Sun god in a boat

Another interesting seal. Akkadian, Tell Asmar. Description: "Sun god in a boat. On prow long-haired crowned figure with punting pole and human-headed lion, snake's head for stern, plow, vase and two objects above, fertility goddess beside boat, fish below" 

That's it???

Well no obviously...There are a lot of interesting details on this seal that definitely deserve some explanation...

I will start with the "fertility goddess beside boat". 

Well she has grain growing out of her and she is holding poppies...

Why?

Opium poppies were cultivated in Ancient Mesopotamia where they were known as "hul gil", meaning "joy plant" 🙂 So poppy harvest was an important annual event in Mesopotamia...Poppy harvest in Iraq starts in Apr-May. More in my article "Poppies and thunder gods"  

But why is "the fertility goddess", basically mother earth from which protrude ripe ears of grain, holding ripe poppies? Well because the poppy and grain harvests coincide in Mesopotamia. You can see that both barley (main Mesopotamian grain) and poppies harvests start in Apr-May...

The poppy and grain harvest season also coincides with the annual flooding in Mesopotamia which peaks in late April early May...Hence the reed boat...Here is the Euphrates flow table. The water levels suddenly peak in April and May, due to snow melt in Iran...

The reed boat represents summer, hence Sun god as the main passenger. Summer starts in Taurus, end of April, beginning of May, harvest time in Mesopotamia...

What about "snake stern"? 

Summer is the time of snakes, which is why snakes became symbols of sun's heat and summer. You can read more about the snake solar symbolism in my article "Enemy of the sun"...

So the boat of snakes, the boat of sun's heat, sun boat, summer...

Where is Sun god stirring the boat of summer towards? Well towards autumn...Which starts in Leo and is symbolised by a lion...Lion kills snake, summer ends, autumn begins... 

Hence the Sun god ferrying the lion in his boat. 

Towards autumn...

Which is when the first ploughing starts. 

At the end of the lion mating season, which starts in Leo and spans the whole of autumn 

Hence the Sun god is ferrying the plough with the lion. Is this a water jug? The fields are ploughed only after they are flooded to soften the soil...Also summer is the time of drought, the time without rain, the time when fresh drinking water becomes very precious...

That's all I have to say about that...Here is the link to the museum page for this seal. 

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?

Musth

This is a very very interesting Indus Valley civilisation artefact. Official description: "TPlano convex molded tablet showing a female deity battling two tigers and standing above an elephant. A single Indus script depicting a spoked wheel is above the head of the deity"...

The interpretations of this artefact which are put forward all pretty much sum up to "We have no idea what we are looking at"...

So I would like to put forward my interpretation of this image to see if it makes sense to you guys...

First I would like to remind you of my article about the Assumption of Mary. In it I talked about all Eurasian and North African goddesses which either sit or stand on a lion, or arrive in a cart pulled by lions, or sit on a throne between lions...

In Serbia this goddess is preserved as St "Ognjena Marija" (Fiery Mary).


Middle of Leo, the moment of maximum heat in the northern hemisphere, is in Serbia known as St Elijah's day. St Elijah, the saint that "gets so angry at the world that he is about to burn it to cinder.

 Except he doesn't, because he is calmed by his wife Ognjena Marija (Fiery Mary)...The Lion (Leo) Lady...

I talked about Serbian Middle of August mythology in my posts "The thundering sun god", "Alidjun", "Ognjena Marija"

I proposed that all these images represent one thing: Virgo which starts when Leo ends...Mary. Fiery Mary...

The image of a woman standing or sitting between two lions specifically marks the moment when the Earth starts to increase its influence in the Sun-Earth system and the beginning of the cooling of the northern hemisphere. This happens in the middle of Leo...I talked about this in my post "Two Crosses"

The middle of Leo is difficult to represent visually. You can do it by depicting the woman as standing on the middle part of the lion's back, or standing or sitting between two lions...Which is exactly what we find...

