Etemenanki

There is a strange object that could be seen on Mesopotamian stelas, cylinder seals and reliefs. It is held by a god or goddess and in a lot of cases is being offered to a king who is standing, often making a sacrifice, or otherwise showing respect. The symbol dates from the Neo-Sumerian Empire (c. 22nd to 21st century BC) to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 911 and 609 BC).

The best known examples of the symbol are from Code of Hammurabi stela

and the Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night relief)

This object is commonly known as "Rod and Ring" symbol and is explained as depiction of  a measuring string and a yardstick.

The myth of Inanna's descent to the nether world describes how the goddess dresses and prepares herself: "She held the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line in her hand..."

The actual reason why gods and goddesses would hold such things as measuring rod and measuring line and why kings would be so grateful to receive such mundane objects is a mystery. 

I love solving mysteries :)

So here is my proposal what this all means:

I believe that Sumerian mysterious symbol "measuring rod and measuring line" was the precursor of the "square and compasses" and it has exactly the same meaning. 

In my post "Square and compasses" I talked about thy symbolism of these two measuring tools. 

I explained how ancient Hebrews saw the universe as a stone built structure with the stone flat Earth as the base and the stone Heavenly dome as the roof. 

Knowing this, the idea of God as the Great Mason, Great Architect who built heaven and earth starts making a lot of sense. Only the Great Mason, the Great Architect could have built such a magnificent stone universe...

That architect would have used the Compasses to draw the top of the universe, the great stone semi circular dome of Heavens. He would also have used the Square to draw the bottom of the universe, the great stone flat earth. 

And this is exactly how the Compasses and Square are positioned in the Masonic symbol: the Compasses at the top, representing the Heavens, the Square at the bottom, representing the Earth. 

Life is the product of the constant interaction of Sky and Earth. Life is the product of the Sacred Marriage of Sky Father and Earth Mother. 

This is a doodle that got me into trouble when I was in primary school. Father (top) and Mother (bottom) in an act of creating life :)

Looks familiar? Well it should be. It is the above Square (Mother Earth) and Compasses (Father Sky) image again...

Hebrew mythology owes a lot to Sumerians. 


And Sumerians saw the sky as Father God An and Earth as Mother Goddess Ki. They believed that An (Sky Father) and Ki (Earth mother) mated and produced basically everything there is including all life. 

Sumerians also believed that both sky dome and flat earth were built out of stone. Basically the world to them looked like this

Ok but what about measuring rod and measuring line?

Well if you were a builder and you wanted to draw a straight line, you would use a measuring stick. But if you wanted to draw an arch or a circle, you would not use compasses. You would use measuring line. Like this:

You take the measuring line, tie it to the central pole and then walk around the pole. As you walk you mark a circle with the centre in the pole. This predates compasses. Also, you can't use compasses to draw large arches or circles. You have to use measuring line. 

I talked about this in my post "Boaz and Jachin". 

So the original symbol of a mason was indeed a measuring rod and measuring line.

There is actually Serbian saying "Pomoću štapa i kanapa" (Using stick and rope) meaning "in the old primitive way"...

Here is what the measuring rod and line would have looked like separate and being held together:

These two objects represent Heaven (Sky) and Earth. Sky Father and Earth mother. They represent the power of Sky and Earth to create and destroy life. 

The absolute power. 

And the reason why gods were giving these tools to the kings is to remind them of their duty to build ziggurats...

I believe that building ziggurats was one of the main duties of kings in Mesopotamia. 

Why?

This is Ziggurat of An from Uruk. 

Built during 4th millennium BC it was 21 meters tall. Sometime at the end of the 4th millennium BC, the massive White Temple was built atop of the ziggurat. The Stone Temple was built of limestone and bitumen on a podium of rammed earth and plastered with lime mortar. The podium itself was built over a woven reed mat called "giparu", a word which originally referred a reed mat used ritually as a nuptial bed but took on the meaning as the source of abundance which radiated upward into the structure...

Sumerians believed that the rain was Sky God's semen and that when it fell down it fertilised the Mother Earth, who then gave birth to food. 

No holly loving, no munching...

And to Sumerians living during the second half of the the 3rd millennium, it must have seemed like Sky God have completely lost interest in Mother Earth. 

The third millennium BC was time of catastrophic weather events which caused chaos across early Bronze Age civilisations. Droughts and floods devastated many areas around the world. The worst of those weather events was the so called "4.2 kiloyear event". 

