"...When he set sail...when Enki set sail for the nether world, against the lord a storm...arose...The waves at the bow of the boat rose to devour the lord like wolves and the waves at the stern of the boat were attacking Enki like a lion..."
So first, why would Enki be going to the netherworld? On a boat? And is the choice of animals, to which the waves are compared, significant? Let me see I can find answers to these questions...
As I explained in this article (oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/shamas…), Enki, the god of the source of fresh water...And the god of flood...Annual flood of the Tigris and Euphrates. Which is why he is depicted with two streams of water full of fish (rivers) coming out of him...
The water levels of Tigris and Euphrates start rising sharply in Jan/Feb, at the beginning of spring, peak in Apr/May, at the end of spring, beginning of summer, and then start falling sharply until Jul/Aug, the end of summer...
Annual flow chart
Left: Tigris
Right: Euphrates
Oh, by the way, Enki is standing on the bull, because the annual flood peaks in Apr/May...The time when wild Eurasian cattle start to calve...Which is marked by Taurus...An ancient animal calendar marker. Which had originally nothing to do with stars...
The time of the flood is when large tracts of Mesopotamia used to be submerged, making boats the only viable means of transport...So Enki, the god of flood, in a boat...
The climatic year in Mesopotamia is divided into two halves: summer, hot and dry half (Apr/May-Oct/Nov) and winter, cool and wet half (Oct/Nov-Apr/May)...
The end of the flood, Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest part of the hot and dry half of the year. The lair of the fire breathing dragons...Depicted as winged lions oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/06/is-tha…
These winged lions were most likely derived from lions with sun heat waves radiating from their back...Basically symbolically saying: dragon is the sun in Leo, the hottest, driest part of the year...
Sometimes the dragons were depicted as beasts with lion's body and 7 snake heads...Snake is the symbol of sun's heat...And there are 7 of them, because old Sumerian summer (🙂), hot dry season, had 7 months. So dragon = hot dry season... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/07/seven-…
Leo, the hottest, driest part of the year, is is also where we find Nergal...The god of death, and the husband of Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld...Standing on a lion, holding lion scepter, being a lion...Or being a winged lion, dragon... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/winged…
Nergal is standing at the gates of hell...The hottest and driest part of the year, when nature dies...And this is exactly where the annual flood, Enki, is going...This is the end of Enki's journey...The end of the annual flood...
But what about the wolf and lion attacking the two opposite ends of Enki's boat...
Eurasian wolves main mating season starts in Jan...At the beginning of the annual flood...
Eurasian lions main mating season starts in Aug...At the end of the annual flood...
So the wolf and lion would be at the opposite ends of the Enki's boat...Of Enki's flood...Which starts when wolves mate, peaks when aurochs calve and ends when lions mate...
Oh, did I say that in the same chapter of the "Gilgameš, Enkidu and the nether world" we also read that "The keel (middle) of Enki's little boat was trembling as if it were being butted by turtles" 🙂
Guess when the terrible Mesopotamian turtles, you know that ones that Enki "unleashed" against Ninurta (oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/ninurt…) mate? In Apr/May, middle, peak of the flood...
So here you go...Hope you enjoyed this...I will get back to Nergal standing at the gates of hell in my next thread...Until then, as a Henry Miller once said: "drink cold, piss warm"...🙂
PS: forgot to mention...That star, above the end of the Enki's boat...That's Sirius, which rises with the sun, the destructive, deadly sun in Leo...Nergal...At the gates of hell...At the end of Enki's boat journey...At the end of his boat...
Sirius, rising before the sun, pretending to be "the morning star"... Otherwise known as Inanna/Ishtar "The queen of heaven"...The one that poses on the lion...In Leo... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2021/05/ninshu…
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Map of the distribution of bull leaping motifs found on seals and amulets, mid 3rd millennium BC to mid 2nd millennium BC. Eagle headed dudes and bull leaping dudes 🙂 From: "Myths of ancient Bactria and Margiana on its seals and amulets" scribd.com/document/47027…
Thread: The other day I posted this article and it went completely unnoticed??? In this thread I want to present the full analysis of all 4 sides of this sarcophagus. Honestly this is as cool an example of symbolic religious calendar art as they come.
First, I definitely don't think that these panels depict funerary rituals, which is the most common interpretation of the scene ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/agia-…
I think that they could be depicting religious rituals related to Proto Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. The "two queens and the king" mentioned In the Mycenean Greek tablets dated 1400–1200 BC.
They are also a religious calendar closely linked to the climatic calendar.
Thread: Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilisation in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no...
...Mead said that the first sign of civilisation in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die...
...You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal...
Thread: Have you ever heard of shepherd's stick calendars? Here's one from Bulgaria...
In the mountains of the Balkans, up until the end of the 20th century, shepherds carried with them calendar sticks...
It was a stick with a notch cut into it for every day of the year and a cross or some other symbol for major holy days, which in Serbia are all linked to major agricultural events and major solar cycle events...
At the end of every day a piece of the stick up to the first notch, representing the previous day, was cut off from the stick. When the last piece was cut, the year was over...
Thread (a quite long one, sorry, but I think worth reading to the end): A while back @another_barbara posted this 1865 beehive panel image with this description: An interesting Shrovetide tradition from Slovenija "babo žagajo" (sawing of an old woman)...
The other day wanted to write an article about this custom, and while looking around the net for more info on the subject, I came across 1960 paper by Niko Kuret "BABO ŽAGAJO, Slovenske oblike pozabljenega obredja in njegove Evropske paralele" etno-muzej.si/sl/etnolog/slo…
In which he presents all the different versions (he knew of) of the "SAWING OF THE OLD WOMAN" ritual found in Slovenian lands, and its European parallels...
Here I will translate the most interesting bits from this paper, and will then give my interpretation of the ritual...
Thread: The žirgeliai (little horses), are common motifs on Lithuanian rooftops, placed there for protection of the house...
They are a symbolic depiction of the Ašvieniai (), Baltic counterparts of Vedic Ashvins, who are said to pull the chariot of Saulė (the Sun Goddess) through the sky. As depicted on this rooftop of a house in Nida... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C5%A1vi…
Both names, Lithuanian ašva and Sanskrit ashva, mean "horse" and are derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root for the horse – *ek'w-...