Phoenician rain dish

Phoenician dish (?), National Museum of Archaeology, Valletta, Malta. Pic by Merike Joosep.

It is "decorated" with a very interesting design: A wild goat, followed by a wild cat followed by a wild goat followed by a wild cat...

Is this just a meaningless "nice" design?

Well, of course, this is possible. Not every object has a "meaning". But let's play a game "what if the maker of this dish wanted to convey some message through the choice of animals and the way they were ordered"...It'll be fun...For me at least🙂...

The goat is an Ibex goat...In Fertile Crescent, which includes Levant, Ibex was the Goat (calendar marker) of Rain (season)...Because in Fertile Crescent, the start of the mating season of Ibex goats (Oct/Nov), coincided with the start of the rain season. I talk about goat of rain in many of my posts...

So the wild goat's identity is certain...

But the wild cat is not so easy to identify. The body shape could be that of

Asiatic lioness

Asiatic leopard

Asiatic cheetah

All three of these wild cats were common in Levant when Phoenician civilisation flourished there...

Depending on which cat is depicted, the meaning of the "decoration" changes...Why? Because if we want to look at the depictions of these animals as animal calendar markers, we need to know when they either mated or gave birth, cause this is what animal calendar markers marked...

Asiatic lions mating season started in Jul/Aug and spanned the whole of Autumn (Aug/Sep/Oct)...

You can find relevant data here...

Which is why autumn starts in Leo (Jul/Aug). And why lion is the symbol of autumn...You can read more about these four symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

I talk about the use of lion as a mythologised animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, the hottest/driest time of the year in Europe, Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia, in many of my posts...

So lioness would also be an animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...

When I first saw this Phoenician dish, I was convinced that the wild cat was indeed an Asiatic lioness, because it has no spots of any kind...

Which would make the message encoded in the "decoration" of the Phoenician dish:

Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows Goat (symbol for cool wet season) follows Lioness (symbol for hot dry season) follows...

But then something caught my eye: the dots and circles...

Which look very much like cup marks...

Which look very much like this...

I talked about this in my post "Lapis Manalis"...

Now apparently, dots and circles were used in the past to represent rain. I talked about this in my posts "Malatya relief", "Lapis lazuli water seal"

As I already said, Ibex goats have mating season which starts in Oct/Nov, the beginning of winter. And both Asiatic leopards and cheetahs have mating season which starts in Jan/Feb, beginning of spring...

Now if we look at the climatic charts for Levant again (it is pretty much the same all over Fertile Crescent), we can see that Winter (Ibex, Nov/Dec/Jan) and Spring (Leopard/Cheetah, Feb/Mar/Apr) is the cool, wet, rainy, green season in this part of the word...

Rainy season which can be symbolically depicted by "Ibex followed by Leopard/Cheetah among the dots with a green tree (of life) behind them"...

Just like on this 3200-3000 BC seal from Late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr Period...I talked about this in my post "Ibex and leopard"

Or even more explicitly on this vessel from Tepe Hissar, dated to 4500-4000 BC...Both Ibex goat and Leopard/Cheetah are actually ejaculating rain...I talked about this in my post "Vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

So is it possible that the animals on the Phoenician dish were depicted as silhouettes, and that the wild cats depicted with wild goats among the raindrops are not Asiatic lionesses but instead Asiatic leopards/cheetahs?

Just like on this Greek Hydria. Kerameikos,  Athens, Archaeological Museum in Athens. 660-580 BC. Where we see a leopard paired with boar, another animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, and lion paired with fallow deer, another animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug...I talked about it in my post "Sirens"...

In which case the message encoded by the maker of this amazing Phoenician object would be "rejoice, it's raining (wild) cats and (wild) goats" 🙂...

Anyway, we will never know, but I think musing over this was fun...At least it was for me...How was it for you? 🙂

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...

Mythical animal from Körtik Tepe

Depiction of a "mythical composite animal" on a plaster plaque from the 10,000BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic A layers of the archaeological site Körtik Tepe, located in the Diyarbakır district of Turkey. One of the first ever found...

Many such plaques were found in Körtik Tepe graves, so they obviously had some ritual meaning for the people who made them...The question is what meaning could that be?

Well, in order to answer this question, we first need to identify the animals from which this "mythical composite animal" is made...So have a look at my earlier post "Goat and snake from Kortik Tepe" about Ibex goat and snake symbolism in Körtik Tepe art. 

In it explain that Ibex is an animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, the start of the mating season of Ibex Goats. And that snake is an animal calendar marker for Apr/May, the start of the mating season of vipers...

Now if we look at the climate in the area of Körtik Tepe, will see that head, Ibex, wild goat, which marks Oct/Nov, also marks the beginning of the cool, wet season in the Körtik Tepe area, and tail, snake, which marks Apr/May, also marks the end of the cool, wet season in the Körtik Tepe area...