The 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch. It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch. Starting in about 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of their desired habitat, as well as the migration of Indo-European speaking people into India. The below map shows global distribution of the 4.2 kiloyear event. The hatched areas were affected by wet conditions or flooding, and the dotted areas by drought or dust storms.

In Mesopotamia this weather event had horrendous effects. By 2100 BC, drought, soil erosion and salt buildup have devastated agriculture. One Sumerian wrote that the "earth turned white."

The Sky God seemed to have lost interest in Mother Earth and his people. The result was hunger, abandonment of cities and eventual civilisation collapse and fall under the foreign rule. 

Archaeological evidence documents widespread abandonment of the agricultural plains of northern Mesopotamia and dramatic influxes of refugees into southern Mesopotamia, around 2170 BC. A 180-km-long wall, the "Repeller of the Amorites," was built across central Mesopotamia to stem nomadic incursions to the south. Around 2150 BC, the Gutian people, who originally inhabited the Zagros Mountains, defeated the demoralised Akkadian army, took Akkad, and destroyed it around 2115 BC....

Lament for the Destruction of Ur, ancient Sumerian composition bewailing the collapse of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC) in southern Mesopotamia. The lament, primarily composed of 11 "songs" or stanzas of unequal length, begins by enumerating some of the prominent cities and temples of Sumer and the deities who had deserted them. In the second “song,” the people of Ur and of other cities of Sumer are urged to set up a bitter lament. The third “song” relates that the goddess Ningal hears the pleas of the people of Ur, but she is not able to dissuade the gods Anu and Enlil from their decision to destroy the city, and the remaining “songs” relate the devastating results of Ur’s defeat in battle. 

At some stage, probably during this period, the white temple at the top of the ziggurat of An in Uruk was ritually destroyed and covered with alternating layers of clay and stone, then excavated and filled with mortar sometime later.

Is it because the god to whom it was dedicated abandoned his people and people in return abandoned their god?

The next great ziggurat to be built, the greatest ziggurat of them all, was dedicated to Marduk (Basically the same old Sky Father An under a different name). Its name was Etemenanki and this ziggurat was very interesting indeed.  

This is Etemenanki a ziggurat built in the ancient city of Babylon. Originally 91 meters in height, it now exists only in ruins.

A number of scholars have suggested that this ziggurat had one purpose: to hold a shrine where the scene of the sacred marriage, the central rite of the great new year festival was performed every year. Herodotus describes the furnishing of the shrine on top of the ziggurat at Babylon and says it contained a great golden couch on which a woman spent the night alone. Well not alone. Having sex with Marduk, Sky. Or possibly a priest pretending to be Marduk. Which is ok, because the woman was pretending to be Ki, Earth. The holly marriage, the marriage between Sky (Heaven) and Earth, between Sky Father and Earth Mother had to be consummated, or there would be no food, no life...

It is unclear when the temple of Sky-Earth was built, but it is accepted that it might have already existed in the 2nd millennium BC. 

Was it built even earlier? 

I would say that it was built probably at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, right during the great drought (c. 22nd to 21st century BC) and right about the time when we see the first depictions of the "measuring rod and measuring line" being given to the kings by gods. 

Believe or not, archaeologists are still debating the reason why Sumerians built ziggurats. To me it is pretty clear that the purpose of ziggurats was to bring the earth closer to the sky in order to help Father sky to consummate his marriage with Mother Earth. 

They were dedicated to Sky Gods in a way that people hoped Sky Gods would visit the ziggurat tops, take the offerings left there and do their duty (spill their semen on the Mother Earth).

That this was the purpose of the ziggurats can be seen from the name of the daddy of all ziggurats: Etemen An Ki (Sumerian É.TEMEN.AN.KI 𒂍𒀭𒆠 "temple of the foundation (support) of heaven and earth")  

I left the best bit for the end:

Historians believe that building of Etemen An Ki possibly inspired the biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel. 

In Hebrew and Christian tradition, the Tower of Babel was built by legendary king Nimrod, the "mighty hunter before god" who ruled over the cities of Babel, Erech, Akkad, and perhaps Calneh, in Shinar.

Since Accad (Babylonian Akkad) was destroyed and lost with the destruction of its Empire in the period 2200–2154 BCE (during the 4.2 kiloyear event), the stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the period just before the collapse of the Akkadian empire. The association with Erech (Babylonian Uruk), a city that lost its prime importance around 2,000 BCE as a result of above mention catastrophic weather event and subsequent struggles between Isin, Larsa and Elam, also attests the early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. 

