Çukurova, alternatively known as Cilicia, is a geo-cultural region in south-central Turkey, covering the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Hatay. Çukurova in Turkish means roughly “Low Plain”, çukur for “hollow, depression”, ova for “plains”.

Extending inland from the southeastern coast of modern Turkey, Cilicia is due north and northeast of the island of Cyprus and corresponds to the modern region of Çukurova in Turkey.

The region starts from Anamur at the west, extending east along the Mediterranean Sea, stretching as far north as Tufanbeyli, wrapping around the Gulf of İskenderun, turning south at Erzin and finally terminating at Yayladağı on the border of Syria.

The core area is Çukurova plain (formerly Cilicia Pedias), covering the area of Mersin on the west, Kozan on the north, Osmaniye on the east and the Mediterranean on the south. Adana-Mersin Metropolitan Area is the business and cultural center of Çukurova.

Most of the Çukurova region is a large stretch of flat, fertile land which is among the most agriculturally productive areas of the world. Throughout history, Çukurova was a gateway from Europe to the Middle East.

It is the shortest access point to the Mediterranean from the northern Middle East and Central Asia. It is a transportation hub, with its two major seaports and oil terminal.

With a population of almost 6 million, it is one of the largest population concentrations in Turkey, as well as the most agriculturally productive area, owing to its large stretch of flat, fertile land.

Adana is a major city in southern Turkey. The city is situated on the Seyhan river, 35 km (22 mi) inland from the Mediterranean, in south-central Anatolia. It is the administrative seat of the Adana Province and has a population of 1.75 million, making it the 5th most populated city in Turkey.

The Adana-Mersin polycentric metropolitan area, with a population of 3 million, stretches over 70 km (43 mi) east-west and 25 km (16 mi) north-south; encompassing the cities of Mersin, Tarsus and Adana.

Cilicia was settled from the Neolithic period onwards. In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor and existed as a political entity from the Hittite era until the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, during the late Byzantine Empire.

Dating of the ancient settlements of the region from Neolithic to Bronze Age is as follows: Aceramic/Neolithic: 8th and 7th millennia BC; Early Chalcolithic: 5800 BC; Middle Chalcolithic (correlated with Halaf and Ubaid developments in the east): c. 5400–4500 BC; Late Chalcolithic: 4500–c. 3400 BC; and Early Bronze Age IA: 3400–3000 BC; EBA IB: 3000–2700 BC; EBA II: 2700–2400 BC; EBA III A-B: 2400–2000 BC.

The area had been known as Kizzuwatna in the earlier Hittite era (2nd millennium BC). The region was divided into two parts, Uru Adaniya (flat Cilicia), a well-watered plain, and “rough” Cilicia (Tarza), in the mountainous west.

The Cilicians appear as Hilikku in Assyrian inscriptions, and in the early part of the first millennium BC were one of the four chief powers of Western Asia.

Homer mentions the plain as the “Aleian plain” in which Bellerophon wandered, but he transferred the Cilicians far to the west and north and made them allies of Troy.

The Cilician cities unknown to Homer already bore their pre-Greek names: Tarzu (Tarsus), Ingira (Anchiale), Danuna-Adana, which retains its ancient name, Pahri (perhaps Mopsuestia), Kundu (Kyinda, then Anazarbus) and Azatiwataya (today’s Karatepe).

There exists evidence that circa 1650 BC both Hittite kings Hattusili I and Mursili I enjoyed freedom of movement along the Pyramus River (now the Ceyhan River in southern Turkey), proving they exerted strong control over Cilicia in their battles with Syria.

After the death of Murshili around 1595 BC, Hurrians wrested control from the Hitties, and Cilicia was free for two centuries. The first king of free Cilicia, Išputahšu, son of Pariyawatri, was recorded as a “great king” in both cuneiform and Hittite hieroglyphs.

In the next century, Cilician king Pilliya finalized treaties with both King Zidanta II of the Hittites and Idrimi of Alalakh, in which Idrimi mentions that he had assaulted several military targets throughout Eastern Cilicia.

Niqmepa, who succeeded Idrimi as king of Alalakh, went so far as to ask for help from a Hurrian rival, Shaushtatar of Mitanni, to try and reduce Cilicia’s power in the region.

It was soon apparent, however, that increased Hittite power would soon prove Niqmepa’s efforts to be futile, as the city of Kizzuwatna soon fell to the Hittites, threatening all of Cilicia. Soon after, King Sunassura II was forced to accept vassalization under the Hittites, becoming the last king of ancient Cilicia.

In the 13th century BC a major population shift occurred as the Sea Peoples overran Cilicia. The Hurrians that resided there deserted the area and moved northeast towards the Taurus Mountains, where they settled in the area of Cappadocia.

In the 8th century BC, the region was unified under the rule of the dynasty of Mukšuš, whom the Greeks rendered Mopsos and credited as the founder of Mopsuestia, though the capital was Adana.

Mopsuestia’s multicultural character is reflected in the bilingual inscriptions of the ninth and eighth centuries, written both in Indo-European hieroglyphic Luwian and West Semitic Phoenician.

In the ninth century BC it became part of Assyria and remained so until the late seventh century BC.

Under the Persian empire Cilicia (in Old Persian: Karka) was apparently governed by tributary native kings who bore a Hellenized name or the title of “Syennesis”, but it was officially included in the fourth satrapy by Darius.

Alexander forded the Halys River in the summer of 333 BC, ending up on the border of southeastern Phrygia and Cilicia. He knew well the writings of Xenophon, and how the Cilician Gates had been “impassable if obstructed by the enemy”.

Cilicia Trachea became the haunt of pirates, who were subdued by Pompey in 67 BC following a Battle of Korakesion (modern Alanya), and Tarsus was made the capital of the Roman province of Cilicia.

Cilicia Pedias became Roman territory in 103 BC first conquered by Marcus Antonius Orator in his campaign against pirates, with Sulla acting as its first governor, foiling an invasion of Mithridates, and the whole was organized by Pompey, 64 BC, into a province which, for a short time, extended to and included part of Phrygia.

