Piglets poglets everywhere

Achaemenid cylinder seal with piglets, lots and lots of wild boar piglets...See the horizontal stripes...

Why piglets? 

Well, have you ever tried piglet roasted on a spit? Maybe the guy owned a barbecue place...

Or maybe...

Nooo! Not animal calendar markers again!!!

To understand what these little piglets could symbolise (not saying that they do, but could), we need to look at the climate in Iran. 

Climate in Iran is divided (roughly) into hot, dry half (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool, wet part (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)...

Wild boar start mating at the beginning of the cool, wet half of the year, in Oct/Nov. 

The gestation period lasts 120 days. Which means that the piglets are born starting from  Mar/Apr...See, stripy...🙂

Guess what happens in Mar/Apr in Iran...The most important annual event, the annual snowmelt, which kick starts the annual flood starts...

So, lots of piglets = annual flood = fertile soil = fertility... 

I talked about this in my post "Zodiac from Isfahan".

In Isfahan zodiac the same period (Mar/Apr) is marked by a ram, Aries...

See, ram, Aries, flood...

Here is Aries, marking the same time period, and the same annual event, the beginning of the annual snowmelt which kickstarts the annual flood, in ancient Mesopotamia...I talk about this in my posts "Goatfish with ram's head"...

BTW, why is Ram marking Mar/Apr? Cause this is the time when lambing of wild (and domestic) sheep stops and milking starts...

I talk about this in many of my articles...

Anyway, I am not saying that the little piglets on that seal were used as animal calendar marker. But maybe they were. Have you seen my "Achaemenid lion boar seal" article?

Send fighter jets!!! It's an Iranian flying saucer!!! 

Achaemenid cylinder seal, 6th–4th c. BC, Iran. 

The depicted scene makes very little sense, unless you view everything on this seal as a calendar marker. Then it all makes a lot of sense...

So maybe all these piglets are animal calendar markers, or...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Wolf?

Plaque in the shape of a wolf (?)

Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Warring States Period, 8th-6th c. BCE, Ordos Region. Bronze with malachite inlay. The Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin. Inv. Nr. 1965-69

But is it possible that this is not a wolf, but a composite "beast"?

The first thing that looked weird to me was the hair on the animal's back and neck...I have seen this before and not on a depiction of a wolf.

Celtic Bronze boar statue from the sanctuary at Neuvy-en-Sullias (1st c. BC)...

And the real thing

Of course, wolves can also be seen with their hair standing up on their back when they are about to attack...So...

The second thing that looked weird to me was the tail...It didn't look like a wolf tail at all...

It looked like a snow leopard tail...

Or a Siberian tiger tail...

And the whole body,  kind of looked cattish not wolfish...

Of course, wolves also wag their tails, but according to this wolf tail dictionary, not when they are snarling and ready to attack...So...

The only kind of wolfish part of the animal could be the head, with the gaping snarling jaw...But then that could also be actually a leopard or a a tiger head too...

So not sure what is actually depicted on this plaque...

So maybe this is a composite animal, with wolf, wild boar and a leopard parts. Or maybe this is just a very very stylised depiction of a wolf with an aggressive arousal 🙂...

I personally think this is a composite animal calendar marker for winter, cause all of the above animals mate during winter:

Wild boar mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Tiger mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Wolf mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

Leopard mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

That's that. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Martenica

I was walking with my family through Marley park in Dublin one day in late March, when I spotted these two little woollen dolls hanging from a branch.

Martenitsa in Dublin. 😊

Martenitsa 🇧🇬 or Martinka 🇲🇰 or Martenica 🇷🇸 or Martis 🇬🇷 or Mărțișor 🇷🇴 or Verore 🇦🇱, a small decoration, made of white and red yarn and usually in the form of a bracelet or a doll...

They are made or bought on Baba Marta (Granny March) Day (1st of March), and traditionally, they are always given as gifts, not made or bought for oneself. They are given to family, friends, and loved ones...

These adornments are then worn as protective talismans until the wearer sees a first stork, first swallow, or first blossoming tree or until the end of March (if Baba Marta is angry and March turns out to be cold and even snowy).

When the Martenitsa is taken off, it is supposed to be tied to a branch of a fruit tree, to protect the tree through the fruiting season...

Interestingly, in Romanian folklore, seasons are attributed symbolic colours: spring is red, summer is green or yellow, autumn is black, and winter is white. This is why Mărțișor (Martenitsa) is made from intertwined white and read thread. It is a symbol of passing, from the cold white winter, to the warm red spring...

