Emmeline Plunket
Ancient Calendars and Constellations
pp. 56-87
IV
THE MEDIAN CALENDAR AND THE CONSTELLATION
TAURUS
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, June 1897]
In a former number1 of these Proceedings I contrasted as follows, what I believed to be the calendar of the Accadians with that of the inhabitants of Lagash : -
"In Accad the calendar makers clung to the originally instituted star-mark for the year, and made it begin with the sun's entry into [the constellation] Aries ; therefore by degrees the beginning of their year moved away from the winter solstice, and in the first century B.C. coincided very closely with the spring equinox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac
"In Lagash, on the contrary, the calendar makers clung to the originally established season of the year, and made it begin at the winter solstice; therefore by degrees the beginning of their year moved away from the constellation Aries, and in Gudea's time [about 2,900 B.C.] the new year's festival was held in honour of the goddess Bau = Gula = Aquarius."
I now desire to draw attention to the Median calendar, which appears to have differed from that used, as above suggested, in Accad or in Lagash; inasmuch as the beginning of the Median year was not dependent on the sun's entry into the constellation Aries, as in Accad; nor was it fixed to the season of the winter solstice as in Lagash.
The beginning of the Median year was fixed to the season of the spring equinox, and remaining true to that season, followed no star-mark. The great importance, however, of Tauric symbolism in Median art seems to point to the fact that when the equinoctial year was first established the spring equinoctial point was in the constellation Taurus. Astronomy teaches us that was the case, speaking in round numbers, from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C.
It is true that we have no documentary proof of the existence of a Median equinoctial calendar in the remote past, such as that which we possess in the Babylonian standard astrological works regarding the ancient sidereal Accadian calendar. We have, however, among the modern representatives of the Medes, the Persians, a very distinctive calendrical observance, namely, that of the Nowroose, or the festival of the new year;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowruz
and we have the Persian tradition that the institution of this festival was of fabulous antiquity. I quote from Ker Porter's remarks on this subject: -
"The 21st of March, the impatiently anticipated day of the most joyous festival of Persia, at last arrived. It is called the feast of the Nowroose, or that of the commencement of the new year; and its institution is attributed to the celebrated Jemsheed, who, according to the traditions of the country, and the fragments yet preserved of its early native historians, was the sixth in descent from Noah, and the fourth sovereign of Persia, of the race of Kaiomurs, the grandson of Noah. . . . But to return to the feast of the Nowroose. It is acknowledged to have been celebrated from the earliest ages, in Persia, independent of whatever religions reigned there; whether the simple worship of the One Great Being, or under the successive rites of Magian, Pagan, or Mahomedan institutions." (Travels, vol. i. p. 316.)
This equinoctial and solar year, as the writer proceeds to point out, is adhered to by the Persians, though they, being Mahomedans, also celebrate Mahomedan lunar festivals, and for many purposes make use of the Mahomedan lunar year.
It is easy to see how greatly the Persian Nowroose differs from the purely lunar Mahomedan anniversaries - anniversaries which in the course of about thirty-two and a half years necessarily make a complete circuit through the seasons. The difference, though not so marked, which exists between the purely solar Nowroose, and all soli-lunar festivals, such as those of the Babylonians, should also be taken note of. These last, like our Easter, were dependent on the phases of the moon, and were therefore "moveable." The Persian Nowroose, like our Christmas Day, is an "immoveable" festival - fixed to the day of the spring equinox.
Modern tradition concerning the distinctively Persian custom of celebrating the Nowroose would, if it stood alone, furnish very slight grounds on which to found a far-reaching theory; but historical evidence confirms this tradition to a great extent, by teaching us that the Median and Persian worshippers of Ahura Mazda,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahura_Mazda
and of Mithras,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra
certainly under the Sassinide dynasty,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanide
and almost with equal certainty under the Achæmenid kings,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ach%C3%A6menid%C3%A6
kept their calendar and celebrated their religious festivals in a manner differing from that of the surrounding nations; their months were not lunar, their years were not soli-lunar but distinctly solar, and the spring equinox was the date to which as closely as possible the beginning of their year was fixed.