Armenian presence in Cilicia dates back to the first century BC, when under Tigranes the Great, the Kingdom of Armenia expanded and conquered a vast region in the Levant. In 83 BC, the Greek aristocracy of Seleucid Syria, weakened by a bloody civil war, offered their allegiance to the ambitious Armenian king.

After the division of the Roman Empire, Cilicia became part of the eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire.

During the Roman and early Byzantine Empires, the capital of Cilicia province was the important seaport of Tarsus, where Mark Antony met Cleopatra, and birthplace of Paul the Apostle and Theodore of Tarsus, among other important missionaries.

The region became an early battleground between Muslim and Christian forces, and was conquered in the 8th century and remained part of the Abbasid Caliphate until reconquered by Byzantine forces in 962. Shortly after, in 1080, Ruben founded the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.

Adana – History of the Historical Armenian City

It was Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’; unique wetlands in southern Iraq where a people known as the Ma’dan, or ‘Arabs of the marsh’, lived in a Mesopotamian Venice, characterised by beautifully elaborate floating houses made entirely of reeds harvested from the open water.

The Floating Basket Homes of Iraq: A Paradise Almost Lost to Saddam

Christianity began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the 1st century in the Roman province of Judea. Jesus’ apostles and their followers spread around Syria, the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Transcaucasia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, despite initial persecution.

Christianity developed during the 1st century CE as a Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism. An early Jewish Christian community was founded in Jerusalem under the leadership of the Pillars of the Church, namely James the Just, the brother of the Lord, Saint Peter, and John. They had known Jesus, and, according to Paul, the arisen Christ had first appeared to James and Peter.

Jewish Christianity soon attracted Gentile God-fearers, posing a problem for its Jewish religious outlook, which insisted on close observance of the Jewish commands. Paul the Apostle solved this by insisting that salvation by faith in Christ, and participation in His death and resurrection, sufficed.

At first he persecuted the early Christians, but after a conversion experience he preached to the gentiles, and is regarded as having had a formative effect on the emerging Christian identity as separate from Judaism. Eventually, his departure from Jewish customs would result in the establishment of Christianity as an independent religion.

This formative period was followed by the early bishops, whom Christians consider the successors of Christ’s apostles. From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known as the Church Fathers, and the study of them is called patristics.

Christianity spread to Aramaic-speaking peoples along the Mediterranean coast and also to the inland parts of the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Parthian Empire and the later Sasanian Empire, including Mesopotamia, which was dominated at different times and to varying extents by these empires.

The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Mark the Evangelist is claimed to have started the Church of Alexandria in about 43 CE; various later churches claim this as their own legacy, including the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

King Tiridates III made Christianity the state religion in Armenia between 301 and 314, thus Armenia became the first officially Christian state. It was not an entirely new religion in Armenia, having penetrated into the country from at least the third century, but it may have been present even earlier.

Constantine I was exposed to Christianity in his youth, and throughout his life his support for the religion grew, culminating in baptism on his deathbed. During his reign, state-sanctioned persecution of Christians was ended with the Edict of Toleration in 311 and the Edict of Milan in 313.

At that point, Christianity was still a minority belief, comprising perhaps only five percent of the Roman population. Influenced by his adviser Mardonius, Constantine’s nephew Julian unsuccessfully tried to suppress Christianity.

On 27 February 380, Theodosius I, Gratian, and Valentinian II established Nicene Christianity as the State church of the Roman Empire. As soon as it became connected to the state, Christianity grew wealthy; the Church solicited donations from the rich and could now own land.

Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address Arianism and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches.

Nicaea was the first of a series of ecumenical councils, which formally defined critical elements of the theology of the Church, notably concerning Christology. The Church of the East did not accept the third and following ecumenical councils and is still separate today by its successors (Assyrian Church of the East).

In terms of prosperity and cultural life, the Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was one of the peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization, and Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in size, wealth, and culture.

There was a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy, as well as an increase in literary output in vernacular Greek. Byzantine art and literature held a preeminent place in Europe, and the cultural impact of Byzantine art on the West during this period was enormous and of long-lasting significance.

The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving in large numbers only the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa and the Nubian Church in the Sudan (Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia).

A coin dated to 324 shows that Ethiopia was the second country to officially adopt Christianity (after Armenia did so in 301), although the religion may have been at first confined to court circles; it was the first major power to do so.

Around the 8th century BC, a kingdom known as Dʿmt was established in Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The polity’s capital was located at Yeha, in northern Ethiopia. Most modern historians consider this civilization to be a native Ethiopian one, although Sabaean-influenced because of the latter’s hegemony of the Red Sea.

Other scholars regard Dʿmt as the result of a union of Afroasiatic-speaking cultures of the Cushitic and Semitic branches; namely, local Agaw peoples and Sabaeans from South Arabia. However, Ge’ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is thought to have developed independently from Sabaean, one of the South Semitic languages.

As early as 2000 BC, other Semitic speakers were living in Ethiopia and Eritrea where Ge’ez developed. Sabaean influence is now thought to have been minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century. It may have been a trading or military colony in alliance with the Ethiopian civilization of Dʿmt or some other proto-Aksumite state.

After the fall of Dʿmt during the fourth century BC, the Ethiopian plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. In the first century AD, the Kingdom of Aksum emerged in what is now Tigray and Eritrea.

According to the medieval Book of Aksum, the kingdom’s first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush. Aksum would later at times extend its rule into Yemen on the other side of the Red Sea. The Persian religious figure Mani listed Aksum with Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his era, during the 3rd century.

Around 316 AD, Frumentius and his brother Edesius from Tyre accompanied their uncle on a voyage to Ethiopia. When the vessel stopped at a Red Sea port, the natives killed all the travellers except the two brothers, who were taken to the court as slaves. They were given positions of trust by the monarch, and they converted members of the royal court to Christianity. Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum.

Wilsonian Armenia refers to the boundary configuration of the First Republic of Armenia in the Treaty of Sèvres, as drawn by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s Department of State.

The Treaty of Sèvres was a peace treaty that had been drafted and signed between the Western Allied Powers and the defeated government of the Ottoman Empire in August 1920. The treaty was never signed by the United States of America. The United States Senate rejected the mandate for Armenia in 1920. The treaty was signed but never ratified by the Ottoman Empire.