Beard pulling

Muiredach's cross is a high cross from the 10th or possibly 9th century, located at the ruined monastic site of Monasterboice, in County Louth, Ireland. On one of the lowest panels of the cross there is a relief depicting two men pulling each other's beards.

Expression "Pulling someone's beard" means "Challenging someone's authority". Does anyone know how old this expression is?

Pulling someone's beard out was an act of insult. In Isaiah 50:6 we read: "I let them beat my back and pull out my beard. I didn't turn aside when they insulted me and spit in my face". This is because beard was a sign of manhood so pulling the beard out was a symbolic castration...

Romanesque sculpted stone capital from the Church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption in Thiviers (Dordogne, France), likely dating from the 12th century.

The link between beard and penis is symbolically represented in this late 15th century polychrome stone stature of Adam from Albi cathedral, showing Adam covering his penis with fig leaf with one hand and touching his beard with the other...

 

Earlier romanesque depictions of the same symbolic scene are much more explicit :) Like this one from the church of San Martín de Elines (dated to 8th-10th century AD). Basically Beard = Penis = Fertility = Fatherhood 

Serbian expression "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" which means "he acts like god gave him power". 

Apparently, this stems from the fact that in the Ancient Near East, grabbing someone by the beard (to kiss them) was a customary gesture of intense affection, respect, and familial intimacy...

So "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" means "Him and God are best palls"...

But the Serbian expression "He acts like he had pulled god's beard" has another version: "He acts like he had pulled god's penis". 

I talked about the link between penis and sceptre (symbol of power) in my post "Sceptre"...

For instance, in Sumerian:  ñišuš-bar: ruler's staff; sceptre, literally means 'penis' + 'to see, show'...

So are beard stroking penis wielding figures like this one from Mansilla de la Sierra depictions of god?

Like this Ithyphallic Norse statue of the male fertility god Freyr Holding his beard and his penis...

Remember god is god the creator, god the father. Beard = Penis = Procreation = Fatherhood...

I talk about all this in my posts "Beard of Osiris" "Braided beard"...

Sacred Ibis

Sacred Ibis - Fresco from the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, built at the beginning of the 1st c. BC. Currently in the Archaeological Museum in Naples...

Is the Sacred Ibis holding ripe grain in its beak? Why?

Animal calendar markers to the rescue...I know, again, boring...

For some reason Ancient Egyptians worshiped this bird and even depicted God Thoth as an Ibis...Why? 

Animal calendar markers...Oh shut up...All you see are animal calendar markers everywhere! No one else does! 

Well, maybe today that is true...But in the past others did too:

In the 1891 "Living animals of the world vol 2" we can read:

The naturalist Brehm says on this subject [why Ibis was sacred]:

"When the Nile, after being at its lowest ebb, rose again, and the water assumed a red tinge, then the ibis appeared in the land of the Pharaohs..."

"...as a sure guarantee that the stream, the giver and preserver of life, which the people in their profound reverence raised to the rank of a god, would once again empty the well-spring of plenty over the thirsty land..."

"...The servant and messenger of an all-bounteous Deity commanded of a necessity a reverence of a poetic and distinguished character, by reason of its importance: he too must be a god."

See 🙂 deified animal calendar markers...

But animal calendar marker for what time of the year? If we look at the available data for the nesting season of African Sacred Ibises, we can see that depending on the area, nesting takes place between Mar and Aug...

The naturalist Brehm says that Sacred Ibis arrived just after Nile reached its lowest level and started to rise again...So if we want to determine when ibises used to arrive to Egypt, lets have a look at the Nile water level chart...

As you can see the Nile starts to rise in Apr/May...Is this the time of the year that the Sacred Ibis is an animal calendar marker for? I think so. In another book, 1829 "Cassell's book of birds" we can read this:

"...According to our own observations, this species is now but rarely seen in Egypt, and was never met with by us below eighteen degrees north latitude; it, however, occurs regularly in South Nubia and the Soudan, where it arrives at the beginning of the rainy season..."

And this is the climate chart for Kharoum, capital of Sudan. You can see that the rain season starts in Apr/May...Very cool, right?

So if Sacred Ibis was indeed a deified animal calendar marker for Apr/May, why was the Sacred Ibis from the temple of Isis in Pompeii with a ripe grain in its beak?

Because grain harvest time in the Nile River Valley starts in Apr/May...

Soooo...Kudos to naturalist Brehm, whoever he was, for being on the right track...

