Iranian goat of rain

I want to thank Gabriella Brusa-Zappellini, Great Italian Archaeologist, for posting excerpts from this book. 

The most prominent place on the cover was of course given to the virile "Goat of rain" standing between two zig zag lines symbolizing flowing water...

This goat was of course interpreted by archaeologists as "decorative design'...But in fact it is a calendar marker. The beginning of the mating season of the Ibex goats (Oct/Nov) announces the beginning of winter and the beginning of the rain season in Mesopotamia and Western Iran.

Iraq

Western Iran

I talked about this in my post about Tepe Hissar pottery, "Strider", "Winged bull with Ibex horns", "Goat in a tree", "Jumping goat"...And many more...

This symbol directly links Ibex goat fertility and nature fertility in general. Ibex goat's semen, and rain, heavenly semen...

Another guy with a flower under it's horns...

And two very stylized goats with flowers under their horns...

Here we see plants growing out of Ibex's horns...Why? Goat of rain...And rain is what makes plants grow in this part of the world...

Is this a field under the horns of the Goat of rain? These kind of things are usually interpreted as fields...Field which depends on rain that the magic goat brings every Oct/Nov...

While some Ibex designs are quite realistic

Others are abstract . This is Ibex coming out of the flowing water, river, which the rain it brings fills...

The cross under the goat's horns...A stylized flower...Or a marker on its own...Like on this Elamite seal about which I talked about in my post "Maltese cross seal from Elam"...

See, goats and cross...

Another cross under the Ibex horns...

This is a cool design...Again Ibex standing on top of flowing water...

What's better than one Ibex standing on top of flowing water? Two Ibexes standing on top of flowing water...

Eventually, we arrive to almost completely abstracted depiction of three ejaculating Ibexes

How about this. Four ibex goats...

Finally. Look at these Ibex horns

And then look at this

And then look at this. No head needed...

Remember, these are Neolithic and Early Bronze Age designs...Cool, right?

Lions vs buffalos

"This cylinder seal and rolling show a pair of lions holding a bull at each end, while a hero is attacking one of the lions! A26312: limestone, Iraq, Akkadian period". From a tweet by @orientalinst (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)

The two kitties are identified correctly as lions. But I don't think this is an ordinary bull...This looks like a buffalo to me...Do you see the ribbed horns? And that makes all the difference...Here are some buffalos:

Now remember this post in which I talked about water buffaloes being already present in south western Iran (Jiroft) 2000 years earlier than people thought? In this article I talked about this artifact depicting buffalos, dated to the early 3rd millennium BC. 

You want proof of Indus Valley civilisation - Mesopotamia links, there you go. These buffaloes didn't wander into Iraq all the way from Indus Valley by themselves...Someone had to bring them there...Via Iran of course...

Now about the seal...It is another example of a complex animal calendar marker.

Buffalos start mating at the beginning of the the rain season...Beginning of winter...November...

While Eurasian lions main mating period starts at the beginning of the drought season...Beginning of Autumn...August...

This is why Leo is where it is on the zodiac circle. It is an ancient animal calendar marker for Jul/Aug, the beginning of the main mating season of the Eurasian lions...

Leo is the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia. The time when water levels in the two great rivers and the irrigation canals that they feed is the lowest. Leo is the time when canals were repaired...See, sun god, in an empty canal (river bed) between lions (in Leo)...

I talked about this in my post "Canals"...

This time of the year was the time of droughts and death...Which is why the god of death in Mesopotamia, Nergal, was actually a "destructive sun of the late summer"...And was depicted as a lion...

I talked about Nergal in my post "Winged superhuman hero"...

Also, because the Eurasian lion mating covers the whole of Autumn (Aug,Sep,Oct), lion was in the past a symbol for autumn

I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

But I wonder if Lions vs Buffalo here means dry vs wet season? Where Lion represents the whole of the hot, dry season (May-October), season of the sun, while Buffalo represents the whole of the cool, wet season (Nov-April), season of rain???

Is this why Mesopotamian dragons have lion's bodies??? I mean 7 heads here represent the 7 months of "summer" (the whole dry and hot season, not just autumn)...

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

How's this for a symbol of hot dry season? Cute Bactrian lion, whose head looks like a blazing sun, and whose body radiates heat, just like the body of the sun god Shamash/Utu...From the same period, 3rd millennium BC...

I talked about this in my post "Lion radiating heat"...

So if lions represent the dry, drought season, and buffalo represents the wet, rain season, then what's that over buffalo's head, two crescent moons pointing up...Why?

The same moon is placed on other Mesopotamian seals over sowing ploughs, next to scorpions, which also symbolise the start of winter and grain sowing season...Scorpions disappear when weather gets too cold...At the start of winter.

I talked about this in my posts "Seven stars of scorpio" and "Ploughing"

But what about the crescent moon pointing up? When the crescent moon points upward and looks like a dish gathering rain water...And when the buffalos start mating...And when the scorpions disappear...Then the rains will start falling...After which, it's time to sow grain...

The last thing: Who's the dude with the axe? Looks suspiciously like a storm god...Ishkur / Adad...He loved axes...

Well, all storm gods used to love axes. And especially stone axes...

I talked about this in my post "Kataibates"

So is the dude from the Akkadian seal "a hero" or a storm god ending drought and bringing rain? 

Have a look at this:

I was planning to do a lot of boring stuff, but then you posted this tweet and ruined my plan...🙂 Thank god...

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...

Thunder poppies

In England, poppies were sometimes called “thunder flowers” because picking them was believed to trigger lightning... 

Beginnen donderwolken op te doemen, stook dan vlug uw donderbloemen (When clouds with thunder approach, burn then your poppies fast) - Dutch saying

In Flanders the local name for common (field, corn) poppies is "donderblomme", literally "thunder flower". In Wallonia this becomes "tonnoire", after "tonnerre" (thunder)...

