Flamingos from Susa

This beautiful vase is not a Modern Art Masterpiece...It is almost 6000 years old, and is currently kept in Louvre, Paris in the "Département des Antiquités orientales"...

It was made between 4000BC and 3000BC by the people who lived in Susa, South Western Iran...

I don't know if you can see what is actually depicted on this vase, cause of amazingly stylised drawing style...So Here is the same vase with annotations...

The goat depicted in the centre of the vase is our old friend, Ibex goat, The Goat of Rain...

The most depicted animal (calendar marker) in Iran...I talked about it in my post "Iranian goat of rain"...

Why was Ibex goat so important to ancient Iranians? Cause the beginning of the mating season of Ibex goats in this part of the world, Oct/Nov, coincides with the arrival of life giving rains, and with the beginning of the cool, wet half of the year...

Susa climate

Goats were so symbolically powerful, that kings, when they wanted to look really important, depicted themselves carrying baby goats...

I talked about this in my post "Goat carrier"...Follow the links in the article to read more about the the Goat of Rain...

So, Goat of Rain, animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov...

What about flamingos? This is Greater Flamingo

And in Oct/Nov, at the same time when The Goat of Rain starts mating, huge flocks of Greater Flamingos arrive from their northern breeding grounds in Central Asia, to their wintering grounds in the warm Southern Mesopotamian marshes...

Unfortunately, not for much longer...Thousands are caught every year by poachers in both Iraq and Iran and are sold either "alive, to people who want to decorate their gardens with living Flamingos" or "dead, to people who like eating roast Flamingos"...

Two articles about migratory bird (and flamingo) poaching in: Iraq and Iran...

Now Susa is located in Khuzestan Province. 

When I started looking at the flamingos in Khuzestan, the first article that I came across was this one that talks about a mating colony of Greater Flamingos in Khuzestan Shadegan Ponds...

Flamingos mate there between April and August...So that screws up the interpretation of the Susa vase flamingos as animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov...

Maybe ibex mating season marks the beginning and flamingo mating season marks the end of the cool wet half of the year???

Well...

The problem is that all the papers about Flamingos in Iran are citing Lake Urmia as the main Greater Flamingo nesting ground in Iran...

For instance, in "Flamingos" By Janet Kear, Nicole Duplaix-Hall we can read that:

"Lake Rezaiyeh (Urmia) is the main Greater Flamingos breeding ground...Southern marshes (including Khuzestan Shadegan marshes) wintering grounds..."

The problem is that the lake Urmia has all but disappeared over last 20 years...

It almost completely dried out...

Which means that the Iranian Greater Flamingos had to find some other place to nest...Or die out...

The 2017 "Birds of Iran: Annotated Checklist of the Species and Subspecies" by Abolghasem Khaleghizadeh, Kees Roselaar, Derek A. Scott, Mohammad Tohidifar, Jiří Mlíkovský, Michael Blair & Pavel Kvartalnov, says:

"Greater Flamingo: Formerly an abundant breeding bird at Lake Urumiyeh, Azarbaijan...common winter visitor to...Khuzestan and entire south coast..."

But:

"recently found breeding in...Khuzestan (at Shadegan)"

So it seems that the birds now nesting in Khuzestan have moved there after their native habitats in Central Asia (listed in "Zoogeographical results of the bicentennial study of the northern part of the asian population of Phoenicopterus roseus" by Boris Yu. Kassal) and the ones in Northern Iran were destroyed...

And that at the time when the Susa vase was made, all the Greater Flamingos found in the Southern Marshes near Susa were winter visitors arriving in huge flocks when Goats of Rain started to mate, in Oct/Nov...

But I might be wrong...BTW this is just one of many vases from the same period depicting Goats and Flamingos...

Most likely not by accident...

BTW, at the same time when people form Susa, Iran, made their Ibex - Flamingos vases, someone in Naqada, Egypt, made this...Looks familiar?

I talked about this in my post "Markhor goat from Naqada"...

Iranian goat of rain

I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini, Great Italian Archaeologist, for posting excerpts from this book. 

The most prominent place on the cover was of course given to the virile "Goat of rain" standing between two zig zag lines symbolizing flowing water...

This goat was of course interpreted by archaeologists as "decorative design'...But in fact it is a calendar marker. The beginning of the mating season of the Ibex goats (Oct/Nov) announces the beginning of winter and the beginning of the rain season in Mesopotamia and Western Iran.

Iraq

Western Iran

I talked about this in my post about Tepe Hissar pottery, "Strider", "Winged bull with Ibex horns", "Goat in a tree", "Jumping goat"...And many more...

This symbol directly links Ibex goat fertility and nature fertility in general. Ibex goat's semen, and rain, heavenly semen...

Another guy with a flower under it's horns...

And two very stylized goats with flowers under their horns...

Here we see plants growing out of Ibex's horns...Why? Goat of rain...And rain is what makes plants grow in this part of the world...

