Patera of Rennes

The Patera of Rennes. A beautiful Roman gold bowl dated to c. 210 AD. found in France and currently kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France...

Along the rim, the bowl has inset gold coins, which make the dating of the bowl possible. The latest issued coin imbedded into the bowl is the one with the representation of the Emperor Geta who ruled with his father Septimius Severus and older brother Caracalla...

This coin would not have been reissued after his assassination and subsequent "damnatio memoriae". So this provides the earliest possible date when the bowl could have been made...

The bowl could have actually been somehow connected to the Severus family. The central decoration shows Bacchus and Hercules. The were tutelary deities of Leptis Magna, the birthplace of Septimius Severus, and both featured on his coins...

However this "history stuff" is not "the interesting bit"...The interesting bit is the stunning central scene depicting Dionysus getting Heracles drunk. And the circular depiction of the Rural (Winter) Dionysia procession which surrounds it...End their meaning...

The story goes that Heracles challenged Dionysus to a drinking contest and lost, resulting in his joining the Dionysus's retinue for a period...

I don't know about the drinking contest...The only person  drinking here is Hercules...The two are seated at the table, surrounded by the satyrs who are providing musical entertainment...

In front of them is a leopard...

Leopard is animal calendar marker and the symbol of winter...The end of winter (Jan-Feb) to be more precise, and the beginning of spring and spring itself...Because this ie when Asian and Arabian leopards begin to mate...

This link between leopards and winter was in Europe preserved in Dionysus cult, which is a winter cult...

Leopard is the mount of Dionysus...

Is carried by Maenads, female followers of Dionysus...

And his skin is worn by the leader of Rural Dionysia...

I talked about the link between Dionysus and leopard in my posts "Leopard and tiger", "Furious Maenad", "Maenads with hare"...

Hercules is sitting on lion's skin which he always carries around...

Interestingly, lion is the symbol of summer. The end of summer (Jul/Aug) to be more precise and the beginning of autumn and autumn itself...Because this ie when Eurasian lions begin to mate...

This is why Leo is where it is on the zodiac circle...And has always been there, since at least Neolithic...It has nothing to do with stars and is not affected by precession...

Leopard and lion are two opposite animal calendar markers...Leopard marks the coldest part of the year while lion marks the hottest part of the year...

And at the Dionysus's party, one is alive (leopard) and the other dead (lion)...Basically symbolically depicting victory of winter over summer...

The celebration of the victory of winter over summer??? But why would anyone celebrate winter? It's cold and damp and dead time of the year...At least in Rennes, France...

Because Dionysus cult didn't originate in Europe...It originated in Eastern Mediterranean or Western Asia (Levant, Mesopotamia, Eastern Anatolia...), in one of the areas where the climatic year is divided into 2 halves: Hot, Dry Summer (May-Oct) and Cool, Wet Winter (Nov-Apr)...

There, the part of the year symbolised by a lion is the time of death. The hottest, driest part of the year...And the part of the year symbolised by a leopard is the time of life. The coolest, wettest part of the year...The time of rebirth of nature...

Which is what Old Rural Winter Dionysia, which is depicted along the bowl's rim is all about: celebration of the return of the rain season... 

Which turns land of death (beginning of autumn)

To land of life (beginning of spring)...

In the procession we see Dionysus arriving on a cart pulled by two leopards, his favorite mounts...The cart is lead by a satyr, half man half goat...

In the areas where Dionysus cult makes sense, like in Levant, rains return when Ibex goats start their mating season, at the beginning of winter (Oct-Nov)...

Which is why goats (and half man half goat Satyrs) feature so prominently in Dionysus cult...

And which is why Dionysus's leopard pulled cart (chariot) is lead by a half man half goat Satyr...

An Ibex goat (mating season Oct/Nov, beginning of winter) leads (is followed, is chased, is attacked) by a Leopard (mating season Jan/Feb, end of winter) since Neolithic...Here they are on a vessel from Mesopotamian Tepe Hissar

Both animals are thus linked to rain and fertility...Their mating, semen, brings rain, heavenly semen, which fertilises the land...

In fact in Eastern Mediterranean, Western Asia, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, the Ibex goat became The Goat of Rain...The most depicted animal found on ancient artefacts.

I talked about this in my many of my posts...Like "Goat petroglyphs from Iran", "Goat in a tree", "Volga mirror", "Green pastures", "Strider", "Jumping goat", "Goats and partridges", "Sanctuary rhyton", "Griffin killing lizard"...

