This is what early domesticated corn (maize) looked like. It was domesticated from the plant "teocintle" (meaning "grass of the gods" in Náhuatl), most likely by the native people of Guerrero, Mexico, around 8000 years ago...
On this picture you can see two small cobs of teocintle on the left, and two cobs with mixed genetics that are developing towards corn on the right...
My article "Resurrection of the maize god" about animal and plant calendar markers found in the Mayan legend about the resurrection of the corn (maize) god, which is depicted on this plate...
When the vultures start dancing, it is time to plant your corn (maize)...Article "Golden eagles from Costa Rica" about the meaning of the gold "Double Headed Eagles", made in Costa Rica between 700 and 1530 AD by people of Diquis culture...
When the big horn rams start fighting for ewes, the rains will arrive and the the corn will germinate and grow...Article "Alosaka" about Alósaka, Horned Corn (Maize) God of the Hopi Indians from the SW USA.
If you wanted to symbolically depict the god of rain (which arrive when big horn rams start fighting for ewes), who is also the god of corn/maize (which depends on this rain to grow), how would you do it? Like this maybe? A "mysterious" petroglyph, Arizona. More in my article "Rain cloud".
When snakes start dancing, the rains will come to help corn (maize) grow...Article "Snake dance" about Hopi Indians snake dance from SW USA.
A member of the Hopi Snake Clan dancing with a snake in his mouth during the ceremonial Snake Dance, the final stage of the 16 days Hopi tribe religious ceremony held every two years in August...
You can see what the snake dance looks like in this documentary from 1913.
Hopi people who live in the Southwestern USA, regard snakes as their "brothers" and rely on them to carry their prayers for rain to the underworld, where the gods and the ancestor spirits, who control the rain, live.
Four days before the snake dance, the Snake priests leave their villages to gather snakes. The priests carry a digging sticks to dig the snakes out of their holes and snake whips, which are rods with two eagle feathers attached to them.
Once they dig the snakes out, they stroke them with the snake whip to make them straighten out and then grab them behind the head. They bring the snakes to the village where they are put inside the "kiva", sacred underground room, where they stay until the day of the snake dance.
On the day before the snake dance, a race is run across the plain and up the steep slope of the "mesa" (village) just before sunrise, symbolising the rain-gods bringing water to the village.
Then the members of the Antelope clan, who also participate in the ceremony, build a "kisi", a shallow pit covered with a wooden board, which represents the entrance to the underworld where the gods and the ancestors live.
At sunset of the day before the snake dance, the Snake and Antelope dancers dance around the plaza, stamping on the "kisi" board and shaking rattles to simulate the sounds of thunder and rain.
The Antelope priests dance with green vines around their necks and in their mouths, just as the Snake priests will later dance with snakes around their necks and in their mouths.
On the day of the snake dance, the snakes are washed in a large jar filled with water and herbs. Finally the snakes are gathered up in a bag, carried to the village plaza, and placed in the "kisi".
Then, each Snake priest reaches into the "kisi", grabs a snake, and they all dance around the village plaza with the snakes first in their hands and then in their mouths, "to symbolically pass their prayers for rain to the snakes".
Finally, one of the Snake priests makes a large circle of cornmeal on the ground. All the snakes are thrown into the circle, while women and girls scatter cornmeal on the wriggling reptiles.
Then the Snake priests grab the snakes, and run out of the village where the snakes are released to carry the prayer for rain to the gods and the ancestor spirits in the underworld, and to inform them that the Hopis still live in the old way of their ancestors.
Soooo...Very interesting...Remember my post "Horned serpent" about the Horned Serpent, whom Hopi believed to be the guardian of water and is associated with rain, thunder and lightning?
In the article I said that when I first saw the depiction of the Horned Serpent, I thought that this could be a depiction of an actual horned snake, the American horned rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes).
In the article, I then explained why I changed my mind and why I believe that the Horned Serpent was a complex animal calendar marker for rain season an animal hybrid with:
a body of a rattle snake
and horns of the desert big horn sheep.
