Watering papyrus

Here is another very interesting object I've stumbled across in Louvre last weekend 

It is a Hellenistic stela dated to the 4th-3rd c. BC, found in Umm al-Amad, Lebanon. The important bit of the description is circled in red

 

So...A ritual "watering of papyrus" by two (semi?) naked women...Anyone heard of this ritual? 

I can bet that this is a fertility related ritual considering papyrus is watered by (semi?) naked women 🙂 That and the fact that it "recalls the Egyptian motif of annual renewal"...

But what does "Egyptian motif of annual renewal" mean? Well check this article: "Cow and calf ivory", in which I talk about the importance of papyrus in Egyptian mythology. Why it is directly linked to the annual flood. It is basically a plant calendar marker that marks the beginning of the rising of the water level in the river Nile, because the papyrus start flowering at that exact time...

Here is Hathor/Mehet Weret (Great Flood), emerging from the flowering papyrus...

Hence "annual renewal"...

Hence "ritual watering of papyrus"...The ritual imitation of the flood...Very interesting indeed...

I wonder if people in Umm al-Amad knew what this all meant? This stela is definitely not an import from Egypt. It was made locally. Depicting local people performing ritual papyrus watering...Which makes no sense in Lebanon...

Anyway another great example of a transplanted deified calendar marker. This time plant calendar marker...

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...

Dog days

Ahhh. I always wandered why the Egyptian "Dog days" were located on the solar year at the hottest part of the year, the end of July, beginning of August...So I looked at the Ancient Egyptian dog breeds...

First thing I found out that the Ancient Egyptian loved hunting dogs. 

And that their word for "hunting dog" was "Tesem". And that it was written in hieroglyphics using the image of a prick-eared, leggy dog with a curled tail from the early Egyptian age...

There were three main types of dogs in Ancient Egypt: pariah dog (basenji), two kinds of greyhound-like dogs and a molosser-type dog....And the one shown on Tesem hieroglyph is definitely the "pariah dog" known in Egypt as basenji.

The "pariah dog" is the name given to the half wild dog species still found around the world. They are the closest we still have to the old wild dogs...And they have preserved one important characteristic of wild dogs: They have one breading season...

And guess when that breeding season starts? You guessed correctly. During dog days, end of July beginning of August, the hottest part of the year in the Northern hemisphere...Here is the page about the "pariah dogs" from Princeton "Canids of the world".

Basenji dogs are close cousins of Canaan dogs also known as Egyptian desert dogs, Bedouin Sheepdogs and Palestinian Pariah Dogs...

For the Egyptians the sight of these doggies dogging must have been a very pleasing sight indeed. Because the start of the Basenji breeding season coincided with Nile flood maximum...

I talked about this in my post "Holy cow". 

No wonder then that it is the Dog headed god Set who "defends Ra from the Serpent of Chaos Apep". The serpent is the symbol of sun's heat. And the dog days mark that maximum. After that the northern hemisphere starts cooling (the serpent is dying)...I talked about this in my post "Apep". 

Of course Set (Dog) is helped in his valiant fight against Apep (The Dragon) by Bastet (Lion, Cat). No wonder. Dog days fall in the middle of Leo...And Leo is where it is because it marks the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian lions...I talked about this too in my post "Apep". 

And that's that...

Oh almost forgot. The time when in Ancient Egypt the Pariah dogs started getting frisky and when the Nile flood arrived, at that same time, Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, was also rising...Is his why the star was eventually, when Greeks, who called that part of the year "Dog days" arrived to Egypt, called The Dog Star? The star that rises during Dog Days? The days when Pariah dogs are mating? 

This link between this ancient dog breed, Dog Days and Dog Star seems to have once been widespread. North America, China, India, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Rome...Finally Egypt...I think this is a very interesting theme which requires more research and which will most likely point at the common prehistoric system of symbols and beliefs linked to the common dog breed, with common single breeding season, dog days, found in all these areas... 

If we look at the oldest known depictions of dogs, they all show Pariah dogs. 

Prehistoric rock art found in Saudi Arabia shows humans hunting with Pariah dogs on leashes. These pictures could be at least 8,000 years old, making them the earliest art depicting dogs. 

Before the discovery of this rock art from Saudi Arabia, it was was believed that the oldest depictions of dogs were the ones found on pottery shards from Tepe Sabz in Iran, which are almost 8000 years old. They depict the same Pariah dog breed... 

