Tulip goddess

Seated female figure (goddess? ) drinking out of a goblet - next to a tulip, bronze seal, late 3rd - early 2nd millennium BC, (BMAC), Afghanistan. Currently in a Private collection Linenthal, San Francisco. 

Just a pretty picture or...? Who is this girl?

Mobile perfume or cosmetic bottle, winged goddess among flowering tulips. Bactrian, the end of the 3rd, beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, Louvre Museum...

Tulips grow wild in Central Asia and bloom in Spring...So who's the goddess? The zigzag and wavy lines at the top usually represent flowing water. So is the goddess somehow linked with the flowing water?

Bactria was centered around the upper reaches of  Amu Darya (Oxus River). This river was fed 

Amu Darya (Oxus River) is partially fed by the rain that falls during the cool, wet half of the year (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

Climate Tajikistan

Climate Uzbekistan

Climate Afghanistan

But the majority of the water in the river comes from the snowmelt from the Hindu Kush, Tian Shan and Pamirs mountains. 

Total snow melt contribution is between 65 and 72%...

You can read more about this in "Runoff from glacier ice and seasonal snow in High Asia: separating melt water sources in river flow"

The annual Amu Darya water level chart. 

The water level starts rising sharply in Feb, at the beginning of the snowmelt season. Now you know why Aquarius 🙂 water pourer, is where it is on the zodiac.  

The water flow peaks in May. In Taurus, and then sharply decreases...

This rising of the water level, which enables irrigation and agriculture in the area, happens during the tulip flowering season...So tulips are definitely linked with flowing water...

I talked more about tulips as calendar markers in Bactria in my post "Sumer and winter BMAC seal"...

So who is the goddess? Earth...Mother Earth...Young, virgin, spring earth...Who just had her first period...So let me introduce you to: Aunt Flo...🙂

This could be the same girl. From a Bactrian seal: Mother earth flowering with tulips next to the flowing river. The snake is under ground (cold part of the year) and the Goitered gazelle (whose mating coincides with the beginning of the cool wet season) is looking at the amazing effect of "the rain it has brought"...I talked about this in my post "Fluffy"...

I wander if this girl has anything to do with Iranian Anahita, the goddess of water...Which features on Iranian artifacts since at least Jiroft culture...The Annual water cycle is identical, so...I talked about it in my post "Anahita"...

I think this answers my original question about the identity of the girl with the drinking cup sitting among the flowering tulips...

Sumer and winter BMAC seals

BMAC (Bactria-Margiana) seal, Turkmenistan, 1st half of the 2nd mil BC. From: "Ancient Art in Miniature: Ancient Near Eastern Seals from the Collection of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky"

Official description:

Obverse: boar "striding towards tulip shaped flowers"

Reverse: bird of pray with wings spread, as seen from below...

That's it...But is it? Of course not...

Both animals

Vulture

Wild boar

depicted on this seal are animal calendar markers for winter in Northern hemisphere. The reason for this is that the mating season of both animals in Central Asia starts in November and spans the whole of winter (Nov, Dec, Jan)...

Now the climatic year in Turkmenistan is divided into hot dry summer (May-Oct) and cold wet winter (Nov-Apr). It is the rain and snow which fall during winter (and subsequent snowmelt) which bring life to this dry region...

Which is why wild boar is depicted under a green leafy branch. But why is it striding towards tulips?

Because, most tulips originate in the mountains of Central Asia, where huge number of different wild varieties can still be seen blooming every spring...

So wild boar striding towards blooming tulips indicates the end of winter and beginning of spring...And symbolically depicts the effect of winter precipitation on the land...It turns desert into this...

Now on the same page of the "Ancient Art in Miniature..." we can see another two faced seal. 

The official description of the seal says:

Obverse: Nude hero dominates writhing snakes

Reverse: winged dragon strides towards a branch

Of course this is not a nude hero. This is the Sun, Sun God, Bactrian equivalent of Sumerian Utu/Shamash (see the heat rays coming out of "hero's" shoulders just like they do from Utu/Shamash's ones?)...I talked about this seal in my post "Nude hero dominating snakes"...

He is not fighting snakes. He is holding snakes which are symbols of sun, sun's heat...You could though say that he is dominating snakes, because they are utterly dependent on sun's heat for survival...

Remember that snakes are solar animals. They are in our world when sun is in our world (hot part of the year) and they are in the underworld when sun is in the underworld (cold part of the year)...I talked about snakes (and dragons) as solar symbols in my posts "Bactrian snakes and dragons", "Enemy of the sun", "Chthonic animal", "Dragon who stole rain"...And many others...

The dragon is actually a winged lion. Where wings are stylistic evolution of heat rays found in earlier depictions of this "beast"...Like on this Bactrian seal...

Beast which represents the hot, dry part of the year, summer...I talked about this in my post "Lion radiating heat"...

By the way did you see how the dragon lion is striding towards a bare branch? This is symbolic depiction of the effect the hot dry summer season, symbolised by the lion, has on nature...It turns it into this

So side by side, on the same page, we have a summer seal and winter seal...I don't think the authors of this paper knew what they did when they placed these two seals together like this...

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...