Is this a field under the horns of the Goat of rain? These kind of things are usually interpreted as fields...Field which depends on rain that the magic goat brings every Oct/Nov...

While some Ibex designs are quite realistic

Others are abstract . This is Ibex coming out of the flowing water, river, which the rain it brings fills...

The cross under the goat's horns...A stylized flower...Or a marker on its own...Like on this Elamite seal about which I talked about in my post "Maltese cross seal from Elam"...

See, goats and cross...

Another cross under the Ibex horns...

This is a cool design...Again Ibex standing on top of flowing water...

What's better than one Ibex standing on top of flowing water? Two Ibexes standing on top of flowing water...

Eventually, we arrive to almost completely abstracted depiction of three ejaculating Ibexes

How about this. Four ibex goats...

Finally. Look at these Ibex horns

And then look at this

And then look at this. No head needed...

Remember, these are Neolithic and Early Bronze Age designs...Cool, right?

Jiroft flood vase

This is the chlorite carved flask discussed in the paper entitled "Searching for mythological themes on the 'jiroft' chlorite artefacts" by Massimo Vidale of the University of Padua. The Flask dated to the 3rd millennium BC, is kept in the Bagh-e Harandi Museum, Kerman. 

In the paper we read: "The scene can be coherently read from the bottom to the top. In the foreground, we see a long-haired personage in kneeling position who grabs from the throat two massive humped bulls facing each other in a heraldic position. Below the neck of the animals runs a strip simiilar to a rope...The bulls (probably sky creatures) emanate heavy water flows, causing a major flood. At the end, the first mountain (or mountains) emerges from the flooded world, as water retires. Then another long-haired personage, accompanied by two heavenly signs (moon and star), puts in the sky an imposing rainbow, and signals that the flood is finished. Beyond the rainbow, a renovated world has finally emerged from the deadly waters."

So the paper interprets the scene from the vase as "a representation of a destructive flood, ending when a divinity lifts a rainbow in the sky at which point the first mountain emerges from the flood waters". And it then goes on to compare these images with Old Babylonian and later cuneiform versions of flood myths. 

I would have to strongly disagree with this interpretation. 

I don't think that the scene depicts a destructive flood and certainly not "The Flood". Instead it depicts the annual flood, the snowmelt flood, which was the main source of water, and life, for the people of the Jiroft culture. 

The rivers in the mountain areas of Iran, including the Halil river, around which the Jiroft culture was based, are fed by rainfall during the winter, but mostly by snowmelt during spring and summer. The snowmelt starts in late Feb early Mar, and peaks in late Apr, early May. 

Pic: the flow of Iranian rivers, which have a spike between Mar and Aug with peak in late Apr early May...

Pic: Halil River

So the flood peaks in late April early May, in Taurus. As I explained in my article about Khafajeh vase, another very interesting Jiroft artefact, on which bulls are linked with water, there is a direct link between the old wild cattle and the annual flood season in the Jiroft area. Here is the bulls and "rivers" part of the scene from the Khafajeh vase:

These are not just any bulls. These are Zebu bulls. Zebu's mating season coincides with the snowmelt flow season which peaks in Taurus 🙂. This is why, on Khafajeh vase, the "human looking being" who stands on zebus is holding flowing water, the rivers among lush vegetation...This is also why water, actually rivers, "emanate" from the bulls heads on this Jiroft vase. 

So the Jiroft rivers flood during the spring and summer. 

But the rain and snow that feed them fall during the winter and spring...

The climatic year in the Halil River (Jiroft) area is divided into dry season (Apr/May to Oct/Nov) and wet season (Nov/Dec-Mar/Apr). The wettest month is Feb, while the driest month is Jul which is also the hottest month...

The only time when you can see a rainbow is during the rain season. Which is winer and spring.  The rainbow "personage" has moon pointing upward with a star. The moon points up during the winter. 

Which is the rain and snow season in Zagros mountains. Hence the only time you can see a rainbow.

So the rainbow personage (I think most likely goddess) represents winter (and spring) and the zebu "personage" (I think this could be goddess again) represents (spring and) summer snow melt floods. The water reach seasons... 

By the way, remember this rainbow girl from Sassanian Iran? 

People now think that this girl "is just a dancer". But once people thought that she was Goddess of water and fertility Anahita. I talked about her in my post Anahita. By the way I still think she is the water and fertility goddess...Mostly because she is holding a rainbow from which vegetation grows...Basically she symbolises the same thing as the rainbow "personage" from the Jiroft flood vase. Rain creating life...

So it seems that the rainbow goddess was the thing in Iran from at least Jiroft culture, until the Sassanian culture...

We know this because these two rainbow holders are linked by this: Bronze disc from Luristan, western Iran. 8th century BC...Sold by Christies for 28,000$... 

Oh and it is not "the first mountain emerges from the flooded world as the waters of The Flood recede"...It's just the Zagros mountains, the source of water and life for Jiroft people...The rainbow is over the mountains because Jiroft guys lived in valleys surrounded by high mountains...

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...