The proposed boundaries incorporated the Ottoman vilayets of Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, which once had Armenian populations of varying sizes. This region was extended to the north, up to the west side of Trabzon to provide the First Republic of Armenia with an outlet to the Black Sea at the port of Trabzon.

The proposed state of Pontus was discussed at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the Greek government of Eleftherios Venizelos feared the precarious position of such a state and so it was included instead in the larger proposed state of Wilsonian Armenia.

The outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence led to the Ottoman Empire not ratifying the Treaty of Sèvres. Later in that year, the Turkish–Armenian War broke out. Armenia was defeated and signed the Treaty of Alexandropol on November 2, 1920 renouncing its territorial integrity under the Sèvres Treaty.

The Treaty of Kars was negotiated between Soviet Russia and Turkey following the annexation of the Democratic Republic of Armenia by the Soviet Army in December 2, 1920, and signed between the Soviet government in Armenia on October 23, 1921.

The latter was never accepted, either by the overthrown Armenian government nor later by the Republic of Armenia. The government of Soviet Russia separately negotiated a similar border between what it considered its territory of Armenia and Turkey in the Treaty of Moscow (1921).

The final Turkish and Armenian borders were internationally agreed upon in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which replaced the generally unratified and unimplemented Sèvres Treaty.

Mary was a first-century BC Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth, and the mother of Jesus, according to the New Testament and the Quran. The gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament and the Quran describe Mary as a virgin.

The Catholic teaching on this subject is expressed in the papal encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam, issued by Pope Pius XII. It states that Mary is called Queen of Heaven because her son, Jesus Christ, is the king of Israel and heavenly king of the universe; indeed, the Davidic tradition of Israel recognized the mother of the king as the Queen Mother of Israel.

In Matthew and Luke she is betrothed to Joseph. According to Christian theology she conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit while still a virgin. She accompanied Joseph to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.

According to Catholic and Orthodox teachings, at the end of her earthly life her body was raised directly into Heaven; this is known in the Christian West as the Assumption.

Mary has been venerated since early Christianity, and is considered by millions to be the most meritorious saint of the religion. She is said to have miraculously appeared to believers many times over the centuries.

The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Theotokos (Mother of God) (Greek: romanized: Theotokos, lit. ‘God-bearer’).

Queen of Heaven (Regina Caeli in Latin) is a title given to Mary, mother of Jesus, by Christians mainly of the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, in Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

The title is a consequence of the First Council of Ephesus in the fifth century, in which Mary was proclaimed “Theotokos”, a title rendered in Latin as Mater Dei, in English “Mother of God”.

There is significant diversity in the Marian beliefs and devotional practices of major Christian traditions. The Catholic Church holds distinctive Marian dogmas, namely her status as the Mother of God, her Immaculate Conception, her perpetual virginity, and her Assumption into heaven.

Many Protestants minimize Mary’s role within Christianity, basing their argument on the relative brevity of biblical references. Mary also has the highest position in Islam among all women. She is mentioned in the Quran more often than in the Bible, where two of the longer chapters of the Quran are devoted to her and her family.

Queen of Heaven was a title given to a number of ancient sky goddesses worshipped throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Near East during ancient times. Goddesses known to have been referred to by the title include Inanna, Anat, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte snd Astghik. In Greco-Roman times Hera, and her Roman aspect Juno bore this title.

Asherah in ancient Semitic religion, is a mother goddess who appears in a number of ancient sources. She is generally considered identical with the Ugaritic goddess ʾAṯiratu (Athirat). Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Middle Eastern goddess Astoreth (Northwest Semitic), a form of Ishtar (East Semitic), worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity.

The name is particularly associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites and Phoenicians. She was also celebrated in Egypt following the importation of Levantine cults there.

Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic ʾEl, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons, as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah. This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon.

Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources, Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship.

The name Dione, which like ʾElat means ‘goddess’, is clearly associated with Asherah in the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, because the same common epithet (ʾElat) of “the Goddess par excellence” was used to describe her at Ugarit.

The Book of Jeremiah, written circa 628 BC, possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title “queen of heaven” in Jeremiah 7:16–18 and Jeremiah 44:17–19, 25.

Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (holy marriage”) is a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities.

Sacred sexual intercourse is thought to have been common in the Ancient Near East as a form of “Sacred Marriage” or hieros gamos between the kings of a Sumerian city-states and the High Priestesses of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, fertility and warfare.

Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there were many shrines and temples dedicated to Inanna. The temple of Eanna, meaning “house of heaven” in Uruk was the greatest of these. The temple housed Nadītu, priestesses of the goddess.

The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos celebrated during the annual Duku ceremony, just before Invisible Moon, with the autumn Equinox (Autumnal Zag-mu Festival).

Inanna in her aspect as Anunītu was associated with the eastern fish of the last of the zodiacal constellations, Pisces. Her consort Dumuzi was associated with the contiguous first constellation, Aries.

Batroun (Arabic: البترون‎ al-Batrun; Aramaic: בתרון‎; Syriac script: ܒܬܪܘܢ Bitron) is a coastal city in northern Lebanon lying 50 km north of Beirut and 30 km south of Tripoli. It is the capital city of Batroun District. It has a history of human occupation going back to at least 5,000 years. It was once one of the most important Phoenician cities in the region.

The people of Batroun are mainly Maronite, Melkite, Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Batroun is a Roman Catholic (Latin rite) Titular See. Batroun is a major tourist destination. The town boasts historic Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches.

Biking along the Batroun coastline is also a major activity namely in late summer days. The town is also a major beach resort with a vibrant nightlife that includes pubs and nightclubs. Citrus groves surround Batroun, and the town has been famous (from the early twentieth century) for its fresh lemonade sold at the cafés and restaurants on its main street.

Batroun is said to have been founded by Ithobaal I (915 – 847 BC), a king of Tyre who founded a new dynasty. During his reign, Tyre expanded its power on the mainland, making all of Phoenicia its territory as far north as Beirut, including Sidon, and even a part of the island of Cyprus. At the same time, Tyre also built new overseas colonies: Botrys (now Batrun) near Byblos, and Auza in Libya.