So was the Tower of Babel built before the 4.2 kiloyear event (2200-2100 BC) or during or after?

I believe during...

Jewish and Christian legends say that Nimrod built the tower of Babel to show that he is as great as God (The Great Mason, Great Architect). This apparently pissed god off a lot...

But I believe that Etemen An Ki was built so high "as to touch the sky" in a desperate attempt to "bring Mother Earth as close to Father Sky as possible" so that he might decide to lay with her again and pour his semen (rain) on the parched Mother Earth. 

Interestingly it is the building of the Tower of Babel which is said to have been the first project done by Masons whose symbol is Square and Compasses...Or should we say Measuring rod and Measuring line...And Nimrod is regarded as the first Mason...

Nimrod figures in some very early versions of the history of Freemasonry, where he was said to have been one of the fraternity's founders. According to the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: "The legend of the Craft in the Old Constitutions refers to Nimrod as one of the founders of Masonry"...

Lets have a look at Hammurabi stela again:

The description of the scene is: Hammurabi (standing), depicted as receiving his royal insignia from Shamash (or possibly Marduk)...

What Hammurabi is receiving from Marduk is measuring rod and measuring line. This is very interesting. So by 19th century BC, the symbols of the Great Mason, Great Architect became "royal insignia"! 

What the Sky God is saying to the king is: here are the Mason tools. Use them to build a temple to me. The high place where I will mate with Earth Goddess. Build it and you will rule, in my name...The symbol basically represented covenant with Sky God...

This is all very interesting. Don't you think?

Myrmidons

Myrmidones (Ant people) were an ancient nation of Greek mythology. In Homer's Iliad, they are the soldiers commanded by Achilles. Their ancestor Myrmidonos was conceived by Eurymedusa of Arcadia when Zeus seduced her in a shape of an ant.

I always wondered is this crazy legend in some way based on something real. Then I saw this:  red wood ant (formica rufa) mound. These ants are native to Europe and Anatolia and make giant mounds which could be truly gigantic... 

Now what do ant mounds have to do with anything? Well have a look at this. This is not an ant mound. This is a Bronze Age tumulus. 

Ahh. Ants make ant mounds, Ant people make human mounds... Were Myrmidons the tumulus builders? 

Tumuli were not universal burial practice in Ancient Greece. So is it possible that the "Ant people" started as a derogatory term for "mound builders" used by Greeks who didn't build burial mounds?

The Tumulus Culture started in north Poland around 1600 BC in the territory of the Unetice culture. 

From there it spread throughout Central Europe where it was the dominant culture until about 1200 BC. I would recommend this article "The origins of the Tumulus culture: Proto-Lusatian and potential Proto-Balto-Slavic origins"

This is one of those Bronze Age "human mounds" from Poland. 

Now the Tumulus Culture was also a warrior culture. They were ruled by warrior aristocracy and their religion seems to have been based on warrior cult. I think Achilles would have fitted in Tumulus Culture perfectly....

So is it these Northerners (from the Greek point of view) who were the original "Ant men"?  The dates match. The fact that these "human mound" builders were homicidal maniacs obsessed with war and conquest, just like Homeric Myrmidons, also matches...And that their leaders were obsessed with obtaining eternal glory for themselves, just like Achilles, also matches...

But this opens a lot of questions about the identity of (at least some of) Homeric heroes...

Don't get me wrong. Tumulus burials have been built in Greece since 3rd millennium BC. The earliest ones were found on the island of Lefkas.

But this very uncommon as opposed to northern Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe where tumulus burials were the norm. So it is assumed that this is an imported fashion that came to Greece from Albania (arriving there from Montenegro) where many tumuli from this period were found. You can read more about the Early Heladic tumuli in "Burial Mounds and “Ritual Tumuli” of the Aegean Early Bronze Age". You can read about Montenegrin tumuli in the series of articles I wrote a while ago here.

The cist graves covered with tumulus only appear in Greece during Middle Helladic III period,  c.1700–c.1550 BC at the earliest. This coincides with the appearance of the tumulus culture in Central Europe. Is this also a cultural import into Greece, possibly brought in by immigrants (invaders, mercenaries?) from Central Europe where tumulus burials were all the rage? You can read more about Greek burial mounds in "Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean mortuary practices in the southern and western Peloponnese".

