Queen Uqnitum

Today I saw this drawing with this description: "Bulla depicting an intimate family scene of Queen Uqnitum & King Tupkish of the Hurrian kingdom of Urkesh (late 3rd millennium BC), with the princess sitting on Uqnitum's lap & the young prince touching his father's knee".

My first reaction was: how do we know the child sitting on the queen's lap was a girl? To me it actually looked like a small boy...And in this thread I would like to explain why I think the child is a boy and why this is important...

To check if my gut feeling was right, I searched for this seal impression in the literature to see what others had to say about this whole thing...

In the "Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus" by Joan Aruz, Ronald Wallenfel, we can read that "this is Queen Uqnitum's most important seal. She appears to be seated on the left holding a small child."

In the "City of Myth, in search of Hurrian Urkesh" by Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, people who found the seal, we also read, in the main description of the seal "...on the left, the mother-queen, seated on a level with the king, holds a small child on her lap..."

But then in the side note we find this: "This bulla shows on intimate scene in the life of Urkesh's royal family, with the king and queen seated on a level with one another, the princess perched on Uqnitum's lop, and the young prince reaching for his father's knee"...

I seriously believe that this is a misinterpretation of the scene, and probably added to fit the "ideal western family standard" of mother, daughter, father, son...

I think the small child depicted on the left of the scene as siting on the Queen Uqnitum's laps is a boy. And not just any boy. He is the same boy, who is depicted on the right of the scene reaching for his father's knee, just at younger age...

This seal does not depict "intimate scene in the life of Urkesh's royal family". This seal is an example of political propaganda...

Ten seals were found which belonged to Uqnitum. The text on one of the seals reads: "Uqnitum, wife of Tupkish". Uqnitum was probably an Akkadian wife (according to her name) of a Hurrian king. One of probably many wives (according to the authors of the The City of Myth)...

Most of these wives had children with the king. But only one of those children, one son of the king Tupkish, will end up succeeding the king at the throne and becoming the new king of Urkesh. And it seems that it was the son of Uqnitum, that became the new king...

Because the inscription on this seal reads "Uqnitum, the queen". Uqnitum could have been promoted from a "wife" to the "queen" only through her sone becoming the "crown prince", the successor to the throne...

And this is exactly what the scene on this seal depicts: "I Queen (!!!) Uqnitum gave birth to the future king of Urkesh".

How do we know that this scene represents the recognition of the Uqnitum's son as the crown prince? Well Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati say that this is because "The prince is shown touching king's lap"...

In the "City of Myth" we can read that among many "King's seals" there is one which also shows "the prince touching the king's lap". This one:

And this is the interpretation of the scene depicted on this seal:

This is very interesting. Except I don't think that the ritual described in Genesis is the same ritual shown on these seals. What Abraham asked his follower to do is to place his hand on his, Abraham's, penis while swearing an oath...

Remember the article about the origin of sceptres? 

In it I proposed that originally, penis was the sign of power the symbol of gods and rulers...I think the ritual from the Genesis is related to this veneration of the penis as the symbol of power.

And Scott, George Ryley states the same in his "Phallic worship: a history of sex and sex rites in relation to the religions of all races from antiquity to the present day" published in 1941. 

In this book we can read that Hebrews, Arabs and Egyptians swore oaths "by placing their hand on their penis or on their master's penis" which was in the Bible euphemisised as "placing the hand under someone's thigh" or just "giving hand under someone"...

I believe that the ritual shown on the Hurrian seals is, I believe, something else. 

The prince is not touching king's thigh nor is he touching king's lap. He is in fact touching king's knee, as the authors of the "City of Myth" state themselves. Why? What does this mean?

Remember the article about the Serbian expression "From knee to knee" meaning "From generation to generation", "From father to son"? In it I talked about the fact that the word for generation and the word for knee have the same root in many languages. Why?

Because of this: The English etymological dictionary says something interesting about the etymology of the word genus: "...could come from Latin genu (knee) from a supposed ancient custom of a father acknowledging paternity of a newborn by placing it on his knee..."

So this is what the prince does on these Hurrian seals. He is touching the king's knee, as a symbol that the king "held him on his knee", that he is "the next generation", that he is "legitimate son" and therefore  that he is "the crown prince" and therefore "the future king"...

These Hurrian seal impressions could be the earliest known depictions of this custom of "father recognising the child as his own by placing it on his knee"...

Amazing, right?

