Winged superhuman hero

Impression from a cylinder seal from Babylonia, 8th century BC; currently in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City. 

Here is the official description of the scene depicted on the seal:

"A demonic lion faces a winged superhuman hero. The lion's threatening gesture and the tension of his sharp claws suggest his evil power. But the hero will prevail. Taller than the lion, he calmly dominates it, and the bull—the victim of the contest—remains in his power"...

🙂 What does this seal really depict?

Well, it depicts Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of death, war, and destruction, who was most often depicted holding a scimitar...

Example: Old Babylonian cylinder seal from Larsa, depicting the underworld (the god of death) Nergal, holding his distinctive scimitar and the double lion headed scepter. The Inscription is a dedication to Nergal by Abisare, perhaps the king of Larsa at that time...

Yeah right. How do we know that the winged dude on the original seal is Nergal? 

Because, in his earliest incarnation, in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900-2700 BC), this god of death "represented the high summer sun which scorched the earth...which hindered crop production"...

Sooo??? 

So, the climatic year in Mesopotamia is divided into two halves: cool, wet season (Oct/Nov-Apr/May) and hot, dry season (Apr/May-Oct/Nov)...

The hot dry season spans summer (symbolised by bull) and autumn (symbolised by lion). 

I talked about the animal symbols of the seasons in my article "Symbols of the seasons"...

And the hottest and driest part of the hot and dry season is the moment when lion catches bull. At the end of summer, beginning of autumn. This moment is "marked" by all those "lion killing bull" images, like this one from Persepolis...Lion (autumn) killing (ending) Bull (summer)...Well more like lion chewing on the bulls butt actually...

Which is why, on our original seal, we don't see hero defending the bull from the lion...We see Nergal, deadly sun, standing at the end of summer, symbolised by upside down bull whom he is holding by the hind leg, and the beginning of autumn, symbolised by the attacking lion...

This is the seat of Nergal, the god of death, the destructive sun of the hottest, driest part of the hot, dry season...Which marked by Leo... 

Which is why Nergal is depicted as a winged lion with a human face. 

Either with wings

Or without wings

And which is why Nergal, when depicted in his human form, holds double lion headed scepter...

Eeee, what? What about precession? Leo I am talking about has nothing to do with constellations. It is an ancient animal calendar marker, marking the beginning of the main mating season of the Eurasian lions. Which has nothing to do with stars and is not affected by precession...

Leo is also "the lair" of the fire breathing dragon... Usually in Mesopotamia depicted as a winged lion... The seat of the beast...Nergal...

I talked about this in my post "Is that you Gilgamesh"...

Nergal is also depicted as a true winged lion, without any human characteristics. Like on this "kuduru" boundary stone of the king Meli-shipak II, dated to the 15th c. BC and currently in Louvre.

Now the winged lion is the evolution of the "lion with sun rays coming out of his back", which is the symbol for the hot, dry half of the year in Mesopotamia, and particularly the hottest, driest part of the year, Leo... 

I talked about this in my posts "Nude winged hero dominating snakes", "Lion radiating heat" and "Butt chewing"...

Nergal, the Burning sun, the Dragon. This cylinder seal from Ur III, is dedicated to Meslamtaea, the earliest name of Nergal. Pic from: "Nergal alakja a sumer irodalomban"... 

It shows Meslamtaea/Nergal, holding his scimitar, and a "mythical beast", winged lion, both holding onto a scepter which looks very much like the two lion headed scepter of Nergal...

So is the scene depicting "Nergal and the dragon fighting over the scepter" a symbolic way of telling us: "Nergal is the winged lion, dragon"???

But this winged lion also has eagle talons...Which means that this "creature" is a mix of lion and eagle...Autumn which starts with Eurasian lions mating season ends with Eurasian vultures mating season...So this "creature" symbolises autumn, which starts when summer ends (dies)...

I talked about this in my post "Assyrian winged dragon"...

Why would Nergal be equated to autumn?

Guess who else is standing "between the lions" or "on a lion"? In Leo...The Old Utu/Shamash, the Old Sun of the end of summer...The destructive sun that dries the rivers and canals...And kills people...

I talked about this in my post "Canal".

In my posts "Shamash young and old" and "Butt chewing", I explained that the hot dry part of the year in Mesopotamia was divided into two parts. 

First part, Summer, Apr/May-Jul/Aug, symbolised by a bull, the part dominated by the "Young Utu/Shamash, the god of life"...He is the sun that fills the holy rivers and the irrigation canals...

Second part, Autumn, Jul/Aug-Oct/Nov, symbolised by a lion, the part dominated by the "Old Utu/Shamash, the god of death"...He is the sun that dries the holy rivers and the irrigation canals...Nergal. God of death...

Which is why on the above seal, Nergal is depicted as a winged dragon, half lion half eagle...Autumn....

So what do you think?

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...

Butt chewing

"Triumphant bull with flowing beard climbing the mountain"? It's from the time of the First Dynasty of Ur...No one knows what it means because: "we have no written documents explaining it"...At least this is what we can read in "A Problem of Early Sumerian Art"

Let's see if we can come out with some sensible explanation for this scene...

"Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth the hero, the youth Utu (Shamash), the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..." from "Enki and the world order"...

Here's the majestic Shamash, depicted as a golden bull with long flowing "lapis lazuli" beard...

Why? To understand this we need to know something about the source of water in Tigris and Euphrates...Well according to the Sumerian legends, the source of these two rivers is Enki.