His daughter Jezabel (897-866 BC.) married Ahab, the seventh king of Israel since Jeroboam I, the son and successor of Omri, and the husband of Jezebel of Sidon, according to the Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Bible presents Ahab as a wicked king, particularly for condoning Jezebel’s influence on religious policies and his principal role behind Naboth’s arbitrary execution.

Jeroboam I was the first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel. The Hebrew Bible describes the reign of Jeroboam to have commenced following a revolt of the ten northern Israelite tribes against Rehoboam that put an end to the United Monarchy.

The name Batroun derives from the Arabic al-Batroun, itself from the Greek, Botrys (also spelled Bothrys), which was later Latinized to Botrus. Historians believe that the Greek name of the town originates from the Phoenician word, bater, which means to cut and it refers to the maritime wall that the Phoenicians built in the sea to protect them from tidal waves.

The ancient Phoenician sea wall was originally a natural structure composed of petrified sand dunes. It was reinforced gradually by the Phoenicians with rocks, and the wall as it stands today took its present shape in the first century BC. The Phoenicians used this wall as protection against sea storms and invaders, while during Roman times it again functioned as a quarry.

The wall is 225 meters long and 1 to 1.5 meters thick. Parts of it have crumbled, but what remains still stands as a bulwark against the sea for the residents of the ancient city, itself a charming destination for a leisurely stroll through the labyrinthian residential alleys.

Batroun is likely the “Batruna” mentioned in the Amarna letters, sometimes referred to as the Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets, and cited with the abbreviation EA, for “El Amarna”), dating to the 14th century BC.

The Amarna letters are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom, between c. 1360-1332 BC.

Batroun was mentioned by the ancient geographers Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Stephanus Byzantius, and Hierocles. Saint Theophanes the Confessor (758/760 – 817/818), a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who became a monk and chronicler, called the city “Bostrys.” After the Muslim conquests of the region, the name was Arabicized to Batroun.

The Phoenicians founded Batroun on the southern side of the promontory in north Lebanon called by the Greeks Theoprosopon and during the Byzantine Empire, Cape Lithoprosopon. The cape, also known today by the name of Râs ach-Chaq’a’, is situated between the ancient cities of Batroun and Tripoli.

The promontory creates a massive barrier that cuts through the coast of Lebanon, making it impossible for travelers to circumvent. During Antiquity, a road that ran parallel to the sea existed, which made it possible to circumvent Cape Lithoprosopon and to connect Batroun to Tripoli.

Historians report that the earthquake of 551 A.D. caused a landslide, causing the road to sink into the sea permanently, and thus isolating Tripoli from Batroun and Byblos. Today’s modern, coastal highway runs through two tunnels.

The name of the cape changed throughout history. The oldest mention of the promontory appears in the writings of the Greek historian, Polybius who named it “Theou Prosopon” or “Face of God.” The Greek geographers, Ptolemy and Strabon, also mentioned it under the name of Theouprosopon. Pomponius, the Roman geographer, called it “Promontorium Euprosopon” or “Cape of the Good Face.”

The name, Lithoprosopon, did not come to usage until the time of the Byzantine Empire when the area was completely Christianized and the name of the cape was changed from “Face of God”, to Lithoprosopon or “Face of Stone.” Aramaic and Syriac historians translated it to “Parsuph Kipa” and later on Arab historians translated it to “Anf Al-Hajar” and “Wajh Al-Hajar” or “Nose or Face of Stone.”

The historians of the Crusades called it “Pew of the Constable” and “Mount of the General.” At the times of the Mamluks and Ottomans, the cape’s named reverted to its Arabic name of “Wajh Al-Hajar.”

The French historian, Laurent d’Arvieux, wrote in 1660 that the Franks named it Cape Rouge, a corruption of the Lebanese Arabic word wež, which means “face.” Jean de La Roque, in 1688, gave the cape two additional names, Capo Pagro and Cappouge. Cappouge was probably a corruption of “Cap Rouge”.

Cappouge could also come from “Capo poggio” or “Cape of the Hill or of the Monticule”, which matches the current name of the cape, Râs ech-Chaq’a’, which means “Cape of the Stone Monticule.” The stone monticule probably referred to the Greek Orthodox monastery of Our Lady of the Light that was built at that time.

The cape today is home to several seaside resorts. It is also a popular Christian pilgrimage site where believers visit the shrine and monastery of Our Lady of Nourieh, located in the village of Hamat.

The city was under Roman rule to Phoenicia Prima province, and later after the region was Christianized became a suffragan of the Patriarchate of Antioch. In 551, Batroun was destroyed by an earthquake, which also caused mudslides and made the Cape Lithoprosopon crack. It is believed that Batroun’s large natural harbor was formed during the earthquake.

Three Greek Orthodox bishops are known to have come from Batroun: Porphyrius in 451, Elias about 512 and Stephen in 553 (Lequien, II, 827). According to a Greek Notitia episcopatuum, the Greek Orthodox See has existed in Batroun since the tenth century when the city was then called Petrounion.

One of Batroun’s medieval archaeological sites is the Crusader citadel of Mousaylaha which is constructed on an isolated massive rock with steep sides protruding in the middle of a plain surrounded by mountains.

Under Ottoman rule, Batroun was the centre of a caza in the mutessariflik of Lebanon and the seat of a Maronite diocese, suffragan to the Maronite patriarchate. Since 1999 it has been the seat of the Maronite eparchy.

Petra (Arabic: ٱلْبَتْرَاء‎, romanized: Al-Batrāʾ; Ancient Greek: Πέτρα, “Stone”), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Petra lies on the slope of Jabal Al-Madbah in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of the Arabah valley that runs from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.

Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary has existed there since very ancient times. The area at and around Petra is believed to have been inhabited as early as 9,000 BC.

By 2010 BCE, some of the earliest recorded farmers had settled in Beidha, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement just north of Petra. Petra is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as Pel, Sela or Seir.

