Afrca to N. Europe to Japan: the Jomon & Anu - Ainu Ques

[Minimalist]

There are Jewish synagogues in the middle east with depictions of the Sun God (Helios) surrounded by zodiacal symbols.

Theoretically, such depictions are totally barred in Jewish belief....yet, there they are. In a synagogue.

You can't rule out that some artisan simply decided to depict the story and that it holds no symbolic meaning whatsoever. It's just a story that caught someone's attention.

[PaulMarcW]

Ishtar. Really fascinating what you share of the Anu. It's 6:30 AM now in Budapest and I have to be up-and-away and am leaving in about 45 minutes so have no time at this moment to read your material again and more carefully so. I'll do that later today.

From my end, it was Gerald Massey (probably in his Ancient Egypt book) that first acquainted me with the Anu and their appearance in the Book of the Coming into the Light of Day.

I believe

FROM THE ANU PEOPLE THE GOD ANU WAS NAMED

Here is the background:

Vilified though he is, it was In his book From Fetish to God, that Budge wrote:

“The similarity between the two...gods [Marc's note: those of Egypt and Sumer] is too close to be accidental...It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems form some common but exceedingly ancient source.”

Ancient peoples sometimes either named themselves after their gods or vice versa. I think this happened with the Anu and god Anu. So, that is where I see the Sumerian roots to Anu.

Now (and hopefully the following comment won't get skimmed-over or lost - here goes) the following link has some prehistoric and, at least to me, stunning and thrilling history of the Anu:

http://www.beforebc.de/all_africa/200_e ... heAnu.html

How much of the above is really true (or to what extent), how much is reliable, I don't know.

The 1000 BC Denmark stamp you show is completely new to me and revealing. I've seen the other images before and have the Celt one (like Horus, the subdurer of snakes; also in Mesopotamian iconography: i.e. the grasping of the neck of the snake - and in Zen Buddhist paintings in maybe Hangchow or Southern Sung;; and also found in the form of a 15th century AD lamp in Japan, Kinki, Kyoto, is a stone carving of a Kaminari Lantern held by an old man holding a snake by the neck. Supposedly 1800 AD but I suspect centuries earlier ;; Also from Central China, Henan, Luoyang, E-Zhou Dynasty, Spring and Autumn, 770-476 BC is a bronze of a man holding a snake by the neck that looks like a Baby Horus take).

You trace the migration route from Mediterranean terrains to Denmark and North Europe. Actually, on the Viking's page I put up in another thread are ships and a similar map and sea-route showing the same kind of migration.

http://www.beforebc.de/Related.Subjects ... 0-825.html

I'm afraid I might be rambling and anyhow might be rambling and that's not good.

To be continued,

[PaulMarcW]

Hmmm. Off topic but where the snake subduer is concerned, the cow being sacred as it is in Egypt (likely worshippers of Amun who'd migrated to India carrying the tradition of the sacred cow? And would the bull fights and the slaying of the bull be reminiscent of hostilities between incoming Spaniards-to-be and an indigenous Amun-worshipping people as in nearby Rome; where the slaying of the bull was the sign of domination of the newcomers over the old? There is the "mocking" of the bull in the annual bull-chase tradition in Spain - mocking the defeated followers of Amun in Spain?; Herodotus wrote of the Assyrian king who slayed the bull representing Amun when he conquered Egypt) could the snake-charmers of India harken back to Egypt and Horus?

The above is admittedly off-topic and I won't diverge like that again. Just a thought that came suddenly and didn't want to loose it and at the same time wanted to share it.

[Ishtar]

Paul Marc

If you like, open up a new thread on bull mythology in the Mythology section, as it's something I've looked into to.

The walls of Catal Hoyuk have plastered bulls protuding from them.

The Bull in India is Nanda.

The Bull in Egypt is Min who is married to Isis.

The Bull in Sumeria is the Bull of Heaven who is married to Ishtar, who I've always considered another version of Isis.

