Stoned mouflons

Post on twitter: A Byzantine-era mosaic from Antioch (modern Turkey), with a repeating pattern of ram's heads facing each other (some wearing expressions that I can't say I have ever seen on a sheep before). It was part of the border of a now-lost central image.

First reply: Maybe they grazed in a field of poppies...

In this article I will try to give a possible meaning of this "strange" image...

First, the sheep depicted on the picture are Anatolian Mouflon wild sheep. 

Male and female herds of Anatolian wild sheep stay separate from each except during the mating season, which starts in November, with rams fighting each other over the right to mate with the females...

Sooo???

Like everywhere else where we find strange mages like these, it is advisable to check the local climate, to see if there is any correlation between the behavior of the depicted animals and the climate...

Antioch was an ancient Greek city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the current city of Antakya, South Eastern Turkey.

The climatic year in the area is divided into hot and dry part (May-Oct) and wet and cool part (Nov-Apr)

The crazy loud head-butting of the wild rams coincides with the arrival of late autumn rains...Which bring life back to perched land...

Interestingly, the sheep give birth usually in Apr-June after 5 months of average gestation period...Right during poppy flowering and then harvest season...In Taurus...I talked about the poppies on Anatolian artifacts the their link to the Bull riding gods in my article "Poppies"...

Interestingly, the time to sow opium poppies in Turkey varies, according to local climatic conditions, between September and December...The poppies are planted "right after the first autumn rains"...You can read more about this in this UN report "The Cultivation of the Opium Poppy in Turkey"

Right when the wild sheep start their crazy head-butting. 

It is this rain brought by the head-butting mouflon sheep that enables poppies to grow...

Which curiously links the planting seed for poppies with mating of wild sheep. And harvesting of poppies with lambing of wild sheep...

Poppies and wild sheep...

Intoxicating love...

Or maybe whoever made the mosaic just liked sheep and flowers...

Poppy priestess

A woman buried around 700BC in the grave 15 from Marvinci-Lisičin Dol cemetery near Valandovo, Macedonia, was not an ordinary woman...

This is a beautiful artist depiction of what the woman, believed to have been a priestess, looked like...

She was buried with so-called Paeonian ritual bronzes. She was also wearing a long belt chain, at which end hang a miniature pyxis (jar) shaped like opium poppy bulb, with bird protome (handles). The jar which, based on the organic matter found inside of it, contained raw opium

What is very interesting is that the chain on which the opium jar hang, was attached to two sickle knifes...

Official interpretation of all these sickles is that "These might be sacrificial instruments but also symbolic tools for harvesting, i.e. ultimately symbols of fertility..."

I don't think so...

This amazing looking thing is an old traditional opium poppy bulb scaring sickle knife with a goat horn handle from Central Asia...

This thing is an old traditional opium harvesting sickle knife from Central Asia...

So harvest indeed, but maybe not of wheat. Of poppies...I mean the poppy priests carried a jar with raw opium on her chain which which ended up with these sickles...

Opium harvest, Makedonija, 1950s. 

I wonder what the grandad is smoking in his pipe 🙂

When I was a kid, in 1970s, my grandparents, who lived in a village in South of Serbia, still grew poppies in their garden, "for medicinal tea" 🙂 in case someone needs a pain killer...

In my article about the link between ancient gods and opium poppies, I explained that there is a link between bulls, gods and poppies. 

Because the poppy harvest in most parts of Eurasia starts in Taurus...The time when wild Eurasian cattle, aurochs, start their calving...This is the golden calf...

You know when yesterday I wrote a post about crazy smiling people and bulls on the brooch from Sicily, which dates from around the same time as this burial...Maybe everyone was so happy not because the grain harvest was starting, but because they were all stoned on freshly harvested opium...Harvested in Taurus...

Now to me this is actually the most interesting bit...The priestess was buried around 700 BC wearing massive disc belt

This is traditional female dress from Macedonia, early 20th c AD...With the same massive disc belt...

Sources of info about the burial:

"Connecting Elites and Regions. Perspectives on contacts, relations and differentiation during the Early Iron Age Hallstatt C period in Northwest and Central Europe"

"Sotto la protezione delle Eliadi. La collana della Tomba 660 di Megara Iblea"

"Macedonian Bronzes - 30 Years Later"

"Makedonische Bronzen"

Poppies

I came across this interesting artefact recently.

