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...

Tigers tigers everywhere

Open bracelet decorated with feline heads. 9th - 8th century BC. Bronze, Luristan, Western Iran, currently in Louvre Museum...

Which feline? Tiger or Lion? I would say tiger...See all the stripes everywhere, including the neck...

If Tiger, this becomes very interesting...Here is Luristan on the 1900 AD Caspian tiger distribution map. Did tigers live further south during Iron Age?

It seems like it, considering that people in Luristan made tiger bracelets...

Why is this important? Cause of the "monster" Humbaba and the story about the Erin forest he (it) protected...Humbaba was described as a frightening roaring monster "whose face is that of a lion" but stripy...And he guarded the eastern mountains, the residence of the sun god Utu, from where all the wood came from to Mesopotamia. Until Mesopotamian heroes killed him...And cut all the trees...

"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 forest, and have cut all the trees down... 

Now in my post "Humbaba", I proposed that Humbaba, the guardian of the ancient eastern forests was a tiger...

And based on the above distribution of tigers in Western Asia, and the fact that Enkidu and Golgamesh transported felled trees "down Euphrates westward", I proposed that the original location of the Erin forest which Humbaba guarded was here, in upper reaches of Euphrates...

In the time before "Civilisation came to Sumer"...

Now when I was in Louvre, I came across this bowl, with felines. It was found in Tepe Djowi, south western Iran, and was dated to 6th millennium BC

When I saw this bowl, I couldn't believe what I was looking at. Were these cats tigers? But Tepe Djowi is all the way down south, at the bottom of Mesopotamia... Did tigers live there during late Neolithic period?

The cats depicted on this bowl are definitely not leopards, so often depicted on early Iranian pottery. For comparison, have a look at this vessel also currently kept in Louvre. The vessel is from Tepe Sialk, Iran, and was dated to 4th millennium BC. The animals depicted on the vessel are leopards.

Leopards are depicted above flowing water, because they are used as an animal calendar marker for the end of winter, beginning of spring. I talked about this in my post "Spots and stripes"...

The zig zag lines symbolically depict flowing water, making leopard "the cat of flowing water"...And the reason for this is that snowmelt in Iranian mountains stats when leopards start to mate, Jan/Feb. In Aquarius 🙂

Pic snow cover Iranian mountains

And it is this snowmelt that makes Iranian rivers flow...

 Pic: water flow in Iranian rivers

And so it is possible that the felines depicted on the Tepe Djowi bowl are leopards with "flowing water" zig zag line drawn on their bodies, to symbolically turn them into "cats of flowing water"...But that would be the only such depiction of leopards I have seen so far...Which makes it a lot more likely that these cats are actually tigers...Now extinct Caspian tigers...Which is kind of amazing...

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...

Humbaba

This mask currently held in the British museum depicts the grim face of Humbaba (Huwawa), legendary guardian of the Cedar Forest from Sumerian mythology. It is rendered in clay as if made of coils of a sheep’s intestines. The reason why is explained on the back:

"If the coils of the colon resemble the head of Huwawa, [this is] an omen of Sargon who ruled the land. If ...., the house of a man will expand. [Written by] the hand of Warad-Marduk, diviner, son of Kubburum, diviner"

Warad-Marduk lived in the city of Sippar (southern Iraq), around 1800–1600 BC. As a professional diviner, his job was to predict the future. The most common method for doing that in ancient Iraq was to study the shape and colour of the internal organs of a sacrificed sheep...

Each feature of the organs was thought to have meaning, a message from the gods. Health, size, colour and position of each organ was examined and the observed features and their meanings were compiled in long scholarly reference works...

And believe or not, a guy named Robert K. G. Temple actually went and checked these ancient descriptions of the sheep intestines and published his findings in "An Anatomical Verification of the Reading of a Term in Extispicy". Here is the pic of the intestines of a sick lamb from his book. Quite cool. Another spiral :)

So Warad-Marduk, the diviner from Sippar, saw Humbaba's face in the intestines...Which makes me ask this question: If you could see Humbaba's face in intestines, was Hunbaba's face imagined as stripy? This is kind of an important question...And you'll see why soon...

Huwawa features as a guardian of the ancient Cedar forest, in the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', where he was killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu after which the ancient cedar forest was cut by their men....This story was told widely across the Middle East. So it must have been important...

Believe or not, we don't know for sure neither who or what Humbaba was, nor where the ancient Cedar forest was, nor if it was a forest of cedar trees at all...What we do know is that Sumerians cut the forest to get building material...And that they soon realised their mistake...

