Thread: It's cold out there...It's cold out there every day... 🙂 Which is why I am posting pictures of old Slavic storage heater/cooking oven/sleeping quarter thingies...Perfect for snuggling up and enjoying yourself during cold days...From: oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2014/06/caille…
This is an improvement on old Slavic stone stoves/ovens/heaters...Stone absorbs the heat, and then slowly radiates it out...Like a storage heater...All Early Medieval Central and Eastern European Slavic houses had stone oven in their corner...From: oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/01/banya.…
But these ovens/stoves/heaters had no chimneys. Hence Slavic proverb: Who doesn't get choked by smoke, doesn't get warm...Having a smoky house has it's advantages though...
Anyway, I guess someone got sick of the smoke, and so the design of these heaters was improved by replacing stone with bricks, and adding snaking internal channels that helped to transfer the heat to the masonry...
So all the benefits of the original stone ovens, minus choking...
Oh if you are interested in heat=>stone=>heat systems, here is an article about the Irish stone sweat houses, and the Bronze Age/Iron Age structures they most likely developed from: Fulacht fiadh oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/12/fulach…
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Thread: Which started as a one line comment on this interesting depiction of a two-headed serpent, with a tree growing from its tail, from the Greco-Roman (2nd c. BC - 2nd c. AD) period Egyptian temple in Esna. Which led to 3 days of research which led to: Nehebkau...
First, what snake is this? I checked the most common Egyptian snakes for spots, and there is one that has exactly this colour and spot pattern: "Sahara Horned Viper" (Cerastes cerastes)...
But why two heads? I think this could mean mating. Most Egyptian snakes, including Sahara Horned Viper have this reproductive cycle:
Mar–May Mating season, Peak mating season Apr/May (two heads)
May–Jul Females lay eggs
Jul–Sep Eggs incubate and hatch
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...