Sun in the middle of Leo is on this illustration from a 17th century Persian Manuscript represented as a sun sitting between two lions.

So the woman standing between two lions (not tigers) on the Harrapan seal represents middle of Leo and the beginning of the cooling of the area of India and Pakistan where Indus River civilisation once flourished (Area 1 on the below map)...

The average temperature all over India starts dropping in the middle of Leo (July-August). The same is true for northwestern part...

Why is the "Goddess" standing on an elephant? Every year, during mating season, Asian elephant bulls develop a physiological condition called "musth"...

Musth occurs at the same time every year and peaks during wet season, monsoon season. And that season starts in June and ends in September. And yes, it peaks during Leo (July-August). Here is the precipitation for northwestern India....

Climate details for Indian subcontinent can be found in this article.

So the image depicted on the Indus Valley seal means: When Elephants go into mating season, in the middle of Leo, Earth will start to cool down, and Lady, Virgo, Yin, Mother Earth aspect of nature will start taking over...I talked about the Earth - Sun system in my post "Yin and Yang".

And the Lady is not standing between two lions for no reason either. Mating season of Asiatic lions starts in August, in Leo...

I talked about this in my post "Entemena vase". 

And what comes after Leo? Virgo of course...The lady that likes "riding on lions" or "riding on carts pulled by lions", or "standing between the lions"...

What about the "Indus Valley script symbol" above the scene? Well, middle of August, middle of Leo, is in Serbia known as day of Perun, the day of the thunder god. The bringer of rain. The scene on the seal depicts "middle of Leo, maximum heat, maximum rain"...And the wheel...

Interestingly, Serbian ritual folk songs talk about "Serbian old country, India". I talked about this in my post "Triglav, Trojan, Trinity, Trimurti"...

O yeah. Did you know that Indra, Hindu thunder god, arrives on Airavata, a white elephant which is also called "Abhra-Matanga" meaning "elephant of the clouds", "Naga-Malla" meaning "the fighting elephant" and "Arkasodara" meaning "brother of the sun"...

Interesting, right?

Equilibrium

Libra (♎) is the seventh astrological sign in the Zodiac. Under the tropical zodiac, Sun transits this area on average between (northern autumnal equinox) September 22 (23) and October 23.

The ruling planet of Libra is Venus. Libra is the only zodiac constellation in the sky represented by an inanimate object.

The Libra sign follows the Virgo sign.

We could almost say that Virgo (Lady) "holds" Libra (Scales) in her hands.

Libra is also another Zodiac sign which can help us understand the true nature of the Zodiac. Which is that the Zodiac is Solar and not Stellar system of signs.

I have already written several article explaining how zodiac sings mark periods of time when important natural events happen during Solar year. These events are linked to the climatic changes in temperate zones of Evroasia and occur every year at more or less the same time. And are not in any way affected by any other star except our own, our Sun.

So far I have shown that four zodiac signs, Aries (ram), Taurus (bull), Pisces (fishes) and Capricorn (goat) mark important cyclical natural events related to animals who live in temperate zones of Evroasia.  

Aries - marks lambing season of European wild sheep
Taurus - marks calving season of European wild cattle
Pisces - marks mating season of European salmon
Capricorn - marks mating season of Alpine ibexes

These events occur every year at the same time, during the time period marked by the images of these animals. And these events are not in any way affected by any star. And they are not in any way influenced by the precession. 

And what about the other non animal zodiac signs? I have so far covered these 3:

Sagittarius - marks the fur hunting season in Continental Eurasia

Aquarius - marks the beginning of the snowmelt in Continental Eurasia

Virgo - marks the beginning of the cooling of the Northern hemisphere, the beginning of the period dominated by the Earth, Yin (Cold, Dark, Wet), the arrival of the Lady which rides on a lion, rides in chariots pulled by lions or stands or sits between lions

But what about Libra? How does it fit into this fixed Solar zodiac?

Well the part of the Solar year marked by the Libra zodiac sign start the day after the Autumn Equinox. Autumn Equinox marks the moment when day and night are of the equal length. 