Then of course, later on there's a Bull in Zoroastrianism and another in Mithraism.

There's a bull in Greece - the Minotaur.... and so it goes on....but let's stick to the earlier ones for now.

The Heavenly Cow is another strong motif in all the oldest three mythologies - Egypt, India and Sumeria.

In Sumeria, she is the mother of Gilgamesh. In Egypt, she is often depicted with Min and, is, I think, another representation of Isis.

And of course, we all know about the sacred cow of India which to this day, is considered so and allowed to roam around wherever they like, causing no end of havoc with the traffic!

Paul Marc, I've created a spin off thread in the Mythologies section on the 'An' origins of Isis and Ishtar, and whether they can both derive their heritage to an earlier goddess that both the Egyptians and the Sumerian worshipped.

http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?t=1863

[Ishtar]

You can't rule out that some artisan simply decided to depict the story and that it holds no symbolic meaning whatsoever. It's just a story that caught someone's attention.

I agree, you can't rule it out. And there is some controversy among scholars about it, some saying that it is Thracian in origin, which opens up another can of worms. OK, say a Thracian artisan did it - well, the Out of India theorists say the Thracian/Phyrigians were part of the Anu who migrated west and then into Greece.

Anyway, this is something from the debate:

http://www.unc.edu/celtic/catalogue/Gun ... ldron.html

As the largest surviving piece of Europian Iron Age silver work, the Gundestrup Cauldron has been given a special interest by many scholars. Especially, its high quality workmanship and iconographic variety have generated an incessant inquiry into the origin of the cauldron. Though the date of the cauldron is generally attributed to the 2nd or 1st century BCE (La Tène III), there still remains much room for controversy concerning the place of its manufacture. The main problem comes from the fact that its style and workmanship is Thracian rather than Celtic despite its decorative motifs manifestly Celtic. So far, scholastic opinions have been largely divided into two groups: those who argue for the Gaulish origin and those who argue for the Thracian origin. The former locate the manufacture of the cauldron in the Celtic west while the latter opt for the Lower Danube in southeastern Europe.

So taken in isolation, it's difficult to prove its origins. But I'm more interested in using it in context to make a wider point. When you see it in context with all the other signs - a few of which I listed earlier - the marked similarities between the Edda and the Vedas, the fact that Skanda is a Vedic god and our word for 'navy' comes from the Sanskrit root nav, you start to get a picture emerging about who the Vikings could have been.

http://indiannavy.nic.in/hydro.htm

While the Euro centric English Historians would argue that the first sailors were the Phoenicians of Asia Minor who sailed the Mediterranean in 2000 BC, What is called 'Navigation' today was referred to by the ancient Sanskrit word 'Navgati'......

I can't find out how Scandinavia got its name, but it cannot be denied that if you break the word down, you get "the land of the navy of the Vedic war god, Skanda".

I'd say that's pretty good description for the home of the Vikings!

[Minimalist]

I agree, you can't rule it out. And there is some controversy among scholars about it, some saying that it is Thracian in origin, which opens up another can of worms. OK, say a Thracian artisan did it - well, the Out of India theorists say the Thracian/Phyrigians were part of the Anu who migrated west and then into Greece.

Sure, but then again Thrace sits just to the west of the Dardanelles and thus in a centuries old crossroad of East and West. I imagine that cultural cross-pollination was a constant factor.


This fresco, found in Pompeii, depicts the battle of Issus (Alexander v Persia.)




Why not make an argument that its presence in a Roman Town, 400 years later preserves the symbolic memory of Roman participation in the battle?

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

[Ishtar]

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

See ... I've already agreed that sometimes a banana is a banana.

So all you have to do is to agree that sometimes it's not.

It's called keeping an open mind .... remember that?