In "Enki and the world order" we read: "...Father Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris with flowing water [after filling Euphrates]. He was like a wild cow mooing for its young in the wild grass..."

But the actual source of water in the two sacred rivers was to a smaller extent rain which fell during the wet half of the year (Oct/Nov-Apr/May), but majority of water in Tigris and Euphrates came from the snow melt in Anatolian highlands and Iranian Zagros mountains...

This snowmelt is caused by Young (spring) sun, Young Shamash...Here he is depicted on this seal in a short tunic climbing the sacred mountain towards Imprisoned Enki...To free him...

This climbing of the mountain by the sun god represents the heating up of the higher and higher regions of the holy mountains in the spring. The heating up which results in the snowmelt, which is the main source of the water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers...This is the "freeing of Enki" and it happens during the spring. You can see how the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates river system are suddenly sharply rising starting from Feb...Water level charts for

Tigris

Euphrates

Enki is finally free (the water levels peak) in Apr/May, at the beginning of summer.  In Taurus...

So Enki, the god of fresh water, gets freed by Shamash, "the triumphant bull with lapis lazuli beard". And the first thing he does, he starts wanking 🙂 And the moment of his ejaculation, the moment of his climax, the moment of the peak water levels in the rivers he fills with his heavenly semen, is also the moment when "wild cows moo for their young in the wild grass"...In Taurus...Taurus, which marks the beginning of the calving season of the Eurasian wild cattle...

Taurus also marks the beginning of summer. The season dominated by the sun...Hence Golden Bull, symbol of summer, symbol of the sun, with lapis lazuli beard, symbol of flowing water...The water bull...

That's the triumphant bearded bull depicted on the original relief...Standing triumphantly...Having his butt chewed by a winged lion...

Why?

Summer ends at the beginning of August, in the middle of Leo. By the way, why is July-August the part of the year marked by Leo? Well Eurasian Lions are seasonal breeders. And their mating season peaks from August and October. 

During autumn, part of the year symbolised by lion...As you can see the symbol of summer is bull...

I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

So if you wanted to symbolically depict the end of summer (symbolised by bull) and beginning of autumn (symbolised by lion), you could do it like this: Lion killing Bull (actually chewing bull's butt)

Or like a winged lion (actually creature with lion's head and eagle tail) chewing on the butt of a bull...

So what's with lion eagle "monster"? It's a composite calendar marker. It represents autumn, which starts "when lions mate" (Leo) and ends "when vultures mate" (Eagle/Scorpio)...I talked about the vulture as the symbol of the end of autumn beginning of winter in my post "Double headed eagle"...

So I think we can understand early Sumerian art even without written explanation from the creators of the said art...

Amazing how all these things fit into each other like pieces of a jigsaw...What is emerging looks like a "lost first draft" of our religions and mythologies, and what has come to us in writing seems to be a reworked version done by the editors (priests) to make it sell better...

Marble copy of the Mask of Warka

This is the so called "Mask of Warka", made between 3300 BC and 3000 BC. It was found in the temple precinct of Inanna, Uruk (today village of Warka)...

Everyone is raving about this piece of art because it is considered to be the first anatomically correct depiction of the human face in Mesopotamia.

What I find absolutely amazing, is that no one is commenting on the fact that the head is actually carved out of marble, but in a way as to mimmic a head sculpted out of clay. Look at the hair. It looks like crudely fashioned with few thumb strokes going from back forward...

Was this an exact marble copy of previously existing clay head?

To me it looks like someone made a quick sketch of a human head in clay, and told a stonemason: this is how you do it. So he did. He copied everything exactly as he saw on the model. To the last detail... 

Here is another picture of the Mask of Warka, uder different light, which makes it look like it was made of clay. 

Look at the eyebrows. They look like they were gouged by a single stroke of a sharp piece of reed or wood through a soft clay. To me this is totally fascinating...

I mean even the eyes look like they were cut by a sharp knife in a single stroke. Look at the bottoms of both eyes, the thin lip of the material sticking out, like it was pressed out and down during the cutting movement. And was just left like that, like in a quick sketch...

How did this stay unnoticed I have no idea. Or maybe it was noticed but I haven't come across the article that talks about it...

But then we have the most delicately and beautifully sculpted bottom half of the head. The chin, lips, cheeks (and probably nose before it was broken off) are so life like. They are perfect...In sharp contrast to the top part of the head which was left "half finished"...

It gets curiouser and curiouser the more you look at this thing...

I think that the reason why the top part was left the way it is (sketched or unfinished or unpolished, called it what you want) is because the top of the head was covered with the wig, false eyebrows were inserted into the eyebrow groves and false eyes, with false eyelashes were inserted into eye sockets...

Which would make the "sketched" or "unfinished" or "unpolished" parts of the head invisible, and which is why the artist didn't bother to finish them. 

What is strange is that if you were doing this head straight out of a piece of stone, the unfinished parts wouldn't look like this

But they would look exactly like this if you made the head out of clay. 

What I think happened is that there was another, earlier, original, clay head, of which this stone head is a copy. It had a wig, false eyebrows and false eyes, which covered the "unfinished bits"...

That head was sacred. It could even have been a depiction of Inanna. And you don't mess with Inanna. You definitely don't change the head of the goddess, if you were told to make a stone copy of her miraculous idol, which was made in her likeness, who knows when...So you copy it exactly...

It's like the icons painters who copy icons exactly, because they believe that they are miraculous, sacred, exactly the way they are...