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Post by enkur on Nov 23, 2010 21:07:16 GMT -5
Hello Us4 He2 Gal2, Sitchin is just a popular author and this explains everything for me. What I personally dislike is his general lack of mythic taste despite of some insightful ideas. On the other hand, Simon's Necronomicon when seen as an occult grimoire, is very well sustained as a style, being a perfect modern re-enactment of what an old grimoire could be in the spirit of the time it pretends to be from. It sounds far more believable than the references in Lovecraft's stories and in the same time comes as their affirmation keeping to the same Lovecraftian spirit. Yet I would hardly practise this grimoire. In the same way I do appreciate the great literature value of Enuma Elish, finding its vision cosmic indeed, yet it stays somehow outside of my Sumerian psychosmos as well. As for Maqlu texts they definitely started a certain tradition which extended till the Medieval Europe and beyond... As for the intellectual model or simulation of what the Sumerian psychocosmos could have been, if it moves one emotionally one may call it vision, since the emotional fill of an concept is what creates the imagery of the myth. However, I doubt if any complete vision is possible, or has ever been possible, since neither the Sumerian priesthood, nor any other priesthood throughout the human history has ever had any complete vision of the things. It will hardly be ever possible. So, not unlike the religion, the science will also never discover any complete intellectual model applied to all. Such are the human MEs. Death probably gives a complete vision but is there anybody to see it? This is said from the perspective of magic and art, which sees the things as incomplete but opened to completion. Oh yes, I do appreciate Jacobsen's classic treatment in this and in many other respects. Yes, anything about the connection between Utu and Abzu would be of interest to me, thanks.
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Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Nov 25, 2010 23:27:56 GMT -5
Enkur: This seems like a reasonable surmise, that the original priestly model (and so our own scientific reconstruction) aren't likely to know completeness. However what is exciting are those occasions when one or another aspect of the modal confirms or works together with another aspect, and in that way we see the value of the original ideas and how they contributed to the ancient sense of order of things. I will acquire the article I have named above and send it to you tonight then.
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Post by enkur on Dec 1, 2010 19:17:21 GMT -5
Yes, that's really exciting to discover congruent elements along one's quest of restoring some fragmentary ancient model of the universe. Such an eccentric quest would not make much sense if the present model of the universe was more complete. At least for me it's the inadequacy of the present model which has turned my attention to the antiquity. For me neither of them is adequate yet certain congruent elements of both models may complement each other to form something which gives some more meaning to life.
Thank you again, I still read the previous one.
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Post by enkur on Dec 5, 2010 21:06:22 GMT -5
Finally, upon finishing Woods's article (however valuable, his footnotes were really enervating for me) I would quote here from the Temple Hymns this characteristics of Gishbanda: "...your exterior is raised up, prominent like a snare, your interior is where the sun rises..." bar gi4-a nim-ma ĝiš es2-ad-gin7 rib-ba šag4-zu ki ud e3 nam-ḫe2 daĝal šum2-mu So Ningishzidda's temple shares the same characteristic with that of Nungal's temple as quoted by Woods - its exterior is the western horizon as an entrance to the netherworld, and its interior is the eastern horizon which is the place of the sun god rising, of birth giving and determining the fates. For me the presence of an abzu-well in these places is foreshadowed. In our Thracian "E Abzu" the entrance is westwards downstairs, then the stairs turn round 90 degree northwards down to the underground chamber, in the middle of which is the well. After the sacramental act had been done there, the priest/s found their way back upstairs first southwards and then eastwards where they emerged on the upperworld again. However, while channeling to the deity who was worshiped there I was "told" by Him that priestess/es services are necessary that His power might be restored. Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Dec 5, 2010 21:09:06 GMT -5
the entrance (westwards and then northwards) Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Dec 5, 2010 21:12:56 GMT -5
the exit - southwards and then eastwards Attachments:
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Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Dec 8, 2010 14:11:17 GMT -5
Engur - this line from the temple hymns about Gishbanda is certainly interesting, only I don't really know what it means - or what Ningishzida himself may have to do with sun rise. Will have to think on it i suppose.
As for this Thracian Abzu I've found the whole thing fascinating. Do you have an article or a source for the suggestion of this thing as Abzu? If you do I may be able to pass it along to my professor who is giving course on comparative ANE religion. He is using a book by Martin West called "The East Face of Helicon" . Helicon being of course the mountain which Hesiod used to muse on, I think. Anyway the books marks potential influence from Mesopotamia to Greece.
