Taranto

A silver didrachm from Taranto in southern Italy minted during the period 355-340 BC. It features on obverse a male youth riding a dolphin.

Dolphins and a dolphin-rider feature so prominently on the coinage of Taranto. This is unsurprising, given the mythological aetiology of the city from the hero Taras, the son of Poseidon (Pausanias 10.10.8). who was shipwrecked and then rescued by a dolphin. 

On this coin from Taranto minted during the period 355-340 BC, Taras is depicted holding his father's trident...

The dolphin-rider motif appears early on the coins of Taranto. For instance, a silver didrachm from Taranto minted during the period 510-450 BC

With a Reverse this time featuring a winged hippocamp symbol of Poseidon.

Poseidon was god of the sea, storms...and horses. This is reflected in his epithets: Nauklarios (Ναυκλάριος) "belonging to the ship-owners", Pelagikos (Πελάγίκος) "belonging to the sea"...and Hippeios (ἲππειος) "belonging to a horse"...

Sailors prayed to Poseidon for a calm seas and safe voyage, "sometimes drowning horses as a sacrifice"...

In Greek art, Poseidon rides a chariot that was pulled by a hippocampus or by horses that could ride on the sea...

Poseidon is apparently "...more often regarded as the tamer of horses, but in some myths he is their father, either by spilling his seed upon a rock or by mating with a creature who then gave birth to the first horse..."

In Arcadia, one of the most conservative parts of Ancient Greece, Poseidon was worshipped as a stallion...

Why? Why?

The natural breeding season of horses starts in Apr/May and ends in Sep/Oct and is marked by wild stallion fights for mares...

The horse fertility is governed by the sunlight and peaks on summer solstice. I heard summer solstice was a big thing for sun worshipers....

Hence solar horses all over Eurasia...

Articles about solar horse (equid):

Iran "Water carrier equid", "Dioscuri plate from Iran"

Mesopotamia "Shamash playing with the solar horse", "Sun god from Tell Brak"

India "Hayagriva"

China "Longma", "Three legged crow", "Mythical beast from Xian"

Levant "Alexamenos graffito", "Goddess on a horse", "Unicorn"

Europe "Archaic rider", "Beotian solar pyxis", "Pegasus and chimera", "King John", "The horseman"

Ok, but what does this have to do with Poseidon? Well, mating season of horses, overlaps with the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean. Both start in Apr/May and finish in Sep/Oct...

I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse", in which I asked a question: was Trojan horse "hypos" - a wooden horse left as tribute, or  "hypos" - a wooden boat with a horse head used for transporting tributes...

As for dolphins, they are animal calendar markers for Apr/May-Oct/Nov.

The reason for this is that dolphin mating and calving season in Mediterranean spans period May-Oct.

It takes place in the shallows, and is therefore easily observable by people living and fishing along the coast...

So there is actually a symbolic link between the horses and dolphins. Their mating seasons overlap and they overlap with the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean...

I talked about dolphin as an animal calendar marker in many of my posts, like "Boat of Dyonisus", "Apollo and dolphins", "Horned animal attacked by a dolphin", "Minoan dolphin fresco", "Coin from Byzantion", "Eagle eating dolphin"

One other thing...A lot of the coins from Taranto depict a mounted warrior on the obverse. You can find them all here... 

This one even depicts a mounted warrior and Nike, the goddess of victory...

Why?

Because Apr/May - Sep/Oct was not only the sailing season but also the war season...

BTW, some of the Taranto coins only depict horse on both sides, like this one minted during the period  325-280 BC...So horses were definitely important symbol on its own...BTW, one is bridled and the other unbridled...Sailing and non sailing season? What do you think? 

Knowing this makes the original coin even cooler...I think...

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...

The boat of Dionysus

Dionysus' Kylix (cup) from Vulci, Etruria, Italy - 530 BC - currently in Staatliche Antikensammlungen of Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Interesting scene. Dionysus arriving on a boat and bringing ripe grapes, surrounded by leaping dolphins...

What could this mean? Well...

Dolphin was an animal calendar marker for Apr/May-Oct/Nov.

The reason why dolphin became an animal calendar marker for hot part of the year, is because dolphin mating and calving season in Mediterranean spans period May-Oct.

