Anat

Anat was a Semitic goddess worshipped by the Canaanites & Egyptians during the Bronze and Iron Ages. 

 

Depicted as violent, delighting in war, she was also establisher of peace. She was also portrayed as highly sexual & fertile, but also referred to as virgin & maiden. Fiercely loyal to her brother Baal, she takes revenge against Mot, god of the underworld, for (briefly) taking Baal's life. According to the Ugaritic text, "She seized divine Mot, with a knife she split him...with fire she burnt him; with millstones she ground him; with a sieve she sifted him; on the steppe she abandoned him.."

She was imported into Egypt by the Hyksos rulers. So who was Anat?

According to old poems from the area, Mot was equated to the sun. I talked about this in my post "Oldest Arabic poem"...

This is the climatic year in Levant. You can see that it is divided into two halves: the wet season (Nov-Apr) and the dry season (May-Oct) dominated by the blazing sun...

In ancient Levant, the wet season was the time when Baal/Hadad ruled the world. But every year, in May, Mot would usurps the throne of Baal/Hadad, kill Baal, and turn the world into hell...

Mot had a brother, Yam, the sea god, also enemy of Baal. The seafaring season in Levant (Apr-Sep) corresponds with the dry season, the season ruled by Mot...Also with mating season of horses, which were the symbol of Yam. 

I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

Anat "put an end to Yam, the beloved of El, and to other enemies of Baal including a 7 headed serpent"...

Interesting...

Like this 7 headed serpent (dragon) from Mesopotamia? Which has the body of a lion (Leo is the symbol of the the hottest part of the year)...And seven snake heads (snake is the symbol of the sun's heat, and 7 heads represent 7 months of the Mesopotamian summer)...With Shamash (sun god) sun rays rising from his back?

I talked about this cylinder seal in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

Who's the girl standing under the star, looking at "heroes killing the 4th snake head of the dragon with 7 snake heads"? Well Ishtar/Inanna of course...The warrior goddess standing on a lion...Under a star...Sirius rising with the sun in Leo...

I talked about her in my post "Ninshubur"...

'The yellow ones of Mot' Mot's henchmen who are slain by Baal/Hadad upon his return...Who are these "yellow ones"?

Look at these pictures: 

Summer (May-Oct), ruled by Mot, the time of death in Levant. 

Winter (Nov-Apr), ruled by Baal/Hadad, the time of life in Levant

Anat also kills: Arsh, a monstrous attendant of Yam, the sea god and "the darling of the gods"...Apparently his name means "towards the land"...Who is Arsh? Who does Anat kill? 

I would suggest that Arsh is the deified "etesian winds" season. 

The etesian winds are the prevailing annually recurring summer winds, blowing over large parts of Greece, the Aegean Sea and eastern Mediterranean. The name derives from the Greek 'etesios', annual. They blow steadily from northern to northwestern directions, bringing cold continental air and clear skies between end of May and beginning of October...

They blow from the north "towards the land" in Levant and Egypt...During the sailing season...When this "monstrous attendant of Yam, the sea god" is killed, the dry season dominated by the sun, Mot, ends too...And Baal/Hadad comes back to power...The storms and rains return...

Anat also kills Atik, the calf of El, and the enemy of Baal/Hadad...

The calving season of wild Eurasian cattle, Aurochs starts in Apr/May...

This period is marked by a bull, calf, cow with calf...Taurus. This is one of the oldest animal calendar markers, which is found all over Eurasia and North Africa. I talked about this in my post "Ram and Bull".. 

Taurus announces the beginning of the hot, dry season, dominated by the sun, Mot and the end of the cool, wet season dominated by rain, Baal/Hadad.

Anat also kills Ishat (Light, Fire) and Zabib (Flame) the Goddesses of fire or flame, the daughters of El, the king of the Gods and servants of Yam/Mot, the enemy of Ba'al, the storm God. Naturally...The fire, flame (heat) of the sun scorches the land and turns it into this: Mot's hell.

I love the fact that Ishat (fire), the goddess of fire and drought, is known as "the bitch of the gods"...In Slavic folklore, the hottest part of the year, end of Jul beginning of Aug, is knows as "kresovi" (fires)...This is also the mating season of the old Canaan dogs...