The mating season of Ibex goats begins with wild buck fights...

In the depiction of the Dionysia on the Rennes bowl, we see an Ibex goat about to head butt a half man half goat Satyr...

The goat mating season starts right after the end of the grape harvest, which in Eastern Mediterranean starts in August and ends in October...

Hence goats pulling cart full of grapes...

Because the end of grape harvest and the beginning of the rain season overlapped, Dionysus became eventually The God of Wine...When actually he is The God of Winter...The life giving winter (Nov-Apr)...

Apollo (right) and Dionysus (left) shaking hands at Delphi. From an Attic vase, fourth century BC. Light, hot, dry part of the year and dark, cold, wet part of the year...Summer and winter...In there balance and accord the tree (of life) will grow... 

I have to say I love the fact that right before the Satyr who leads Dionysus's leopard pulled chariot, walks (well drunkenly stumbles) Heracles 🙂 "the Lion killer"...

Hot dry part of the year (symbolised by a lion) has to end so that cool, wet part of the year (symbolised by a leopard and ushered by a goat) can begin...More about lion as the symbol of the hot dry part of the year can be found in this article about "Chariots of Admetus"...

So far so good and pretty obvious... 🙂...But here is where we come to the mystery animal...

What animal is this, reined and pulled by one of the revelers while an old Satyr rides on its back?

There is a broken goat horn depicted on the ground under it...Cornucopia? You know goat horn symbol of plenty...Plenty provided by the Goat of rain... 🙂I talked about this in my post "Cornucopia"... I don't think this is here for no reason...

Oh look. Dionysus and Pluto (God of wealth) with cornucopia...

But what animal is this? I don't think somehow that this is a goat...I think that this could be a deer, Persian Fallow deer to be more precise, if these are spots on its body...The tail is also a giveaway as Fallow deer have exactly that kind of tail...

But if this is a deer, where are its horns? Well is this a hole on the side of the animal's head? 

Are they the holes that can be seen on deer head after their antlers fall off in the spring?

If so, then this is a symbol for the end of the winter half of the year, the half ruled by Dionysus...Because Fallow deer lose their antlers right at the end of winter, Apr-May...

So if I am right about this mystery animal being an antlerless Fallow deer buck, then this Dionysian procession actually depicts the "Old winter, dark, cool, wet half of the year" (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

Ibex goat, symbolysing the beginning of the old winter (Oct/Nov)

Leopard, symbolising the middle of the old winter (Jan/Feb)

Fallow deer with no antlers, symbolising the end of the old winter (Apr/May)

This is kind of cool, right? But I wonder how much of all this was known to the makers of this artifact? Did they just blindly copy old symbols without knowing their meaning? Or did they indeed know precisely what they were doing, but the rest of the plebs didn't...

Hmmm. Quite possibly...Because Dionysus cult was kind of a secret society, whose members didn't really go around explaining what all this stuff was about to the uninitiated...

But I wonder if even the initiates in the Dionysian mysteries knew that at the bottom of their religion was death and resurrection of nature?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Barbery lion

Now here is something very interesting I just found out today...The Lion calendar marker for end of Jul beginning of Aug, hottest part of the year, Leo, was derived probably in Mesopotamia, from the beginning of the mating season of Eurasian lions...

African lions are different...Their mating season peaks in winter, starting in November in the Southern Africa and in January in the Northern Africa...Now extinct Barbery lion, which once lived in Tunisia, mated in January...

The mating behavior of Barbary lions would explain something that I couldn't explain until today. Things like this: Roman mosaic, 2nd century AD, Tunisia. Dionysus riding a lion, followed by Silenus riding a camel, followed by a leopard on a leash...

We all know that Dionysus was linked with winter, the period after the grape harvest...His main celebration was Winter Dionysia, which is what is depicted on the above mosaic...

Now let's have a look at the animals depicted on the above image as animal calendar markers: 

I talked about leopard symbolism and its link to winter, the rain season in both Middle East, Central Asia, Levant and North Africa in my posts "A vessel from Tepe Hissar", "Ibex and leopard", and its link to Dionysus, the god of rebirth (of nature), and Rural (winter) Dionysia in my posts "Maenads with hare", "Furious Maenad", "Leopard and tiger"...Basically, leopards mate in Jan/Feb, at the end of winter beginning of spring...

In this article I talked about Bactrian camel, and how it became a calendar marker for winter in Bactria. Basically, wild Bactrian camels mating season overlaps with the rain season in Central Asia... 