Best Regards
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Post by enkur on Dec 11, 2010 9:58:06 GMT -5
Also, in "The building of Ningirsu's temple" (Gudea, cylinders A and B), in lines 132-133, we read how the goddes Nanshe interprets Gudea's dream:
"The daylight that had risen for you on the horizon is your personal god Ningishzida, who will rise for you as the daylight on the horizon."
ud ki-sar2-ra ma-ra-ta-e3-a digir-zu dnin-gis-zid-da ud-gin7 ki-sa-ra ma-«ra-da»-ra-ta-e3
For me Ningishzida is also a god of the twilight, of both the dusk and the dawn.
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Post by enkur on Dec 11, 2010 10:03:09 GMT -5
As for the temple-well in Thrace, as you may guess, its location is in the present Bulgaria - one of the most lost countries in the south-east Europe. One should learn Bulgarian if one wants to read the Bulgarian archaelogic studies, especially those published during the communist regime. Seems this mysterious temple-well has much confused the archaelogists at the time having neither a precedent nor a later analogue on the territory of ancient Thrace. However ideologically burdened, the marxist science was strict and correct, desperately dry and boring, observing even some secrecy in relation to objects which were difficult to be identified. The general public knew about this archaeological find just in 2003 while it was excavated in 1972!
The archaelogist who discovered the temple-well, Dimitrina Mitova-Jonova published her study in the periodical "Thracia", volume VI, edited by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, C 1984 pages 66-70, entitled "A Temple of the Subterranean Waters from the Bronze Age in the South-West Bulgaria". This study is published also in her book "The Archaeological Memorials in Pernik's District" and in a booklet entitled "A Megalith Temple-Well at the Village of Garlo, Pernik's District" (all these data are translated by me for your information).
Some quotes translated by me: "The underground temple-well near the village of Garlo belongs to the same architectural model - an undergound building with tholos and dromos. Though its designation is quite different, it repeats the ancient plan of the neolith housing and cult architecture in Mesopotamia, which gradually penetrated more and more north-westwards, spreaded over the Greek islands and the continental Greece, and, in a comparatively early period - 14-13 century before the new era, reaches the upper regions of the valley of Struma river." (where the temple-well was found)
"As an architectural model and building technique the temple-well near the village of Garlo is most close to the Mycenaean building traditions, however as a cult content, as an expression of the subterranean waters' worship, this temple has parallels eastwards from the Balkans in Palestinia as well as westwards in an unexpected literal analogy in the proto-Sardinian megalith culture Nuraghi."
I haven't got yet the entire study, there are some contradictory elements in the above quotations. The eventual cult of Enki/Ea is supposed in a few popular articles only, not in some sensational context, but as a logic relation to the only known god of the subterranean waters from the Middle East. My own hypothesis is simple enough - I suppose a cult imported from the neighbour and contemporarry Hittite empire (14-13 century b.c.e.) where Enki/Ea was worshipped along with Inanna/Ishtar and other Mesopotamian deities. Moreover the Hittites were of the same ethnic origin as the Thracians and Phrygians.
In his "Mythology of the Hittite Anatolia" (a Polish edition translated in Bulgarian) Maciej Popko mentions cursorily about a ritual wherein the Anunnaki of the underworld are summoned via a sacrifice made at some subterranean well, and also about a myth wherein the goddes Ishtar asks some sacred subterranean source for its purifying water. Unfortunately many interesting Hittite cuneiform tablets are badly damaged. There are also myths wherein god Ea from the city of Abzuva playes a central role in dissolving the problems of the Hittite pantheon.