In Darmesteter's translation of the Zend Avesta the Persian months are treated of in Appendix C, p. 33, and in Appendix D, p. 37, we read of the Persian years: -
"L'année était divisée en quatre saisons, correspondant aux nôtres. Cette division ne paraît guère que dans les textes post-avestéens; mais il y a dans l'Avesta même des traces de son existence ancienne, La division normale de l'année est, dans l'Avesta, en deux saisons, été et hiver; l'été, hama, qui comprend les sept premiers mois (du Ier Farvardîn au 30 Mihr, soit du 21 mars au 16 octobre). . . . Cette division a une valeur religieuse, non seulement pour le rituel, mais aussi pour les pratiques, qui varient selon la saison."
The worship of the Persian sun-god Mithras was introduced into Rome about the time of the fall of the Republic. How far this worship differed from that taught in the Zoroastrian writings we need not inquire; however changed it may have been, it was evidently derived originally from a Persian or a Median source. The worship of Mithras, in spite of much opposition, gained many followers in Rome. The birthday of the sun-god was kept at the winter solstice, but the great festivities in his honour, "the mysteries of Mithras," were as a rule celebrated at the season of the spring equinox,2 and were famous even among Roman festivals. Let us now turn our attention to the Tauric symbolism so closely connected with Mithraic observances in Rome.
A writer in the Athenæum thus describes a Roman Mithræum :3 "Discovery was made during some excavations at Ostia of a handsome house containing among its various rooms a mithræum. . . . Into the kitchen opens a narrow and tortuous passage, from which by a small half-concealed staircase the mithræum is reached; ... it is quadrangular and regular in shape, as is usually the case in buildings of the kind. Almost the whole length of the two lateral walls run two seats, and on the side opposite the door is seen a little elevation, which served as the place for the usual statue of Mithras in the act of thrusting his dagger into the neck of the mystic Bull. A very singular peculiarity of this little Ostian mithræum is that it is entirely covered with mosaics - pavements, seats, and walls alike. The various figures and the symbols are splendidly drawn, and all executed in black tessera on a white ground. Upon each side of the seats, turned to the entrance door, is figured a genius bearing a lamp, that is, the genius of the spring equinox, with the face raised, and that of the autumn equinox, with the face cast down. . . .
It is known, in fact, that the whole myth of Mithras is related to the phases of the sun . . . hence are represented in the ground below the seats all the twelve signs of the zodiac, by means of the usual symbols, but each accompanied by a large star."
In the many sculptures of the Mithras group similar to that above described, which have been so well figured in Lajard's Culte de Mithras, various heavenly bodies are represented. The Scorpion (the constellation Scorpio of the Zodiac opposed to Taurus) joins with Mithras in his attack upon the Bull, and always the genii of the spring and autumn equinoxes are present in joyous and mournful attitudes.
In looking at these plates the conviction is clearly forced upon our minds that the Bull so persistently, and, it may be added, so serenely, slain by Mithras in these Roman representations, is the Zodiacal Bull, overcome, and as it were destroyed or banished from heaven, in the daytime by the sun-god, and at night by Scorpio, the constellation in opposition. With almost equal conviction we arrive at the conclusion that this triumph of Mithras was associated traditionally - in Roman days it could only have been traditionally - with the occurrence, at a remote date, of the spring equinox during the time that the sun was in conjunction with the constellation Taurus.
In the ruins of Persepolis, ruins of buildings designed, erected, and decorated by the worshippers of the supreme God Ahura Mazda, and of his friend and representative Mithras, Tauric symbolism abounds. We do not amongst these ruins find portrayals of Mithras as a youth wearing a Phrygian cap, and "thrusting his dagger into the neck of the mystic Bull," but again and again, in the bas-reliefs adorning the walls, we do find a colossal being thrusting his dagger into the body of a still more "mystic" creature than the Bull of the Roman sculptures - a creature combining in one instance at least (see Plate IV)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateIV.tif
the attributes of Bull, Lion, Scorpion, and Eagle, and frequently those of two or more of these animals.