The artefact turns out to be from Urartu and is forehead part of the horse head gear. It is currently kept in Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum.

It was dated to c. 800BC

Urartu is a geographical region commonly used as the exonym for the Iron Age kingdom also known by the modern rendition of its endonym, the Kingdom of Van, centered around Lake Van in the historic Armenian Highlands (present-day eastern Anatolia).

The symbols depicted on this artefacts are very interesting indeed.

The "god", I presume it's a god, is riding on a bull. He is standing in the middle of (wearing) a flying winged disc, usually symbol for the sun and he has what looks like sun disc on his crown. And the whole metal thingy is shaped like a sun with rays pointing upward...

But he couldn't be a sun god.

Because there is only one god in Urartian pantheon which rides on a bull: Theispas the thunder god. He is basically the same god as the Hurian Teshub and Luwian Tarhunz...

And all these gods "ride on a bull" and cary a trident (symbol of lightning)...

And so does the guy on the above artefact. He rides on a bull and holds a trident in each hand...

Or does he?

Here is the close up of one of the "tridents":

To me this looks very very vey much like this: opium poppies...

But why would a storm god cary opium poppies?

Have a look at this:

The planting of poppies throughout the poppy growing regions of the Balkans, Asia Minor and Middle East takes place in the autumn, from September to December, depending on the locality...

If the plant survives the winter, it requires ample rain in between March and May.

The rainfall pattern in the Anatolian (Armenian) plateau

Here is the average precipitation in eastern Anatolian plateau, lake Van region, the land of Urartians and Hurians. The rain peaks in April.

In the rest of the Anatolian plateau, the land of the Hittites, the rain peaks in May.

Taurus Taurus (20 April – 21 May) covers the maximum rain, maximum thunderstorm season in both of these areas.

Which is why, I believe, Urartian Theispas, Hurrian Teshub, Luwian Tarhunz...All ride on a bull...

And cary tridents

Hmmm...Trident's you say...Why tridents? 

But Taurus doesn't only bring rain to Anatolian (Armenian) plateau. It also brings summer. 

As you can see in the above precipitation tables, the May-June is when the rains stop and the hot weather starts. Exactly what opium poppies need to flower and ripen:

I already wrote in my posts "Ram and bull" and "Symbols of the seasons", about the bull being the symbol of the summer.

The summer starts at the beginning of May, during wild Eurasian cattle calving season and ends at the beginning of August, during wild Eurasian cattle mating season...

Bull is the true symbol of summer...

And summer is the main opium poppy harvesting season:

In Turkey, opium poppy harvest season starts in May...
In Afghanistan, the opium poppy harvest season starts in late April early May...
In Iraq, the opium poppy harvest season starts in late April early May...
In Iran, the opium poppy harvest season starts in later April early May...

In the Balkans, the opium poppy harvest season starts in May...

These are stills from an amazing Macedonian documentary from 1955 called Rhythm And Sound. Showing poppy harvesting. 

You can find video here: part 1, part 2

Basically opium poppies are harvested during the summer, symbolised by the bull. The bull, or more precisely the guy on the bull, the pusher, brings the poppies...

So here are some questions:

1. Is the guy on the Urartian artefact the thunder god? I presume he is a god and not a stoned acrobat...
2. Is he carrying poppies to announce the beginning of the opium harvest season? Sort of: The pusher's here!!! The Thunder dude!!! It's party time!!!
3. Did the trident, the symbol of thunder gods, develop from poppies? 

What do you think?

Great source of information about the cultivation of poppies in the Balkans, Asia Minor and Middle East is this article entitled "Some Observations on the Cultivation of Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) for Its Latex" by A. D. Krikorian and Myron C. Ledbetter

What is very interesting as well is that apparently, opium poppies were "...most likely first cultivated for human use in Asia Minor or in the Balkans..." according to "Troubling Fields: The Opium Poppy in Egypt" by Joseph J. Hobbs

So the link between the poppies harvest, which starts right after the Thunder gods bring thunderstorms in Taurus, during the calving of the wild cattle, was very strong in the area from the beginning...