One more interesting thing that Brehm said:

"When the Nile, after being at its lowest ebb, rose again, and the water assumed a red tinge..."

I talked about Red Nile in my post "White calf"...

And one more interesting thing. Apart from dressing up as an Ibis, Thoth also liked dressing up as a Baboon...Why? Remember my posts about Tefnut?

Tefnut was the deity of moisture in Ancient Egypt. One day, she got pissed off 🙂 with Egyptians for taking the piss 🙂 and not giving her enough kudos, and pissed off 🙂 to Nubia...

Sun god Ra, Tefnut's father, missed his daughter and so he sent Thoth (god of wisdom) as his emissary to ask her to return home.

For some weird reason, Thoth, disguised himself as a baboon (!!!) and went looking for Tefnut (???)

To understand why Thoth disguised himself as a baboon, and why Tefnut followed Thoth back to Egypt, you need to know that "Tefnut" (moisture) was married to her twin brother "Shu" (wind), and that together they mean "wet wind" = eastern monsoon...I talked about this first in my post "Menat"...

And baboons peak mating season is at the beginning of the monsoon season in East Africa...Which starts in Mar/Apr/May. And it is this monsoon that feeds the Nile flood...I talked about this in my post "Baboon"...

Oh and guess what? Thoth, our Ibis/Baboon cross dresser was also identified with Shu, the monsoon wind...And when depicted as Shu, Thoth was just like Shu depicted carrying ostrich feathers on his head. Why?

Well ostrich mating season begins in Mar/Apr and ends in Aut/Sep. During that time male ostriches become aggressive, fight with each other for harems and make loud booming mating sounds...While the Nile is rising...

Soooo....Hope this was interesting...At least a bit...I promise my next post is not going to be about animal calendar markers...🙂

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Winged camel

I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini for alerting me to this amazing book, "National museum of Afghanistan: illustrated guide" by Dupree, Nancy Hatch. In it, on page 37 is this Bactrian bone seal dated to the 2nd millennium BC. WOW!!!

The official description says that the seal depicts a winged camel on the front and a bird on the back...Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini thinks the bird is an eagle and the camel's wings are also eagle wings...I would say the bird is a vulture...

Hmmmm...Winged camel...If it was just a winged camel, I would say "Eh, Afghanistan is a weird place, maybe camels there really have wings" and would move on, just like the authors of this book...

But the "winged camel" also has a very, very long stripy tail, like a tiger tail...Or are my eyes deceiving me???

And when I see something like this, I put my super suit, assume a super pose and shout out my super slogan: "Animal calendar markers!!!" 🙂

All of these animals (Bactrian camel, eagle/vulture, Caspian tiger) mate during winter, starting in Oct/Nov...This is a complex animal calendar marker for winter...

I actually wrote about all of these animals separately as animal calendar markers for winter.

I wrote about Bactrian camel as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Bactrian camel", "Volga mirror", "Camel and buffalo"...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

I wrote about Griffon Vultures as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Double headed eagle", "Summer and winter BMAC seals" and many others...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

I wrote about Tingers as animal calendar marker for winter in my posts "Spots and stripes", "Tigers tigers everywhere", "Tiger and dragon" and many others...The reason why they are an animal calendar marker for winter is because they start breeding in (Oct/Nov), the beginning of winter...

So:

Bactrian camel - mating season winter

Caspian tiger -  mating season winter

Old world vultures - mating season winter

You put them all together and you get complex animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain and snow season in Afghanistan.

And it is this rain and especially snow, that feeds all the local rivers and supports life in the land of flying camels with vulture wings...Source of water in local rivers. I talked about this in my posts "Tulip goddess"...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Pillar of the Boatmen

Strap in. This is going to be fun. In this article I am going to talk about the first raw of panel from the 1st c. AD Roman monument known as the "Pillar of the Boatmen" found in Paris, France...

I was prompted to look into it by the posts by this great account @Michssspp82096 about this panel which depicts a bull standing under a willow tree, with 3 cranes perched on his back. The inscription reads "TARVOS TRIGARANOS" or  "Bull and Three Cranes" in Gaulish...

This is a coloured version of this image. 

It looks cool, but the colours are wrong...The only cranes native to France are Common Cranes and their feathers are grey not white and their legs are black not orange...

Common Cranes are highly migratory and follow extremely precise migratory routines, always mating/nesting and wintering in the same locations...

In Northern Europe (Including France, Britain and Ireland), cranes arrive from their wintering sites to their mating/nesting sites in the spring in Mar/Apr/May and they leave their mating/nesting sites for their wintering sites in Oct/Nov...