The day after the Autumn Equinox, night becomes longer than day. This is the moment when the feminine principles (dark, cold, wet), the Yin principles of Mother Earth, finally overpower the masculine principles (bright, hot, dry), the Yang principles of Father Sun. 

I talked about this in my post "Yin and Yang". 

From that day the scales tip and Mother Earth, The Lady, The Virgo, becomes dominant force in the Sun - Earth system. 

This event, the tipping of the equilibrium of day and night in favour of night, occurs every Solar year at the same time (22nd of September). And this event is not affected by stars and is not influenced by precession. It is firmly fixed on the Solar circle. 

And this is why we find the Zodiac sign Libra where it is. To mark this event. 

So what do you think of all this? 

BTW, Mesopotamians seems to have viewed Libra in the same way, as their name for this sign suggest: ZIB-BA AN-NA, The Balance of Heaven. I talked about this in my post "ZIB-BA AN-NA"...

PS: I have since finished the full analysis of the European Zodiac. You can find the jump page to the articles about all the signs here...

Sun god from the first temple

In my post "Boaz and Jachin" I talked about the significance of the fact that Solomon built his temple on a threshing floor. The reason why this is significant is because in the past threshing floors were not only used for threshing and winnowing, but were also used as solar observatories and for ceremonies which were part of a solar cult. At the end of that article I suggested that the First Temple, whose entrance was oriented towards true east, towards the area of the horizon where the sun rises, was a temple dedicated to the sun and built by sun worshipers. And I said that we actually have indications that this could in fact have been the case.

Well some might say that just because the temple was oriented towards the east, that doesn't mean that the people who built the temple worshiped the sun. For instance look at the early Christian churches which were also oriented towards the east. Does that mean that the early Christians were also sun worshipers?

To this I will just say :)

That the builders of the first temple were sun worshipers we are actually told by the scriptures. In Ezekiel 8:16 we read this:

"In the sixth year, in the sixth month on the fifth day, while I was sitting in my house and the elders of Judah were sitting before me, the hand of the Sovereign Lord came on me there. 2 I looked, and I saw a figure like that of a man.[a] From what appeared to be his waist down he was like fire, and from there up his appearance was as bright as glowing metal. 3 He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem...He then brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord, and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east."

One of the common archaeological characteristic of the early Christian churches is that they were oriented toward East, i.d. toward the Rising Sun, the same orientation found in the First temple. So the orientation of the Christian churches can't be used as the proof that the first temple was not a temple of sun worshipers. Quite the opposite. It raises questions whether the early Christians were sun worshipers too. 

The early Christian practice of praying facing East, in the direction of the rising sun, was such a big problem, that Tertullian (born c. AD 160) felt constrained to write in his “Apology,” and again in his writing “Against Valentinian”:


"Others... believe that the sun is our god... though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth.... The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer."

Tertullian was not the only one who was at pain to explain why Christians pray facing the rising sun in the east. According to Saint Gregory of Nyssa: "the Orient was the birthplace of mankind, and the earthly garden of paradise".  Saint Thomas Aquinas spoke of: "the East as the place of our Lord’s life and death, the direction from which He would come on judgment day".

Which of course makes no sense if you are an Egyptian Christian, or Indian Christian, or Armenian Christian...The only reason why the early Christians prayed facing the rising sun in the east, which makes sense, is because they were sun worshipers too, just like the builders of the First Temple....

Anyway... 

Ezekiel (622 - 570 BCE) strongly disproved of sun worshiping practices that he had observed in the First temple. The fact that people still prayed to the sun during the time of Ezekiel is very interesting, because it shows how strong this solar cult was among the people of Judah. Ezekiel was born during the reign of Josiah (649–609 BCE). And it was Josiah, who according to the Hebrew Bible, instituted major religious changes aimed at eradicating the solar cult which flourished in Judah before and during his time. How strong the solar cult was in Judah just before the time of Josiah can be seen from the royal seal of the Kingdom of Judah from the time of the King Hezekiah (739 - 687 BC).