In the past, people used to gather red poppy flowers and make bouquets from them. These bouquets were then brought to the church where they were blessed by a priest...

When a thunderstorm approached, people would burn the poppies on the altar of the church to ward of the damaging thunderstorm...

Why?

Poppies start flowering May. Which is the beginning of the thunderstorm season in continental Europe...And flower until the thunderstorm season is over. These pictures  show thunderstorm frequency in Europe per month...

What is interesting is that the beginning of May, the beginning of summer, is when wild Eurasian cattle, Aurochs, used to start calving. It is also interesting that the beginning of Aug, the end of summer, is when wild Eurasian cattle, Aurochs, used to start their mating...

I talked about this in my post "Ram and bull"...

Which is why bull was the symbol of summer...

I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

You can read more about the origin of zodiac symbols and their link to the annual lifecycles of the animals used as symbols in my posts about zodiac signs which are linked to this page about "Zodiac"...

Anyway, if you look at the above thunderstorm distribution map, you can see that thunderstorm season in continental Europe starts in May and ends in Aug...

And interestingly, it is in August that Serbs celebrated the victory of Perun (Slavic thunder god) over Veles (The great snake, Dragon, Symbol of drought)...They battled all summer (summer being the hottest part of the year and also the part of the year with most thunderstorms)...

And guess what Serbs did to celebrate that victory which falls at the beginning of the mating season of Aurochs, which was characterized by wild bull fights for females? Serbs organized (and still do) bull fights

I talked about this in my post "Alidjun"...

Oh and guess what else they do to celebrate the victory of the Thunder god, at the end of summer, which is symbolized by a bull? They kill and sacrifice a bull...

I talked about this in my post "Bull of Grom Div"...

This link between poppies (bulls) and thunder (gods) is not only a European thing...

Beginning of May falls in the middle of Taurus...Anatolian thunder god arriving on a bull and holding a trident as a symbol of thunder. Why? Because Taurus is the peak of the thunderstorm season in Anatolia...

I talked about this in my post about "Uluçinar stelae".

And sometimes the god standing on a bull is even carrying poppies...

I talked about this in my post "Poppy god"...

Mesolithic sturgeon fishermen

Objects made of stone, dated to 6300 – 5990 BC and excavated in houses of the Mesolithic Lepenski vir culture, 9500-5500BC, Danube Iron Gates gorge, eastern Serbia. All have carvings on the surface. Lengths: 35-45cm. Classified as "stone sceptres". But are they?

The other day I came across the article "Big Fish Hunting: interpretation of stone clubs from Lepenski Vir" by Ivana Živaljević.

In this paper, the author proposes that these objects were in fact stone clubs or mallets, which may have been used in fishing as stunners. Not any fish fishing...Sturgeon fishing...

These giant fishes were, until very recently abundant in Danube river. They are migratory fishes, which spend most of their life in the Black and Azov sea, but migrate every spring into rivers to spawn...

And they are easily caught using fish traps. 19th c. sturgeon traps in the Danube Iron Gates gorge were described as follows: The narrow branches of the Danube are disrupted [by] double post structures made from timber, arranged in a V-shape, opening downstream...

Once the sturgeons enter, it is not their habit to turn downstream. As they proceed in the ever-narrowing funnel, they wind up in the 'death chamber' at the end...” All you need to do then is kill it and drag it out of the water...

Danube Iron Gates gorge is exactly where Mesolithic Lepenski vir settlement was located. We know that people from Lepenski vir were fishermen, judging by the huge number of fish bones found in the settlement, particularly sturgeon bones...

There is no evidence how Lepenski vir people caught sturgeons, but we can assume that they used fish traps used by fishermen world over to catch migratory fish, either in rivers or in tidal seas.

Ivana Živaljević proposes that once sturgeons were stranded inside the "death chamber" at the end of the trap, that they were basically clubbed to death using stone mallets...

If you are wondering why they didn't use spears to finish the fish off, these are armored fish with thick bony plates protecting their heads and their bodies...

So basically the easiest way to kill these monsters was to smash their skulls with clubs, mallets. Like the above "stone scpetres"? What do you think? Plausible? Would a longer wooden club been better for this? I don't know...

Ivana Živaljević says that "The massive and often ornamented stone clubs were initially interpreted as 'magic' and 'ritual' devices; however, it should be noted that the 'ritual' and 'profane' uses of an object need not exclude one another"...

There is one reason why Ivana Živaljević might be right in thinking that maybe these stone objects were both stone mallets used for killing giant sturgeons and sacred sceptres...

One other thing found in many Lepenski vir houses is this: a  statue carved out of a large river pebble (boulder). It is believed by many archaeologists that it depicts a human-fish hybrid...And not any fish. A human-sturgeon hybrid...

The row of bumps on the statue's back resemble sturgeon spinal scutes.

But also human spinal vertebrae...

The large downturned statue mouth resembles mouths of large sturgeons once caught in the Danube river. 

But also human mouths...Sad human mouths...

So it is possible that Lepenski vir people didn't see sturgeons as just "giant fishes"...According to one of the Serbian archaeologists "sculpted boulders from Lepenski Vir could represent metamorphosis of the deceased into fish"...

Who knows...But there is definitely something fishy going on here...

By the way, did you know that the migration of giant sturgeons up Danube river started every year "as soon as the the snow started melting, and water level started to rise, in late February, early March". In pisces...I talked about pisces as an animal calendar marker for the migration of continental European salmon (now extinct) in my post "Fishes"...

If you have found this interesting, you might find this post interesting too: Sun over pyramid, sun worship in the Lepenski Vir culture...