Perrot and Chipiez have supposed this constantly repeated scene to represent imaginary contests between the reigning monarch and all possible or impossible monsters, but a very different impression was produced on the mind of Ker Porter by these same bas-reliefs ; and though he did not adopt a purely astronomic theory to explain them, he was firmly convinced that the combat depicted was not one waged between an ordinary human being and an ordinary or extraordinary animal, but that it was a symbolical representation of the combat constantly carried on by Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda), and by his representative Mithras, against the powers of evil and darkness.4
With the astronomic clue to Persian symbolism put into our hands by the Roman sculptures, of which mention has been made, and by a study of the researches of Lajard, it is not difficult to recognize in the composite animals represented on the bas-reliefs allusions not only to the Zodiacal Bull, traditionally associated with the spring equinox, but also to three other constellations which at the same date of the world's history (namely, from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C.) marked more or less accurately the remaining colures, i.e. the Lion, the Scorpion, and the Eagle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colure
The constellations of the Lion and the Scorpion, there can be no doubt, were appropriate star marks for the summer and autumn seasons, when the spring equinoctial point was in the Bull,5 but as regards the Eagle it must be admitted that though it adjoins the Zodiacal Aquarius (the constellation in which the winter solstitial point was then situated), yet its principal stars lie considerably to the north and west of that constellation.
A reason for the substitution of the Eagle (Aquila) for the Zodiacal Water-man or Water-jar (Aquarius or Amphora) may, however, be found in the fact of the very great brilliancy of the star Altair in the Eagle. It is a star of the first magnitude. In the Water-man there is no star above the third. The Persians, we are told, had a tradition that four brilliant stars marked the four cardinal points (i.e. the colures). In Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio we find stars of the first magnitude : there was therefore no temptation for Mithraic calendar makers and mythologists to seek for an extra-Zodiacal star to mark and represent the spring, summer, or autumn seasons; but for the winter solstice the only stars of the first magnitude within at all suitable distance were Aquila, to the north-west, or Fomalhaut to the south of Aquarius. For a nation dwelling as far to the north as the Medians are supposed to have done, Fomalhaut (when the winter solstice was in Aquarius very far to the south of the equator) would have been rarely visible. The choice by a Median astronomer and symbolic artist in search of a very brilliant star mark for the solstice would therefore have been restricted to the constellation of the Eagle, containing the conspicuous Altair, a star of the first magnitude.
The very constant association, not only in Persian and Median, but also in the mythologic art of other nations, of the Lion and the Eagle, seems to confirm the view here put forward, i.e. that the constellations of Leo and Aquila rather than of Leo and Aquarius were sometimes chosen to symbolise the summer and winter solstices.
The Griffin, a fabulous animal sacred to the sun, composed of a Lion and an Eagle, is a well-known figure in ancient classic art.
In Babylonian and Assyrian sculptured and glyptic art Merodach is often represented as in conflict with a Griffin. Merodach has been claimed by Jensen and other writers as a personification of the sun of the spring equinox. The for ever recurring triumph of spring over winter is probably figured in Merodach's triumph over the Griffin.
The association of Eagle and Lion is to be noticed in the arms of the city of Lagash; they were "a double-headed Eagle standing on a Lion passant or on two demi-lions placed back to back." 6 In Lagash, as was pointed out in a former paper, the new year's festival appears to have been held at the winter solstice: such a supposition would furnish an astronomical interpretation for the arms of Lagash.7 Mythological references to the Eagle alone are also to be met with which point to the Celestial Eagle (Aquila) marking the winter solstice in lieu of the constellation Aquarius, as for instance the Babylonian legend of the ambitious storm-bird, Zu,8 who stole the tablets of destiny, and thus sought to vie in power with "the great gods." Here we may find allusions to the substitution (deemed by some, no doubt, unauthorized) of an extra-Zodiacal for a Zodiacal constellation.