The seal bears the symbol of a winged sun and two ankh symbols, which symbolize life.

This means that the solar cult was not a minor religious curiosity. It was a state religion whose main temple was the First temple. A state religion supported by at least a significant part of the Judah's population. 

So when Josiah started his religious reforms, not everyone was pleased. A lot of people saw these changes as sacrilege and continued to practice the old solar religion. We know that this was the case because we find evidence of the solar cult among the people of Judah again and again in the following centuries. 

Now as part of his crusade, Josiah did the major cleanup of the First temmple. In 2 Kings 23:11 we read:

"He (Josiah) removed from the entrance of the LORD's Temple the horse statues that the former kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun... He also burned the chariots dedicated to the sun..."

This is most peculiar. We have a temple, build on a threshing floor (ancient solar observatory). The temple was oriented towards the east, and in the temple people prayed to the rising sun as if it was a god. And the temple housed a chariot and horses dedicated to the sun god???

Who was this sun god to whom ancient kings of Judah dedicated horses and chariot?

Well Helios of course.

Here is a depiction of Helios, the old titan (Old European) sun god. He is mostly depicted as a youth with sun ray halo driving the chariot pulled by winged horses across the sky, from east to west.

Why do I think that this god was Helios? Well because 800 years after Josiah removed Helios from the first temple, he reappears in synagogues in Holy land.

The Beth Alpha or Bet Alpha or Bet Alfa is a sixth-century synagogue located at the foot of the northern slopes of the Gilboa mountains near Beit She'an, Israel.

The central nave floor mosaic panel features a Jewish adaptation of the Greco-Roman zodiac. The zodiac consists of two concentric circles, with the twelve zodiac signs appearing in the outer circle, and Helios, the Greco-Roman sun god, appearing in the inner circle. The outer circle consists of twelve panels, each of which correspond to one of the twelve months of the year and contain the appropriate Greco-Roman zodiac sign. Female busts symbolizing the four seasons appear in the four corners immediately outside the zodiac. In the center, Helios appears with his signature Greco-Roman iconographic elements such as the fiery crown of rays adorning his head and the highly stylized quadriga or four-horse-drawn chariot. The background is decorated with a crescent shaped moon and stars. As in the "Binding of Isaac" panel, the zodiac symbols and seasonal busts are labeled with their corresponding Hebrew names.

This zodiac wheel, with Helios or Sun in it's center is found in contemporaneous synagogues throughout Israel such as Naaran, Susiya, Hamat Tiberias, Huseifa, and Sepphoris.

The Tzippori Synagogue (Sepphoris Synagogue,) is an ancient synagogue discovered in Tzippori, a Roman-era Jewish city in the Galilee. Based on numismatic evidence, the synagogue appears to have been built in the first half of the fifth century. In the center of the nave floor, there is a large Zodiac with the names of the months written in Hebrew. Helios sits in the middle, in his sun chariot.

The Hammat Tiberias Synagogue is an ancient synagogue on the outskirts of Tiberias, located near the hot springs just south of the city. The synagogue dates to 286 and 337 CE, when Tiberias was the seat of the Sanhedrin.The mosaic floor is made up of three panels featuring the zodiac, and Helios, the sun god. Women who symbolize the four seasons of nature appear in each corner.

It is important to note that this image of Helios does not appear anywhere in Synagogues in Jewish diaspora. It is only found in Synagogues in holy land.

Now what is Helios doing in the synagogues?!? 

Well currently, there is a scholarly debate going on regarding the relationship between Judaism and general Greco-Roman culture in late-antiquity. Some interpret the popularity that the zodiac maintains within synagogue floors as evidence for its Judaization and adaptation into the Jewish calendar and liturgy. Others see it as representing the existence of a “non-Rabbinic” or a mystical and Hellenized form of Judaism that embraced the astral religion of Greco-Roman culture.