You know, dog days...When Dog Star, Sirius, rises with the sun...In Leo...Sounds familiar? 

I talked about this in my post "Dog days"...

Anat kills Mot after "seven years of drought"...This is a "poetic" version of "seven months of drought"...This story originates in Mesopotamia, and there, summer, dry season says  "In my working term of duty, which is seven months of the year"...I talked about this in my post "Seven headed dragon"...

Anat finds Mot, and cuts, winnows, and sows him like grain. Have a look at this:

Mesopotamian agricultural calendar. 

Levantine agricultural calendar. 

Mot's reign, dry season, starts with grain harvest, in Apr/May...In the middle of that period, in Leo, Jul/Aug, after harvest, threshing, winnowing, storing...of the grain is all done, Anat arrives...Mot's reign, the dry season, ends with grain sowing, in Oct/Nov...

Which is when Anat kills Mot and Baal rules again...For a while...

And you know what also spans 7 months? The time between the sowing and harvesting of grain. During which time you open 7 sealed grain storage pithos jars...7 seals...

Interestingly, the opening of the 7th seal happens in Aries, the end of the lambing season of wild sheep...So the lamb opens the 7th seal...I talked about this in my post "Seven seals"...

After Anat kills Mot and his goons, Baal/Hadad, the Rain god, ascends back to the throne...

Accompanied by his daughters:

Pidray - daughter of the mist, daughter of light (lightning)...

Tallay - she of dew, daughter of drizzle...

Arsay - she of the earth, daughter of [ample flows]...

Ybrdmy - she/he who serves up water...

How mythological...

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...

Seven headed dragon

This is a seal from Tell Asmar, dated to 2200 BC. It depicts a seven headed dragon (beast with lion's body and seven snake heads) with sun's heat rays radiating out of its back, being speared by two gods (heroes)...

As Gary A. Rendsburg points out in his article "UT 68 and the Tell Asmar Seal" this is one of the most remarkable seals ever found and one of the most discussed...

Why? Because the mythical theme of a hero (god) slaying 7 headed dragon keeps popping up again and again in different cultures in Eurasia...

For instance the Ugaritic monster Lotan (meaning "coiled"), also called "the mighty one with seven heads", was a serpent of the sea god Yam. Or Yam himself as he was also called "the serpent". This monster was defeated by the storm god Hadad-Baʿal in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle...

Hadad defeating Lotan, Yahweh defeating Leviathan, Marduk defeating Tiamat, Zeus slaying Typhon, Heracles slaying Hidra, Perun killing Veles, Thor fighting Jörmungandr...Different versions of the same myth which originated most likely in the Fertile Crescent among the Neolithic farmers...

This story is allegorical description of the local Mesopotamian climate, where the year is divided into two seasons: dry, hot summer (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and wet, cool winter (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...

So Thunder god fighting and killing dragon is a symbolic depiction of rain season following the dry season...And the veneration of the Thunder gods and all the sacrifices and prayers dedicated to them are means to ensure that this succession of seasons actually happen...

For instance, look at Yam-Lotan. Why was the Sea god, called "the serpent"? Well, Yam was a brother of Mot, Ugaritic god of death, who was identified as the sun...I talked about this identification of Mot with Sun in my post "The oldest Arabic poem"... 

As I explained in my post "Trojan horse" the sailing season (season ruled by Yam) in ancient Eastern Mediterranean started in Apr/May, at the beginning of the hot dry part of the year and ended in Sep/Oct, at the end of the hot dry part of the year...

Which is why Haddad (God of the cool wet part of the year) is fighting Yam (god of the hot dry part of the year). Yam who is helped in his rule over summer by his brother, Mot, God of death, Sun, which turns everything into desert...

As I explained in my post about "Snakes and Dragons symbolism on Bactrian seals" the key for understanding all of this was inexplicably preserved in Slavic folklore, of all places...

As I explained in my post "Enemy of the sun" snake is directly associated with the sun. It is a solar animal, because it follows the sun. It is in our world during the hot, dry part of the year when sun is in our world too...

And it is in the "underworld" during the cold, wet part of the year, when the sun is in the "underworld" too...Which is why snake is mistakenly identified as a "chthonic" animal...

