Snake water bowl

Spouted silver bowl decorated with entwined serpents. Southeastern Iran Mid 3rd millennium BC. From Al-Sabah collection.

Why was this vessel decorated with entwined serpents? Here's what I think:

I already talked about this type of vessels in my post "Elamite water bull" about this Proto-Elamite silver figurine of a clothed anthropomophised kneeling bull...holding a spouted [water] vessel. c. 3000BC. Currently in the Met Museum...

My guess that this figure is either Enki (Sumerian god of sweet water) or Utu (Sumerian sun god)...Or their unnamed Elamite equivalent who possibly combines both of them in one...

They were both described as bulls. Why?

These are yearly charts of the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates. You can see that they both peak in Apr/May, Taurus, Bull...

BTW, Taurus here is The Old Taurus, the animal calendar marker for the beginning of the calving season of wild eurasian cattle...

This rise in water levels in Tigris and Euphrates is the result of the sun heating up of the mountains which are the source of the two great rivers: Anatolian highlands and the Zagros mountains...Which causes the snow to melt, which causes the rivers to swell...

Snowmelt, Zagros

Hence the humanoid bull holding a spouted water vessel...Which looks just like the vessel from the  Al-Sabah collection...

I talked about another water carrier figurine from Iran in my post "Water carrier equid", about this "Spouted Anthropomorphic Vessel", Western Iran, circa 1000-650 BCE. Currently in Los Angeles County Museum of Art...

Here the anthropomorphised animal water carrier is not a bull but an equid, horse or a donkey. Why? Cause equid mating season, starts in Apr/May, right when the water discharge peaks in the rivers in Mesopotamia/Iran...

But why was the vessel from the Al-Sabah collection decorated with entwined serpents?

First, snake is a solar animal, pretty much a universal symbol of the sun's heat. Snakes follow sun everywhere. They are in our world when sun is in our world (day, summer) and in the underworld when the sun is in the underworld (night, winter)...I talked about this in many of my posts. For instance "Snake god from Hatra"...

And it is the sun's heat that melts the snow...

Second, snake mating season, when snakes intertwine, starts in Apr/May, the time of the peak snowmelt runoff in Iranian mountains, and the peak discharge of the rivers in the Tigris/Euphrates system...

Which is why in the Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations, 2500-1500 BC, By Graham Cunningham, we can read that in the Earliest Sumerian texts, Enki, the god of sweet flowing water and the source of Tigris and Euphrates, was associated with poisonous snakes...

Hence Enki (Or at least Elamite equivalent of Enki) sitting on a snake throne....

And which is why I think the [water] vessel from the Al-Sabah collection is decorated with entwined serpents...

Great info can be found in this X thread by @dalaygiz

“Twenty different officiants are attested in connection with Napiriša. Their designations vary from simple šatin (4) and makuš (7) to (makuš) pirramadda (3) and (makuš) haturmakša; their names are all Iranian except for two.”

“Elsewhere, the same individuals are associated with a range of other sacrifices, including sacrifices for or at various mountains, for Adad, Auramazdā, Išpandaramattiš, and (the) Mišebaka.”

(‘The Heartland Pantheon’, Henkleman, pg 1229)

“The syllabic spellings of the name (AN na‐pír‐šá‐ra, AN na‐pír‐ir‐šá‐ir‐ra) follow the development riša > irša, “great,” suggesting that the name of the god was still understood as a compound (logographic spellings: AN dingir.gal MEŠ, AN gal MEŠ).”

The origins of Napiriša, attested since the early second millennium BCE, may lie in the eastern highlands of Elam. This may also account for his popularity in the PFA*. 

The water‐giving god and his wife are shown here at the open‐air sanctuary of Kūrāngūn:

It’s majorly held for the figures above that they are Napiriša (or Napiriša‐Inšušinak) and his spouse Kiririša, the ‘Great Goddess’ of Liyan/Būšehr. 

Also, Mesopotamians identified “Naprušu/Napriš” as their own Ea/Enki.  

(‘The Heartland Pantheon’, Henkleman, pg 1228)

*Persepolis Fortification Tablets 

This deity is attested for 26 times and given Iranian epithets.