We know that there were direct contacts between Mediterranean and South Baltic during the Middle Helladic III period. 

Amber goods show connections in the Bronze age also went north to south. North Sea coast of Jutland and Baltic amber was found in Greece - in royal graves at Mycenae and Pylos ca 1600 BC. This is amber jewellery from a grave at Mycenae, Greece. ca 1500-1600 BC. 

The main north-south amber trading route, the so called amber road, went straight through the Tumulus culture territory (Unetice culture territory)

And right on the northern end of the amber road, in Tollense Valley, archaeologists have discovered the Tollense battlefield, the biggest Bronze Age battlefield discovered so far, where thousands of warriors fought and hundreds died in 1200 BC. Right at the end of the Tumulus culture and right at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse, which saw among others, the end of Mycenaean civilisation... 

And according to genetic evidence from the site, at least some of the people who died in the Tollense valley came from Mediterranean...

I think this is a very interesting subject that needs more research...

Ladia

Amazing photo. This is not a scene from a film about Vikings. This are barges on the River Emajõgi, 19th century. Emajõgi is a river in Estonia which flows from Lake Võrtsjärv through Tartu County into Lake Peipus

Ladja was an early medieval Slavic heavy cargo ship developed in South Baltic. Norse Vikings acquired the technological knowledge to build these large vessels when Harald Bluetooth made the alliance with the Baltic Slavs, which is why we find the word in Old Norse.

Before mixing with Slavs, Norse viking ships were small, narrow and fast. Ideal for small raiding parties. Only after, when they started building wide and large "ladja" ships, were they able to cary armies including cavalry. And only then were the vikings able to transport enough troops and equipment to Britain to launch the major invasion, which culminated during Canute (Cnut the Great).

This is based on archaeological data. Source for Slavic influence on Viking ship building (and the other way round) is "A comparative analysis of early medieval shipwrecks from the southern shores of the Baltic sea" by George Indruszewski, used to work in Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, now at Roskilde University....

One of a kind centaur

"One of a kind centaur", from Harvard Art Museums: "Exceptional vessels" 

This quote talks about this artefact: rhyton with a centaur holding a goat, currently in Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology. 

What does this, "one of a kind", image mean? Here is what I think:

Sagittarius 23 November – 21 December 

The hunter, usually represented as a centaur. Marks the beginning of the fur hunting season in continental Europe). You can read more about why Sagittarius is where it is on the solar circle in my post "The hunter".

Capricorn 22 December – 20 January 

The ibex goat. Marks the mating season of Alpine Ibex goats in continental Europe. You can read more about why is Capricorn where it is on the solar circle in my post "Goat".

Now if we look at the Sagittarius and Capricorn zodiac signs together, we see something very interesting: Winter Solstice marks the end of Sagittarius (Centaur) and the beginning of Capricorn (Goat)

Is this what the above image represents, the moment when hunter catches the ibex goat? 

The new solar year starts on that day, and that was a pretty big thing in the past...

This is the same symbolism preserved in the Slovenian legend about Goldhorn. 

In it, a hunter hunts an ibex goat, mortally wounds it, and from goat's blood grows a beautiful alpine rose. 

This is a multi layer legend. To me the most interesting layer to this story is the astrological one. The Zlatorog story describes the succession of three winter astrological signs, Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius. 

Sagittarius 23 November – 21 December (The hunter)
Capricorn 22 December – 20 January (The ibex goat)
Aquarius 21 January – 19 February (The blood)

You can read more about this legend in my post "Zlatorog-Goldhorn".

Interestingly, in Sanskrit tradition, goat was the animal sacrificed instead of a pig, which was in Europe the animal sacrificed during winter solstice celebrations. 

Basically, the goat has to die, in order for spring to arrive...

This was probably the older tradition than the one preserved in Europe today, as it matches the season marker, unlike the pig...

You can read more about sacrificial animals in Indo-European tradition in my post "Sacrificial animals"

So what do you think? Makes sense?

Sun Bread

The oldest yeast bread, more precisely wild yeast, sourdough bread, was probably invented in Upper Egypt, Nubia, during or even before the 2nd millennium BC.