The Edomite site excavated at the top of the Umm el-Biyara mountain at Petra was established not earlier than the seventh century BCE (Iron II). The Nabataeans were archaeological, religious and linguistic a nomadic northern Arabian tribe. They might have settled in what would become the capital city of their kingdom, as early as the 4th century BC.

The Nabataeans were accustomed to living in the barren deserts, unlike their enemies, and were able to repel attacks by taking advantage of the area’s mountainous terrain. They were particularly skillful in harvesting rainwater, agriculture and stone carving. They invested in Petra’s proximity to the trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub.

Petra flourished in the 1st century AD, when its famous Khazneh structure – believed to be the mausoleum of Nabataean king Aretas IV – was constructed, and its population peaked at an estimated 20,000 inhabitants.

On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site. In a popular poll in 2007, it was also named one of the 7 Wonders of the World. The PAP (Petra Archaeological Park) became an autonomous legal entity over the management of this site in August 2007. The Bidouls belong to one of the Bedouin tribes whose cultural heritage and traditional skills were proclaimed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed in 2008.

There is a small community of Armenians in Ethiopia, primarily in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Armenians had traded with Ethiopia from as early as the first century AD. The Armenian population peaked in shortly before the Italian invasion in 1935 at around 2,800. By the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy in 1974, it was around 2,000, after which the numbers fell precipitously.

One of the first recorded diplomatic missions to Europe from Ethiopia was led by Mateus (Portuguese for Matthew), also known as Matthew the Armenian (died May, 1520). Matthew was an Ethiopian ambassador sent by the Empress Eleni of Ethiopia to king Manuel I of Portugal and to the Pope in Rome, to appeal for aid against Islamic incursions into Ethiopia in the 16th Century.

He was in search of a coalition to help on the increasing threat that Ethiopia faced from the growing Muslim influence in the region, with the counsel of the Portuguese diplomat and explorer Pêro da Covilhã (c. 1460 – after 1526).

Eleni or Helena (died April, 1522) also known as Queen of Zeila was an Empress of Ethiopia by marriage to Zara Yaqob (r. 1434–1468), and served as regent between 1507 and 1516 during the minority of emperor Dawit II.

Zera Yacob (English: “Descendant of Jacob”; 1399 – 26 August 1468) was the Emperor of Ethiopia, and a member of the Solomonic dynasty, also known as the House of Solomon, the former ruling Imperial House of the Ethiopian Empire.

The dynasty’s members claim lineal descent from the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Tradition asserts that the Queen gave birth to Menelik I after her biblically described visit to Solomon in Jerusalem. Menelik I was the first emperor of Ethiopia and of Hebrew descent. Ruling in the 10th century BC, he established the inaugural Solomonic dynasty.

In 1270, the Zagwe dynasty of Ethiopia, the ruling dynasty of a Medieval kingdom in present-day northern Ethiopia (900 to 1270) was overthrown by Yekuno Amlak, who claimed descent from Solomon and reinitiated the Solomonic era of Ethiopia.

The dynasty would last until 1974, ended by a coup d’état and deposition of the emperor Haile Selassie (through grandmother). Eleni played a significant role in the government of Ethiopia during her lifetime, acting as de facto co-regent or advisor to a number of emperors.

Mateus arrived at Goa in 1512, and traveled to Portugal in 1514, from where he returned with a Portuguese embassy, along with the Portuguese missionary and explorer Francisco Álvares (c. 1465 in Coimbra – 1536~1541, Rome).

In 1515 he traveled to Ethiopia as part of the Portuguese embassy to emperor Lebna Dengel accompanied by returning Ethiopian ambassador Matheus. The embassy arrived only in 1520 to Ethiopia where he joined long sought Portuguese envoy Pêro da Covilhã.

The Portuguese only understood the nature of his mission after they arrived in Ethiopia in 1520, shortly after Mateus’ death, a fact that complicated their mission to the new Ethiopian Emperor.

Besides the obvious religious affiliation, there is also the story of the “Arba Lijoch” children, a group of 40 Armenian orphans who had escaped from the atrocities in Turkey, coming to Ethiopia after the Armenian Genocide.

Arba Lijoch were adopted by Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia (1892 – 1975), then Crown Prince Ras Tafari. He was Crown Prince and Regent of the Ethiopian Empire from 1916 to 1928, and then King and Regent from 1928 to 1930, and finally Emperor from 1930 to 1974.

Among the Rastafari movement, whose followers are estimated to number between 700,000 and one million, Haile Selassie is revered as the returned messiah of the Bible, God incarnate.

Beginning in Jamaica in the 1930s, the Rastafari movement perceives Haile Selassie as a messianic figure who will lead a future golden age of eternal peace, righteousness, and prosperity. He was an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian throughout his life. He is a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history. He was a member of the Solomonic dynasty who traced his lineage to Emperor Menelik I.

He was born to parents with ethnic links to three of Ethiopia’s Afroasiatic-speaking populations: the Oromo and Amhara, the country’s two largest ethnic groups, as well as the Gurage. He came to power after Iyasu V was deposed, and undertook a nationwide modernization campaign from 1916, when he was made a Ras and Regent (Inderase) for the Empress Regnant, Zewditu, and became the de facto ruler of the Ethiopian Empire.

Zewditu (born Askala Maryam; 29 April 1876 – 2 April 1930) was Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930. She was the first female head of an internationally recognized country in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the first empress regnant of the Ethiopian Empire.

Her reign was noted for the reforms of her Regent and designated heir Ras Tafari Makonnen who following her death, in 1930, succeeded her as Emperor Haile Selassie I. After becoming the regent and de facto ruler of Ethiopia in 1916, Selassie began to gradually modernize Ethiopia, beginning with the capital, Addis Ababa.

He started by having Ethiopia admitted to the League of Nations in 1923 and his diplomatic trips in the following years aimed to solidify stable connections outside of Ethiopia. The first of these diplomatic visits was in 1924, when Selassie went on a trip to Europe and the Middle East in the hopes of establishing allies in Europe.

But it was in the heart of the Middle East — in Jerusalem — that Selassie would soon become acquainted with the 40 Armenian orphans who would ultimately become the forerunners in the modernization of mainstream music in Ethiopia.