Oh and yeah, almost forgot. The meaning of the message from the original seal therefore is: "Up yours! It is MY son, the one I gave birth to and held on my lap, that was placed on the king's knee and was chosen to be the future king...Yours, QUEEN!!! Uqnitum. Have a nice day" 🙂

PS. As someone said earlier today: what's with the noses?

Few years ago, i did this survey on FB: When you are on a toilet, constipated, and you are straining to push things out, what is the sound you are making? Does it sound like "nnnnn"? What about the sound you are making when you are pushing something away? The same? 🙂

Most people answered yes. The sound made was like "nnnnn". Made through closed teeth & mouth, tongue pressed against the back of the upper teeth and the roof of mouth...Interesting. Why? Well, why do words for "no" 🙂 in most IE languages start with "n"? Ever thought about this?

Is this an example of natural, involuntary sounds evolving into words? Is this maybe one of the oldest words in IE languages? I mean people recognised the meaning of "nnnnn" instinctively...From there to "no" is a very short step...

I would even go as far as to say that "nnnn" is the second oldest word in the word... 🙂 The oldest word in the world I think was "aaaa". You all know that word. You all used it and heard it being used 🙂...

I explained why I think so in my post "The oldest word in the world"...

I don't know which number in the top 10 oldest words in the world is "mmmm", but it is definitely close to the top 🙂. You know the word. When something is "mmmm". Like honey. The first truly "mmmm" thing humans tasted. 

I have no idea where the word honey comes from, because in most IE languages the word for honey starts with "mmmm". I talked about this in my post "mmmmm"...

Anyway...

Uluçinar stelae

In 2007 two stelae, each bearing figures of the Storm-god leading a ruler and a duplicate Hieroglyphic Luwian text, were discovered at Uluçinar (formerly Arsuz), on the Turkish coast south of İskenderun...

The inscription is the work of a Suppiluliuma, son of Manana, king of the land of Walastin, now understood as the Luwian designation of the Amuq plain with its capital at the Iron Age site of Tell Tayinat...

The stelae, probably dating to the later tenth century BC, record the successful reign of the ruler who "achieved things his father or grandfather could not" like conquer the city of Adana and the land of Hiyawa (most likely Ahhiyawa, the Hittite designation of Greeks)

All his military victories and the abundance of grain and wine in his kingdom, the king attributes to the mighty Storm god. On both stelae, the king is depicted holding grapes in his right hand and grain in his left, while being led by the hand by the Storm god, his patron deity...

On the first stela the storm god, stands on a bull under the winged sun disc... 

On the second stela the storm god, stands on a plant under the winged sun disc... 

Why?

Well here is why: This is a chart showing yearly temperature and precipitation in Eastern Anatolia...

The late April early May (Taurus) is the time of maximum precipitation and maximum thunderstorms. The time when Thunder god arrives to the land of the Hittites...Hence the bull...This is also start of summer...Hence the winged sun disc...

The inscriptions are from the article "Two new inscribed Storm-god stelae from Arsuz (İskenderun): ARSUZ 1 and 2" by Belkis Dinçol, Ali Dinçol, J.D. Hawkins, Hasan Peker and Aliye Öztan

One more thing: Look at the end of the spring rain season. Jul/Aug. The Storm god is leading the king who is holding grapes and grain towards the end of the summer (symbolised by a bull) and the end of the rain season. And Jul/Aug is the beginning of the grain and grape harvest in Eastern Anatolian plateau. 

In "The Palaeoethnobotany of Tell Tayinat, Turkey" we read that "Hittite texts discuss the process of harvesting grains in some detail. The harvest (BURUX) would occur in Jul/Aug."

Here is something interesting. 

Summer starts on the 6th of May, in the middle of Taurus (end of April beginning of May) and is symbolised by a bull. 

Autumn starts on the 2nd of August, in the middle of Leo (end of July beginning of August) and is symbolised by a lion.

You can read more about the beginnings of seasons in my post "Two crosses"...

You can read more about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

You can also read about why are the zodiac signs where they are on the zodiac circle (spoiler: it has to do with reproductive cycles of the animals used as zodiac symbols) in the posts linked from my page "Zodiac"...

Now, the autumn (lion) succeeds summer (bull). The autumn (lion) ends (kills) summer (bull). End of July beginning of August. Lion kills Bull. But also harvests begins...

Killing of the bull = Killing of the grain = Beginning of Harvest?

Unicorn

Unicorn, 13th c. floor mosaic, Basilica of San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna

While we are talking about unicorns, I actually believe that unicorns (horses with a single giant "horn") do exist...Except their horns are depicted in the wrong place...Probably because of the morals 🙂 

The predecessor of all medieval bestiaries, Physiologus (Φυσιολόγος), which was compiled in Alexandria sometime between 2nd-4th c. AD, popularised an elaborate allegory about a unicorn trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary) 

"As soon as the unicorn sees the virgin, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep" it claims...

