Date beer

A late 3rd millennium BC seal found in the Hurian city of Urkesh located in northeastern Syria. Pic from "Dal profondo del tempo" by Giorgio Buccellati, one of many great Urkesh related resources found on urkesh.org... 

What does it mean?

In the article we read: "...a representation of an act of worship. The two attendants, or priests, they just cut off the head of a young bull. The one on the left still holds the knife in his hand, while the one on the right holds it suspended the animal for the hind legs..."

"...The bull's head is placed at the base of a small palm tree trunk, with a jar on top...Does the seated woman mix something in a container - the blood of the sacrificed animal? "

What I think is depicted here is indeed an act of worship. Of alcohol...And Ishtar...Yes I think that is Ishtar sitting on that throne next to the date palm tree trunk...

You can read about the link between Ishtar and the date palm tree (the Mesopotamian Tree of Life) in "Western Asiatic Tree Goddess" by Irit Ziffer...

Here is one of the artefacts cited in this paper that shows this link between Ishtar and date palm. An Akkadian seal depicting Ishtar sitting on her lion throne, with worshippers standing in front of her, while people at the back are shown harvesting dates...

This seal can be found in "Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der Akkad-Zeit" by Boehmer, R. M. published in 1965. 

But what does this mean? What is the actual link between date palms and Ishtar...

Enter animal and plant calendar markers...

There is this girl, Inanna/Ishtar, who loves standing on lions? Why does she do this? 

Well...standing on a lion means "In Leo"...(Jul/Aug)...

And you know how everyone thinks that Inanna/Ishtar "The queen of heaven", "The morning star" is Venus...Well, when this "mythology" was developed, Sirius rose before the sun, in Leo (Jul/Aug), pretending to be "the morning star"...I talked about her in my posts "Ninshubur", "Inana and Šukaletuda", "Under the blazing Sun Sirius"

In "A hymn to Inana as Ninegala" we can read "Inana, great light, lioness of heaven..." 

Why is she "lioness of heaven"? 

This, combined with Inanna's obsession with standing on lions only makes sense if she is Sirius, rising with the sun in Leo...

Leo here has nothing to do with constellation Leo...Well it didn't originally...Leo (Jul/Aug) marks the beginning of the main mating season of Eurasian lions...

What does this have to do with date palms? When Leo (Jul/Aug) marks the beginning of autumn (Aug,Sep,Oct)...Which comes after summer (May,Jun,Jul)...Summer which starts in Taurus (Apr/May)...Hence Bull as symbol of summer and Lion as symbol of autumn...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Date harvest season starts in Jul/Aug...In Leo...When Ishtar stands on lions (Sirius rises with the sun in Leo)...

When lion (autumn) kills (ends) bull (summer) it's time to harvest dates. You can read my analysis of this seal in "Lion killing bull under date palm"... 

Taurus here has nothing to do with stars...It originally marked the beginning of the calving season of the Eurasian wild cattle (Apr/May)...I talked about this in my posts "Ram and bull", "Foundation peg of goddess Nanshe", "Cow and calf ivory"...

So the dates are harvested when the bull of summer dies...Hence the dead bull, from whose head a palm tree grows...Did Hurians marks this time of the year by actual bull sacrifices, I don't know. I personally think that this is a symbolic way to depict "the end of summer"...

Ok so we now know what the link between Ishtar and date palm tree and dead bulls is...But what is Ishtar mixing in the pot depicted in front of her? And why is there another pot depicted standing on top of the date palm tree trunk?

To find the answer to this questions we need to turn to drink...I am currently drunk, so it is fitting that I am writing about drink...

When you mention booze in ancient Mesopotamia, everyone thinks of beer, made from grain...

But there was another alcoholic beverage which was very popular in Mesopotamia, and which Sumerians called "The Juice of Life"...You can read about this in "The Date-Palm in Antiquity" by Paul Popenoe

We don't know how this drink was made. But we know that there are two different date alcoholic beverage: the date fruit drink and the date sap drink, so The Juice of Life is one of these two...

Date sap is tapped by cutting into the terminal bud and running the sap through a spout into a clay vessel. Around 10 litres of sap can be collected per day. And it takes about 6-8 hours to ferment the juice into 4%-5% alcoholic beverage...You can read about this in "Dates: Production, Processing, Food, and Medicinal Values"...