After they have killed Humbaba and have cut all the trees down:

302 [Enkidu] opened his mouth to speak,  saying to Gilgameš:

303 “[My friend,] we have reduced the forest [to] a wasteland,

304 [how] shall we answer [God] Enlil in Nippur?

You can read the whole thing in "Back to the Cedar Forest: The Beginning and End of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgameš"

The other day I came across the article "Gilgamesh, Humbaba and the Land of the Erin-Trees" by J. Hansman. In the article, the author tries to determine the location of the "Land of the Erin tree" which is what the Humbaba's forest was called in original manuscripts...And to identify the "Erin tree" itself

Most people identify Erin tree with Lebanese cedar. 

And because of its historical distribution, they identify the Land of the Erin Trees as Mountains of Lebanon...

Although as we can see the Distribution area also covers the whole of Southern Anatolia too...

But, Lebanon is in the west of Sumer. And the earliest mentions of the Erin forest place it in the east of Sumer. An old Sumerian text says: "...When Utu (Sun) comes forth from the mountains perfumed by Erin trees..."

The Cedar Forest is the glorious realm of the gods of Mesopotamian mythology. And the mountains in the east, the same ones perfumed by the Erin trees, are called "Utu's living quarters" from which he emerges radiant and bright in the morning...

And before their departure for the Land of the Erin trees, Enkidu urges Gilgamesh to inform Utu of their intensions, as that land is his domain...After which Gilgamesh asks Utu to be his ally while he is in the land of the Erin trees...

And then, treacherously, Gilgamesh goes and kills Humbaba, whom Utu himself placed in his forest of Erin trees, to be its guardian...And after killing Humbaba, Gilgamesh cuts Utu's forest of Erin trees...So no more perfumed sunrises...When will gods learn not to trust humans???

So originally the Land of the Erin trees was located east of Sumer, in Zagros mountains of Western Iran. The problem here is that Lebanese cedar never grew in this part of the world. So originally Erin tree was not Lebanese cedar, and Erin forest was not a Cedar forest...

So what was Erin tree then? The author of the "Gilgamesh, Humbaba and the Land of the Erin-Trees" proposes that Erin tree was Juniperus excelsa, Greek or Persian juniper. 

It grows in Iran, Caucasus, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon...In all the lands surrounding Iraq...

Greek or Persian juniper wood is very fragrant and when burned gives off only minimal visible smoke, but this smoke is highly aromatic...And in the heat of the sun, these trees would indeed perfume the Utu's mountain...

Greek or Persian Juniper wood is also pale and the Sumerian texts describe the wood of the Erin trees as "white" or "of light colour"...So it all fits...Right? Well...

J. Hansman identifies Erin as Juniper because he identifies The Land of the Erin trees as Elam, and Greek or Persian juniper is "the only economically viable large conifer native to the mountains of the South-Western Iran...So...

But I have my doubts about this identification...Here is why:

311 Gilgameš was cutting down the tree,

312 Enkidu was seeking out the best timber.

313 Enkidu opened his mouth to speak,  saying to Gilgameš:

314 “My friend, we have cut down a lofty cedar,

315 whose top abutted the heavens...

Juniperus excelsa is a "large shrub or tree" reaching 6–20 metres...Look at the shape of the tree canopy and the trunk. Very unlikely to be described as "tree whose top touches the heavens" or as a tree "of best building timber"...Have a look for yourself:

Also, after they have cut the Erin trees down, Gilgamesh and Enkidu and their men lashed the trees together into rafts...

320 . . . . . . branches […] cypress together with [… ,]

321 they lashed together a raft, they laid […]

Rafts? Well...Ever heard of log driving?

Log driving was once the way to transport logs from the mountains where they were cut to the place where they were used...And there are several rivers flowing down from the Southern Zagros mountain westward...

So Gilgamesh and Enkidu could have driven their logs down one of these rivers. Like Karun river:

But there is one problem. Enkidu actually names the river which they used to transport the Erin tree logs from the Land of the Erin trees...And it's not any of the rivers flowing from the Southern Zagros mountains. And no, it's not any of the rivers flowing from Mt Lebanon either

318 Let the river Euphrates carry (it) to [Enlil in] Nippur,

319 [let Nippur’s] sanctuary [rejoice over it!]”

Wow! How did hunters for the location of the Land of the Erin trees miss this?

So...Where was the Land of the Erin trees, and what was Erin tree then?

Enters Inana: "My brother (Utu), awe-inspiring...lord of heaven...let me ride with you to the mountains; to the mountains of herbs, to the mountains of cedars, to the mountains; the mountains of cypresses..." 