These are wall paintings depicting offerings to gods

The tomb of Menna (1388–1351 BC), TT69, Theban Necropolis

The Tomb of Nakht (c. 1401 – 1391 BC), TT52, Theban Necropolis

Tumb of Userhat (1427–1401 BC), TT 56, Theban Necropolis

Tomb of Nefertari (c. 1295-1255 BC), QV 66, Valley of the Queens, Thebes West Bank, Thebes

Among the offerings, the most prominent place occupy loaves of bread like this one:

This is the so called "Shamsi Bread" the sun-raised bread ("shamsi" meaning "sun" in Arabic) still made in Upper Egypt today. 

In Upper Egyptian villages bread is baked one a week, or once every two to three days, depending on the family size. It is an arduous job, requiring the entire day to mix the dough, gather the fuel, prepare the oven, and bake the bread.

The flour is first sifted in a large sieve, the coarser grains left to dust the hands and homemade clay bread platters. After washing the hands, a prayer asking God's blessing is usually said to ensure a proper rising, as bread is considered a gift from God (Sun god???).

The flour is mixed with water, a bit of salt and is then worked into a smooth dough.

Then a sourdough starter made from live wild yeast and previous batch of dough is added as a leavening and the dough is then worked again to mix it all together.

About two fists sized lumps of dough are made into balls, dusted in flour, patted out to about 12 cm. loaves, and laid out on the platters to rise in the sun for about 45 minutes.

They may be turned over or shifted to a sunnier spot. The bread needs to rise for 20 minutes if the sun is really hot, or for 40 minutes if it isn't very sunny.

Loaves dry on the outside and develop a thin crust while rising on the inside.

Just before the baking, the loaves are scored for decoration using a large needle or pin and the crust is pulled apart.

Muslims make three crescent-like cuts

Coptic Christians make four corner crescent like cuts.

The oven is lit from the back

And the inside is wiped with a wet cloth, causing the inside of the oven to fill with steam

The bread is then placed inside the hot oven

And the oven is closed.

The bread is baked for 20 minutes.

The bread changes shape depending on how it is scored.

Muslim breads with three crescent scores turn into triangle shaped loaves.

Christian breads with four crescent scores turn into cross shaped loaves

Bread is thick and soft, not at all like the usual Egyptian flatbread.

Still images from "A Cook Abroad Series , Egypt" by Dave Myers and BBC.

Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) mentions this sourdough bread of Luxor, very different from the more familiar pocket bread of Cairo. So we know that this bread was made in the 5th c. BC.  

During the excavations of the Settlement and Cemetery at Giza dated to the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure (mid-4th Dynasty, c. 2472–2442 BC), archaeologists have found bread baking oven.

Inside of the oven, the archaeologists found five partial or nearly complete ceramic vessels. Most of these were shallow baking plates (platters) or trays.

These platters or trays are crudely made, poorly fired, and fragile. Platters are associated with the baking process. In ethnographic studies these platters (called apr.t) have parallels with modern Egyptian vessels used for making ‘eish shams, or sun bread. Peet and Woolley describe a modern baking method by villagers living near Amarna in which they place the dough on unfired platters or plates, and both platter and bread are then baked together in the oven (Peet and Woolley 1923: 64). Also, unfired trays and trays fired at low temperature or partially fired have been discovered in the Elephantine bakery from the First Intermediate Period (2181–2055 BC), T. Rzeuska, personal communication). These trays often break when the bread is taken off.

From "Settlement and Cemetery at Giza: Papers from the 2010 AERA-ARCE Field School" edited by Freya Sadarangani and Alexandra Witsell

So it seems that sun breads were already made in Egypt at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. 

As for decorations, particularly the central circular one and the dots.

A lot of breads deposited in the tombs were found found lying on offering tables when the tombs were opened for the first time.  This is low rectangular table for bread. Deir el-Medina / Tomb of Kha, New Kingdom, XVIII dynasty, Amenhotep II - Amenhotep III (1428-1351 BCE). 

Most of them have the central indentation just like the breads in the tomb wall paintings. 

The triangular bread in the middle of the first row still has visible prick mark decorations

In the end:

This is the Egyptian ideogram of "niwt" meaning a "city", "village" or a general location occupied by people. 

The sign already existed before the unification of the two parts of Egypt and is one of the oldest known hieroglyphs, dating from the pre-dynastic period. 

The accepted explanation is that "this hieroglyph is derived from the graphic renderings of walled enclosure, which were depicted on flattened stones (palettes) found near Abydos in Upper Egypt and dating from the end of the fourth millennium BC..."

But is it possible that this hieroglyph is derived from the sun bread, meaning "any place where bread is made or eaten"? Or was the sun bread decoration derived from the "niwt" symbol?