The thing is it is possible that the horns of the Horned Serpent are not (just) the horns of the desert big horn sheep. They could (also) be the horns of the pronghorn (false antelope)...
Arizona climate chart...
The desert big horn sheep mating starts in Jul and ends in Oct. During the rut, the rams charge at each other head-on crashing their horns together with tremendous bangs...Thundering bangs...So they are ideal calendar markers for the monsoon season....
In their southern range, the pronghorns mating starts Jul and ends in Sep. During the rut, the bucks charge at each other head-on crashing their horns together with tremendous bangs...Thundering bangs...Ideal calendar markers for the monsoon season...Arizona climate chart...
And interestingly, it is the snake and antelope clans that perform the snake dance rain ceremony together. Why? There has to be the reason for it, albeit one that has been long forgotten...The reason we are now rediscovering...
Something else: Two depictions of the Hopi antelope katchina (spirit doll). You can see that one has horns that look like pronghorn horns and that the other one has horns that look like big horn sheep horns...So did Hopis consider both of these animals to be the same "spirit"?
Final proof that the Horned Serpent from the Hopi mythology was not an actual horned rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes), is the fact that horned rattlesnakes are not used in the rain snake dance ceremonies.
The rattlesnake that is used is the Prairie Rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis). You can read more about it in this article which contains some early accounts of the snake dance ceremony
One interesting thing about Prairie Rattlesnakes, is that this species usually mates between Jul and Sep...
And so, in August, the peak mating season of the dancing snakes, dancing big horn sheep and dancing pronghorn antelopes, and in the middle of the Monsoon season in the SW USA, the members of the Antelope and Snake Clan dance for rain...
And the Horned Serpent, the guardian of the waters releases the life saving rain and refills the rivers and wells...
A swallow tattoo means 5000 nautical miles a sailor has traveled. For regular seamen, this is about 5,750 miles (ca. 9,254 km).
This article is about swallows as animal calendar markers for the beginning of the sailing season in Ancient Rome, about Isis, as the goddess of the sea, and about the climate change...and roses...
A group of children, somewhere in Greece, holding wooden spinners decorated with flowers, with a model of a swallow on a spindle, acting as a weathervane. They are getting ready to sing the "swallow song", a song welcoming swallows as the heralds of spring...
You can actually hear the children singing the "swallow song" in this documentary:
Χελιδονίσματα στο Σιτοχώρι Σερρών την 1η Μαρτίου 1967
Athenaeus of Naucratis (3rd c. CE) writes that after the first swallow was spotted, the Rhodians would hold a festival.
During the festival the Rhodian children would sing:
He comes! He comes!
Who loves to hear
Soft sunny hours, and seasons fair:
The swallow hither comes to rest
His sable wing and snowy breast.
The children then ran to different houses and "played the swallow", demanding food.
Ashleigh Green then goes on to talk about animal calendar markers 🙂 without knowing that she is talking about animal calendar markers: "In ancient times, people did not rely on calendars or clocks to tell them the time or the passing of the seasons..."
"...They watched and listened to birds. Cockcrow heralded sunrise and roused them from sleep; cranes migrating told them it was time to sow; and swallows returning from worlds unknown told them spring had arrived."
And then she says: The sailing season was also marked by the swallow’s return. Taking the swallow’s appearance as their cue, centuries of Greek poets sang to sailors to weigh anchor and unfurl the sails...the swallows are here. Winter storms have passed, it is time to go to sea.
These poems are written by Leonidas, Antipater of Sidon, Marcus Argentarius, Thyillus and Agathias Scholasticus respectively, and although they stretch from the third century BCE to the sixth century CE, they are almost identical in form and substance.
Such evidence suggests that swallows truly were linked as closely to sailing as to spring. The spring wind was even called chelidonia after the swallow, and Horace suggests that the swallow actually helps to calm the sea...Very interesting...Why would people believe such a thing?
Cause the return of the swallows from Africa in Mar/Apr and their nesting in Apr/May coincides with the change of wind. Sun, heating up the Eastern Mediterranean, creates an updrift, which sucks the cooler air from Europe to start streaming southward, creating the etesian winds.