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 10:58:48 GMT -5
Naomi, us4-he2-gal2, and everybody interested, My hypothesis about an imported Enki/Ea's cult from the Hittite Empire came out to be unsubstantial. At last the mystery was revealed and it's revelation is scientifically based. I contacted a scholar named W. Sheppard Baird who investigates similar sacred sites in the island of Sardinia, and in Spain and he elucidated me much on that matter. In brief, the origin of these sites is Minoan - parallely to the early Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, certain Mediteranean and Aegean shores were colonized by the Minoans, and sometimes they penetrated deeply in the mainland along the rivers valleys (as in the case with this temple in Thrace). www.minoanatlantis.com/Minoan_Spain.phpIt was probably the famous Atlantis empire which is to be searched in the Mediterranean rather than elsewhere. Its decline started after 1630 b.c.e. when the Theran (Santorini) volcano erupted in the Aegean causing earthquakes and tsunami which devastated the island of Crete - the heart of the Minoan civilization. In the consequent centuries the Minoan colonists who remained without any support from Crete and being permanently attacked by the local peoples, were on active decline and started to organize themselves into devastating mass pirate attacks on the Eastern Mediterranean in search of new territories to settle. These mass pirate attacks were known as the Invasions of the Sea Peoples. www.minoanatlantis.com/Origin_Sea_Peoples.phpTheir climax was between 1278 and 1175 b.c.e. when the Near East states on the Mediterranean shores (excluding the Phoenican cities who were their allies), the Mycenae Greece, the Hittite Empire were totally devastated and destroyed. Only Egypt managed to withstand their attacks and even to defeat them but these wars so exhausted Egypt that in the next centuries it started to decline. This disaster was not unlike the Great Migration of Peoples in the 5th century c.e. when the Roman Empire collapsed. Seems that only Mesopotamia remained unafflicted thereby. The Bulgarian archaelogist who discovered this mysterious temple-well along with her hypothetic Mesopotamian connection supposed some Nuraghic connection as well. In fact the Nuraghe culture on the island of Sardinia derived from the Minoan colonists, later known as Shardana who were one of the Sea Peoples. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuraghe www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=6336302
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:07:01 GMT -5
This is a sacred well in Sardinia. Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:08:32 GMT -5
a sacred well in Sardinia Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:11:56 GMT -5
Yet the question remains: which was this deity of the subterranean waters worshipped in these temple-wells? I know little about the Crete-Minoan religion but what I know is that in this distant antiquity it was the Sumerians who had the most developped conception of the subterranean waters as sustenance of life. W. Sheppard Baird wrote to me: "Your Enki/Ea hypothesis may have merit and should be thoroughly investigated." He recommended to me the book "Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess: A Near Eastern Koine" by Nanno Marinatos, wherein she considers the Minoan civilization not as an isolated pre-Hellenic culture but as being on active cultural exchange with the Near East civilizations. heritage-key.com/publication/minoan-kingship-and-solar-goddess-near-eastern-koine
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:14:36 GMT -5
the book Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:20:15 GMT -5
So it comes out that I have made a Sumerian channeling through a Minoan sacred construction That's why the magical investigation is to be made in parallel with the scientific one. The magickal investigation is often beyond the linear time and could make quite direct connections with the things which on a subjective level might come quite true but the objectivity needs a linear or historic time in order to manifest. For me this temple-well still corresponds to my own Sumerian psychocosmic model repeating the mythic structures of Ningishzidda's Gishbanda site as well as that of Nungal together with the foreshadowed Abzu-well in their bottoms, but the actual archaelogical excavations are to be considered in this respect. Unfortunately my dream to study archaeology remained unacomplished. This reconstruction of the Eridu Temple still speaks nothing to me (look through the schemes of the archaeologic excavations by entering the site). babel.massart.edu/~tkelley/v5.0/eridu/
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:31:54 GMT -5
Here there are some quite subjective associations of mine between the cross sections of the sacred well in Bulgaria and the cuneiform signs for Abzu.
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:34:50 GMT -5
cross-section 1 Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:36:01 GMT -5
cross-section 2 Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:36:39 GMT -5
cross-section 3 Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:39:19 GMT -5
abzu arch. sign Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:40:05 GMT -5
abzu vertical Attachments:
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 11:42:30 GMT -5
Just a subjective association
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Post by enkur on Jan 7, 2011 12:50:40 GMT -5
Naomi,
>have been busy working on the Mutational Alchemy deck at Abrahadabra.
Do you mean a tarot deck? Would be interesting to see your work. As far as I have looked through different tarot decks I haven't seen yet any one of Mesopotamian symbolism.
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Post by enkur on Jan 17, 2011 9:07:50 GMT -5
Creating such a deck is probably a very complicated matter. I've always felt it as a great challenge, but except my first attempt some 24 ago when I created a deck of the 22 classic tarot archetypes only as an educative aid for my study at the time, I've never managed to complete my further attempts. Seems I need a special guidance from the gods Otherwise, discovering Ningishzidda was a divine revelation to me since my magical relations with both snakes and trees have been strong to the extent of sexual attraction, so each snake killed, and each tree cut have made me personally suffering. This dying and resurrecting deity combining both things together has really MADE SENSE to me.