Again, in Grecian mythology the Eagle is sent by Zeus to carry Ganymede up to heaven, and in Grecian astronomy Ganymede is placed in the constellation Aquarius. It does not therefore seem unreasonable to suppose that the Eagle associated in the Persepolitan bas-reliefs with the Lion, the Bull, and the Scorpion (as at Plate IV.),
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateIV.tif
is the constellational Eagle, symbolizing the winter solstice, and that the compound animal is emblematic of the four seasons of the year, and also, it may be, of the four quarters of the world.
If to the composite monster of the bas-reliefs we ascribe an astronomic motive, we shall be ready to grant the same to other Tauric symbolisms prominent in the Persepolitan ruins.
With full conviction we shall recognize in the demi-bulls which crowned the columns in Persepolis and Susa representations of the demi-bull of the Zodiac. The resemblance is so striking that words are scarcely required to point it out when once the outlines of the two figures have been compared (Plate V.).
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateV.tif
In the spirited description of these capitals, quoted here from Perrot and Chipiez,9 are some lines, marked with italics, which might be applied with exactness to the demi-bulls of the Zodiac.
"On ne saurait cependant ne point admirer le grand goût et l'art ingénieux avec lequel, dans ses bustes de taureau, il [l'artiste perse] a plié la forme vivante au nécessités de la décoration architecturale. Il a su la simplifier sans lui enlever l'accent de la vie; les traits caractéristiques de l'espèce sur laquelle s'est porté son choix restent franchement accusés, quoique les menus détails soient éliminés ; ils auraient risqué de distraire et de troubler le regard. Les poils de la nuque et du dos, de l'épaule, des fanons, et des flancs sont réunis en masses d'un ferme contour, auquelles la frisure des boucles dont elles se composent donne un relief plus vigoureux; en même temps le collier qui pend au col, orné de rosaces et d'un riche fleuron qui tombe sur la poitrine, écarte toute idée de réalité; ce sont là des êtres sacrés et presque divins, que l'imagination de l'artiste a comme créés a nouveau et modelés à son gré pour les adapter a la fonction qu'elle leur donnait à remplir. Cependant, tout place qu'il soit en dehors des conditions de la nature, l'animal n'a pas perdu sa physionomie propre. Dans le mouvement de la tête, légèrement inclinée en avant et sur la côté, on sent la force indomptée qui anime ce corps ample et puissant. Hardiment indiquées, la construction et la musculature des membres inférieurs, repliés sous le ventre, laissent deviner de quel élan le taureau se lèverait et se dresserait en pied, s'il venait à se lasser de son éternel repos. J'en ai fait plusieurs fois l'expérience au Louvre, devant la partie de chapiteau colossal que notre musée doit a M. Dieulafoy : parmi les visiteurs qui se pressaient dans cette salle, parmi ceux mêmes qui semblaient le moins préparés à éprouver ce genre d'impressions, il n'en est pas un qui n'ait subi le charme, qui de manière ou d'autre, n'ait rendu hommage à la noblesse et a l'etrange beauté de ce type singulier."
For the exquisite columns crowned by these Tauric capitals the same writers have claimed a distinctively Median origin. This claim they sustain at great length, and with much architectural learning. They show that in their proportions, and in every detail of their ornamentation, the Persepolitan differed from the Ninevite, Grecian, or Egyptian column. They also point out that nowhere except at Persepolis and at Susa is the demi-bull of the capital to be met with; and yet they express the opinion that this feature, so far as is known proper to Persia, was mainly derived from, or helped at least by, the models of Assyria.
Very close resemblances can indeed be traced in Medo-Persian to Assyrian art, and as the Medo-Persian buildings, whose ruins are at Persepolis and Susa, were erected certainly at a later date than the palaces of the Assyrian kings discovered on the site of Nineveh, it is natural to attribute, as Perrot and Chipiez, and nearly all writers on the subject attribute, such resemblances to imitations of Assyrian art and symbolism on the part of the Medo-Persians.