As Selassie toured Jerusalem, he visited the Armenian Quarter and marveled at the St. James Armenian Apostolic Church (Surb Hakobyants Vank.’) There he observed a marching band composed of 40 young Armenian men; he was deeply moved by the band’s musical talent.

Selassie himself was a devout member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and he noted the striking similarities between the two churches, as well as the likeness in written script.

After concluding his tour of the Armenian Church and district, Selassie had a conversation with Patriarch Turyan and learned that these 40 talented young musicians were orphans of the Armenian Genocide. He also learned of the terrible financial strain that came with raising these orphans.

In response, Selassie offered to adopt and bring the marching band back with him to Addis Ababa. They impressed him so much that he obtained permission from the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to adopt and bring them to Ethiopia, where he then arranged for them to receive musical instruction.

The 40 Armenian orphans arrived to the capital on September 6, 1924, accompanied by Father Hovhannes Simonian, and officially became known as the Arba Lijoch (“forty children” in Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia.)

The Arba Lijoch became the first official orchestra of the nation and formed the royal imperial brass band of Ethiopia. Each of the children were allocated a monthly stipend, provided with housing and trained by their musical director, the conductor and composer Kevork Nalbandian. These 40 orphans who were once deprived of their most earnest childhood memories due to genocide and dispossession had now found their beacon of hope through music.

Nalbandian was an Armenian orphan himself, originally from Aintab (modern-day Gaziantep) in the southeastern region of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It was Nalbandian who led the Arba Lijoch with his musical compositions and Selassie was so impressed with the band’s compilations, he asked Nalbandian to compose the music for Ethiopia’s national anthem.

In 1926, Nalbandian composed the music for the Ethiopian Imperial National Anthem titled, “Teferi Marsh, Ethiopia Hoy,” which translates to “Ethiopia, be happy” (words by Yoftehé Negusé) which was the Ethiopian National Anthem from 1930 to 1974.

It was performed by the 40 orphans for the first time in public during Haile Selassie’s official crowning as Emperor on November 2, 1930 in Addis Ababa. In fact, Selassie’s initial coronation on November 2, 1930 set a defining tone for the Arba Lijoch and the Armenian community in Ethiopia.

The Arba Lijoch began performing for nearly every imperial event of the state, and later trained Ethiopia’s army and imperial bodyguard bands. While not much is recorded about the personal lives of the 40 orphans, Mesfin Kebede, a native Ethiopian resident of Addis Ababa, possesses some documents that provide a look into the lives of the orphans, including their names, ages and hometowns.

Kebede recounts that the majority of the orphans were originally from various Armenian towns and that most of the orphans came from Vaspurakan (Van), Karin, Zeytun, and Sis. Kebede described the Arba Lijoch as “diligent, abstemious, and honest,” virtues that, according to him, “are qualities of the race to which they belong.”

Nerses Nalbandian was an Ethiopian a musician and educator of Armenian descent. He was born into a family living in Syria who had escaped the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in the early twentieth century. Stateless Armenian, he gained Ethiopian nationality in 1959.

Nalbandian’s family settled in Addis Ababa at the end of 1930’s. There he becomes a musician and a conductor (playing the violin, piano, saxophone). With the agreement of Haile Selassie, he takes over his uncle Kevork Nalbandian after retiring in 1949 as the head of the major musical institutions of the country in Addis Ababa.

In particular, Nalbandyan conducts the orchestra of the Imperial Guard, the Police Orchestra, the Municipal Orchestra of Addis Ababa (where he is a professor in 1946), the orchestra of Hayle-Selassie Theatre (directed by Franz Zelwecker) and the music schools and Nazret Yared.

His influence is essential in the evolution of Ethiopian music from the 1940’s, following the work of his uncle, which he incorporates into traditional instrumental and stylistic basis (pentatonic scale, rhythm) to infuse them with principles of Western classical music and jazz (including the use of brass), modernising without occidentaliser.

Nalbandian’s contributions lay foundation for the creation of the Ethio-jazz in the 1950’s, most of the musicians – Tlahoun Gésésé, Bezunesh Beqele, Alemayehu Eshete, Mahmoud Ahmed, Hirut Beqele, Menelik Wzsnatchew – played or sung in bands of Addis Ababa that Nerses Nalbandian led.

How Armenian Genocide Orphans Sparked A Revolution In Ethiopian Music

In The Company of Emperors: The Story of Ethiopian Armenians

Adolf Dehn (22 November 1895 – 19 May 1968) was an American lithographer. Throughout his artistic career, Dehn participated in and helped define some important movements in American art, including Regionalism, Social Realism, and caricature. Two-time recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, he was known for both his technical skills and his high-spirited, droll depictions of human foibles.

Every year millions of children around the world anxiously wait for the arrival of Santa Claus. Parents tell stories of the man with the white beard, red coat and polished boots who travels the world with his reindeer bearing gifts for all those who were well-behaved. Perhaps one day, parents will also tell the story of the real Santa Claus – a man who dedicated his life to charity and gift-giving.

One of the sources of the popular Christmas icon of Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas of Myra (270 – 343 AD), also known as Nicholas of Bari. Nicholas was born in the village of Patara, later renamed Arsinoe, a flourishing maritime and commercial city on the south-west coast of Lycia on the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor near the modern small town of Gelemiş in Antalya Province.

Nicholas was an early Christian bishop of the ancient Greek maritime city of Myra (modern-day Demre, Turkey) during the time of the Roman Empire. He was born to wealthy parents, who died in an epidemis while Nicholas was still young. He used his entire inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker.

Saint Nicholas has become the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, prostitutes, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, and students in various cities and countries around Europe. His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the traditional model of Santa Claus (“Saint Nick”) through Sinterklaas.

The feast of Sinterklaas celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas on 6 December. The feast is celebrated annually with the giving of gifts on St. Nicholas’ Eve (5 December) in the Netherlands and on the morning of 6 December, Saint Nicholas Day, in Belgium, Luxembourg and northern France (French Flanders, Lorraine and Artois).