This drink is made throughout date growing regions of Asia and Africa even today. The sap can be extracted out of the tree year round, although the best time to do it is during dry season. Which in Syria is Apr/May - Oct/Nov...

But that doesn't match "the death of the bull of summer" animal calendar marker depicted on our seal...And would not explain what Ishtar is doing with the pot in front of herself...

Let's see how the date fruit drink is made...

In "Date beer: brew it like the ancient babylonians" we can read that: 

"...Although the research literature tends to call date fruit drink “beer”, the beverage is actually closer to cider. It is produced from fruit and water and fermented using natural yeast in the dates..."

...The ancient Mesopotamians themselves have not provided us with an actual recipe for brewing date beer. However, we have a date beer recipe from antiquity, recorded by the pharmacologist Dioscorides in the first century CE..."

"...According to Dioscorides, date beer was brewed using crushed dates and water which were put into a cask and let ferment for ten days. On the eleventh day, the beverage was ready to be consumed..."

And so what I think is depicted on the Hurian seal is Ishtar (or whatever they called Goddess of the Palm Tree) pounding date palm fruit in a mortar with a pestle...Date fruit which is harvested "after the bull of summer dies"...

In order to produce date palm "Juice of Life" which is symbolically depicted by the beer drinking pot placed on top of the date palm trunk, where date fruit is found, symbolically depicting "the beer made out of the fruit of the date palm"...

Here is another seal from "Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der Akkad-Zeit" by Boehmer, R. M. published in 1965 showing a seated god(?) drinking sitting under a date palm tree...Indication that what is being drunk is a date drink? The Juice of Life?

That's it...What do you think? All makes sense now?

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...

Shamash playing with the solar horse

A while back, while reading "Equids as Luxury Gifts at the Centre of Interregional Economic Dynamics in the Archaic Urban Cultures of the Ancient Near East",  I came across this interesting 3rd millennium BC seal from Hurian city of Urkesh, Syria...

I found this article when I was writing my post, "Sun god from Tell Brak", about (what I believed was) the earliest depiction of the sun god in a quadriga pulled by equids, from this 3rd millennium BC cylinder seal imprint found in Tell Brak, Syria...

I based my argument on the fact that the seal depicts a snake above the charioteer, and both snake and equids are solar animals...You can read detailed explanation why in the above post.

What I didn't know then (and should have 🙂) is that apparently the sun god Shamash rode around in chariot pulled by four horses...You can read about this in "Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia"...

Why didn't anyone tell me that after reading my article? 

So the charioteer from Tell Brak could be Shamash himself...

Anyway, keep this in mind, it will come handy later...

The Urkesh seal depicts common Akkadian and Old Babylonian theme usually called a "presentation scene". In it a king carrying a sacrificial animal is lead by a minor deity towards the main seated deity...

The sacrificial animal carried by kings in these "presentation scenes" is usually a baby goat. Like on this seal showing a king bringing a sacrificial goat to the god of flowing water and flood, Enki/Ea...

Why was goat the usual sacrifice to the gods? Cause in Mesopotamia the climatic year is divided into cool/wet "rain season" (Oct/Nov - Apr/May) and hot/dry "drought season" (Apr/May - Oct/Nov).

The beginning of the rain season is marked by the beginning of the mating season of the wild goats (Oct/Nov). And the end of the rain season is marked by the end of the birthing season of the wild goats (Apr/May).

Which made the wild goat a super important animal calendar marker for rain season. And the symbol of fertility brought by rain. And the symbol of the resulting prosperity. And the symbol of royalty based on that prosperity. 

You can read about it in my post "Goat carrier"...

BTW, If you are wondering why there is a fish facing Enki/Ea, this is because Enki's flood, annual flood of Tigris and Euphrates, happens in Apr/May, the same time when giant Mesopotamian carps migrate upstream (to Abzu) for spawning...More in my posts "Carp surfer", "Goatfish"...

Oh, and on the above Sacrifice to Enki seal, the king is lead towards Enki by Isimud, Enki's two faced assistant...Why?

Did you know that Mar/Apr (Isimud) that "leads towards" Apr/May (Enki) is where  we find Mesopotamian New Year, you know the domain of Janus...Check these posts: "Adda seal", "Janus"...