Here’s the Kurangun relief, which depicts a horned Elamite deity seated upon a snake-coiled throne. 17th century BCE. It’s in Fars, Iran. 

“He is seated on a throne formed by the body of a snake, coiled back upon itself over and over again, and he grasps the tail of the snake in his left hand. In his right he holds the divine rod and ring [my comment, he is not holding rod and ring, he is holding a cup, just like Enki/Ea] from which two streams of water flow [...]” 

(D.T Potts, From Handaxe to Khan, 1990, pg.146) 

You can read more here: The numinous and the immanent

Snakes did appear a lot in Elamite art...

"In terms of identification, he has been called Inshushinak, who was the patron of Susa anyways. Enki/Ea/Napirisha are mentioned as well; the author deduces that these names/figures are all in fact related, with the former being used as epithets, besides the shared identity"...

That's it. 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 X threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Beautiful boy

Just learned about Nefertem, the Egyptian Beautiful Boy, originally a lotus flower at the creation of the world, who had arisen from the primal waters.

Nefertem emerging from the lotus (blue water lily) blossom, from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Pic: Margarete Büsing...

Now, blue water lily flowering season, Jul,Aug,Sep, is the same season when the Nile water level reaches its peak. During the annual Nile flood...

So I wonder if "lotus flower at the creation of the world, who had arisen from the primal waters" just means: "lotus flower who arrises from the waters of the Annual Nile Flood"...

The Annual Nile flood is after all what originally created Egypt and "The Egyptian World"...Without the annual Nile flood there would be no Egypt...

I talked about Blue Lotus in my posts "Flower of life" and "Lotus and papyrus"...

The time of the Annual Nile Flood is also the hottest time of the year in Egypt...Hence Nefertem's epithet "Water-Lily of the Sun"...

Aug, Leo, is also the time of Lionesses of the Eye of Ra, like Sekhmet...I talked about this in my posts "Holy cow" and "Baboon"...

So I wonder if Nefertem has anything to do with this old post of mine "Golden boy" about this inlaid ivory panel depicting "lioness devouring a boy"...From the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, ca 899-700 BC. Currently in the British Museum.

Who is the golden boy depicted here? And who is the lioness?

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...

Meroitic language

This article was originally an X thread. So are most of my articles actually, as I publish all my stuff on X first. But this thread is different, as in it I wanted to show how I do my research and how fast you can find things if you know what you are looking for...

Before I saw this post 6 hours ago, I had never heard of "Meroitic language" and have never seen one of these objects before. But I had a funny feeling that I knew what was depicted on it...So I did some googling, and it turns out I was right. 

Check this out:

So my hunch was that the relief depicted some kind of connection between water (obvious, as the wavy lines are water bing poured out of the two jars) and summer solstice (not so obvious, but these two jars, for some reason, reminded me of the "twins symbol")...

Twins which mark summer solstice...I talked about these twins in several of my articles. First in my post "Hayagriva". 

Surya's wife Saranyu transforms into a mare and runs away from her husband. Surya eventually finds her, turns himself into a white stallion and...

After which Saranyu delivers horse head twins called Ashvins...

Horse zodiac symbol is disguised as Dioskuri, divine twin horsemen. The guys who wanted to marry "the daughters of the white horse". 

They mark Summer Solstice, the peak of the horse mating season, characterised by wild stallion fights for mares...

We find them in Sasanian Iran, on this plate with youths and winged horses drinking water from a jar ca. 5th–6th century AD. I talked about this in my post "Dioskuri plate from Iran"...

In Mesopotamia (no horses in site), they appear as these two charming gentlemen: Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea, "who were both closely associated with Nergal, and could be either regarded as members of his court or equated with him"...

These two dudes "typically appear together in cuneiform texts and could be described as the "divine twins", and were linked to Gemini constellation. They were regarded as protectors of doors, "possibly due to their role as the gatekeepers of the underworld"...

Hmmm...Twins guarding doors (of the underworld)? This looks like a door to you?

Very interesting, knowing that right after the summer solstice, we enter the hottest time of the year, Jul/Aug, the domain of Nergal, the god of the underworld...

In Central America we find Hero Twins who pour the water of heaven (rains there arrive in Jun/Jul). I talked about this in my post "Resurrection of the maize god"...