There are, however, some considerations which make it difficult to adopt this view. In the first place, the symbolism supposed to have been copied by the Medo-Persians was religious symbolism, and the religion of the Aryan Medo-Persians was very different from that of the Semitic Assyrians.
The Achæmenid kings who built their palaces at Persepolis claimed constantly that they were worshippers of the one great Lord Ahura Mazda, of whom Mithras was the friend and representative. That these kings should have adopted from the polytheistic Assyrians not only the Tauric symbolism above described, but also, as it is suggested, the emblem of their one great Lord Ahura Mazda from that of Assur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assur
(see Plate VI. figs. 1, 2, 3),
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateVI.tif
would in itself be strange, but that they should have done so when Assur and all his followers had been utterly vanquished by the victorious worshippers of Ahura Mazda, seems still more improbable.
From the state in which the ruins of Nineveh were when discovered by Layard it is easy to see that, from the very day of the sacking of the city, it had for the most part been left just as it fell. It may have been rifled of its material wealth, but its literary and artistic treasures were left uncared for and undesired. A few hundred years later the very site of Nineveh was unknown.
The great city would not have been treated with such neglect had the Medo-Persian artists turned to it for inspiration and for themes of symbolic art with which to decorate the palaces of Persepolis.
The resemblance, however, between Medo-Persian and Ninevite art is in many instances so striking that some way of accounting for it must be sought, and those who are dissatisfied with one explanation will naturally look about to find some alternative suggestion.
The alternative suggestion I would now propose is that the progenitors of the Assyrians at an early period of the world's history borrowed Tauric and other religious symbolisms from the ancestors of the Medes.
In support of this theory the following considerations are put forward :
Tauric symbolism, if it is at all astronomic, points us back to a very remote date for its first institution, to a date considerably earlier than that at which the existence of the Assyrian people as an independent nation is generally put. The symbolism already discussed must, at the latest, have been originated about 2,000 B.C. Of the Assyrians as a nation we have no monumental proof earlier than 1,700 B.C.
But further, in the symbol of Ahura and Assur, I believe an astronomic reference may be traced to the position of the colures amongst the constellations, a reference which points us back not merely to a date between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C., but rather, and with curious precision, to the furthest limit of the time mentioned, namely to 4,000 B.C.
To penetrate into the meaning of this symbol of Ahura we must study both the Median and Assyrian representations of the figure presiding over the winged disc, and we may also seek for further light to be thrown upon it by other references in Assyrian art to the god Assur.
Ahura presiding over the winged circle holds in his hand a ring or crown; Assur in some examples is similarly furnished; but more often he appears armed with bow and arrows. In this figure, variously equipped, I believe that the heavenly Archer, the Zodiacal Sagittarius (Plate VI. fig. 4),
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateVI.tif
is to be recognized - Sagittarius, the constellation in which the autumnal equinoctial point was situated, speaking in round numbers, from 6,000 to 4,000 B.C.
The fact that a crown or wreath or ring often replaces the bow and arrows in the hand of Ahura and of Assur might at first sight make us doubtful as to the connexion of the figure with the constellation Sagittarius, but a glance at the celestial globe will rather make this fact tell in favour of the astronomical suggestion here made : for there we find dose to the hand of the Archer the ancient Ptolemaic constellation Corona Australis (the Southern Crown), actually incorporated with the Zodiacal constellation Sagittarius.
Not only do Assur's bow and crown remind us of Sagittarius, but his horned tiara, resembling so closely that worn by the man-headed Assyrian bulls, inclines us to look for some astronomic and Tauric allusion in this Assyrian and Median symbol.
True it is that, speaking generally, Gemini and not Taurus is the constellation of the Zodiac opposed to Sagittarius, but owing to the irregularity in the shape and size of the portions assigned in the ecliptic to the Zodiacal constellations, the extreme western degrees of Sagittarius are opposed to the extreme eastern degrees of Taurus. Therefore about 4,000 B.C. the equinoctial colure passed through the constellations of the Archer and the Bull.