It takes place in the shallows, and is therefore easily observable by people living and fishing along the coast...

I talked about this in my post "Minoan dolphin fresco", about the famous Minoan "dolphins fresco" from Knossos, Crete, dated to 1500BC...

Guess what? Apr/May-Oct/Nov is also the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean. 

I talked about it in my posts "Trojan horse", "Three sacrifices" and "Anat"...

It's all to do with the Etesian winds

Which blow between Apr/May and Sep/Oct

According to Hesiod, the middle point between the beginning and the end of the dolphin mating season, Jul/Aug, Leo, is "the best time to go to the sea"...I talked about this in my post "Tetradrachm from Byblos" about this amazing 4th c. BC, silver coin from Byblos.

According to Hesiod: "Fifty days after the solstice, when the season of wearisome heat is come to an end, is the right (best) time for men to go sailing"

That's Jul/Aug, when Lion (autumn) kills (ends) Bull (summer). 

Aug/Sep is the beginning of the grapes harvest season in Greece and Italy...On this Archaic Greek amphora made in Athens 540–530 BC and currently in MFABoston, we see Dionysus seated in the middle of a vineyard during a grapes harvest. He is actually depicted as the root from which all the grapevines grow...

This is why ripe grapes are a plant calendar markers for autumn...I talked about this in my post "Skipping", about this amazing Archaic Greek black-figured amphora, found in Etruscan city of Vulci, Italy, dated 520BC...Depicting Leto holding Apollo and Artemis, standing between grapes and ivy. Why? One of the best examples of the use of plant calendar markers I have ever seen...

So when we put this together, the scene from the Dionysus' Kylix means: The grape harvest starts (ripe grapes are brought by Dionysus) in Aug/Sep, right after the best time to go to sea, which is Jul/Aug...

I think 🙂 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...

Apollo and dolphins

This is a 490 BC Etruscan hydria from Vulci, previously belonging to the Feoli Collection. shows Apollo in the centre, holding his lyre, seated on the Delphic tripod...with a dolphin to either side of the tripod...

What's with Apollo and dolphins?

Well, one of Apollo's epithets was Δελφίνιος (Delphinius, Delphinios), literally "Delphic", after Δελφοί (Delphi). An etiology in the "Homeric Hymn of Apollo" associated this with dolphins...

The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. 580–570 BC...

It describes in detail how Apollo built his temple in "Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus" and how then he went looking for priests that will serve him...

For some weird reason, Apollo chose his first priests to be  "Cretans from Minos' city of Knossos" who were voyaging on a "black ship" across the sea. Apollo leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin "a great and awesome monster"...

Dolphin-Apollo then forced the ship to sail to Parnassus where: "...like a star at noonday, the lord, far-working Apollo, leaped from the ship: flashes of fire flew from him thick and their brightness reached to heaven..."

"...He entered into his shrine between priceless tripods, and there made a flame to flare up bright, showing forth the splendor of his shafts, so that their radiance filled all Crisa, and [all who saw it] raised a cry...for he cast great fear upon them all..."

"...From his shrine he sprang forth again, swift as a thought, to speed again to the ship, bearing the form of a man, brisk and sturdy, in the prime of his youth, while his broad shoulders were covered with his hair: and he spoke to the Cretans, uttering winged words..."

"...guard my temple and receive the tribes of men that gather to this place"...

Interestingly, the Cretan archaeological finds from Delphi, dating from the 8th to the late 7th c. BC confirm that there once might have been Cretan priests at Delphi. But why Apollo as a dolphin? 🙂

This is the famous Minoan "dolphins fresco" from Knossos, Crete, dated to 1500BC...

Old Cretans, Minoans, were really into Dolphins, as any Mediterranean Maritime culture should be. Why? Cause of animal calendar markers of course. Dolphin was an animal calendar marker for Apr/May-Oct/Nov.

The reason why dolphin became an animal calendar marker for hot part of the year, is because dolphin mating and calving season in Mediterranean spans period May-Oct. It takes place in the shallows, and is therefore easily observable by people living and fishing along the coast...

I talked about this in my post "Minoan dolphin fresco"...