Which means that their arrival and departure was definitely used as animal calendar marker for the beginning of spring (arrival) and end of autumn (departure)...

Now look at this: In (Celtic) Europe, willow flowers in Feb/Mar/Apr, basically announcing the arrival of spring...

Spring which starts in Jan/Feb, and is marked by Celtic Imbolc festival...

So, spring starts (Jan/Feb), willow starts flowering (Feb/Mar)...Then the cranes arrived (Mar/Apr)...

And started their mating dances followed by mating and nesting...

And then in Apr/May the wild Eurasian cattle (now extinct) calving and lactating season started...This is what the original, Old Taurus marked...I talk about the old Taurus which we find all over Eurasia in many of my posts...

Spring starts (Jan/Feb), Willow (Feb/Mar), Cranes (Mar/Apr), Bull/Calf (Apr/May) Spring ends...

Cool, right? It gets a lot cooler...

Cranes are linked to cattle as animal calendar markers all over Eurasia. I talk about it in several of my posts...

What I found only today is that cranes love hanging around large ruminators, domesticated and wild. They love open spaces created by these animals...

You can read more about this in

"Interactions and impacts of domesticated animals on cranes in agriculture"

"Eurasian crane (Grus grus) as ecosystem engineer in grasslands ‒ conservation values, ecosystem services and disservices related to a large iconic bird species"

Which is why cattle and cranes together are a very common sight...

And why why we see things like these

Crane animal calendar marker:

A Terracotta Bowl, Mehrgarh, Balochistan, Indus Valley, 3500–3000 BC...

Decorated with zebu bulls, each with a water bird perched on its back and a leaf motif between the horns...

I talk about this artefact in my post "Mehrgarh crane bowl"...

Cool, right? It gets A LOT cooler...

Interestingly, next to the panel depicting "Tarvos Trigaranos" (arrival of spring) is the panel depicting a young man cutting willow branches. The inscription reads "ESVS"...

There are several prominent spring rituals in Europe involving the cutting and usage of willow branches, particularly in Central and Eastern European Slavic (ex Celtic) lands...

These traditions, now linked to Easter (Mar/Apr), are generally rooted in pre-Christian fertility rites, marking the arrival of spring and symbolising health, growth, renewal...

And there is a very good reason for it: Spring willow is full of growth hormones...Which is why I put the spring branch cuttings into water for watering my flowers...I talked about this in my post "Willow in Slavic folklore": 

I also talked about the use of willow trumpets in May day/Beltain/St George's day rituals in

In the past in the Balkans, during the night before St George's day, processions of men and boys roamed the villages blowing willow bark trumpets "to scare the witch (winter) away"...The same ritual was performed in Cornwall too on May Day. I talk about this in my post "May horns"...

May day/Beltain/St George's day is the day which in South Slavic and Celtic calendar marks the end of cold, dark half of the year, and the beginning of the hot, light half of the year...

I also talked about the use of willow in spring fertility (sexual) rituals among the Etruscans in my post "Whipping fresco", where I give full symbolic analysis of this 5th c. BC Etruscan fresco, Tarquinia, Tomb of the whipping...Depicting...Well you can all see the obvious bit that it is depicting...Right? 🙂

BTW, the now tame Slavic spring willow rituals could once have been equally as explicit as the Etruscan ones...Considering the beliefs like this:

In Serbia people believed that women become very horny and very fertile in spring, when willows started putting out new green shoots ...So this was the best time to make babies...🙂 

And rituals like this:

Willow, the tree which grows next to water, is associated with rain, water and female fertility, female sexuality...Hence ritual whipping of teenage girls by teenage boys using willow whips, performed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia on Easter Sunday...

I talk about this in my post "Willow in Slavic folklore" about willow and fertility in Slavic folklore. 

Anyway...

Esus was Gallic god whose Romans equated with either Mercury or Mars...Which is it? It doesn't mater...

In Roman times, Mar/Apr-Oct/Nov was the "war season", which was opened and closed with the appropriate religious festivities presided by the Salii priests...

As I asked in the comments to this post, but didn't get any answer, I wonder if Celts also had "War Season"?

The Gallic chieftain Dumnorix, literally "king of the world" in Gaulish, of the Aedui tribe, is depicted holding a severed head on a silver coin (first half 1st century BCE)

I would say yes, they did. I think that the Celts, like many societies in antiquity, had their "war season" aligned with the agricultural and weather cycles...