What does this mean? 

Well I believe that this is another myth which has its root in the "natural zodiac", set of symbols based on fixed annual lifecycle events...

In this case the unicorn symbol is derived from the natural reproductive cycle of horses. 

The natural breeding season of horses typically begins around mid-April and finishes around mid September...It is characterised by violent stallion fights...

The beginning of the horse mating season coincided with the beginning of the sailing season in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is probably why the Greek sea god Poseidon to whom then sailors prayed for calm seas, was also "god of horses" who was "worshiped as a stallion". You can read more about this in my post "Trojan horse"...

So obviously, the horse mating season is the time when stallions get "horny" 🙂 Unicorn horn is described as "being cubit and a half (700 mm, 28 inches) in length". 

Pic: erect horse's penis sizes 🙂 (sorry)

The virgin, which calms the unicorn 🙂 is not an euphemism for bestial sex...It just means that the natural horse mating season ends in Virgo 23 Aug–23 Sep...Which is the time when unicorns (🙂 ) disappear. 

Until next summer...

But maybe this is just me reading into things...

Oh I completely forgot to say that the Unicorn is the symbol of the sun, sunny part of the year, from spring equinox to autumn equinox. Mares fertility is tuned to day length, which means they are most fertile around summer solstice...When stallions are horniest 🙂  too...

Oh, and the origin of the Unicorn legend can be found in the mistranslation of the Hebrew legend of Re'em...Cause Re'em in the end turned out to be a wild bull, hot a horse...I talked about this in my post "Re'em"...

Re'em

A re'em, also reëm (Hebrew: רְאֵם), is an animal mentioned nine times in the Hebrew Bible. The Greek Old Testament (3rd-2nd c. BC) translated re'em as "unicorn" which stayed as the main translation of this word until the end of the 19th century...

Then, in 1899, Johann Ulrich Duerst discovered that the word "re'em" it was based on the Akkadian cognate "rimu", meaning "Auroch", the Eurasian wild cattle...This has been "generally" 🙂 accepted today as the correct translation, "even among religious scholars" 🙂....

Now, I would like here to talk about the folklore related to re'em. Which is really interesting as it is directly based on the ancient Hebrew solar cult from the time of the First Temple...You can find more about this cult in my post "Sun god from the First Temple". Pic: Sun on the seal of the kingdom of Judah (739-687 BC)

Re'em in folklore: 

1. "The re'ems live at the opposite ends of the earth, one in the east, the other in the west" Solar symbolism? 

Well yes...

Serbian riddle:

Q: "I slaughtered a bull behind one hill and the blood spurted from behind another" 

A: Sun, setting in the west and rising in the east

Another example of the deep link between bull and sun in Serbian culture...And possibly an explanation why there are ever only two "re'em" animals...Sun rising in the east and setting in the wast? But why would "re'em" be the symbol of the sun? Read on...

2. "They meet only when they mate, after which the female kills the male" 

Summer starts in Taurus, which is the time when Aurochs calving season starts...

Summer ends in Leo, which the time when Aurochs mating season starts...

You can read more about why Taurus is where it is on the Zodiac (Solar year) circle in my post "Ram and bull"...

Which is why Bull is the symbol of summer...

You can read more about the animal symbols of the seasons in my post about "Symbols of the seasons"...

By the way, summer ends during Auroch's mating season...Bull (summer) dies during Auroch's mating season...

3. "The female becomes pregnant...[At the end of her pregnancy] she cannot walk...and she survives only because her saliva waters the earth around her sufficiently to produce enough vegetation for her support"

Female aurochs gestation lasts 9 months...They are pregnant during autumn, winter and spring...During the cooler, wetter part of the year...Which is why cows are in many mythologies linked with clouds, rain, feminine...While bulls are linked with sun, masculine...

4. "Instead of giving birth, her stomach bursts open and she dies instantly. However, twins are born, one male and one female. They get up immediately and wander away, one to the east, one to the west"

This is here just so it is obvious that we aren't talking about real animals

Finally here is the "interesting bit":

So David, the guy who bought a threshing floor (used in the past as solar observatories), on which the First Temple was built (later denounced as a place where people worshiped sun) is minding his own business...

Pic: Threshing floor observatory how to...

You can read more about the link between the threshing floor and the First Temple in my post "Boaz and Jachin"... 

