Thread: In the Sumerian text "Enki and Ninhursanga" (etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr111…) Enki [the god of fresh water and the annual flood] says: "When Utu [the sun god] steps up into heaven, fresh waters shall run out of the ground for you"...
What does this mean?
This makes no sense, right? How can rising of the sun make water run out of the ground? Well it is not the sun's daily elevation, but the sun's annual elevation that this text talks about...
The sun's elevation is the lowers at the start of the solar year, at Winter Solstice. As the solar year progresses, the sun's elevation increases. The sun's elevation is the highest at the Summer solstice, after which it decreases until its minimum at the Winter Solstice...
What does this have to do with water running out of the ground? Well, the elevation of the sun is directly linked to the duration of the day.
The day is the shortest at the Winter Solstice (lowest elevation) and the longest at the Summer Solstice (highest elevation)...
You would think that the the winter solstice would then be the coldest time of the year, as the day is the shortest. But, because of the way earth-sun system works, the earth continues to cool after winter solstice, even though the days start getting longer...
The coldest time of the year is at the beginning of February, the beginning of spring...After which the earth starts to warm up...
This is Exactly when the water levels of Tigris and Euphrates start to rise. Why? Cause the earth is warming up, and the snow, which covers the mountains to the North of Sumer is melting...
And it is this snowmelt that is the main contributor to the water flow of Tigris and Euphrates...
And so, as Utu, The Sun god, climbs higher and higher up the sky, warmer and warmer the earth becomes, more and more snow is melted, and higher and higher the water levels of Tigris and Euphrates become...Symbolically Utu frees Enki from his icy prison...
And as the water levels of all the rivers in the Tigris and Euphrates catchment area rise, "fresh waters runs out of the ground"...
Just like Father Enki has promised. Enki, "the important one of the great gods" for whom it is said that "there is no one who does not take his skillful advice"... researchgate.net/publication/28…
BTW: The water levels in Tigris and Euphrates reach their peaks at the beginning of Summer, in Taurus. Which is why Enki, "the flood of heaven and earth" is also "great bull" who releases his semen into Tigris and Euphrates...
PS: I just thought of something...You know how originally Sumerian gods lived in Ekur, the holy mountain(s), which later became heaven...The same holy mountain(s) which are the source of Tigris and Euphrates...
Did "When Utu steps up into heaven" originally mean "When Utu steps up into holy mountain(s)", just like it is depicted on the seal showing Shamash/Utu liberating Enki/Ea?
Technically it's the same thing, as "Sun stepping up the mountain" means "Sun heating up the higher and higher ranges of the mountains", which correspond with the "Sun's elevation getting higher and higher"...
Interesting...
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Thread: Conoid stamp seal, Late Cypriot III. Cyprus (?), ca. 13th–12th c. BC. Currently in the Met metmuseum.org/art/collection…. Official description: lions (?) attacking a cow suckling a calf...Actually, this is a complex animal calendar marker, marking the beginning of August...
First, cow suckling its calf...I talked about this animal calendar marker in many different threads, like this one...It is a symbol for Apr/May, the time when wild Eurasian cattle start to calve...
Thread: Yesterday was Ognjena Marija (Fiery, Burning Mary)...She announces the beginning of "kresovi" (fires), the hottest part of the year in the norhtern hemisphere, the time of droughts, death... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.ie/2014/07/ognjen…
We are in the midlle of Leo, which originally had nothing to do with constellations...It is an ancient animal calendar marker, which marks the beginning of the mating season of the Eurasian lions...
Thread: Flint animals, Ibex, (probably Auroch) bull and (probably migratory) birds...Naqada II, 3650-3450 BC, Egypt, currently in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. From metmuseum.org/art/metpublica… page 48.
Why these animals?
Well Ibex and bull are well known animal calendar markers used throughout Eurasia and North Africa. They mark the beginning of the winter and summer, and in places where the climatic year is divided into dry and wet half, they mark the beginning of dry and wet season too...
I already talked about Ibex as calendar marker in Naqada culture here:
A very curious object, made from a wild boar bone. Usage and meaning unknown...But very cool 🙂
It was found in the Neolithic layer in the "Gaban cave shelter" located in Trentino-Alto Ádige, Italy. The shelter was used from Mesolithic to Bronze Age... laboratoriobagolini.it/ricerca/archeo…
One possible interpretation...From top to bottom:
Pray to the sky (human with hands raised up)
For water (zigzag line = flowing water)
And fertility (omega = symbol of the womb and fertility associated with Hathor and Ninhursag)...
But that would be stretching it, right? Cause this object predates the oldest depictions of omega in either Mesopotamia and Egypt...
Thread: In which I will propose that some of our myths about sky gods are in fact very very old scientific theories which tried to explain the available observed phenomena in the best possible way with the knowledge of the universe people possessed at that time...
Actually I would even argue that we would most likely explain the same observed phenomena today in the same way, if we weren't taught all that "science stuff" at school that some "smart scientists" figured out already, so we don't have to...
So I will start with telling you where the super cool image from the first tweet is from. It's from Prohodna cave in Bulgaria, which was possibly used as an early sky god temple oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-ey…
I always thought that Thor's hammer looked like a stylized axe...
That Thor's "hammer" probably was originally an axe, can be seen from this next artifact. A museum in Utrecht has a relic called "the hammer of St. Martin of Tours".
The "hammer" was made in the 13th or 14th c. from a Bronze Age stone axe dated to 1,000 - 700 BC...