This table, from a South Aegean Yachting site, gives directions of the prevailing winds in Aegean sea during the sailing season: Apr-Oct...Even today, with much better boats, this is the safe sailing season...
I talked about Etesian winds and the sailing in the Eastern Mediterranean in this post about "Three sacrifices" performed during the Trojan war.
7th c. BC Mykonos pithos. It contains the oldest depiction of the Trojan Horse, the way Homer described it in Iliad
So, swallows return, start nesting, it's time to go sailing...Another animal calendar marker embedded into mythology. Swallow was apparently a holy bird of Isis, who also apparently, had a control of the sea, and was the goddess people prayed for calm waters and good winds...
The swallow was also associated by the Ancient Greeks, and the Romans, with "euploia" (a pleasant voyage). Indeed it is attested that during the Roman festival Navigium Isidis, the festival in honour of Isis for good sailing, the devotees held models of swallows...
The Navigium Isidis was an annual Roman religious festival, held on March the 5th, in honour of the goddess Isis, when people prayed for the safety of seafarers and then a model of a ship was carried in a procession from the local Isis temple to the sea or to a nearby river...
This is a fresco from the sanctuary of Isis in Pompeii, currently in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Napoli. It depicts cista mystica between two snakes (similar to a lararium) and above it navigium Isidis (boat of Isis) on the left and another boat with a swallow in it...
Why did sailors pray to Isis for calm seas and good winds? In the article entitled "Isis, goddess of the seas and the Navigium Isidis, Celebrate the beginning of the maritime season with Isis" by Rhakotis Magazine we can read:
By the Roman period, Isis has become the predominant sea goddess to such an extent that her festival marked the official beginning of the sailing season across the empire. This seems strange when we consider the fact that Egypt was not known for its maritime prowess.
River sailing was an important aspect of its society and economy for millennia. Indeed, the sail may have first emerged from Egypt, with south blowing winds powering ships up the Nile against the current. Yet Egypt did not really have any sea gods for much of its early history.
It was perhaps outside of Egypt that the association of Egyptian gods and the sea first began. Byblos was an important trade center with Egypt for centuries. A text from the Middle Kingdom calls Hathor "Mistress of Byblos [who] holds the rudders of barques" (!!!)
During the New Kingdom Isis took over more and more functions of Hathor, ultimately becoming the predominant goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. About this time, she also became the Egyptian goddess in Byblos, "taking over" Hathor’s maritime goddess role.
Very interesting...
I talked about Hathor as a deified animal calendar marker for Apr/May, the beginning of the calving period of the the wild Eurasian cattle in my post "Cow and calf ivory". Which is exactly when etesian winds start blowing in the Eastern Mediterranean...
Navigating the Nile was fundamentally a seasonal occupation, closely tied to the cycle of the flood. Changing water levels meant variable navigability in the river channel, especially for larger cargo vessels. The optimal time for sailing was during the height of the inundation.
Even in the main channel of the Nile, water levels effected navigability. A dwindling river made sand banks an increasing hazard, threatening not only to block a vessel’s passage, but also to trap it and, at worst, capsize and wreck it...
By happy coincidence, it is also during this high-Nile season that the maxim of ‘current from the south, wind from the north’ is most valid. The Nile valley and the Nile Delta are subject to two quite different wind regimes.
In the Nile valley, northerly winds blow year round because of the cyclonic highs that sit over the Sahara desert year round...
In the Delta, northerly winds blow only during the summer...because the Delta is under the influence of Mediterranean weather systems...
And so, if you wanted to sail up the Nile delta and then further up the Nile river, you had to wait for Hathor, the holy cow to give birth to a holy calf in Apr/May. And then when the water level of the Nile starts to rise, in Jun/Jul, catch the northerly wind and sail south...
So is this why Hathor was associated with sailing and was the Goddess "who holds the rudders of barques"? And why Isis, Hathor's replacement, was known as the Goddess "that opens the seas"?
