Meroitic language

This article was originally an X thread. So are most of my articles actually, as I publish all my stuff on X first. But this thread is different, as in it I wanted to show how I do my research and how fast you can find things if you know what you are looking for...

Before I saw this post 6 hours ago, I had never heard of "Meroitic language" and have never seen one of these objects before. But I had a funny feeling that I knew what was depicted on it...So I did some googling, and it turns out I was right. 

Check this out:

So my hunch was that the relief depicted some kind of connection between water (obvious, as the wavy lines are water bing poured out of the two jars) and summer solstice (not so obvious, but these two jars, for some reason, reminded me of the "twins symbol")...

Twins which mark summer solstice...I talked about these twins in several of my articles. First in my post "Hayagriva". 

Surya's wife Saranyu transforms into a mare and runs away from her husband. Surya eventually finds her, turns himself into a white stallion and...

After which Saranyu delivers horse head twins called Ashvins...

Horse zodiac symbol is disguised as Dioskuri, divine twin horsemen. The guys who wanted to marry "the daughters of the white horse". 

They mark Summer Solstice, the peak of the horse mating season, characterised by wild stallion fights for mares...

We find them in Sasanian Iran, on this plate with youths and winged horses drinking water from a jar ca. 5th–6th century AD. I talked about this in my post "Dioskuri plate from Iran"...

In Mesopotamia (no horses in site), they appear as these two charming gentlemen: Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea, "who were both closely associated with Nergal, and could be either regarded as members of his court or equated with him"...

These two dudes "typically appear together in cuneiform texts and could be described as the "divine twins", and were linked to Gemini constellation. They were regarded as protectors of doors, "possibly due to their role as the gatekeepers of the underworld"...

Hmmm...Twins guarding doors (of the underworld)? This looks like a door to you?

Very interesting, knowing that right after the summer solstice, we enter the hottest time of the year, Jul/Aug, the domain of Nergal, the god of the underworld...

In Central America we find Hero Twins who pour the water of heaven (rains there arrive in Jun/Jul). I talked about this in my post "Resurrection of the maize god"...

And finally, and most importantly for our current thread, we find them in Egypt, where god Hapi, the god of the annual flooding of the Nile, was "often depicted as twins, tying papyrus and lotus flowers together". Papyrus flowers in Apr/May (beginning of summer), and lotus in Jul/Aug (end of summer) and the knot the twins tie is...Summer solstice...I talked about him/them 🙂 in my post "Lotus and papyrus"...

Anyway, now that you know why I thought twins were important, 

So, I first went on the museum website and I found the official description of the object here:

"Offering table, from Ballana, dates to Meroitic phase IIIB-IV, decorated in relief with two kohl jars and four loaves and has a Meroitic inscription"...

So I then went to find out what the hell were "kohl jars". Well, they were jars, like this one from New Kingdom, dated to 1492–1473 BC and currently in Met Museum. 

Used for storing kohl, an ancient eye cosmetic, made by grinding stibnite.  

The Ancient Egyptians (both men and women) wore kohl on their eyelids as protection against the glare of the sun. Outlining the eyes could also have been a way of drawing a protective amulet, such as the Wadjet Eye, right onto the skin.

Anyway, I couldn't find any link between kohl and kohl jars and water, so I was about to give up and write this off as a false hunch, but I decided to just do one last thing and check where exactly was the Meroitic language spoken. 

It was spoken here. In the area between today's Aswan in Egypt and Khartoum in Sudan...

And so, in the spirit of "if all you have is a hammer (animal calendar markers), everything looks (actually is) like a nail (deified calendar)", I went to check the local climate...

And what is very interesting about this part of the world is that it has a very long dry season and very short wet season, and that the rains arrive right around...summer solstice...

So my hunch that the two jars with water pouring out of them somehow links water and summer solstice (and the start of the rain season) was right...

Which would then explain what is depicted on this very interesting offering table (altar), Ptolemaic Period, 306–30 BC. Northern Upper Egypt, Dendera, currently in the Met Museum, New York...

The flowers depicted on this altar are Sacred (blue) lotuses...

Which bloom during the annual Nile flood. 

I wrote about the calendar marker meaning of these flowers in many of my posts...

Now look at the above rain chart and the above water flow chart. They overlap...Which means that the two jars are also linked to the start of the flood season...

But what does this have to do with kohl jars? Nothing. University of Chicago was wrong. These were not kohl jars at all. They are hes-vases...

Here is one, currently in the Brooklin museum, from the Old Kingdom to 18th Dynasty. I have no idea how I came across this page. AI decided to help me I guess...I doubled it so you can see how they resemble the vases from the offering table...

The hes-vases were special vessels used to hold ritually purified water. These containers were frequently left as tomb offerings so the deceased could drink the water...

Thirsty dead? Again? I talked about the "thirsty" dead first in my posts "Drought" 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?

I finally talked about "thirsty dead" 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...

Hmmm ritually purified water...Was this purification intended to turn water back to rain? The pure water that falls from the sky that can be drank without fear of diseases?

So we have water pouring out of hes-vases, which normally contain water for the dead and loaves of bread...Again we see the link between water, the dead, rain and bread...

(This was not in the original thread, but I just remembered this thread: 

Sycamore tree goddess, originally Hathor, and later Isis, both goddess of flood, pouring water which is depicted with ankh (life) symbols inside it...Tomb, Siwa Oasis, 400-600 BC. Egypt...Is she pouring water of life from a "Hes-Vase"?