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Post by sheshki on Mar 20, 2011 11:45:21 GMT -5
While looking through my new books i found an interesting rulers name: Ur-Ningizzida, ruler of Eshnunna, ca 1930 bc
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Post by sheshki on Apr 1, 2011 14:09:03 GMT -5
I just found some interesting lines about the Mushkhusshu dragon in "Civilisations of the Ancient Near East" chapter "Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Iconography" by Anthony Green
An excellent example of how a symbol might be transferred between gods in the wake of theological and political developments is provided by the dragon called Mushkhusshu (Furious Snake) in Akkadian. The complex mythologies and associations with various gods that involved the creature have been collected by F.A.M. Wiggermann. The origin of the dragon was apparently as the beast of the underworld snake god Ninazu, who in the third millennium BCE was whorshipped in the city of Eshnunna (Eshnunnak, modern Tell Asmar). When, in the Akkadian or earlier in the Old Babylonian period, Ninazu was replaced as city god of Eshnunna by the war god Tishpak (probably in origin the Hurrian storm-god Teshub), the latter took over the Mushkhusshu as his animal, while in Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba) the beast became associated with Ninazu´s son, the underworld god Ningishzida. From Middle Babylonian times, however, possibly after Hammurabi´s conquest of Eshnunna, the dragon was transfered to the new Babylonian national god, Marduk, and his son, Nabu. The Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed Babylon in 689BCE. Thereafter, the Mushkhusshu is found in Assyrian art, usually as a symbol of the national god Assur, whose cult assimilated much of the mythology and festivals associated with Marduk. On Sennacherib´s rock reliefs at Maltai, the creature is seen as the mount of two deities, Assur and another god, probably Nabu. Although the "meaning" of the Mushkhusshu dragon changed , therefore, in terms of the specific deity or deities it represented, it remained fairly constant in terms of the types of gods it symbolized. Its distinctive reptilian iconography originated from its association with the underworld and with an underworld god. By virtue of this god beeing the main deity of a particular city-state, the beast came to symbolize a succession of chief local and national deities and their sons.
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Post by enkur on Apr 2, 2011 7:46:24 GMT -5
This inspires me to prepare at last a collage dedicated to Mush-Hush! After all, it's more intimate to me than Imdugud
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Post by muska on Apr 2, 2011 9:58:04 GMT -5
As for the Snake gods in general, it would be interesting to see how the image of the snake implies to various gods. For example, S.N. Kramer referred to "a composition that seems to be a lamentation, Inanna gives birth to Lulal, the water scorpion, the water snake, whose cry is the cry of the Flood". (Kramer, Wolstein. Inanna. Perhaps this text referred in other Kramer s works). As I know, Lulal was not Snake god in general, so the images of bird and snake in language of religious texts indicates some complexes of divine qualities possessed by various deities.
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Post by sheshki on May 6, 2011 16:01:14 GMT -5
from: cdli.ucla.edu/tools/yearnames/yearnames.htmDiyala: Esznunna, Tell Asmar Usyur-awassumu u2-syur-a-wa-su2 ensi2 asz2-nun{ki} {gisz}gu-za mah {d}nin-gis-zi-da ba-dim2 Year Usyur-awassu the governor of Esznunna made a magnificent throne for Ningiszida Ur-Ningiszzidamu {gisz}na2! ... e2-{d}tiszpak-ka u3 {urudu}alan e2-{d}nin-gis-zi- <> ba-dim2 Year a wooden bed for the temple of Tiszpak and a copper statue for the temple of Ningiszida were made
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Post by lilitudemon on May 9, 2011 1:47:58 GMT -5
Been looking into Ningishziddha more.
I know Aphrodite is a Greek cultural appropiation of Ishtar-Astarte, so I was wondering about Ningishzidha and Hermes.
"A.L. Frothingham incorporated Dr. Ward's research into his own work, published in 1916, in which he suggested that the prototype of Hermes was an "Oriental deity of Babylonian extraction" represented in his earliest form as a snake god. From this perspective, the caduceus was originally representative of Hermes himself, in his early form as the Underworld god Ningishzida, "messenger" of the "Earth Mother""
[ A.L. Frothingham, "Babylonian Origins of Hermes the Snake-God, and of the Caduceus", in American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp.175-211]
The other thing with Ningishzidha (forgive me if this has already been discussed earlier in the thread.) is his relations to the Genesis serpent in the tree. The story of Adapa seems to correlate to this biblical tale.
Thoughts? Opinions? Theories? I am very curious about this.
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