Just to show you that there was life before the Romans, Min.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracians

The prehistoric origins of the Thracians remain obscure, in absence of written historical records. Evidence of proto-Thracians in the prehistoric period depends on remains of material culture. Proto-Thracian tombs can be found dating back to 3000 BC,[3] when what can be termed as 'proto-Thracian' culture began to form. It is generally proposed that a proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age[4] when the latter, around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous peoples.[5]


Modern linguistics classifies the Thracians as an Indo-European people who spoke a satemized language, which links them to Albanians, Slavs, Balts and Ancient Iranian peoples [in other words, Anu - Ish]

It is however disputed whether the satem languages actually descend from a later than PIE ancestor (thus forming a true satem subgroup of Indo-European) or whether satemization was caused by areal contact or parallel evolution. Links to the Greek branch (a centum language) of the Indo-European language family are also being investigated.

[Minimalist]

Before the Romans were the Etruscans....but that's just Italy. As I recall there have been numerous finds in Bulgaria and Northern Greece relating to the Thracians in recent years. It's a possible point of origin for the Sea People who did in the Late Bronze Age c 1200 BC. Again, though, the Celts drove into the Balkans in the 3d century BC and even after they were stopped the region remained on the cutting edge between east and west.

Ish, I'm a guy. Of course we know that bananas are not always bananas!

[Ishtar]

Paul Marc

I found this on your site:

`The Scorpion King . . . belonged to the preceding race of Anu, moreover he worshipped Min and Set.'). As we shall see later Min, like the chief gods of Egypt, was called by the tradition of Egypt itself `The Great Negro'. . . .

Another interpretation of this was that Min is shown as black to reflect the Nile's inundation. So I'm wondering, was he actually called "The Great Negro" or "The Great Black"?

Here's a picture of Min (and his banana!)



However, the Scorpian King is an Anu, and this gives us a link to Hathor and the Anu, and Hathor became Isis.

In Egyptian mythology, Hathor (Pronounced Hah-Thor) (Egyptian for house of Horus) was originally a personification of the Milky Way, which was seen as the milk that flowed from the udders of a heavenly cow. Hathor was an ancient goddess, and was worshipped as a cow-deity from at least 2700 BC,[1] during the second dynasty. Her worship by the Egyptians goes back earlier however, possibly, even by the Scorpion King who ruled during the Protodynastic Period before the dynasties began.

[Ishtar]

Ish, I'm a guy. Of course we know that bananas are not always bananas!

Boasting again!

I meant to say, great pic by the way!

[PaulMarcW]

Ishtar. You made reference to the Scorpion King of Egypt. We can read that "King Scorpion or Scorpion II refers to the second of two kings so-named of Upper Egypt during the Protodynastic Period."

Here is macehead at the Ashmolean:



Interesting, though, is that Mesopotamia had the Scorpion Archer. In Warka, Gulu is defended by the ScorpionArcher (3rd millennium BC).



EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA: I don't know if there would be any relationship or borrowing between a King Scorpion and Scorpion Archer though they seemingly co-existed both in the 3rd millennium Egypt and Mesopotamia.

I am presently reading your Anu material.

[Ishtar]

That's the similar to the picture that's on the Narmer Palette (c. 3,000 BC) a shield-shaped bowl used in the temples for grinding the cosmetics for decorating the gods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer_Palette

[PaulMarcW]

Ishtar. You wrote:

I can't find out how Scandinavia got its name, but it cannot be denied that if you break the word down, you get "the land of the navy of the Vedic war god, Skanda".

I'd say that's pretty good description for the home of the Vikings!

It's a pity that the artists who tried to make viewable the incised ships found by the thousands in the mid-Neolithic rocks of Scandinavia used wide brushes to apply brown paint as the original works were sort of more delicate and elegant.

In any case, if "navies" are large fleets of ships, there is ample evidence that near 4500 BC, these abounded in Scandinavia. In Solberg, Skjeberg, Østfold, Norway, for instance, is the following fleet from about that time ... navy.

[Minimalist]

What a great avatar this would be.

[Ishtar]

Yes.... a guy with an intellect as big as his cock. How unusual.