Guess what? Apr/May-Oct/Nov is also the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean. I talked about it in my post "Three sacrifices", where I analyse this crazy story from the beginning of the Trojan war: 

Greeks are sacrificing to the sun god waiting for good winds to sail to Troy, when suddenly, a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow's nest in platanus tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. And then the good winds started to blow....Eee what? Why? Because the sailing winds in Eastern Mediterranean start blowing in Apr/May, when platanus trees start blooming, the sparrows are nesting and the vipers start mating...

BTW, note that the Greeks are praying to the Apollo for good wind...Good winds which blow from Apr/May to Oct/Nov, the dolphin season...Why?

It is the sun (Apollo), that heats up the Eastern Mediterranean...Which creates an updrift, which sucks the cooler air from Europe to start streaming southward, creating the etesian trade winds...And they get stronger as the summer progresses...

Minoans also depicted dolphins as "a great and awesome monsters" attacking goats. Why? Again, cause of animal calendar markers. I talked about this in my post "Horned animal attacked by a dolphin"...

This is a typical climatic chart for Crete

On Crete, the cool, wet season starts in Oct/Nov, when wild goats start to mate, and the hot, dry season starts when dolphins start to mate...So dry/good winds/sailing season (dolphin) ending (killing) wet/bad winds/no sailing season (goat)

Interestingly, Minoans seem to have linked lions with dolphins. Why? Well, cause the middle point between the beginning and the end of the dolphin mating season, Jul/Aug, Leo, is according to Hesiod "the best time to go to the sea"...

I talked about this in this post about this silver Tetradrachm from Byblos, Phonecia, apparently, minted during the reign of Adramelek, 315 BC-...and currently in the British Museum...

So what's that got to do with Apollo as a dolphin?

In Greece, the sun god Shamash, more precisely the "terrible" sun, Shamash as Nergal,  became Apollo. The "terrible" sun god Apollo...I explained why terrible in my post "Apollo from Delos" about the lions from the 600 BC Temple of Apollo from Delos:

So Apollo would then be this dude, Sun in Leo...

Nergal, the deified destructive "burning" sun, was depicted as a lion man, because Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia...

Talked abut him in my post "Winged superhuman hero"...

BTW, Leo originally had nothing to do with stars. It was an animal calendar marker marking the beginning of the main mating season of Eurasian lions, which starts at the beginning of autumn, Jul/Aug and spans the whole of autumn, (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...

Hence lion as an animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, Leo. And why lion is the symbol of autumn in general (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

So sun in Leo = Apollo as dolphin?

So maybe whoever wrote the "Homeric hymn to Delphic Apollo" wasn't just making ridiculous link between unrelated terms Apollo Δελφίνιος (Delphinios) and δελφίν, Koine form of δελφῑ́ς (dolphin)...

Check this out: δελφῑ́ς (dolphin) comes from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelbʰ- (womb), so originally it meant "fish with a womb". Now Δελφοί (Delphi), comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root *gʷelbʰ meaning womb.

Apollo's temple in Delphi was originally, according to legends, temple of Gaia, the old Mother Earth. And, again according to legends, the temple was located "at the centre of the earth" which was marked with ὀμφαλός (omphalós) meaning navel stone.

So we have a navel of the mother earth...In the place called Womb...So what was then (symbolically 🙂) the crack in the earth that the oracle sat over while reciting her prophecies? What makes every woman a woman, including Mother Earth?

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...

Minoan dolphins fresco

This is the famous Minoan "dolphins fresco" from Knossos, Crete, dated to 1500BC...

Why is it important do determine what type of dolphins were depicted on this fresco? 

Spoiler: animal calendar markers...🙂

In my post about the strange dolphin attacking ibex goat Minoan seal, I talked about different types of dolphins that live in Mediterranean sea

Here they are again...

So which one of these dolphins was depicted on the above Minoan fresco? I would say that we can pretty much immediately discard the Bottlenose dolphin because of the color...

The other two look quite similar. But if we look at the central line, on the dolphins depicted on the fresco, we can see that the only dolphin that has the same feature is the Stripped dolphin.

Add to that that the Stripped dolphin is the most abundant dolphin species in the Mediterranean, I think that the dolphins depicted on the Minoan fresco are the Stripped dolphins.

Yeeeey! Now what?

Well as I said in my post "Minoan spring fresco" about the Minoan swallows fresco, these animal depictions should be treated as animal calendar markers...