In the Assyrian Standard (depicted in Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, Plate XXII.)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/AssyrianStandard.tif
we see the figure of an Archer above that of a galloping Bull, and in another Assyrian Standard, that of Sargon II., we find not only the Archer and the Bull, the two constellations which 4,000 B.C. marked the equinoctial colure, but we may also clearly trace a reference to the two constellations which at the same date marked the solstitial colure, namely, those of the Lion and the Water-man (Plate VII.).
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateVII.tif
Here the Archer dominates over a circle in which symmetrically duplicated Bulls appear, and duplicated Lions heads emerge out of what appears to be a hollow vessel resembling a water jar; the wavy lines that traverse the disc suggest streams that unitedly pour their waters into this jar. Below the jar again are to be seen halved and doubled heads, partly Lion and partly Bull.
This Standard of Assur may (like the Persepolitan monster earlier described) be considered as an astronomic monogram representing the four constellations which marked the four seasons of the year, and the four quarters of the earth.
The monogram of the Standard refers us back, however, to an earlier date for its origin than does the monogram of the composite animal in the Persepolitan bas-relief, for in the Standard the Archer is opposed to the Bull, in the bas-relief the Scorpion takes the place of the Archer, and the Eagle takes the place of the Water-man.
The precession of the equinoxes advances from east to west amongst the stars. Therefore the Scorpion marked the colure at a later date than did the Archer. The Eagle, as has already been pointed out, is considerably to the west of Aquarius, and could scarcely have been chosen as a substitute for that constellation when the colure was in its extreme eastern degrees.
At Plate VIII.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateVIII.tif
is given the position of the colures at 4,000 B.C. ; not much earlier or much later than this date can we place the origin of the symbolism in the Standard shown at Plate VII.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/files/Assur/PlateVII.tif
Earlier not Leo and Aquarius, but Virgo and Pisces, would have marked the solstitial colure. Later not Sagittarius, but Scorpio, would have in opposition to Taurus marked the equinoctial colure.
At this date, 4,000 B.C., suggested with such curious accuracy by this Assyrian Standard, we have absolutely no trace of the existence of the Semitic nation of the Assyrians in Northern Mesopotamia. In Babylonia two hundred years later the Semitic Sargon I. ruled at Accad. In the astrological work drawn up, if not for Sargon yet, as we may judge from internal evidence, for some king of Accad, no mention is made of the Assyrian nation.
The Phoenicians, the Hittites, the Kings of Gutium, and the "Umman Manda"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umman_Manda
are then the dreaded foes of Accad. Of the Manda we read as follows: "The Umman Manda comes and governs the land. The mercy seats of the great gods are taken away. Bel goes to Elam."
Professor Sayce is opposed to the view that the Manda are necessarily identical with the Medes; but he admits that Herodotus, following the authority of Medo-Persian writers, claimed as Median the victories of the Manda.10
If now on the authority of Herodotus and the Medo-Persian writers we assume, at least as a possibility, that these Manda were Medes, we should expect to find them worshippers of Ahura Mazda. Ahura, it is on all hands admitted, is the Iranian form of the Vedic Asura, just as Mithras is the Iranian form of the Vedic Mitra. At whatever date the separation between Iranian and Vedic Aryans took place, the worship of Ahura (still probably under the form Asura) must have existed amongst the Iranians; indeed, many have supposed that the monotheistic reform which placed one great Ahura or Asura above all other Asuras, and above the Devas, occasioned the separation of these two great Aryan races.
It is for the Lord Ahura, called, as here supposed, Asura, in early times, by the Aryan Manda, that I would claim the astronomical symbol of the Archer presiding over the circle of the ecliptic, or, in other words, over the circle of the year, and of a year beginning at the spring equinox - a year, as has already been pointed out, distinctively Median.
According then to this supposition, a powerful Median race was established in the vicinity of Babylonia early in the fourth millennium B.C. - a race who worshipped one great Lord, first under the name of Asura, afterwards under that of Ahura.