And finally, and most importantly for our current thread, we find them in Egypt, where god Hapi, the god of the annual flooding of the Nile, was "often depicted as twins, tying papyrus and lotus flowers together". Papyrus flowers in Apr/May (beginning of summer), and lotus in Jul/Aug (end of summer) and the knot the twins tie is...Summer solstice...I talked about him/them 🙂 in my post "Lotus and papyrus"...

Anyway, now that you know why I thought twins were important, 

So, I first went on the museum website and I found the official description of the object here:

"Offering table, from Ballana, dates to Meroitic phase IIIB-IV, decorated in relief with two kohl jars and four loaves and has a Meroitic inscription"...

So I then went to find out what the hell were "kohl jars". Well, they were jars, like this one from New Kingdom, dated to 1492–1473 BC and currently in Met Museum. 

Used for storing kohl, an ancient eye cosmetic, made by grinding stibnite.  

The Ancient Egyptians (both men and women) wore kohl on their eyelids as protection against the glare of the sun. Outlining the eyes could also have been a way of drawing a protective amulet, such as the Wadjet Eye, right onto the skin.

Anyway, I couldn't find any link between kohl and kohl jars and water, so I was about to give up and write this off as a false hunch, but I decided to just do one last thing and check where exactly was the Meroitic language spoken. 

It was spoken here. In the area between today's Aswan in Egypt and Khartoum in Sudan...

And so, in the spirit of "if all you have is a hammer (animal calendar markers), everything looks (actually is) like a nail (deified calendar)", I went to check the local climate...

And what is very interesting about this part of the world is that it has a very long dry season and very short wet season, and that the rains arrive right around...summer solstice...

So my hunch that the two jars with water pouring out of them somehow links water and summer solstice was right...But what does this have to do with kohl jars? Nothing. University of Chicago was wrong. These were not kohl jars at all. They are hes-vases...

Here is one, currently in the Brooklin museum, from the Old Kingdom to 18th Dynasty. I have no idea how I came across this page. AI decided to help me I guess...I doubled it so you can see how they resemble the vases from the offering table...

The hes-vases were special vessels used to hold ritually purified water. These containers were frequently left as tomb offerings so the deceased could drink the water...

Thirsty dead? Again? I talked about the "thirsty" dead first in my posts "Drought" and "White feast" about South Slavic beliefs that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And that thirsty ancestors will "drink rain from the clouds and will cause drought".

I then talked about "thirsty dead" in my post "Lapis Manalis" about Roman belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...BTW, do you see the similarity between cup and ring marked stones and rain caused ripples on water? Or is it just me?

I finally talked about "thirsty dead" in my post "Care of the dead" about Hittite and Sumerian belief that the dead are linked to rain and grain fertility...And if you forget to respect the sacred bond with the dead...

Hmmm ritually purified water...Was this purification intended to turn water back to rain? The pure water that falls from the sky that can be drank without fear of diseases?

So we have water pouring out of hes-vases, which normally contain water for the dead and loaves of bread...Again we see the link between water, the dead, rain and bread...

(This was not in the original thread, but I just remembered this thread: 

Sycamore tree goddess, originally Hathor, and later Isis, both goddess of flood, pouring water which is depicted with ankh (life) symbols inside it...Tomb, Siwa Oasis, 400-600 BC. Egypt...Is she pouring water of life from a "Hes-Vase"?

Now I was wondering why would water from the twin vases be pouring on the two loaves of bread. Maybe there is some kind of cereal that directly depends on the rain that starts falling around summer solstice...

And It turns out I was right again...Sorghum is a staple crop in Sudan. Sorghum grows during the rainy season (Jun-Sep). Once harvested, it is ground and stored for the dry season...and is used to make kisra flat breads...

And just when I decided I had found enough info to write this thread, while I was looking for a nice pic of traditional sorghum kisra flat breads, I stumbled across "Sky and Earth – A Nuba Mountains Folktale"...

Nuba Mountains lie just below Khartoum, and this story proves conclusively that my hunch about the twin(s) jars was 100% right. Here it goes:

“At the beginning of time,  the sky and the earth lived together as one..."