The domestication of dogs happened at the European edges of the Eurasian steppe. 30,000 years old dog fossils from Palaeolithic sites in Belgium, the Ukraine and Russia are the earliest proof we have of canids which are different from wolves...

The earliest proof of dogs actually being part of human society are the remains of a dog found buried with two humans, dating back 14,700 years, in Germany... 

So, it seems that the dogs spread throughout the world from Europe. And because domesticated dogs stay with humans, they must have spread with the humans who originally domesticated them...Which haplogroup was responsible for the dog diffusion? Was that dog the Pariah dog? Did Pariah dog always have a single mating season which started at the same time (July-August)? And is it during this expansion of the Mesolithic-Neolithic hunters and their Pariah dogs, that the link between the mating period of Pariah dogs (Dog Days) and the Dog Star - Sirius was forged in all these places around the world? 

Menat

Have a look at this object.

This is a "menat" (a musical instrument/amulet) which consists of this strange phallic thingy to which a bunch of beads were attached to.

This instrument/amulet was worn by the Holy Cow Hathor/Mehet-Weret. In fact Menat was another name for Hathor. 

The above one, was made between 664 and 380 BC. On top of it we see the lion headed goddess Tefnut (another face of Hekhmet, another face of Hathor) on the left, with a solar disc and cobra on her head, and her husband-twin brother Shu on the right, with ostrich feathers on his head. 

Tefnut carries the solar disc and the snake because the sun's heat, represented by a snake, is the strongest at the end of July beginning of August, during Leo. 

But why is Shu carrying ostrich feathers on his head? 

Well ostrich mating season begins in March or April and ends sometime before September. During that time male ostriches become aggressive, fight with each other for harems and make loud booming mating sounds...

This is exactly the period when rain season starts in Ethiopian highlands. We see increase in rainfall starting from March, and then the arrival of the full blown monsoon starting from April/May/June, depending on the season...

So at the top of the Menat we have wind and moisture producing monsoon. 

This monsoon empties on Ethiopian highlands during the ostrich mating season. The rain water accumulates in the catchment area of the Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia, and it flows out as Blue Nile...

It then flows down towards Egypt as the Great Flood...

I think that the circular bit at the bottom represents the Great Flood. The circle is the summer sun which fills the Nile with water...

What is interesting is what is depicted inside the circle:

A strange looking fish with a huge dorsal fin, swimming at the bottom of the river or lake, near a flowering papyrus marsh. 

The strange fish is not just a bad fish doodle. It is a very precise depiction of a  Labeobarbus bynni, the Niger barb, Nile barb, a relatively large fish, up to 82 cm in total length and with a distinctive top fin. It is found all over the Nile river. 

This was one of three main fish species caught and eaten by Ancient Egyptians, together with Nile perch and Nile tilapia.

This fish was not chosen randomly. The Nile barb spawning (mating) season is March-April, right at the time when the first rains start falling in Ethiopian highlands. And flowering papyrus? 

So why was papyrus so important? As I explained in my post "Holy Cow" the main papyrus flowering season is April...Right at the time when Nile Barb spawns (swims along the bottom burying eggs into the gravel)

Another interesting detail on this Manet is the "squatting figure of the ram-headed sun god" (according to the official description) figure just above the circular part. 

The description alludes at Amun. The god of wind and the creator god. Following Amun's ascendancy during the New Kingdom, he was hailed as "The Self-created One" and "King of the Gods" who had created all things, including himself. But I don't think this is Amun. Before there was Amun, there was another ram headed god. Another creator god who created everything including other gods. Khnum. 

He was one of the oldest Egyptian deities. And guess what: he was venerated as the god of the source of the Nile 🙂 Is this cool or what? I talked about this good in my post "Khnum" and there I explained why he was depicted as a "ram" (???) headed deity. 

The horizontally twisted horns show that we are dealing with a ram of the species "ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiacus".

This was the earliest type to be domesticated in Egypt, but became extinct sometime in the New Kingdom. Nevertheless, the shape of the horns was preserved even in later depictions of Khnum. Now here is the interesting bit. We have no idea what this "ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiacus" was or whether it was even a sheep or a goat. Regardless, the only two potential candidates, for the place of the "ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiacus" both have their young during April. The time when the first rains, represented by Tefnut and Shu, arrive to Ethiopian highlands. Right when papyrus flowers and right when Nile barb spawns...

Tefnut and Shu, the creators of all life...

Interesting artefact indeed 🙂