It is for these Aryan Manda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manda_(Mandaeism)
or Medes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medes
that I would claim, at the date of 4,000 B.C., the original conception of the astronomic monogram in which so plainly may be read an allusion to the four constellations of the Zodiac, which at that date marked the four seasons and the four cardinal points, i.e. Sagittarius and Taurus, Aquarius and Leo. This monogram was used as a Standard thousands of years later by the Semitic Assyrians.
To the Manda or Medes, also, I would, as has been suggested, attribute the first imagining of the astronomic emblem common to Ahura and Assur - that of the divine Being presiding over the circle of the ecliptic.
Berosus mentions a Median dynasty as having reigned in Babylon for one or two hundred years. Let us now suppose that the Manda for more than a thousand years held power in Northern Mesopotamia, but that at last the tide of conquest turned, and after many struggles with the Semites in the south the Aryans were finally driven from the land now known as Assyria, and a Semite race firmly settled in the regions from whence in Sargon's time the Umman Manda had threatened the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Accad. That this was the case about 2,200 B.C. may perhaps be gathered from the monuments of Hammurabi, the Semitic king of Babylon, for he refers in his letters to his troops in Assyria, and in a lately discovered inscription of this king he speaks of restoring to the city of Assur its propitious genie, and of honouring Istar in the city of Nineveh.
To account for the existence of the Assyrian nation, their close resemblance in language and race to the ruling Semitic class in Babylon, and yet to explain the great difference in the religion of these two peoples, has always been a difficulty.
The Assyrians worshipped, and worshipped with enthusiasm, all the Babylonian gods; but high above the whole Babylonian Pantheon they placed as their supreme and great Lord Assur - Assur whose very name is not to be met with in Babylonian mythology. This difficulty I would explain in the following manner.
When the Medes had, by Hammurabi or his successors, been driven out of Northern Mesopotamia, they were replaced by Semitic settlers who (like the settlers sent into Samaria more than a thousand years later by a king of Assyria) adopted, to a certain extent, the religion of the nation whom they had dispossessed. In 2 Kings xvii. we read that in this parallel instance "the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel: and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof." Later in the same chapter we read that in order to appease, as they believed, the wrath of the "God of the land," these idolatrous settlers, retaining in full the worship of all their own gods, added to it a worship of the Lord of the dispossessed Israelites.
I would suppose then that the polytheistic Semites, who in Hammurabi's time were settled in Northern Mesopotamia, had acted in a similar manner. Coming into a region where for nearly 2,000 years the monotheistic Medes or Manda had been established, they, to avert the wrath of the god of the land, adopted to a certain extent his worship. In fact, like the Samaritans, "they feared the Lord [Asura], and served their own gods."
This explanation of the difference in religion between the Babylonians and the Assyrians seems to yield also an explanation of the resemblances between the Assyrian and Median religions, or rather of the resemblances between the religious art of the two peoples; and thus we return to the problem proposed for discussion earlier in this Paper, namely, the inadequacy of the generally held opinion which accounts for the resemblances in Persepolitan and Ninevite symbolic art by supposing that the Medes borrowed from the Assyrians.
In support of the alternative suggestion put forward at p. 75, that the progenitors of the Assyrians at an early period of the world's history borrowed Tauric and other religious symbolisms from the ancestors of the Medes, I would claim that the Assyrians borrowed not only religious symbolisms, but even the very name of their god Assur from the Medes. For I look upon Assur as a "loan word" adopted from the Aryan Asura.
To the Medes or Manda, who were, as has been argued, in power in Northern Mesopotamia about 4,000 B.C., I have attributed the origin of the astronomic Assyrian and Ahurian emblem. To them, on the same grounds, I attribute the first imagining of the astronomic Assyrian Standard, and the devising of the man-headed and winged monsters so well known as "Assyrian Bulls"; and to them I would, with full conviction, leave the honour of having invented, and not borrowed, the idea of the magnificent Tauric capitals that crowned the columns of Persepolis and Susa. To all these conclusions I have been led by a consideration of the distinctively equinoctial character of the Median calendar, taken in connexion with the importance given in Median art to the constellation Taurus.
