Thread: Wall painting from a house in Çatalhöyük (7500-6500 BC) showing a fruit tree and ibexes/wild goats...From "Flora Unveiled: The Discovery and Denial of Sex in Plants" by Lincoln Taiz, Lee Taiz
Tree of life with ibexes, goats of rain? Most definitely...
Why goat of rain?
Because Bezoar Ibex goat, which is the kind that live(d) in the Çatalhöyük area, start their mating season in Oct/Nov. Their mating season is characterised by vicious male goat fights. The head banging can be heard from miles away, so it is difficult to miss...
And in Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Anatolia, Middle East, Iran, Central Asia, this is when the rains arrive after hot dry summer and autumn...The rains that are source of life, arrive when Ibexes start mating...Hence goat of rain and tree of life...Çatalhöyük climate chart...
Goat of rain from Gobekli Tepe (9500-8000BC)..With zig zag line symbolizing flowing water...
In the area of Gobekli Tepe, the rains arrive when ibex goats start mating, Oct/Nov...
Decorated stone vessel from Ayanlar Hoyuk (9000BC) with, again, goat of rain and zig zag lines...
Ayanlar Hoyuk (Urfa) climate chart...Again the rains arrive when Ibex, goat of rain starts mating...
Thread: Strap in. This is going to be fun. In this thread I am going to talk about the first raw of panel from the 1st c. AD Roman monument known as the "Pillar of the Boatmen" found in Paris, France... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_of…
I was prompted to look into it by the posts by this great account @Michssspp82096 about this panel which depicts a bull standing under a willow tree, with 3 cranes perched on his back. The inscription reads "TARVOS TRIGARANOS" or "Bull and Three Cranes" in Gaulish...
@Michssspp82096 This is a coloured version of this image. It looks cool, but the colours are wrong...The only cranes native to France are Common Cranes and their feathers are grey not white and their legs are black not orange... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cr…
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…
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...
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....
Thread: Two Sassanian wall relief slabs dated to the 5th-6th c. AD, depicting rampant ibex goats flanking "the tree of life"...
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:
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?
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)...
Thread: Poseidon, Greek god of the sea was associated with waves (obvious), horses (not so obvious, unless you know about animal calendar markers and the link between the horse mating season and the sailing season in eastern Mediterranean) and earthquakes (???)...
Why earthquakes? Look at this: Map of the Greek region showing the epicenters of the intermediate depth earthquake activity...
Big earthquakes trigger tsunamis. If you lived on these islands, observing this for millennia, you would eventually start believing that it is the god of waves, Poseidon, that is also creating earthquakes, as the big earthquakes are always accompanied with big waves...