór - Ireland's Gold"...More about Eastern Mediterranean - Irish links during the early Copper Age can be found in these articles about "Montenegrian tumuluses"...

And we have even earlier evidence that Mediterranean seafaring mining prospectors, which mined, sailed and traded all over Mediterranean seas during Neolithic, also landed in Ireland, during the late 4th millennium BC...

So the maritime link between the British Isles and Mediterranean was in existence for thousands of years before the first tin mine was opened in Cornwall...The cultural exchange that happened along this trading route is very difficult to measure as yet...But it could account for a lot of "coincidental cultural similarities", "parallel independent cultural developments"...

Ashkelon invasion

This is a transcript made by the archaeologist Georges Perrot, of the Luwian inscription engraved on the 3,200-year-old, 29-metre-long limestone frieze which was discovered in Turkey in the 19th c. The stone with the original inscription was later destroyed...

This inscription is the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. When the text was eventually translated, it turned out to be a story about the "Sea People" naval expedition to Ashkelon in modern-day Israel (Illustration: Sea People by Giuseppi Rava)

The inscription tells the story of King Kupantakuruntas, who became king of Mira and ‘guardian of Troy’ after his father Mashuittas’s death, and was the brains behind the capturing of Ashkelon and turning it into a major army and navy base...You can read more about it in Rediscovered Luwian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from Western Asia Minor...

Now recent genetic study "Genetic History of the Near East (Iron & Classical Ages)" - Haber at al. 2020 has shown that at that exact time the area around Ashkelon had a large influx of "Southern European and Western Anatolian DNA"...

You can read more about it in "A Genetic History of the Near East from an aDNA Time Course Sampling Eight Points in the Past 4,000 Years"

The important bit is that authors of the study say that "...according to ancient Egyptian texts and archaeology, the Sea Peoples conquered the Levant but failed to conquer Egypt. Therefore, we tested whether the Eurasian gene flow to Lebanon during the Iron Age had also reached ancient Egypt."

"The results of the measurement of the Steppe ancestry in both regions suggests that...either ancient Egypt did not receive the Eurasian gene flow that the Levant received during the Iron Age or that the Eurasian ancestry was replaced in Egypt later..."

Which matches the historical records from the area...

Mold cape

This is the solid sheet gold cape, dated 1900–1600BC, found at Mold in Flintshire, Wales. 

It is thought to have formed part of a ceremonial dress and was worn like this... 

Nothing like this has been found anywhere else in the world...

And then we have this: Figurine from Central Mesopotamia, possibly Eshnunna, 2000-1800BC 

And finally we have these: 

Figurines from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, dated 3000BC...  

Anthropo-zoomorphic (???) female figurine, terracotta, 3500-3000BC, Quetta, Beluchistan (Pakistan)...

Hmmm...

Goats and partridges

Terracotta lentoid flask, 11th century B.C. Levantine. Both sides of the flask are decorated with goats, birds, and rudimentary foliage. 

I would like to analyse this object and its decorations.

So first, what are the animals depicted on this flask? Well, they are, based on the characteristics, our old friends: 

Bezoar Ibex Goat

Chukar partridge...

Is the choice of the animals and the composition and grouping of animals random? I don't think so. Here is why:

Climate in Levant, where this flask was made, is characterised by Hot Dry summers and Mild Wet winters...

Red table-temperature. 

Green table-rain.

You can see that the wet season starts in October-November and ends in April-May.

The breeding season of the Bezoar Ibex Goats varies across their range, but is generally from October-November to January. October-November is the beginning of winter and the beginning of Cool Wet Season in Levant. Which is why goats on the vessel are flanking a flowering and leafy bush (tree). This is the beginning of the season when nature turns lush and green. 

Also the mating season of Bezoar Ibex Goats overlaps with winter (from the beginning of November to the end of January), which is the first half of the Cool Wet Season.

The breeding season of the Chukar Partridges varies across their range, but is generally from February to May...The end of the Chukar breeding season marks the end of spring and the end of the Cool Wet Season in Levant. Which is why partridges are standing among dry bushes...

Also the mating season of Chukar Partridges overlaps with spring (from the beginning of February to the end of April), which is the second half of the Cool Wet Season.

What the decorations on this (most likely water) flask represent the Cool Wet Season, water rich season, neatly divided into Winter (Bezoar Ibex Goats part) and Spring (Chukar Partridges part). 

And the important demarcation dates on the climatic year are again marked by animals which mate or have young around those dates...

Lebanon is another place where we find Ibex worship from very early times. 

Like in Crete, Ibex was worshiped as bringer of life, often associated with "tree of life", basically just growing, living, green tree kept alive by rains which are "brought" by mating ibex goats...I talked about this in my posts "Goat riding thunder god", "Saffron" and "Sanctuary rhyton".

And like in Crete, Partridge was worshiped as symbol of fertility because the period when partridges start laying eggs is also the period when first vegetables and grains, the products of fertile nature, are ready to be harvested...I talked about this in my post "Painted eggs from Knossos".