When he happens to stumble upon a re'em (gigantic bull representing summer which starts at the beginning of May in Taurus-Bull) and mistakes it for a mountain (often used as a symbol for sun's ascent and descent and used for solar cult celebrations)...

David starts climbing the mountain (the summer progresses). The "re'em" wakes up, looks at David and goes, WTF, and lifts David up on his gigantic horns (sun between the bull horns, sun above middle of a bull, summer solstice, when the sun reaches the highest point in the sky)...

Summer continues...David prays...Lord sends lion (because the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian lions starts in Jul/Aug, in Leo...

The "re'em", the gigantic bull, bows down before the lion (because summer, symbolised by the bull, ends in Leo, which is why lion is the symbol of autumn)...Hence lion killing bull symbol which is literally everywhere in Eurasia and North Africa...

Lion looks at David, goes "mmmmm" and licks it's lips...David prays again...Lord sends deer (because the mating season of fallow deer, most common deer species in the middle east, starts in August, in Leo)...Lion goes off chasing deer (autumn progresses)... 

You can read more about the fallow deer as an ancient solar calendar marker in my post about the "Entemena vase"...

David stays on the border between summer and autumn...A very peculiar point on the solar circle...The point where sky gods are worshiped...Like Elijah (allegedly old god, Helios???) whom Hebrews (allegedly) worshiped in the First Temple built by David...And whom Serbs also worshiped as Ilija Gromovnik (Elijah the Thunderer)

Anyway, interesting beast that "re'em"...

Fig with bulls

Indus Valley civilisation seal depicting a tree flanked by two bulls. 

From "Intercultural Relations between Iran, the Murghabo-Bactrian Archaeological Complex (BMAC), Northwest India and Failaka in the Field of Seals" by Sylvia Winckelmann

This is one of many so called "narrative seals". The problem is no one has a clue what the narrative is. So let's try to figure it out...

The broad lief tree is Ficus religiosa or sacred fig, a drought deciduous plant. 

It sheds its leaves during the peak of the dry season, February to April. And new leaves start growing at the end of April beginning of May, in Taurus. Taurus which marks the beginning of summer, season marked by a Bull. You can read more about why the beginning of summer is marked by a bull in my post "Ram and bull". And you can read more about the animal symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Here is the sacred fig again, this time literally "linked" to the bull. 

 From an Indus Valley Civilisation pot depicting two growing seasons in Indus Valley. More in my post "Kharif and rabi season"... 

Oh and what about the fish from the original seal? Well this is most likely "palla" fish, a migratory fish which swims up the river to mate between May and August (summer symbolised by a bull), which is the main fishing season on the Indus river...

Here is again most likely "palla" fish again symbolically linked to the bull of summer. And the sun 🙂 From another Indus Valley Civilisation vessel. More about it in my post "Palla"...

Oh, and here it is again on these two Indus Valley Civilisation seals, swimming up the river (please note the arrow pointing up, just in case you might get confused 🙂 ) During the bull season, summer...

Now finally what about the wheel depicted on the original seal? Well that is the symbol of the sun and thunder god. Well at least it is in Slavic mythology (folklore).

Ok that's a bit much, I can hear you say...That makes no sense...

Well...

The little circles on the trunk of the fig tree are fig fruits. 

They ripen at the end of Taurus. The end of Taurus (End of May) is the beginning of the rain, monsoon season in Indus Valley.
 

The rain season spans summer, the season marked by a bull. That is the hottest (Sun god) and wettest (Rain god) part of the year...

Does it make sense now? 

Here is the same symbol on another Indus Valley Civilisation tablet, above the scene which marks the peak of the monsoon season (end of July beginning of August)

You can read more about this object and the meaning of the symbols depicted on it in my post "Musth"...

So do we understand the narrative a bit better now?

PS: It is amazing how blind I can be sometimes. Luckily my friend Tobi Wd was't blind. Here is the conversation I had with him about this seal moments ago:

Tobi Wd: Predecessor of the trident 🔱

Me: No, it's a tree. A sacred fig. It appears on many seals in different shapes.

Tobi Wd: With the curved bull horns as well? I hypothesize that the shivaistic trident could be a stylisation of this tree in combination with the bull horns.

Me: Ahhh, I see it now. BLIND!!!! You are right. And the trident is of course an early symbol of the thunder (rain) gods...If you read the article linked from the post, it actually says that the meaning of the seal is "beginning of monsoon"...And trident was the weapon of Shiva, whose Vimana (animal avatar) was bull...

Amazing actually...

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...