So far so good...

And then it goes down hill for Elam and Lebanon: "...to the mountains of silver, the mountains of lapis lazuli...to the distant source of the rolling rivers, to the mountains..."

You can read the rest in "A šir-namšub to Utu"

Are these rolling rivers Tigris and Euphrates? I would say so, cause if the rivers were not named in Mesopotamia, then they are The Rivers: Tigris and Euphrates...It fits with what Enkidu said certainly, that the river they used to transport logs from Utu's mountain was Euphrates...

Silver (found in Eastern Anatolia)? Lapis Lazuli (found in Afghanistan)? Who was supplying Sumer with these precious materials? Were they transported down Tigris and Euphrates? We know copper was, as Sumerian name for Euphrates means "copper river":  

This mention of Lapis being found in Utu's mountains is very interesting indeed. Cause apparently in Erin forest:

24 [Monkey mothers] sing aloud, a youngster monkey shrieks:

25 [like a band] of musicians and drummers,

26 daily they bash out a rhythm in the presence of Ḫumbaba.

Meet Rhesus macaque. 

It is native to among other places India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan...

Afghanistan, the land of Lapis Lazuli...And just East of Afghanistan is Indus river valley...Hmmm...Is this a poetic freedom...

Well I would get back to that later. First...Is it possible that the Land of the Erin trees once in Eastern Anatolia? Around the source of Euphrates. Or east of it. Well, yes it is. Apparently, according to "A History of Deforestation as Indicated by Charcoal Analysis of Four Sites in Eastern Anatolia" during Bronze Age this land was covered in huge forests...

But how can then the Erin mountains be east, where Utu lives? When Sumerian civilisation was located in the lower Mesopotamia? 

Well how old is the epic of Gilgamesh? 

If we go back in time from Sumerian civilisation we eventually arrive to Halaf culture And guess where Halaf culture was located? Much further up north...

Wait. That's 6100 BC and 5100 BC!!!

How old are our epics? How long do they get transmitted orally before they are recorded for the first time? By the time writing was invented in Mesopotamia, people moved down south...And "East" and "Mountain of Utu" acquired different meaning...

If we go even further back in time, we arrive to the culture known today as Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. This is "The Fertile Crescent" everyone is talking about. 

We are in 7500 BCE. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans...

This is the same area, with relief. 

Look at the mountain that is east of this area. It's mount Ararat...

Euphrates flows directly from it westward...Through Armenian highlands, towards the centre of the populated area which lies between Taurus mountains and Kurdistan highlands...

What lies east from the area where we find the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B sites is very very interesting. It's the area full of mountainous forests, made of tall oaks and pines... 

And the western most known habitat of Caspian tigers. 

Well, based on 1900 AD records this was the western most habitat of Caspian tigers. 

Who wants to bet that around 6000 BC they lived further west and south? In the area of the upper Euphrates? 

Now remember my question about Humbaba's stripy face?

"His face is that of a lion. When he looks at someone, it is the look of death. Humbaba's roar is a flood, his mouth is death and his breath is fire! He can hear a hundred leagues away any [rustling?] in his forest! Who would go down into his forest!"

Now imagine going into the forests of the upper Euphrates to cut wood...Armed with stone axes...The forests of tall, straight trees perfect for timber...Like Pinus Nigra and Pinus Brutia:

But also forest full of tigers...

That would create some legends, right? Oh, by the way, the Greek/Persian Juniper also grows in this area...

By the time the legends were first recorded, the Sumerians were far away from the land of tigers...And so the true identity of Humbaba, the guardian of the Erin forest, was forgotten. Except for a bit about a stripy lion like head, roaring and all the other tiger like things...

But wait, does it mean that all these historians who say that Erin forest was located in Lebanon are talking crap? No. It doesn't. They are just quoting late Mesopotamian sources...The earliest identification of Mt Lebanon as the source of Erin was from the 11th century BC...

To get timber to Euphrates from Lebanon, you have to transport them overland for 430km...Before that, since 2200BC, Mesopotamian record call Amanus Mountain in south eastern Turkey, the Erin mountain. From it you need to transport logs "only" 70 km overland to reach Euphrates...

Before that Zagros mountains were the Erin mountains...And before that, Armenian highlands were the Erin mountains...This is a tragic tale of human destruction of the environment...As more trees are cut down, people have to go further and further to find them and cut them...

And in doing so, they are destroying their environment more and more, turning once lush Erin forests into wastelands...Eventually only desert is left. Humbaba is gone, Erin trees are gone...

That's it for today. I'm tired. Have fun guys...