Saturn was a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in Roman mythology. He was described as a god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation. Saturn’s mythological reign was depicted as a Golden Age of plenty and peace when humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the earth without labour in a state of innocence.

One of the principal components of the Theogony is the presentation of the “Succession Myth”. It tells how Cronus overthrew Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos.

Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December. It held theological importance for some Romans, who saw it as a restoration of the ancient Golden Age, when the world was ruled by Saturn.

The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.

A common custom was the election of a “King of the Saturnalia”, who would give orders to people, which were to be followed and preside over the merrymaking. The gifts exchanged were usually gag gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as sigillaria. The poet Catullus called it “the best of days”.

Saturnalia may have influenced some of the customs associated with later celebrations in western Europe occurring in midwinter, particularly traditions associated with Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and Epiphany. In particular, the historical western European Christmas custom of electing a “Lord of Misrule” may have its roots in Saturnalia celebrations.

Ekur (É.KUR), also known as Duranki, is a Sumerian term meaning “mountain house”. It is the assembly of the gods in the Garden of the gods, parallel in Greek mythology to Mount Olympus and was the most revered and sacred building of ancient Sumer.

In the Hymn to Enlil, the Ekur is closely linked to Enlil whilst in Enlil and Ninlil it is the abode of the Annanuki, from where Enlil is banished. The fall of Ekur is described in the Lament for Ur, a Sumerian lament composed around the time of the fall of Ur to the Elamites and the end of the city’s third dynasty (c. 2000 BC).

In mythology, the Ekur was the centre of the earth and location where heaven and earth were united. It is also known as Duranki and one of its structures is known as the Kiur (“great place”). The Ekur was seen as a place of judgement and the place from which Enlil’s divine laws are issued.

The ethics and moral values of the site are extolled in myths, which Samuel Noah Kramer suggested would have made it the most ethically-oriented in the entire ancient Near East. Its rituals are also described as: “banquets and feasts are celebrated from sunrise to sunset” with “festivals, overflowing with milk and cream, are alluring of plan and full of rejoicing”.

The Indonesian drawing is not the oldest in the world. Last year, scientists said they found “humanity’s oldest drawing” on a fragment of rock in South Africa, dated at 73,000 years old.

Sulawesi art: Animal painting found in cave is 44,000 years old

The Norwegian forest cat (or scogkatts in Norwegian) originated between 1500 and 4,000 years ago, as a result of natural selection. Though they almost went extinct during World War II, the ancient cats are making a comeback in Norway, Sweden, Iceland and even France.

Their exact origin is up for debate. One theory is the Vikings brought short-haired from the British archipelago that mixed with long-haired cats brought by the crusaders. Another claims they are a hybrid of Siberian forest cats from Russia and Turkish Angoras.

The Angora (‘Ankara cat’) is a breed of a domestic cat. Turkish Angoras are one of the ancient, natural breeds of cat, having originated in central Turkey, in the Ankara region. The breed has been documented as early as the 17th century and is believed to be the origin of the mutations for both the coloration white and long hair.

Angora cats have long, silky coats and elegant, sinuous bodies. A younger Turkish Angora can often be mistaken for a snow weasel. Though it is known for a shimmery white coat and posh tail, Turkish Angora cats can display a variety of colors.

They come in tabby and tabby-white, along with black with an undercoat of chocolate brown, and lastly smoke varieties, and are in every color other than those that indicate crossbreeding, such as pointed, chocolate and lavender.

Eyes may be blue, green, amber, yellow, or heterochromatic (e.g., one blue and one amber or green). Ears are pointed, large and wide-set. The eyes are almond shaped and the profile forms two straight planes. The plumed tail is often carried upright, perpendicular to the back.

Longhaired cats were imported to Britain and France from Asia Minor, Persia and Russia as early as the late 16th century, though there are indications that they appeared in Europe as early as the 14th century due to the Crusades.

The Angora was recognized as a distinct breed in Europe by the 17th century. Charles Catton in his 1788 book Animals Drawn from Nature and Engraved in Aqua-tinta, gave “Persian cat” and “Angora cat” as alternative names for the same breed.

Angoras and Persians seem connected. Although some cat associations think the Persian cat is a natural breed, in the 19th century Persians and Angoras were identical. The Persian cat was developed from angora mutations by British and American cat fanciers. The Angora was used, almost to the point of extinction, to improve the coat on the Persian.

The Angora of the 20th century was used for improvement in the Persian coat, but the type has always been divergent from the Persian – particularly as the increasingly flat-faced show cat Persian has been developed in the last few decades.

Van cats are a distinctive landrace of the domestic cat found in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey. The variety has been referred to as “the swimming cat”, and has been observed to swim in Lake Van.

They are relatively large, have a chalky white coat, sometimes with ruddy coloration on the head and hindquarters, and have blue or amber eyes or are odd-eyed (having one eye of each colour).

Cats from eastern mountainous regions of Anatolia developed into longhaired breeds like the Van and the Angora through inbreeding and natural selection. Like all domestic cats, Angoras descended from the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica). The Fertile Crescent was a place where cats were first domesticated.

Genetic research has shown that the domestic cat’s ancestor, the African wild cat (Felis lybica lybica), was domesticated, for rodent control, about 9,000 years ago in the Near East when tribes transitioned from hunter-gathering to crop farming and settled life.

The white-spotting in domestic cats appeared at the earliest stage of cat domestication, and is one of the points of evidence of early artificial selection. Van cats have been reported living in the vicinity of the city of Van and the general Lake Van area for centuries; how long is uncertain.

The naturally occurring Van cat type is popularly believed to be the basis of the Turkish Van breed, as standardised and recognised by many cat fancier organizations; it has been internationally selectively bred to consistently produce the ruddy head-and-tail colouring pattern on the white coat.

The cats are notable for their lean, long-legged appearance. They are all-white, or sometimes mostly white with amber markings around the tail and ears. Locals to the Van area identify only the all-white type as Van cats, according to a 1991 BBC documentary, Cats, written and presented by Roger Tabor.

Their most notable genetic characteristic is their almond-shaped eyes that often are mismatched colours. The most valued and valuable members of the type generally have one amber-green eye and one blue eye.