For the end I want to ask two questions:
Why was Navigium Isidis celebrated on the 5th of March, when all the old Roman texts tell us that the safe sailing season in the Mediterranean was Apr to Oct? In Ships and Fleets of the Ancient Mediterranean, J. Rouge summarised the problem of winter navigation as follows:
Vegetius (fourth century AD) says that the seas were (generally) closed between Oct/Nov and Apr/May
And in this article, Oded Tammuz goes on to propose that even though the main sailing season in the Mediterranean was Apr to Oct, the sea was never really closed. Here are 5th century BC Egyptian customs records, noting down ships that arrived to the Elephantine harbour.
We also have many Roman sources which say that opportunistic captains would sail outside of the main sailing season, because the gains that could be made were very high. But so were the risks...I wonder how many Mediterranean shipwrecks are ships trying to sail the closed seas?
Romans started celebrating Navigium Isidis, around 100BC. Now I wonder if the reason why the Romans celebrated the opening of the seas at the beginning of March, was because the Mediterranean sea was around 100BC indeed fully navigable in March. Due to climate change...
This chart shows polar temperature variation in last 10,000 years. We can see that the temperature has been going up and down madly all the time. And one of the big temperature spikes, which centres around 100BC, when Navigium Isidis became a thing, is marked as Roman warming.This warming must have affected the weather in Mediterranean. Making sailing safe a month earlier, in March? I think so. Which is why Navigium Isidis was celebrated on the 5th of March...
And here I come to the second question: Are there any roses blooming in Italy and Greece on the 1st of March?
Why am I asking this? Because, according to Lucius Apuleius, who in the 2nd c. AD wrote "The Golden Ass", roses were already blooming on the 5th of Mar during his time.
The Golden Ass is a story about certain Lucius, who drank a magic potion which accidentally turned him into an ass. He spends the rest of the book trying to turn back into a man. Finally, he succeeds on the day of Navigium Isidis...
The night before the festival of the opening of the seas, Lucius, still an ass, is on the seashore watching the moon emerging from the sea. He prays to Isis to turn him back into a man.
He then falls back to sleep, and dreams (has a vision) of the goddess herself emerging from the sea. She tells him tomorrow there will be a festival "when the ocean’s storm-blown waves are calmed".
And then she tells him: "My priest...will be carrying in his right hand as part of his processional equipment a sistrum wreathed with a garland of roses...Approach the priest and...gently take a bite of the roses".
Here is a fresco from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii depicting priestesses of Isis holding a sistrum...Currently in the Naples National Archaeological Museum.
And so, on the morning of the 5th of Mar in the middle of the 2nd c. AD, an ass turned into a man on the streets of Corinth after eating a rose. Just like the Goddess Isis told him it would happen...
Today, in Italy and Grece, as far as I know, roses start blooming in Apr/May. Maybe (big maybe) you can find them blooming at the end of Mar. But, it is very unlikely, that a donkey wandering around Corinth on the 5th of Mar today would be able to find a blooming rose and eat it.
Yet Lucius Apuleius wrote that donkey ate a rose on the day of the opening of the sea, and no one batted an eyelid...Like of course, why wouldn't it? Roses are already blooming in and around Coritnh at the 5th of March. Everyone knows that...
Interesting right? Roman warming? Also, did you know that equids (horses and asses) start mating in Apr/May, at the beginning of the "safe sailing season"? Interestingly, all Eastern Mediterranean sea gods seem to be obsessed with horses...I talked about this in my post "Trojan horse"...
A type of merchant ship which had horse figurehead on its prow and which Greeks called "hippos" (horse), and used for delivering tributes...
And finally...I wonder if all this assing around in Golden Ass is kind of symbolic, in a calendaric kind of way? Maybe someone should look into it...That's it...That's all I have to say about that...
Thank you an I hope you enjoyed this meandering article, originally published as an X thread.
Spouted silver bowl decorated with entwined serpents. Southeastern Iran Mid 3rd millennium BC. From Al-Sabah collection.
Why was this vessel decorated with entwined serpents? Here's what I think:
I already talked about this type of vessels in my post "Elamite water bull" about this Proto-Elamite silver figurine of a clothed anthropomophised kneeling bull...holding a spouted [water] vessel. c. 3000BC. Currently in the Met Museum...