Now I was wondering why would water from the twin vases be pouring on the two loaves of bread. Maybe there is some kind of cereal that directly depends on the rain that starts falling around summer solstice...

And It turns out I was right again...Sorghum is a staple crop in Sudan. Sorghum grows during the rainy season (Jun-Sep). Once harvested, it is ground and stored for the dry season...and is used to make kisra flat breads...

And just when I decided I had found enough info to write this thread, while I was looking for a nice pic of traditional sorghum kisra flat breads, I stumbled across "Sky and Earth – A Nuba Mountains Folktale"...

Nuba Mountains lie just below Khartoum, and this story proves conclusively that my hunch about the twin(s) jars was 100% right. Here it goes:

“At the beginning of time,  the sky and the earth lived together as one..."

 "...The Nuba people remember a day when a young woman from the Nuba was grinding sorghum on the grindstone.  As she worked, she unintentionally struck the sky with her elbow.  The sky was insulted and decided to leave the place and take up residence far away from the earth..."

"...The people were unhappy about this and did not know how to continue their lives which had become gloomy and miserable without the sky, its rainy clouds and its shining sun..."

 "...They held a meeting and agreed to send an envoy to the sky to persuade it to come back. The envoy somehow managed to convince the sky to come back. It agreed on one condition: that it would return only once a year and would be invited to return each time..." 

"...This is how the seasons were created and how the Nuba Mountains received their first Kujur, the rainmaker, who since that time has continued to mediate between the earth and sky. The kujur has passed on his ability to make rain to his children and the children of his children..."

The end...

Now here is the best bit (from "Sudan Notes and Records Volume 23"): 

The only person equal to the Kujur is "a man who fathered twins" as "father of twins is the most important person"...Why? The only explanation is that the ancient Sudanese associated rain season with twins...Gemini...

Neat...Oh and in September, right after the rains stopped and the first harvest started, Nuba people hold Kambala festival, which celebrates the harvesting of grain and is associated with initiation rites for young Nuba men.

And we know that rain is linked with grain, semen and male fertility...

PS: Dear @ISAC_UChicago I would really like to know what is written on this offering table, if you know yourself. But I find it interesting that in Meroitic language

at(a) means "bread" and ato means "water"...

PS: please correct the object's description...

That's it. It took about half an hour to find all this info...

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...

Female pots from Sudan

Fur women from Sudan making clay pots...Pic from "Sudan Notes and Records Vol. 22, No. 1 (1939)". 

And in there we read that Fur people regarded pots, their making and their use, as "female" only and a taboo for men...

For instance, in the above article we can read that when ethnographers asked Fur men how do you say in their language "he lit fire under "burma" (pot used in brewing beer)", the reply was that "you can't say that in our language, cause only women can do that"...

The authors then say that this taboo most likely originates from the ancient association between pots and goddess [mother earth] as for instance "in Nigeria, pots are still associated with mother goddess and a pot is a symbol for a female genitals"...

In "Nile Valley archaeology and Darfur ethnography: the impact of women on cultural evolution. A personal reflection" Randi Haaland gives us further info about this association between pots and women in Fur society:

"The Fur used terms for body parts to describe parts of pots in addition they explicitly associated pots as females, and in particular with motherhood occasionally manifested by placing two protrusions called nansu (breasts) on pots..."

"...Grain storage pots were made by women and only accessed by women...Body terms are used for different parts of the container such as stomach, neck and mouth. And these granary pots are made with features resembling breasts."

It seems that not only pots were exclusively in the female domain. Any grain processing and storing equipment was under strict female control too...Like a cooking fireplace, which is exclusively controlled by a woman. And grinding stones...

"Women in the village were making their own grinding stones. Suitable raw material was found in only one area, where a fine grained sandstone was located. Women had their own quarry where they extracted the raw material and did the rough shaping of the grinders..."

"...The making and using of grindstones were closely associated with female identity, so much so that when grinders are used in male dominated activities like iron production, it is only women who perform the task of grinding the ore."

These taboos are all linked with tools used for storing, grinding, cooking grain. Which indicates that they all come from the grain cult, which directly links woman, mother and female fertility and earth, mother earth and earth fertility...

This is confirmed by this taboo:

"Porridge and beer, both made from the same raw material – millet – are both made by women. In Fur tradition, they were set apart from other food items in the sense that the selling of these products would imply an activity classified as shameful, similar to selling sex."

This elevation of grain, grain food and grain drink to a level of holy food is very interesting...It must be very very old, coming from the time when grain was rare luxury. I believe that this grain cult most likely arrived to Sudan with the Neolithic farmers.

And got preserved in Sudan isolated until present time. We actually find evidence of the existence of such cult in archaeological, historical and ethnographic data throughout Eurasia from Neolithic until present day...

The remnants of this female grain cult were preserved in European "folklore" to this day, particularly among Slavs...I talked about this a lot already, like in this post about the "Mother of grain"...

The symbolic link between women and earth depicted on this Early Vinča Culture terracotta figurine from Jela, Iron Gate region of the Danube, Serbia, c. 5200 BC, H. 5.3 cm, which has a branching plant growing out of the womb...

I have been meaning to talk about the female cult of the bread baking pottery from Serbia for a while, but I always get distracted with something else, so...But I promise I will get to it soon...

PS: I want to thank my friend @dalaygiz for reminding me of this amazing Bronze Age terracotta couple from Tell Marlik in Iran. The man is depicted with a knife and a woman with a...pot...