Snake is the symbol of the sun's heat. And as I explained in my post "Dragon who stole rain" fire breathing dragon is the symbol of the destructive sun's heat of the mid and late summer...

The sun's heat which "steals" and then "guards" water...And the only way to release the water is to kill the dragon. Dragon is the symbolic description of summer heat which causes droughts and death. Which is why it is often mistakenly identified as water and not fire creature...

As a proof that Mesopotamians equated snake and dragon with the sun's heat, can be seen on the tell Asmar seal...The dragon has snake heads and the sun (heat) rays radiating out of its back...Sun (heat) rays usually radiating out of the sun god Utu (Shamash)...

On the seal from Tell Asmar, the dragon is being speared at the head and the back by two "heroes" (gods???)...Gary A. Rendsburg points out in his article "UT 68 and the Tell Asmar Seal" that in Ugaritic description of the Haddad's fight against Yam, Haddad defeats Yam using "two clubs"...

With one he strikes Yam in the back, but Yam does not fall. Then with the other club he strikes Yam in the head and that finally kills Yam...So basically this is textual description of the scene visually depicted on the Tell Asmar seal...

The two deities (heroes?) attacking the dragon are actually one deity, Storm god. His "attacks" at the back and head of the dragon symbolise the end of the rain season and the beginning of the rain season...Basically the beginning and the end of summer, the time of dragons...

Now here is the interesting bit (finally 🙂): no one has any idea why 7 heads...I have for a long time suspected that this has something to do with the duration of the Mesopotamian hot dry season, the season of the snake and dragon...

And today I stumbled across "The debate between Winter and Summer" or Myth of Emesh and Enten, a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC... 

And in it, after winter accuses summer of taking all the credit for winter's hard work, summer says: "In my working term of duty, which is seven months of the year"...

Ha!

This is why the dragon on the seal from Tell Asmar has 7 heads...And why its Ugraitic equivalent also has the 7 heads. These 7 heads represent 7 months of the Levantine and Mesopotamian summer: Apr/May-May/Jun-Jun/Jul-Jul/Aug-Aug/Sep-Sep/Oct-Oct/Nov...

That this interpretation is correct is actually emphasised on the seal...The dragon has 4 downward pointing (dead) heads and 3 upward pointing (alive) heads...This represents the point in time...The point at the end of the 4 summer months Apr/May-May/Jun-Jun/Jul-Jul/Aug...

How do we know this? Because this is the time when Sirius rises with the sun...And guess what: There is a star depicted in the sky above the scene...Star which can only be Sirius...

Sirius, whose heliacal rising marks the hottest part of the year on the northern hemisphere. The part of the year also marked with a Lion, Leo...By the way, the body of the Sumerian and Akkadian dragons, and the dragon on the Tell Asmar seal, is usually a lion's body...

Oh yeah. Almost completely forgot to explain why was this exact moment in the solar year (middle of Leo) depicted on this seal 🙂 The Storm god has symbolically "half killed" (or 4/7ths killed, to be precise 🙂, well maybe actually only half killed as the 4th head is in process of being killed 🙂) the dragon of summer and his power is waning...,This is the precise moment when the heating of the northern hemisphere stops and cooling of the northern hemisphere begins...As I explained in my post "Thundering sun god", by pure "coincidence" of course, this is also the exact time of the year when Balkan Slavs, whose folklore formed the core of the key used for understanding all this, celebrate the day of their thunder god...

Oh and this star has everything to do with Inanna/Ishtar, the goddess that arrives on the lion, at the exact moment depicted on this seal...In the middle of Leo...

So this Tell Asmar seal is indeed an amazing artefact...

Today I came across this artefact: 

The description that came with it says: Hero-God (which some scholars identify as the Akkadian god Ninurta) fighting a seven-headed flaming monster, shell plate, 2500 - 2400 BC, Proto-Dynastic III, Bible Lands Museum (BLMJ), Jerusalem, Israel, no. 2051

Again we see 7 headed dragon. This time only one head is cut by a kneeling "hero-god" who is holding a sickle...

This is Sumerian agricultural calendar

Guess what happens during the first of the seven months of summer which is what the seven headed dragon represents? Grain harvest...Which is why the "god-hero" has grain on his hat...

This is amazing...