My guess that this figure is either Enki (Sumerian god of sweet water) or Utu (Sumerian sun god)...Or their unnamed Elamite equivalent who possibly combines both of them in one...
They were both described as bulls. Why?
These are yearly charts of the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates. You can see that they both peak in Apr/May, Taurus, Bull...
BTW, Taurus here is The Old Taurus, the animal calendar marker for the beginning of the calving season of wild eurasian cattle...
This rise in water levels in Tigris and Euphrates is the result of the sun heating up of the mountains which are the source of the two great rivers: Anatolian highlands and the Zagros mountains...Which causes the snow to melt, which causes the rivers to swell...
Snowmelt, Zagros
Hence the humanoid bull holding a spouted water vessel...Which looks just like the vessel from the Al-Sabah collection...
I talked about another water carrier figurine from Iran in my post "Water carrier equid", about this "Spouted Anthropomorphic Vessel", Western Iran, circa 1000-650 BCE. Currently in Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
Here the anthropomorphised animal water carrier is not a bull but an equid, horse or a donkey. Why? Cause equid mating season, starts in Apr/May, right when the water discharge peaks in the rivers in Mesopotamia/Iran...
But why was the vessel from the Al-Sabah collection decorated with entwined serpents?
First, snake is a solar animal, pretty much a universal symbol of the sun's heat. Snakes follow sun everywhere. They are in our world when sun is in our world (day, summer) and in the underworld when the sun is in the underworld (night, winter)...I talked about this in many of my posts. For instance "Snake god from Hatra"...
And it is the sun's heat that melts the snow...
Second, snake mating season, when snakes intertwine, starts in Apr/May, the time of the peak snowmelt runoff in Iranian mountains, and the peak discharge of the rivers in the Tigris/Euphrates system...
Which is why in the Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations, 2500-1500 BC, By Graham Cunningham, we can read that in the Earliest Sumerian texts, Enki, the god of sweet flowing water and the source of Tigris and Euphrates, was associated with poisonous snakes...
“Twenty different officiants are attested in connection with Napiriša. Their designations vary from simple šatin (4) and makuš (7) to (makuš) pirramadda (3) and (makuš) haturmakša; their names are all Iranian except for two.”
“Elsewhere, the same individuals are associated with a range of other sacrifices, including sacrifices for or at various mountains, for Adad, Auramazdā, Išpandaramattiš, and (the) Mišebaka.”
(‘The Heartland Pantheon’, Henkleman, pg 1229)
“The syllabic spellings of the name (AN na‐pír‐šá‐ra, AN na‐pír‐ir‐šá‐ir‐ra) follow the development riša > irša, “great,” suggesting that the name of the god was still understood as a compound (logographic spellings: AN dingir.gal MEŠ, AN gal MEŠ).”
The origins of Napiriša, attested since the early second millennium BCE, may lie in the eastern highlands of Elam. This may also account for his popularity in the PFA*.
The water‐giving god and his wife are shown here at the open‐air sanctuary of Kūrāngūn:
It’s majorly held for the figures above that they are Napiriša (or Napiriša‐Inšušinak) and his spouse Kiririša, the ‘Great Goddess’ of Liyan/Būšehr.
Also, Mesopotamians identified “Naprušu/Napriš” as their own Ea/Enki.
(‘The Heartland Pantheon’, Henkleman, pg 1228)
*Persepolis Fortification Tablets
This deity is attested for 26 times and given Iranian epithets.
Here’s the Kurangun relief, which depicts a horned Elamite deity seated upon a snake-coiled throne. 17th century BCE. It’s in Fars, Iran.
“He is seated on a throne formed by the body of a snake, coiled back upon itself over and over again, and he grasps the tail of the snake in his left hand. In his right he holds the divine rod and ring [my comment, he is not holding rod and ring, he is holding a cup, just like Enki/Ea] from which two streams of water flow [...]”
"In terms of identification, he has been called Inshushinak, who was the patron of Susa anyways. Enki/Ea/Napirisha are mentioned as well; the author deduces that these names/figures are all in fact related, with the former being used as epithets, besides the shared identity"...