Together, they mark the season of rebirth (of nature), brought by rain...water...

This reminds me of the (ancient?) belief, preserved by Slavs, about the thirsty ancestors...Is this why we find all these "empty" vessels in Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age graves? Were they placed in the graves full of water, for the thirsty dead? I talked about in my post "White feast"...

Körtik Tepe graves also contained "empty" vessels...

Why? Did they contain water too when they were originally placed into the graves, together with the "mythical composite animal", half goat half snake, a composite animal calendar marker for rain, wet, water season...

But is this a head of an ibex goat...🙂

Top: Ibex, wild goat

Bottom: Mouflon, wild sheep

Hmmm...The horns of the composite being look more like a Mouflon...Oh no!!! 🙂

But don't fret...Nothing changes...Mouflon sheep also mate starting from Oct/Nov...So as animal calendar markers, Ibex and Mouflon are interchangeable...

So whether the Körtik Tepe "mythical composite animal" has a head of an Ibex wild goat, or a Mouflon wild sheep, the meaning of this composite animal calendar marker is still "Oct/Nov-Apr/May, the rain season"...

The season of rebirth (of nature)...

So did people from Körtik Tepe believe in rebirth?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Ultime grida dalla savana

Petroglyph, Wadi Mathendous, Libya

After the mandatory giggle, let's think what this image could represent?

Remember this? "We owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains".

My guess is that in places like Libya, where life depends on rain, life is created by Sky (Father) inseminating (raining on) Earth (Mother)...

I talked about this in several of my posts: "Riddle", "Living nature", "An Ki Ankh"

Srbska zagonetka: Visok otac, široka majka = nebo i zemlja 🙂

Serbian riddle: Tall (high) father, wide mother = sky and earth 🙂

Father Sky and Mother Earth creating Life, preserved in Serbian tradition.

Because of the above identification of Sky = Father = Male and Earth = Mother = female, in many cultures around the world we find symbolic and ritual linking between:

Male fertility (ability to produce semen), sky fertility (ability to produce rain), seed and sowing...

Female fertility (ability to conceive after being inseminated), earth fertility (ability to grow plants after them being sown), fruit and harvesting...

I talked about this in my post "Sowing", in which I discussed this strange Serbia custom: In Serbia in the past people lived in extended families called "zadruga". When grain needed to be sown, the family would choose one man to do all the sowing. He had to abstain from sex from that moment until all the seeds were sown...

This brings me to a great Italian documentary I saw years ago, "Ultime grida dalla savana" ( Final Cry of the Savanna) which was in 1975 directed by Antonio Climati and Mario Morra...

And in it, if my memory is serving me right, they showed men from some African tribe, ritually inseminating Mother Earth, by each digging a small hole in the ground, lying down over it and...

Basically ritually playing the role of the Sky Father...

Chinese door deities

In Chinese mythology, Shentu神荼 and Yulü 郁壘 are two door deities that protect Chinese houses from ghosts and demons. Legend says that they were the guardians of the ghost gate in a divine peach tree in ancient times, and responsible for watching over the ghosts as they pass through...

Very interesting indeed...Ghosts normally means the souls of the dead ancestors...And it is very significant that "the ghost gate" was located "in a divine peach tree". Here is why: plant calendar markers 🙂. Let me explain:

Peach (apricot) was directly linked to thunder (rain) god and it is actually a plant calendar marker for the beginning of the monsoon season in China...

Lei Kung (or the son of thunder) started his life as a mortal and only became the God of Thunder after eating a magic peach (apricot) after which he grew storm wings and got supernatural strength...I talked about Peach/apricot as calendar markers in my posts "Lei kung", "The sun of thunder"...

I have written a lot about the link between the dead and water (rain). 

I talked about the "thirsty" dead first in my posts "Thirst" and "White feast" about South Slavic beliefs that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And that thirsty ancestors will "drink rain from the clouds and will cause drought"...

I then talked about "thirsty dead" in my post "Lapis Manalis" about Roman belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...

BTW, do you see the similarity between cup and ring marked stones and rain caused ripples on water? Or is it just me?

And in my post "Care of the dead" about Hittite and Sumerian belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And if you forget to respect the sacred bond with the dead you end up dying of thirst...

There is also a link between the dead and water in Egypt. I talked about this in my post "The beard of Osiris" about Pharaohs who wore a false beard to pretend to be Osiris (who wore a false beard to pretend to be a dead ancestor 🙂) and about the cult of the dead in Ancient Egypt. Grain growing from the body of Osiris. 

The same link is found in Buddhism where we find Pretas, the hungry ghosts of the ancestors...I talked about this in my post "Pretas"... 

And as we can see we have the same link in China, where the ghost (ancestors) gate is located in a peach tree, the thunder (rain) tree...Very interesting indeed...

It seems this link between the dead and water (rain) and grain is found everywhere in Eurasia and North Africa...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers which enabled me to decipher all this, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...