But the camel ridden by Silenus is Arabian camel, Dromedary...What about its mating season? Well, Dromedary mating "peaks in the rainy season". Winter... So camel is then exactly what you would see in the winter procession of Dionysus next to leopard...

But you wouldn't expect to see Dionysus riding on a lion. Dionysus is normally depicted riding either on a leopard or tiger. Both animals mate in winter, both are used as animal calendar markers for winter... 

I thought that this was because the mosaic artist didn't know "that Dionysus, winter god, should only ride on winter mating wild cats"...

Weeeell...I was wrong...The lion on which Dionysus rides on mosaics from North Africa is Barbary lion...Another winter mating cat, worthy of bringing god of winter, rain and life giving winter...God of rebirth (of nature) indeed...

You can see how the same animal, lion (two subspecies), with two opposite mating habits in two different parts of the world, can become a calendar marker for two different things, and cause complete confusion when it comes to interpreting its meaning on ancient artefacts...

But it wouldn't be fun if everything was obvious...Right? 

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Furious Maenad

Furious Maenad holding a thyrsus in her right hand and a leopard in her left hand. She wears a leopard skin as a cloak and a snake around her head like a diadem. Tondo of an Attic white-ground kylix, 490–480 BC. From Vulci, Italy...

Very beautiful and very interesting...

Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

The oldest festival dedicated to Dionysus, was Rural Donysia, which took place around Winter Solstice. The main part of the festival was the procession. The god’s entourage during the procession consisted of the male satyrs and the female maenads...

I love this depiction of reveling dancers (satyrs???) lead by the piper dressed in leopard skin (Dionysus???)...Why leopard? Well, I talked about this in my post "Leopards and tigers"

Asian leopards are very secretive creatures. Very little is known about their lives. The general belief of the local population in the areas where Leopards are still found today, is that Leopards mate during "midwinter", right at the time of Rural Dionysia...

Is this why Dionysos was associated with leopards? 

Recent studies have however shown that the actual mating starts in January, soon after the Rural Dionysia, and peaks at the beginning of February...At the the end of winter beginning of spring...

It is interesting that in Anatolia, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, leopard was, with ibex goat, associated with rain season. Rain season which covers winter (starts with ibex mating season) and spring (starts with leopard mating season)...

Leopard hunts (follows) ibex...Spring, which starts with leopard mating season, follows winter which starts with ibex mating season...And this "hunt" revives nature and brings fertility to the land...I talked about this in my post "Goat and leopard"...

Rain, which is brought by mating ibexes and leopards, brings fertility...Ibex and leopard semen turns to rain which turns to flowing water...I talked about this in my post "A vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

Wasn't Dionysus associated with goats? Wasn't goat sacrificed to him? Wasn't tragedy, which translates in Greek as "goat-song", originally an improvised hymn sung and danced in praise of Dionysus? Was't Dionysus turned into a baby goat by god of rain, Zeus, his father? Who was in turn suckled by a goat??? I talked about the link between Zeus and a goat in my post "Goat riding thunder god"...

Now I am beginning to believe that Dionysus, the god of resurrection of nature, is associated with leopards because the end of leopard mating season is when "the resurrection of nature" actually happens: the end of winter and beginning of spring...Well in Greece anyway...

I think that this is why Dionysus, the god who dies and gets resurrected, rides on a leopard (arrives during leopard mating season), wears leopard skin (is identified with the end of the leopard mating season)...

And I also believe that this is why this Maenad not only holds a leopard by his hind leg (the end of leopard mating season) but also wears a leopard skin (dead leopard, again the end of leopard mating season)

So kind of cool...

It's actually even cooler...

Maenad's snake diadem. Snake is the animal which symbolises sun's heat, fire. Snakes are in our world when sun is in our world, spring, summer, autumn...And in underworld when sun is there, in winter. I talked about this in my posts "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal",  "Bactrian snakes and dragons" and many others...

Maenad's thyrsus. The stick used by Prometheus to steal fire from the gods and smuggle it into human hearths. Probably also symbolic torch as well as penis...I talked about this in my post "Thyrsus"...

Finally Maenad's fury = internal fire, heat

The three main attributes of the Maenad represent fire, heat...And she is out dancing, for Dionysus, "the polar opposite of Apollo" in the middle of cold, dark, winter...Maenad kills leopard, winter ends, spring begins. Resurrection...

Finally finally, here is a Maenad carrying a thyrsus and a flaming torch...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...