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oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
@serbiaireland
Jun 20, 2021 • 10 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Thread: Fragment of a vessel with wheat stalks and a procession of bulls in relief, Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr, 3300–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Why bulls and grain? metmuseum.org/art/collection…
Sumerian limestone bull cup with wheat stalks. Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr, 3100–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Why bulls and grain? christies.com/lot/lot-a-sume…
Steatite bowl with bulls in relief (5 cm. high). Found in a house of much later (Persian) times; dated stylistically to the Jemdet-Nasr period, 3100–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Why bulls and grain? classics.unc.edu
Why bulls and grain? For the same reason sun god Shamash/Utu was depicted as a bull with a tail made of wheat...
Because it is in Taurus (Apr/May), that the grain harvest begins in Mesopotamia...
But this is the old Taurus, which has nothing to do with stars...It is an ancient animal calendar marker which marks the beginning of the calving of the wild Eurasian cattle. I talked about it in this thread:

If you look at the Mesopotamian agricultural calendar, you will notice that that in Mesopotamia summer (Apr/May-Jul/Aug) started with grain harvest and ended with grain threshing and storage...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2018/08/sickle…
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/03/seven-…
The grain collecting season, summer, which starts in Taurus, is symbolised by a bull, because both calving (begins in Apr/May) and mating (begins in Jul/Aug) of Wild Eurasian cattle takes place during the summer, May to August...
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/05/ram-an…
oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbol…
Which is why on the Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr vessels we see bulls depicted with ripe grain...

Now check Hesiod and what his agricultural calendar has to say about grain...

oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/06/hesiod…
A thread about threshing floors that you might find interesting if you have actually read this thread to the end 🙂

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More from @serbiaireland

oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 26
Thread: Few posts about the Bronze Age bull leaping ritual...
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…
Image
Read 7 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 20
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.
Read 36 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Aug 4
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... Image
...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...
Read 5 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Jul 3
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... Image
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...
Read 8 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
Jun 3
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)... Image
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...
Read 64 tweets
oldeuropeanculture Profile picture
May 27
Thread: The žirgeliai (little horses), are common motifs on Lithuanian rooftops, placed there for protection of the house... Image
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…
Image
Both names, Lithuanian ašva and Sanskrit ashva, mean "horse" and are derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root for the horse – *ek'w-...

I talked about Ashvins here
Read 10 tweets

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