 "...The Nuba people remember a day when a young woman from the Nuba was grinding sorghum on the grindstone.  As she worked, she unintentionally struck the sky with her elbow.  The sky was insulted and decided to leave the place and take up residence far away from the earth..."

"...The people were unhappy about this and did not know how to continue their lives which had become gloomy and miserable without the sky, its rainy clouds and its shining sun..."

 "...They held a meeting and agreed to send an envoy to the sky to persuade it to come back. The envoy somehow managed to convince the sky to come back. It agreed on one condition: that it would return only once a year and would be invited to return each time..." 

"...This is how the seasons were created and how the Nuba Mountains received their first Kujur, the rainmaker, who since that time has continued to mediate between the earth and sky. The kujur has passed on his ability to make rain to his children and the children of his children..."

The end...

Now here is the best bit (from "Sudan Notes and Records Volume 23"): 

The only person equal to the Kujur is "a man who fathered twins" as "father of twins is the most important person"...Why? The only explanation is that the ancient Sudanese associated rain season with twins...Gemini...

Neat...Oh and in September, right after the rains stopped and the first harvest started, Nuba people hold Kambala festival, which celebrates the harvesting of grain and is associated with initiation rites for young Nuba men.

And we know that rain is linked with grain, semen and male fertility...

PS: Dear @ISAC_UChicago I would really like to know what is written on this offering table, if you know yourself. But I find it interesting that in Meroitic language

at(a) means "bread" and ato means "water"...

PS: please correct the object's description...

That's it. It took about half an hour to find all this info...

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...

Prince Stefan Prvoslav

This is the Church of the Đurđevi Stupovi Monastery in Berane, Montenegro. 

It was built in 1213 as a memorial to the Serbian Prince Stefan Prvoslav, whose grave is in the nave...His grave slab is decorated with a very interesting symbol: triskele of Celtic Scordisci type.

The Scordisci were a Celtic Iron Age cultural group centered in the territory of present-day Serbia...From the 3rd c. BC until the 1st c. AD they ruled over a tribal state which at its zenith also included parts of Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania...

During the 3rd and 2nd c. BC they successfully fought Romans in the Balkans. You can read more about this on the Balkan Celts blog... 

Lucius Annaeus Florus in his Epitome  XXXVIIII (The Thracian War), says about them: "The cruelest of all the Thracians were the Scordisci...their haunts among the woods and mountains..."

They are the guys who lived in the fortress on Veliki Vetren peak on Mount Juhor, Central Serbia...

"14 horsemen came down from Devil's Town on Veliki Vetren peak, Serbia, on foggy nights and abducted young girls, croaking like Ravens" (Local legend). 14 sets of cavalry equipment were found in the Celtic opidium on Veliki Vetren peak 🙂 

Where this button was found...With the identical triskele symbol...

From my post "Veliki Vetren"...

During the 1st c. BC their power begins to weaken and eventually they were crushed in 15 BC by Tiberius, and became Roman subjects, after which they started fighting for the Romans as mercenaries...

After the Roman conquest in the 1st century AD, their territories were included into the Roman provinces of Pannonia, Moesia and Dacia. 

Strabo's Geographica (20 BC–23 AD) says that "the Major Scordisci, lived between moths of Sava and Morava rivers (Serbia)"...

So what happened to Scordisci after they became "Romans"? Well they stayed in the Balkans...And most likely became one of (many) Serbian ancestors...Look at Serbian genes...

Is this why Serbian Prince Stefan Prvoslav has a Scordisci triskele on his grave slab? Or maybe this is just a meaningless squiggle...

BTW, do you remember my post "Death of Prince Marko" about Celtic style "ritual killing" of weapons during warrior funerals, depicted in Medieval Serbian folk epic poems? 

More about Scordisci can be found on this great site "Balkan Celts, Journal of Celtic Studies in Eastern Europe and Asia-Minor"

But I don't think you will find anything there about Serbian Prince Stefan Prvoslav's grave...

PS: By @LazarStojkovic

And let’s not forget this…

In “Red and White: Serbian-Celtic Parallels" (In Serbian), the late Serbian linguistic scholar, Celticist, and academician Professor Ranka Kuić identified ~600 words shared between Welsh and Serbian.

For comparison, that’s about 10x the number of words shared between the languages considered to be the members of the Finno-Ugric language group...