Van cats are claimed as a cultural icon by Armenians, Kurds, and Turks, who have inhabited the region at different periods in history. Some authors associate the cat with the Armenian people, a population of whom have historically lived in the Lake Van area, who have been said to have “revered” the cat.

Turkish folklore has it that a Van cat was aboard Noah’s Ark, and that as the flood waters receded, Allah (God) blessed the cat with a ruddy patch of fur on its head when it left the ark, after which it made its way to the city of Van via Mount Ararat. Many Van cats are all-white, however.

Armenians often consider the breed to be historically Armenian, as the Lake Van area was inhabited by Armenians since antiquity until their local extermination during the genocide of 1915. Prior to 1915, the area had a large Armenian population, and the Armenian homeland is centred on Lake Van, which was important even in ancient Armenian culture.

The Armenian inhabitants of Van have been said to have “loved” Van cats. Among them was post-impressionist and surrealist artist Arshile Gorky, later an immigrant to the United States, who sculpted Van cats in the early 1910s.

Armenian writer Vrtanes Papazian wrote a short novel in which the cat has been used as a symbol of the Armenian liberation movement. Armenian authors Raffi, Axel Bakunts, and Paruyr Sevak have featured Van cats in their works.

Meeting with my friend Hakob Sargsyan, who has translated the Poetic Edda (Den eldre Edda) from Old Norse to Armenian ….  – he will soon be on his way to translate the heroic poems of the Edda and the Prose Edda.

Poetic Edda is the modern attribution for an unnamed collection of Old Norse anonymous poems, which is different from the Edda written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius.

The Codex Regius is arguably the most important extant source on Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends. From the early 19th century onwards, it has had a powerful influence on later Scandinavian literatures. Not only by its stories, but also by the visionary force and the dramatic quality of many of the poems.

It has also become an inspiring model for many later innovations in poetic meter, particularly in Nordic languages, offering many varied examples of terse, stress-based metrical schemes that lack any final rhyme by instead using alliterative devices and strongly-concentrated imagery. Poets who have acknowledged their debt to the Codex Regius include Vilhelm Ekelund, August Strindberg, J. R. R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, and Karin Boye.

Codex Regius was written during the 13th century, but nothing was known of its whereabouts until 1643, when it came into the possession of Brynjólfur Sveinsson, then Bishop of Skálholt. At the time, versions of the Edda were known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was another Edda, an Elder Edda, which contained the pagan poems that Snorri quotes in his Edda.

When Codex Regius was discovered, it seemed that the speculation had proved, but modern scholarly research has shown that Edda was likely written first and the two were, at most, connected by a common source.

The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri’s Edda (Icelandic: Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as Edda, is an Old Norse work of literature written in Iceland during the early 13th century.

The work is often assumed to have been written, or at least compiled, by the Icelandic scholar, lawspeaker, and historian Snorri Sturluson c. 1220. It is considered the fullest and most detailed source for modern knowledge of Germanic mythology.

The Prose Edda was originally referred to as simply Edda, but was later titled the Prose Edda in modern collections to distinguish it from the collections titled Poetic Edda that are largely based on Codex Regius, a collection of poetry composed after Edda in 13th century Iceland.

At that time, versions of the Edda were well known in Iceland, but scholars speculated that there once was an Elder Edda which contained the poems which Snorri quotes in his Edda.

Raouché (Arabic: الروشة‎, romanized: ar-Rawše) is a residential and commercial neighborhood in Beirut Central District, Beirut, Lebanon. It is known for its upscale apartment buildings, numerous restaurants, and cliff-side cafés that line Avenue de Paris, a seaside promenade which forms part of the Corniche Beirut.

Corniche Beirut has its foundation in the Avenue des Français, which was built during the period of the French Mandate of Syria and Lebanon along the seafront that extended from the old town.

The corniche or the wide, seaside sidewalk of Avenue de Paris is popular on weekends and evenings where strollers and joggers crowd the pavements. Lined with palm trees, the waterfront esplanade has views of the Mediterranean and the summits of Mount Lebanon to the east.

Off the coast of Raouché, located at Beirut’s westernmost tip, there is a natural landmark called the Pigeons’ Rock (also known as the Rock of Raouché). The two huge rock formations, which stand like gigantic sentinels, are a popular destination for locals and visitors alike.

Some historians believe that the word “raouché” derives from the Aramaic word rosh or Arabic word ras, both meaning head. Other historians argue that it is a corruption of the French word roche (rocher), meaning rock.

Raouché is also claimed to be the remains of a sea monster the Greek hero Perseus killed to save Andromeda, in the Greek myth the daughter of the Aethiopian king Cepheus and his wife Cassiopeia. She was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster

Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa for Polydectes and saved Andromeda from being sacrificed to the sea monster Cetus. The stone is rock as Perseus used Medusa’s head on the monster to turn it into stone. In a different story, Heracles slayed Cetus to save Hesione.

When Cassiopeia’s hubris leads her to boast that Andromeda is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage Andromeda as divine punishment. According to one version, Perseus drove his sword into Cetus’s back, while according to another version, he used Medusa’s head to turn the monster into stone.

Andromeda is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to sate the monster, but is saved from death by Perseus. Her name is the Latinized form of the Greek Androméda or Andromédē (“ruler of men”), from anēr. andrós (“man”) and medō (“I protect, rule over”).

As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical times; it is one of several Greek myths of a Greek hero’s rescue of the intended victim of an archaic hieros gamos (sacred marriage), giving rise to the “princess and dragon” motif.

In Ancient Greek kētŏs (plural kētē=kētea), Latinized as cetus (pl. ceti or cetē = cetea), is a great fish, a whale, shark, or sea monster. The term cetacean (for whale) derives from cetus. In Greek art, ceti were depicted as serpentine fish. The name of the mythological figure Ceto is derived from kētos.

Perseus and Andromeda

Perseus, the half-brother and great-grandfather of Heracles, was, alongside Cadmus and Bellerophon, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Heracles. In Greek mythology, Perseus is the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty.

Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughter’s son.

In a mytheme also connected to Ares, Oenopion, Eurystheus, and others, