We find the same symbolism on figurines found from the Balkans to Iran. They use similar combination of vulva + grain to depict the same thing: Mother Earth turning into Mother of
BTW, have you ever heard of the Grain spirit? That "lives in the corn dolly made from the last sheaf of grain"?
In Gaelic, the word Cailleach means both an old woman and the last sheaf of wheat and the corn dolly made from it. Corn dolly which represents Mother Earth, the life (grain) giving mother...
Who is this "Grain spirit"? Well the mother of grain of course. The mother earth...The mother of all of us (and grain)...The Proto Mother...The ancestor...
I also talked about this in my post "Diduch", the representation of an ancestor "who gives us wheat"...
And my post "Wheat cross"...About living corn dollies from Eastern Europe...
The wheat wreath was the most important part of the Romanian end of harvest ceremonies. It was made from the last sheaf of wheat...
It was normally then used to "crown" the "most beautiful unmarried girl" that participated in the harvest, who then carried it back to the village on her head...Love these pics of the reenactment of this ceremony by Vasile Sarb
Yesterday, I came across the paper entitled "Bull leaping in Syria" by Dominique Collon. Which talks about early 2nd millennium BC depictions of bull leaping found in Syria. In it, I saw this amazing hematite seal, which was most likely made in Aleppo, around 1700BC...
Showing, well, bull leaping 🙂Among animal calendar markers...Which could help us to determine when the bull leaping festival took place...
First, the bull leaping scene is positioned under the depiction of a charging bull...
And bull is the most common animal symbol for summer (May/Jun/Jul)...I talked about animal symbols for seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...
Summer starts in Taurus (Apr/May), the ancient animal calendar marker which marks the time of the year when Wild Eurasian cattle used to start calving...I talked about this in my post "Cow and calf ivory" and many others...
The summer, which started with the calving of Wild Eurasian cattle, ended with mating of Wild Eurasian cattle...Mating which was marked by vicious bull fights...Where bulls charged at each other...Like this...Like the charging bull...
Anyway, what finally ends summer is the beginning of autumn. Autumn begins in Jul/Aug. In Leo...See the lion sitting down and looking at the charging bull of summer with the "where do you think you're going" expression on its face? That's Leo, ending summer...
Most commonly, this moment in the solar year is depicted with "lion killing bull" scene...
Leo is an ancient animal calendar marker which marks the beginning of the main mating seasons of the the Eurasian lions...
Lion is also the most common animal symbol for autumn (Aug/Sep/Oct)...Because the mating season of the Eurasian lions spans the whole of autumn...I talked about this in my post "The king killing Angra Mainiu" and many others...
Moving further to the left, we see a priest (?) holding the ankh symbol, symbol of life...He is standing facing a god, Ishkur, Hadad, Adad, Baal...basically the thunder and rain god, whatever name you want to give him...
How do I know that this is a thunder and rain god?
The climatic year in Syria is divided into hot, dry half (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool, wet half (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)
The rains (rain god 🙂) arrive in Oct/Nov...When ibex goats start their mating season, marked by vicious goat buck fights...
This turned ibex goat into The Goat of Rain in Crete, Cyprus, Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, Central Asia...All the places with the same climatic year, in which life bringing rains arrive in Oct/Nov, when ibex goats start mating...You can find links to related articles in my post "Goats and tree of life from Çatalhöyük"...
See on our seal, the Ibex "Goat of Rain" looking at the "God of Rain"? With his front leg up? Like a pet? This goat marks the moment of the arrival of the God of rain, in Oct/Nov, the beginning of winter and mating season of ibex goats...
The mating season which spans the whole of winter (Nov/Dec/Jan)...Which makes goat the most common animal symbol for winter...
Now do you see these two symbols? The "rosette" above the goat is not a decoration. This is Sirius, which is the most prominent winter star...And the other symbol is the winter moon. Crescent moon points up during winter...I talked about this in my post "Lions vs buffalos" and many others...
Soooo...From right to left, we have summer, autumn, winter...Bull leaping is placed under summer...The season symbolised by a bull...I think that the bull leaping ceremony was performed during the summer, and more precisely, at the end of summer...
PS: I know I am getting probably boring by now, but HOW EFFING AMAZING IS THIS SEAL? And how the hell did no one else see what's really depicted on it?
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...
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...
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.
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...
The Arabian ostrich, Syrian ostrich, or Middle Eastern ostrich (Struthio camelus syriacus) is an extinct subspecies of the ostrich that lived on the Arabian Peninsula and in the Near East until the mid-20th century...
This bird appears on early middle eastern seals, like this one from Arslantepe, dated to the end of the 4th millennium BC...Here is a seal with ostriches and snakes...Any reason for this or is this just random?
Ostriches are seasonal breeders. In the northern hemisphere, breeding period is March to September. During hot part of the year...In Northern Syria, where these seals were made, temperature suddenly rises in March, peaks in July/August, and falls in October. More details about the climate in Syria can be found here.
Snake seems to be a universal (Eurasia and North Africa) symbol, which represents sun's heat, hot part of the year...This true meaning of this old symbol was best preserved in Slavic mythology. I talked about this in my post "Enemy of the sun".
So ostriches mate during the time when snakes are out...
The destructive power of the burning sun's heat during the hottest part of the year, end of July, beginning of August, is represented by the Dragon...Again Slavic mythology has preserved the key to understanding this universal symbol too...I talked abut this in my post "Dragon who stole the rain" and "Apep"... The destructive giant serpents, dragons are the main enemy of Storm gods. The reason becomes obvious if we know that Dragon is the drought and the Storm god is the rain...
Here is another seal with snake and lion
Snake and lion are found together in many myths around the world. The reason is that sun's heat (represented by snake) is strongest during Leo (end of July beginning of August). And Leo signals the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian Lions... Like in this Romanesque marble statues which I talked about in my post "Lion killing snake".
Or like on this Egyptian mural which I talked about in my post "Apep".
And the reason why lion is killing the snake is because it is in Leo, that the cooling of the northern hemisphere begins...
Back to our ostriches...
Ostrich mating season, which corresponds with the hot, snake season, is characterised by wild mating dances and loud calls...Definitely something you can't miss when it starts and stops...Which makes ostrich a very good calendar marker...
Does putting ostriches and snakes on a seal together mean that in the 4th millennium Syria we already have this symbolic link established and widely known???? O yeah. Almost forgot about the other seal.
The seal with: Auroch bull (Mating season ends in Aug) Ostrich (Mating season Mar-Aug/Sep) Snake (Hot part of the year, hottest part: beginning of Aug) Persian deer (Mating season starts in Aug) Here's an old Neolithic Syrian love poem:
