Eagle dance

Leroy Golf was an American who worked in the oil industry in the Middle East in the 1930s and 1940s where he acquired a number of very interesting seals...

Leroy returned home around 1950 and died shortly thereafter. He had no family and only one close friend, a Mr. Henderson in Kansas who inherited his collection...

Mr. Henderson died in 1974, when the collection was wrapped up and placed in a carpenter’s wooden chest in the attic. Mrs. Henderson died in 2001 and the Leroy's collection, along with the contents of the house, was then sold to a local second hand dealer...

The items were sold by her on eBay or to other dealers in 2002 and 2003...

I wonder if the local second hand dealer knew what she was selling...

Today I would like to talk about one of these very interesting seals. This one found in North Mesopotamia-Syria, and dated to about 1800–1500 BC.

Why is this seal interesting? Cause all the symbols depicted on it point at the same time of the year: winter. Suggesting that this is a complex calendar marker...

The seal depicts two birds with outstretched wings facing each other. The birds are depicted over what looks like a mountain. A crescent moon is depicted above one of the birds...Why?

I would suggest that the birds depicted on the seal are eagles, more specifically vultures. Just like this one depicted on this older sea, also found in Syria, and was dated to about 3000-2000 BC. and also from Leroy Golf collection.

The way they are depicted, facing each other, looks almost like they are fighting...Or dancing, jumping, with outstretched wings...

There is a dance from the Dinaric mountains of the Balkans called Oro. It is danced usually during wedding ceremonies, by a man and a woman facing each other, jumping with outstretched arms...

You can see the eagle dance performance by a folk ensemble here

The locals says that the name of the dance comes from the local word for an eagle "oro" and that the dancers are imitating the mating dance of eagles. More precisely vultures...

I talked about this dance in my post "Shield of Achilles"...

 

Why was I talking about this dance in a post about the Shield of Achilles? Cause this dance is identical to the description of the dance from Iliad...Check the above blog post...

Anyway, what the dancers of this Balkan mountain dance are trying to imitate is this: courtship aerial display performed by vultures at the beginning of their mating season...

I talked about this in my post "Double headed eagle". Cause the vultures performing this aerial dance look like this from the ground...

The beginning of the Vultures mating season coincides with the beginning of the cool wet season (Nov-Apr), Mesopotamian winter, and spans this season. This is the only time when rain and snow fall in this part of the world...

This is why the rain god was originally imagined as huge black eagle, then as an eagle man, then as a man with a pet eagle...

I talked about this in my posts "Pero", "Abu", "Eagle dude from Aleppo", "Pillar 43", "Giant eagle dude with mouflons", "Strider"...

Vultures nest in the mountains north east of Mesopotamia and Syria. And it is the the rain and snow that fall on these mountains, when vultures dance in the air above them, during the cool wet half of the year, that feed the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates...

These mountains are Abzu, the source of sweet water from Sumerian mythology...I talked about this in my post "Shamash young and old". 

In it I analysed this seal showing young (spring) sun god Shamash/Utu, climbing the mountains of Abzu towards Enki (sweet water) who is imprisoned (the ice and snow on the mountain tops) to free him (melt the ice and snow)...Over 70% of all the water flowing down Tigris and Euphrates comes from annual snowmelt... 

These mountains are also E-Kur, the mountains of the gods, the original heaven on earth...From where gods brought grain, agriculture and culture in general to Mesopotamia. I talked about this in my post "How grain came to Sumer"...

So the interpretation that the mountain depicted under the two birds is "the sacred double mountain of Mashu, the sacred mountains that Gilgamish had to pass before he could reach the land of the gods" is not off the mark at all...

I explained why we should look for this sacred "Cedar Mountain" North East of Mesopotamia in my post "Humbaba"

So we have two eagles dancing above the mountains...Which means winter...Now do you see the crescent moon depicted above one of the two dancing eagles? It is pointing upwards. Which only happens during winter...

This is another common symbol for winter...I talked about winter moon in several of my posts. 

Like "Lions vs buffalos" about this Akkadian seal

Or like "Seven stars of scorpio" about this Mesopotamian seal 

Now do you see this "star" above the ploughing scene? Next to the moon? That's Sirius, which appears in the night sky with the moon at the beginning of winter. At the time when grain fields are ploughed and grain is sown in Mesopotamia...

After the first rains brought by the eagles dancing over the holy mountains...

That's as far as I can go today. Finally, we are left with 3 dots...I have no idea what they mean...I will have to leave that symbol, which I have seen on other seals too, for some other time. I think this is quite enough for today...

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...

Shield of Achilles

In "On Dance", Lucian names as the birthplace of Greek dance the island of Crete, were according to Myth, Rhea, the Mother of Zeus, being enchanted by this art, taught the Curetes in Crete how to dance...

Few days ago I read a very interesting article called "Circular Platforms at Minoan Knossos" which was published by Peter Warren in "The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 79 (1984)". 

The article first describes the discovery of three circular platforms located on a hillside at the edge of Knossos.

It then proceeds with proposing that these were threshing floors, which are still found all over mediterranean.

But it then dismisses this explanation and proposes that the discovered structures were dancing floors. And it then goes on to point at various depictions of dancing people found among Minoan artefacts as the evidence that points at these circular structures being dance floors. For instance, this object from the site of Kamilari which depicts four figures holding each other by the arms and shoulders, surrounded by a low wall decorated with Horns of Consecration. Most archaeologists concur that this group is one of the earliest depiction of people dancing. 

In a walled circular structure. Which to me looks very much like a stone walled threshing floor...

There are of course much much earlier depictions of dancing, from other parts of the world. Like this depiction of people dancing holding hands...

Vase fragment, 5th - 4th millennium BC. Discovered at Rayy = Rei (?), Tehran region, Iran. Currently in Louvre, Paris.

Basically this, just 6000 years earlier...

Some people say the above Minoan object could be a depiction of people pressing grapes in a vat? Like it is still done in Duro valley in Portugal

However the structures discovered in Crete were too big to be grape vats...So...

I mean why could the circular structures discovered in Knossos not have been both threshing floors and dance floors? 

Many Greek villages have a flat place called χοροστάσι (αλώνι-χοροστάσι)(Chorostasi/Khorostasi/Horostasi), where dances, weddings and other events used to take place. 

The term "αλώνι-χοροστάσι" denotes "threshing floor", the place where the threshing of wheat was done. This is how this is done in Croatia. Horses are tied to the central pole and walk around it trampling the sheafs of grain and breaking off the seeds.

After the end of threshing, and until the next harvest, it was clean and empty and hence a natural place for celebration. 

Dancing Linđo (images from this video) on an threshing floor in the village of Mrčevo, Croatia...

As I said, in mountain villages threshing floors were usually the only flat platforms suitable for social gatherings...

I give few more examples of the dancing on threshing floors from the Balkans in my post "Sacred marriage on a threshing floor", where I also talk about the fact that threshing floors were sacred places of Inanna (Sumerian Mother of Grain) and Demeter (Greek Mother of Grain)...

Apparently the word χοροστάσι comes from χοροσ+τάσι (dance+tray) and literally means "a tray like place where singing and dancing takes place". 

According to ethnographic research from the Balkan mountains inhabited by Serbs, conducted in the 19th century, threshing floor was the place where all the village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place.The ethnographers say that this is because "threshing floors were the only flat smooth surfaces big enough to accommodate many people". 

But was this the only reason? Were threshing floors places where village meetings, celebrations and ceremonies took place because they were considered to be the sacred ground? The place where god lived on earth? I believe so.  

In 1950, Serbian ethnographer Nenad Janković published a book on folk astronomy called "Astronomija u predanjima, obicajima i umotvorinama Srba" (Astronomy in legends, customs and oral and written tradition of the Serbs). In it he expressed his great surprise at the ability of ordinary illiterate peasants to tell exact date and time without calendars and clocks. Professor Jankovic states that one of the main instruments used for these calendar and time calculations was the threshing floor. By looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole at sunrise, they were able to tell the date. And by looking at the shadow cast by the stožer, the central pole during the day they were able to tell the time. Threshing floor is a universal solar observatory, which at the same time can tell the date and the time. The main parts of this solar observatory were solar circle and its center, solar pole, stožer. Or if viewed from above, from heaven, the way Sun God would see it, a circle and a dot representing its center, solar pole, stožer. This is the symbol found all over the world and in Egypt it was the symbol of the sun, Ra. 

This circle, the symbol of the sun, Ra, is usually interpreted to mean sun disc, but I believe that it actually means sun circle, solar year, the manifestation of the Ra's power on earth...

That I am correct can be seen from the fact that this symbol, known as "sun hieroglyph" is used in the Ancient Egyptian language hieroglyphs as a determinative to refer to events of time, for example when referring to '"day xx" (of month yy'). For example, in the 24th century BC Palermo Stone, the sun hieroglyph is used to identify dates, or specific "day-events", ..."day of ....".

It also means "threshing floor", "solar observatory" and if you are a sun worshipper that equates to "temple"...Because it is from threshing floors that the Sun God was observed and his movement was interpreted as seasons, date and time...Threshing floors were the first sundials...And interestingly Greeks called the central pole of the sundial "gnomon" meaning the one which knows. This was because the central stake "new" the time and date.

How can threshing floor be used as a solar observatory?

What you are actually observing is the shadow made by the central stake. At the sunrise and sunset the shadow will be long enough to cut the circle at the opposite end. This is extremely precise way of marking the sunrise point. Which is very useful if you want to determine solstice and equinox points. And for instance align your temple with the true east, or winter or summer solstice...

Did you know that the orientations of the central courts of the palaces of Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia and Gournia were to the rising sun...

You can also observe the shadow during the day and use that to determine the hour of the day...

A place like this, where sun and grain were directly connected, must have been seen as sacred by the Greeks. We know they were seen as sacred by the Serbs. 

Rituals were performed on the threshing floor, at winter solstice, the birth of the new solar year, and some at the beginning of the threshing. During these ceremonies, sacrifices were performed on the central pole. 

There are some ethnographers who believe that this pole was the earthly representation of the Sun God...That this pole was a totem pole...I talked about this in my post "God's threshing floor".

Interestingly, at the same time Serbian folk tradition says that threshing floors are a favourite meeting place of demons and witches and one of the main places that should be avoided during the night. Witches come to threshing floors to dance. This is typical reversal of positives into negative which was a favorite method of brain washing used by Christians during forced conversions. Old gods become devils and demons, and places where people gathered to celebrate Sun God through circular solar dance, become the place where demons and witches gathered to dance. What is interesting is that people believe that witches only live on unused threshing floors. Once people stop visiting god's house on earth, the god leaves as well, and demons move in....

In Montenegro, young people, wearing flower wreaths on their heads, would gather on "Vilino Gumno", Fairy threshing floor, on the Feast of Ascension to sing songs about fairies and dance a circular dance kolo, oro. 

Christ's ascension to heaven? 
Marked by a circular solar dance? 
On a solar observatory? 

The fact that threshing floors were used as solar observatories just made me think of something...What if the word χοροστάσι was originally ὥραστάσις (horastasis) which can be broken into ὥρα+στάσις?

ὥρα - "any defined period of time, season, climate, year, time of day, hour, some specific time: right time, time for something, time of life: youth..."
στάσις - "Standing stone, pole"

Time pole...

Can we have a better description of a solar observatory? All it is is a pole stuck in the ground with a circle drawn around it...Like a threshing floor...

And because threshing floors were also sacred places where things like village councils, weddings...were held, often accompanied by dancing, the ὥραστάσις were also χοροστάσι...

Anyway...

Warren ends his article with the mention of The Shield of Achilles:

The Shield of Achilles is the shield that Achilles uses in his fight with Hector, famously described in a passage in Book 18, of Homer's Iliad. In the poem, Achilles lends Patroclus his armour in order to lead the Achaean army into battle. Ultimately, Patroclus is killed in battle by Hector, and Achilles' armour is stripped from his body and taken by Hector as spoils. The death of Patroclus prompts Achilles to return to battle, so his mother Thetis, asks the god Hephaestus to provide replacement armour for her son. He obliges, and forges a shield with spectacular decorative imagery. Homer gives a detailed description of the imagery which decorates the new shield.

This is the shield's design as interpreted by Angelo Monticelli, from Le Costume Ancien ou Moderne, ca. 1820.

One of the things Homer says was depicted on the shield was "a dancing-floor where young men and women are dancing"...

Here is the part of the Book 18 which describes the dance scene from the Shield of Achilles:

The renowned one [= Hephaistos], the one with the two strong arms, pattern-wove [poikillein] into it [= the Shield of Achilles] a place for singing-and-dancing [khoros].

It [= the khoros] was just like the one that, once upon a time in far-ruling Knossos, Daedalus made for Ariadne, the one with the beautiful tresses [plokamoi].

There were young men there, and young women who are courted with gifts of cattle, and they all were dancing [orkheîsthai] with each other, holding hands at the wrist.

...

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers [kubistētēre] among them were swirling...in their midst...

Now this is very very interesting.

Circular dances with the name like "horos" are found in all Balkan and East Slavic countries as well as in Romania and Turkey. One of the places is Montenegro where we find circular dance called "oro". 

Anthropologist Chris Boehm spent 3 years, between 1963 and 1966, doing fieldwork in Montenegro in Gornja Morača region. He called the people that he encountered there "Mountain Serbs of Montenegro".

One of the pictures taken by Chris Boehm has this capture: "All important tribal events took place on the plateau in front of the church. Oro (traditional circle dance) was often part of the event."

In the past, before churches, these events were held on threshing floors, "the only flat piece of ground in the mountain villages"...

The oro dance is typically danced at the weddings and celebrations of the Serbian Orthodox population in Montenegro and Herzegovina...

Now, in "The Geographical Journal, Volume 4, Issues 2-6 Royal Geographical Society", published in 1894 we can read

So local people believed that the name of the dance "oro" meant "eagle" dance??? Which was dismissed by the author of the above article...

But there is something remarkable about this mountain dance...It is identical to the description of the dance from Iliad:

Half the time they moved fast in a circle, with expert steps, showing the greatest ease...

The other half of the time they moved fast in straight lines, alongside each other....

A huge crowd stood around the place of the song-and-dance [khoros]...

Two special dancers among them were swirling...in their midst...

You can see the Montenegrin oro dance performed here.

Is this the kind of dance Homer saw depicted on The Shield of Achilles?