Interestingly there is no mention of the Solar cult of the First temple and the possibility that the the appearance of Helios in synagogues marks the reemergence of this cult in the holy land???

As I already mentioned, Ezekiel sees priests in the First Temple worshiping the sun. Interestingly, Josephus records an Essene practice that he says was handed down to them by the forefathers where it appears that they were praying to the rising sun (War 2.8.5).

Qumran scrolls, which are attributed to the Essens, seem to confirm that Josephus was telling the truth. In the Hodayom, there are several references to prayer at dawn. 1QH 4:5 states: "I thank thee, O Lord, for Thou hast illuminated my face by Thy covenant, and I seek Thee, and sure as the dawn Thou hast appeared to me as perfect light."

Church fathers Origen (Contra Celsius 1.26, 5.6), Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, 6.5.41), and maybe even some of the New Testament Epistles (Col 2:16-23, Heb 2:5) are aware of some Jewish practices that involved worship of objects in the sky.

So were the synagogues with Helios built by Essenes?

In the Book of Enoch, which dates to at least a couple of centuries before Christ, and have been very important for the further development of the Qumranic (Essenic) Judaisms, we find an impressive part (the Astronomical Book) about the course of the Sun and the use of a solar calendar (found also in Qumran). The use of this Solar calendar was considered extremely important. Which is to be expected from the sun worshipers.

On the "Hebrew calendar" Wiki page we read:

"Many of the Dead Sea (Qumran) Scrolls have references to a unique calendar, used by the people there, who are often assumed to be Essenes. The year of this calendar used the ideal Mesopotamian calendar of twelve 30-day months, to which were added 4 days at the equinoxes and solstices (cardinal points), making a total of 364 days...With only 364 days, it is clear that the calendar would after a few years be very noticeably different from the actual seasons, but there is nothing to indicate what was done about this problem. Various suggestions have been made by scholars. One is that nothing was done and the calendar was allowed to change with respect to the seasons. Another suggestion is that changes were made irregularly, only when the seasonal anomaly was too great to be ignored any longer."

I will suggest here that the Solar calendar used by the Qumran community and before then by the people who wrote the Book of Enoch did not slide at all. I believe that it was regularly readjusted every winter solstice, when the new sun, solar year, was born. This is very easy to do if you know how to use threshing floor as a solar observatory. Which is why the First temple was built on the threshing floor. It made determining of the winter solstice, the starting point of the new solar year easy, which ensured that the calendar never slipped.  

Was this solar calendar which was used by the writers of the Book of Enoch and by the Qumran community the calendar used in the First temple? I believe so. Solar worshipers, who built their temple on a threshing floor, a solar observatory used for determining the date and the time based on the movement of the sun definitely used solar calendar. They would have seen this as part of their religion.

This solar calendar of the First temple was later almost fully substituted by the lunar calendar of the Second temple. This lunar calendar was probably a borrowing from the Babylonians. It could have been brought back from the exile or could have been introduced even later according to some scholars. You can read more about this change of calendar in these three books and many more:

"Calendrical Variations in Second Temple Judaism" by Stéphane Saulnier

"Out of the Cave: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Dead Sea Scrolls Research" by Edna Ullmann-Margalit

"Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection" edited by Gabriele Boccaccini

This change of calendar was not just "the change of calendar".

The Book of Enoch makes it is clear that there were some Jews that considered the Second Temple as impure, and were clearly trying to restore a cult which was as much as possible near to the one of the First Temple. The solar cult. 

It appears that the worship or veneration of the sun (or other objects in the sky for that matter) which had a precedent in the First Temple period and is condemned by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, and which Josiah tried to eradicate through his "reforms", never really completely died out. And this is why centuries after Josiah removed chariot and the horses dedicated to the sun from the First temple, Helios appears in synagogues in holy land.  

But then, around the 6th century AD Helios disappears from the synagogues never to be seen again. 

So here we are left with two questions:

1. Where did Helios come to holy land from?
2. Where did Helios go from the holy land to?

I will talk about this in my next posts...