1 V. p. 54.
2 Cumont, in the first volume of his Monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, p. 326, having spoken of the solstitial festival in honour of the birthday of the god, observes as follows : "Nous avons certaines raisons de croire que les équinoxes étaient aussi des jours feriés où l'on inaugurait par quelque salutation le retour des Saisons divinisées. Les initiations avaient lieu de préférence vers le debut du printemps, en mars ou en avril. . ,"
3 Athenæum, 1886, October 30 and November 6,
4 "The man who contends with the animals ... is represented as a person of a singularly dignified mien, clad in long draperied robes, but with the arms perfectly bare. His hair, which is full and curled, is bound with a circlet or low diadem; and his sweeping pointed beard is curled at different heights, in the style that was worn by majesty alone. . . . The calmness of his air, contrasted with the firmness with which he grasps the animals, and strikes to his aim, gives a certainty to his object, and a sublimity to his figure, beyond anything that would have been in the power of more elaborate action or ornament to effect. From the unchanged appearance of the hero, his unvaried mode of attack, its success, and the unaltered style of opposition adopted by every one of the animals in the contest, I can have no doubt that they all mean different achievements towards one great aim. . . ." - Ker Porter's Travels, vol. i. p. 672.
5 The solstitial and equinoctial colures were situated, speaking in round numbers, for 2,000 years in the constellations Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius.
6 Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 604.
7 In this connexion the following passage from Sayce's Hibbert Lectures, p. 261, is interesting : - A text copied for Assur-banipal, from a tablet originally written at Babylon, contains part of a hymn which had to be recited "in the presence of Bel-Merodach ... in the beginning of Nisan," - ".... O Zamama, Why dost thou not take thy seat ? Bahu, the Queen of Kis, has not cried to thee."
He adds in a note that Zamama was the Sun-god of Kis, and was consequently identified with Adar by the mythologists. On a contract-stone he is symbolized by an eagle, which is said to be "the image of the southern sun of Kis." It was claimed in a former paper (Feb. 1896) that "the Southern sun" was "the sun of the winter solstice" and that Gula ( = Bahu) was the name of the constellation, or of some stars in the constellation Aquarius (V. p. 50). In these lines Bahu, as I have supposed, Aquarius, and Zamama, symbolised by the Eagle, the image of the Southern sun or winter solstice, are closely associated.
8 Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 666.
9 Histoire de l'Art dans l'antiquité, Perse, p. 519.
10 Proceedings, vol. xviii, Part vi. pp. 176, 177.'
Now cf.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66919
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86sir#Etymology
'Grimm further notes a resemblance the name of the gods of the Etruscans reported by Suetonius and Hesychius, æsares or æsi. He notes that Etruscan religion, as well as Greek (Dodekatheon) and Roman polytheism, supposed a circle of twelve superior beings closely "bound" together, as it were forming a fasces, in Rome known as the dii consentes paralleling the Eddic expressions höpt and bönd "bond" for the Æsir.'
Perhaps the 'ring of power' symbolized the zodiac?
I'll sum up:
*aNsu-/*aNsura- (non-IIR *esu-) means not only "master", it means "master of the twelve"; as the sun is the master of the houses of the zodiac, the *aNsu- etc is master of twelve houses/peoples on earth.
And BTW, speaking of law and procedure, the system of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehmic_court
has been attributed
('[d]uring 18th to 19th century Romanticism, there were various misguided attempts to explain the obscure term, or to elevate it to the status of a remnant of pagan antiquity, scoffed at by Grimm's entry in his Deutsches Wörterbuch.[2] A particularly fanciful etymology, suggested by James Skene in 1824, derives the word from Baumgericht (Lit. 'Tree law'), supposedly the remnant of a pagan "forest law" of the Wild hunt and pagan secret societies.')
to the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_hunt
of that top dog Woden and his followers. To me it smacks of something you'd expect in an occupied country, which according to Snorri that land,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalia
was, governed by Odin's son Beldegg/Balder/Phol
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre03.htm
Torsten