Anyway, enough digression. Let's get back to the Urkesh seal with the "presentation scene". On it, the king is indeed being lead by a minor deity towards the seated main deity. 

But the king is not holding a baby goat. He is holding a baby equid...

And the king is lead towards the seated deity who is feeding a prancing equid...While holding a whip (???)...

Now these are not horses. These are Kungas, animals only bread in the area where Urkesh is located, and so highly regarded, that "they were used for drawing the chariots of kings and gods"...

Considering that the seal was made by the breeders of the kungas, it is not surprising that king is bringing a baby kunga equid as the sacrificial animal to the seated deity, probably seen as the protector of the city and its wealth built on kunga breeding...Right?

But I think that this is not just an ordinary presentation scene...Why? Bhere is something hidden on this seal in plain sight, so "out of place", that no one who discussed this seal seem to have noticed it...A buffalo...For instance check this article "Sacred space: contributions to the archaeology of belief". Nothing...

What is buffalo doing here? Well I believe that both kunga and buffalo are used here as animal calendar markers.

For those who never heard of them, animal calendar markers are ancient calendar markers derived from the annual mating or birthing or migrating or hibernating...season of the depicted animal in the area where the symbol is used...

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...

For instance in Europe:

I talked about this in my post "Zodiac". You can find posts about each Zodiac sign as a calendar marker linked to this post....

And so let's have a look at equids and buffalos as animal calendar markers.

Buffalo. Both domesticated and wild Eurasian water buffalos start their mating in Oct/Nov, at the beginning of the rain season in Mesopotamia. Characterised by bull fights for mating rights...

Hence their association in Mesopotamia with rain and water...I talked about this in my post "Buffalo licking jar"

BTW, because in India the climate is opposite to the climate in Mesopotamia, the mating of water buffalos marks the beginning of the hot/dry season, the season of drought and death. Hence buffalo as a mount of Yama, the god of death...I talked about this in my post "The bitch of the gods" and "Mahishasuramardini"...

Equids...As I explained in the post about the solar quadriga, equids mating season, characterised by mad prancing stallion fights for mating rights, starts in Apr/May...Which is why equids (horses in particular) are animal calendar marker for Apr/May...

Because horses fertility is governed by the sunlight, and it peaks on summer solstice, horse became the symbol of sunny half of the year...I talked about this in my post "Goddess on a horse"...

And because horse mating season overlaps with the sailing season in Eastern Mediterranean, horse got linked with Eastern Mediterranean Sea Gods. I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

This biological link between the sunlight an horse's reproduction is why in India we find this: 

Once Lord Vishnu’s head was cut off accidentally by other gods. The head turned out to be the Sun. The gods then attached a horse head to Vishnu's body, which is how he assumed his Hayagriva form...I talked about this in my post "Hayagriva"...

This is also why Shamahs, the sun god rides in the quadige pulled by 4 horses. And why the seated god on the Urkesh seal is Shamash, or his Hurian alter ego Šimige...

Not sure? Here is another Hurian seal with seated god playing with an equid...Oh, what's this above the horses back? Sun?...Could this be the "Sun god" playing with a "Solar Horse"???

Just like "Solar Horse" depicted on this Celtic coin...Stylised horse, left; sun above horse

Here's the original: Roman silver coin (Didrachm) of the Pyrrhic war (275-270 BC). Front: Apollo wears a laurel-wreath. Back: horse gallops beneath a 16 pointed star. Star is The Sun of course...

The old Mesopotamian summer, the sunny half of the year, starts in Apr/May. Which is when the equids start mating

And when the equid babies are also born, cause equid gestation period is 11-12 months...

Hence the sun god, ruler of the summer, the sunny half of the year, playing with the prancing equid (mating), and getting a baby equid (birthing) as a sacrificial offering from the king...

What we just learned makes: 

This is weather chart for the area where the seal we are talking about was found

buffalo: the animal calendar marker for the [beginning of] the cool/wet half of the year, winter (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)

equid: the animal calendar marker for the [beginning of] the hot dry half of the year, summer (Apr/May - Oct/Nov)

Considering that the god sits facing the prancing equid, while behind him the buffalo is walking away, this places the god at the end of winter, beginning of summer...In Apr/May...When the baby kungas are born...

And indicates that the god is most likely Sun God Shamash...

That's it. I hope you liked it...Have as nice a day as possible...