Warfare was most common during the warmer months, roughly from after spring agricultural work, planting, ended until before autumn agricultural work, harvest, began...

So Esus could have been a war god, Mars, announcing (by cutting the willow branches with cranes in Mar/Apr) the start of the war season, starting (most likely) in Apr/May...

Here he is depicted on another panel from a four sided column dedicated to Mercury, dated to the early Roman imperial period, and found in Trier, France. He is depicts as a young man chopping a willow tree, which holds a bull and three birds...

Also, according to the Irish tradition, before the Tuatha De Danan went to war against Fomori, Lugh, the leader of the Tuatha De Danan danced the "Corrghuineacht" (crane dance) around his warriors on one leg, with one eye closed and one arm outstretched, while cursing their enemies...

So the arrival of cranes and their mating dance was also an announcement of the beginning of the war season...

But ESUS could have also been Mercury/Hermes...

Hermes himself was a deified calendar marker for Apr/May...Every single plant and animal that features prominently in his mythology is a calendar marker for Apr/May...I talk about this in these articles:

Happy birthday Hermes! According to the "Homeric hymn to Hermes", Hermes was born "on the fourth day of the month" but the name of the month was never mentioned...So a mystery...Solved using animal and plant calendar markers: it's 4th of May. I talk about this in my post "When grapes flower"...

What did Hermes do first after he was born? 

He stole Apollo's cows. 

He then invented fire drill, made fire, and sacrificed one of the cows to the gods...

I talked about this in my post "12 Olympians" about (apparently inexplicable 🙂) link between Hermes and Hestia (fire)

What did Hermes do after that? He invented a lyre which he gifted to Apollo...A very special lyre...In exchange, Apollo gave him Caduceus topped with two snakes...

I talk about this in my post "Lyre of Apollo", in which I present the analysis of the animal and plant calendar markers embedded into the story about the birth of Hermes, particularly the part related to him making the first lyre, which he later swapped with Apollo for the caduceus...Bull, Tortoise, Snake are all animal calendar markers for Apr/May, the time of Hermes...

Finally, are the wings on the hat worn by Hermes/Mercury actually cockerel wings? Cockerel is also an animal calendar marker for Apr/May, the time of Hermes...I talk about this in my post "Cock fight mosaic", where I talk about the link between Hermes/Mercury, cockerels and (god of rain) thunder storms...

Remember, Mercury/Hermes was Herald of the Thunder God Jupiter/Zeus...Guess when the thunderstorm season starts in Europe? In Apr/May, the months of Mercury/Hermes...And peaks in Jul/Aug...

So Esus could have been Mercury, the herald of Jupiter...Which is interesting, cause the next panel in the same row on the Pillar of the Boatmen, next to the one with Esus, depicts Juptier, standing, holding a spear and a thunderbolt. The inscription reads "IOVIS"...

How cool is this? It get EVEN EVEN cooler...

Mercury/Hermes was the protector of trade and traders. During Celtic/Roman/Greek times, long distance trade in Europe started in Apr/May. After the snow melted, making roads passable, after ice melted, making rivers passable, after winter storms passed, making seas passable...

Which is quite interesting, considering that all of this is depicted on a Roman column erected in Lutetia (modern Paris) in honour of Jupiter by the guild of boatmen...

How cool is this? It gets EVEN EVEN EVEN cooler...

In Irish myths, Lugh, Thunder God, carried his most precious magical relics in a crane skin bag, the corr bolg, as did Manannan mac Lir, the Sea and Warrior God!

As I said, Trading, War and Thunderstorms all stared in Apr/May, right after the arrival of cranes...

How cool is this? Well, here is the coolest part...

The last panel in this same row depicts Vulcan/Hephaestus, standing, with hammer and tongs. The inscription reads "VOLCANVS"...

Why Vulcan/Hephaestus? 

Cause he was a Holy Craftsman...

So?

When were boats repaired during Roman times? Well of course, during the "non sailing season", Oct/Nov - Mar/Apr...

Which makes me wonder if the first row of panels on the Pillar of the Boatmen is actually a calendar:

TARVOS TRIGARANOS: Spring (Jan/Feb-Apr/May)

ESUS: Summer (Apr/May-Jul/Aug)

IOVIS: Autumn (Jul/Aug-Oct/Nov)

VOLCANVS: Winter (Oct/Nov-Jan/Feb)

I told you...I think we just managed to decipher the meaning of the first row of panels form Pillar of the Boatmen. What do you think? I will leave deciphering the rest of this pillar for some other time. I think this is quite enough for today...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...