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...

For all the people who forgot who they are

For all the people who forgot who they are when they moved away from home:

"A mountain drove a deer away from its body. The deer went over to another mountain. It grew fat and insolent. It began to curse «back at» the mountain: 'Would that a fire burn up the mountain on which I am grazing! Would that the Storm-god strike it! Would that a fire burn it up!' 

When the mountain heard (thus), it became sick in its heart, and the mountain cursed back at the deer: 'Is the deer that I made fat now cursing back at me? Let the hunters fell the deer, but let the fowlers take it! Let the hunters take its flesh, but let the fowlers take its hide!'

It is not a deer, it is a person. It is that man who ran away from his city and arrived in another land. He would be (sought to be) insolent, and he began to do evil to the city in return, and the gods of the city hold him accursed.'

Leave aside that story! I will tell you another story. Listen to my message. I will tell you a (piece of) wisdom."

One of the parables from the "Song of Release", Middle Hittite text dated to the early 14th century BC. 

The shards with deer were found in a sacrificial pit in the Uşaklı Höyük, 2nd millennium BC Hittite city, which is now believed to be Zippalanda, one of the Early Hittite holy cities...

The pics are from the excavation report published by the University of Pisa which lead the excavation.

Now what are these weird "cupmark" like circles surrounding the deer with full grown antlers?

Symbolic depictions of rain? Remember my article "Lapis manalis"?

Article about the Roman agricultural rituals which link the (thirsty) dead living under (holy) stones, rain and agricultural fertility...And lots of other interesting things...

And this article, "Lapis lazuli water seal", about this Lapis lazuli seal, made between 2400BC and 2000BC in Eastern Iran, which talks about circles being used a symbol for raindrops...

This is the climate chart for the area of Uşaklı Höyük/Zippalanda. You can see that the rains arrive in Oct...

Reed deer antlers become fully grown right in time for the beginning of their mating season, rut, which lasts between late Sep and early Nov, and peaks in Oct. Red deer rut is marked by loud stag mating roars and wild stag fights for females...

This is not something you would easily miss...And just as the red deer mating season gets into the full swing, the rains arrive to Zippalanda...Life giving rains...I talked about deer (antlers) as the symbol for rain/snow/winter in my article "Winter deer"...

Deer figurines, Iran, 14th - 10th century BC...

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...