Well, here is a very interesting Minoan sealstone discovered at Akrotiri, Thera, and dated to the 18th c. BC. It depicts a griffin suckling a dolphin...

The pic of the seal is from "Thera, Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean" by Christos Doumas. 

The pic of the seal drawing is from "Minoan Sacrificial Ritual" by Nanno Marinatos.

The author of the "Minoan Sacrificial Ritual" paper says this about this seal: "The dolphin's speed, size and intelligence must have impressed Minoans who attributed special powers to it and made it companion to the divinity in similar manner as the lion and the griffin..."

Hmmmm...Is there anything else that could connect dolphins, lions and griffins...Could these all be animal calendar markers pointing a the same time of the year maybe?

I think so...Animal calendar markers mark the time when the depicted animal either mates, gives birth or rarely, migrates, goes to hibernation...

Let's check our real and imaginary animals mating seasons... 🙂

Have a look at this:

Common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) May - Aug, peak Jun/Jul

Short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) May - Sep, peak Jul/Aug

Striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba) Jul - Oct, peak Sep

So, the striped dolphin mates from beginning to the end of autumn (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...Which means that it could be used as a calendar marker for beginning of autumn, Jul/Aug (beginning of its mating season) or for autumn in general (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...

What about lions? I think we are in luck here...The main mating season of Eurasian lions starts at the beginning of autumn, Jul/Aug and spans the whole of autumn, (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...

Which is why lion is used as an animal calendar marker known as Leo, which marks Jul/Aug. And why lion is the symbol of autumn in general (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov)...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

What about griffins? Eeeee, I can hear you say...Griffin!!! Mythical monster!!! Not a real animal...Actually griffin is not a mythical animal, but a complex animal calendar marker for autumn (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov). Minoan griffin (there are different griffins)🙂

Minoan griffin consists of 

Lion, animal calendar marker known as Leo, marks Jul/Aug, cause the mating season of Eurasian lions starts in Jul/Aug...

Vulture, animal calendar marker known as Eagle, marks Oct/Nov, cause the mating season of Eurasian vultures starts in Oct/Nov

This is an ancient symbol for autumn, and I talked about it in my post "Origin of griffins" which contains symbolic analysis of this Proto-Elamite seal, dated to 3000 BC and depicting a griffin, followed by ibex goat, or goitered gazelle...

So all three of these real or imaginary animals can be used as animal calendar markers for autumn (Jul/Aug - Oct/Nov).

So why would Minoans care about any of this? I think Hesiod can answer this question. Writing in the 8th century BC, he says that:

"Fifty days after the solstice, 

when the season of wearisome heat is come to an end, 

is the right (best) time for men to go sailing"

This is at end of July beginning of August. In Leo...At the beginning of the mating seasons of lions and striped dolphins...And griffins 🙂

This is the time when Romans celebrated the Neptunalia. Apparently the authorities are not sure why Romans celebrated Neptune at exactly that time of the year. I will let authorities ponder this further... 

Here I will propose that maybe Minoans also celebrated sea god in Leo...

Here is another amazing Minoan fresco. It is known as "Minoan Admirals Flotilla Fresco", and was found Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini) and was dated to c. 1613 BC. It shows a flotilla sailing out of the harbor as part of some kind of celebration...

This is a restored detail of this fresco showing the admiral's ship. You can see that the hull of the ship is decorated with lions and striped dolphins...Why? 

In "Minoan Sacrificial Ritual", professor Nanno Marinatos tries to explain this decoration like this:

"Let us now look at some representations where the dolphin can be designated as an aggressor by virtue of analogy, because it is shown together with other predatory animals. On the major ship of the fleet...there appear emblems of aggression: lions and dolphins."

"The association of the two would be problematic, were it not for the observation made above, that the dolphin is itself a hunter which makes it equivalent to a lion. Thus, the two animals represent aggression in two domains, the land and sea."

Hmmmmm, well you could argue that...But maybe these two animals are depicted together because this flotilla is part of the Minoan version of Neptunalia...Celebration of the Minoan sea god, whatever his name was...

Which takes place in Leo, at the beginning of autumn, at the beginning of the mating season of both Eurasian lions and striped dolphins...And griffins 🙂 At the best time to sail the Mediterranean sea...

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...