oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
May 22, 2021 20 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Thread: Impression from a cylinder seal from Babylonia, 8th century BC; in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City themorgan.org/seals-and-tabl… Here is the official description of the scene depicted on the seal:
"A demonic lion faces a winged superhuman hero. The lion's threatening gesture and the tension of his sharp claws suggest his evil power. But the hero will prevail. Taller than the lion, he calmly dominates it, and the bull—the victim of the contest—remains in his power"...🙂
What does this seal really depict?

Well, it depicts Nergal, the Mesopotamian god of death, war, and destruction, who was most often depicted holding a scimitar...
Example: Old Babylonian cylinder seal from Larsa, depicting the underworld (the god of death) Nergal, holding his distinctive scimitar and the double lion headed scepter. The Inscription is a dedication to Nergal by Abisare, perhaps the king of Larsa at that time...
Yeah right. How do we know that the winged dude on the original seal is Nergal?

Because, in his earliest incarnation, in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900-2700 BC), this god of death "represented the high summer sun which scorched the earth...which hindered crop production"...
Sooo???

So, the climatic year in Mesopotamia is divide into two halves: cool, wet season (Oct/Nov-Apr/May) and hot, dry season (Apr/May-Oct/Nov)...
The hot dry season spans summer (symbolised by bull) and autumn (symbolised by lion). I talked about the animal symbols of the seasons in this article:

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbol…
And the hottest and driest part of the dry at the moment when bull meets lion. At the end of summer, beginning of autumn. This moment is "marked" by all those "lion killing bull" images, like this one from Persepolis...Lion (autumn) killing (ending) Bull (summer)...
Which is why, on our original seal, we don't see hero defending the bull from the lion...We see Nergal, deadly sun, standing at the end of summer, symbolised by upside down bull whom he is holding by the hind leg, and the beginning of autumn, symbolised by the attacking lion...
This is the seat of Nergal, the god of death, the destructive sun of the middle of the hot, dry season...In Leo... Which is why Nergal holds double lion headed scepter...
Eeee, what? What about precession? Leo I am talking about has nothing to do with constellations. It is an ancient animal calendar marker, marking the beginning of the main mating season of the Eurasian lions. Which has nothing to do with stars and is not affected by precession...
Leo is also "the lair" of the fire breathing dragon... Usually in Mesopotamia depicted as a winged lion...oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/06/is-tha… The seat of the beast...Nergal...
Nergal, the Burning sun, the Dragon. This cylinder seal from Ur III, is dedicated to Meslamtaea, the earliest name of Nergal. docplayer.hu/47106522-Nerga…
It shows Meslamtaea/Nergal, holding his scimitar, and a "mythical beast", winged lion, both holding onto a scepter which looks very much like the two lion headed scepter of Nergal...
Now the winged lion is the evolution of the "lion with sun rays coming out of his back", which is the symbol for the hot, dry half of the year in Mesopotamia, and particularly the hottest, driest part of the year, Leo... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/nude-w…
So is the scene depicting "Nergal and the dragon fighting over the scepter" a symbolic way of telling us: "Nergal is the dragon"...
Guess who else is standing "between the lions" or "on a lion"? In Leo...The Old Utu/Shamash, the Old Sun of the end of summer...The destructive sun that dries the rivers and canals...And kills people...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/04/canals…
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/shamas…
The Sumerian poem "Enki and the World Order" exclaims: Young Utu/Shamash (the sun), father of the Great City (the realm of the dead, underworld)...Equating Utu/Shamash with Nergal, the god of the Underworld...

How can sun be the Lord of the Underworld?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with oldeuropeanculture

oldeuropeanculture Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @serbiaireland

Aug 11
Thread: Late Sassanian depiction of a deity on a column capital now held in Taqe Bostan , which @persiaantiqua identified as Mehr (Mithra) based on the fact that he is surrounded by blooming lotuses... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taq-e_Bos…Image
Mithra was directly associated with lotus, to the point where on the most famous relief of Mithra, the one from Taqe Bostan, he is actually depicted standing on a lotus flower, radiating light, while witnessing Ahura Mazda giving ring of power to king Ardashir II... Image
Why Lotus? Mitra originates in India. Where he was, in the earliest times, directly associated with Varuna, the old Monsoon good whose Vahana was a crocodile, an animal calendar marker for the monsoon season in India....

Read 28 tweets
Aug 6
Thread: Two Sassanian wall relief slabs dated to the 5th-6th c. AD, depicting rampant ibex goats flanking "the tree of life"... Image
Image
This is an ancient symbol found throughout Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Levant, Crete. The reason for that is that in all these regions, year is divided into two halves:

hot, dry half, roughly Apr/May - Oct/Nov
wet, cool half, roughly Oct/Nov - Apr/May Image
And the wet, cool half begins when ibex goats start their mating fights...see, "flanking"... Image
Image
Read 11 tweets
Aug 1
Thread: 900-700 BC Syro-Hittite relief from Carchemish which everyone believes depicts the ancient Sumerian Hero Gilgamesh as master of animals, holding the horn of a bull and the leg of a lion. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Ankara, Turkey). Who is this dude really? Image
If we interpret the animals as animal calendar markers, which they always are in compositions like this, The Dude (with big D) stands in the moment when bull (summer) ends and lion (autumn) begins (end of Jul start of Aug)...

The moment usually depicted like this
Read 11 tweets
Jun 9
Thread: Silver Stater from Mallos, Cilicia, C. 425-385 BC. Depicting (???)

Obv: Winged male deity advancing right, holding solar disc; Aramaic legend.
Rev: MAΛP , swan standing to left, flapping its wings. Rare.

I would suggest that this is (a local version of) Apollo... Image
An anthropomorphised, Hellenised, version of the winged sun disc...Like this one depicted on Stele to Assurnasiripal II at Nimrud (9th c. BC)... Image
BTW, do you see the Sun Cross (Cross of Shamash) inside the winged Sun Disc? I talked about Sun Cross (of Shamash) here
Read 9 tweets
Apr 30
Thread: Illustration by Bernard Zuber for Maurice Garçon’s La Vie Execrable de Guillemette Babin, Sorciere, 1926.

May Day Eve (April 30) is across Northern and Central Europe known as Walpurgis Night, the night when everyone is trying to "ward off, scare, witches"...

Why? Image
Maybe this has something to do with the old Celtic calendar which divided the year into two halves:

Winter (Samhain, 1st of Nov - Beltane, 1st of May)
Summer (Beltane, 1st of May - Samhain, 1st of Nov)

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/07/two-cr…Image
This division of the year, is btw based on the old transhumance shepherd calendar:

Lowland grazing and lambing Oct/Nov - Apr/May
Highland grazing and milking Apr/May - Oct/Nov

Check this whole thread:

Read 17 tweets
Apr 27
Thread: Goats flanking the tree of life. Ritual vessels from Gonur-depe, the administrative and ritual center of Ancient Margina, the Northern regions of the Oxus civilization, dated to 2300˗1600 BC. Pic from researchgate.net/profile/Nadezh…Image
The reason why we find goat flanking the tree of life in Iran, Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Levant, Crete is because in this part of the world, the climatic year is divided (roughly) into hot/dry summer (Apr/May - Oct/Nov) and cool/wet winter (Oct/Nov - Apr/May)... Image
Image
Image
Image
Oct/Nov is also the time when male ibex goats start their ferocious mating fights...And because the wet season in these parts of the world starts when ibex goats start mating, ibex goat became an animal calendar marker for the beginning of the rain season... Image
Image
Read 27 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(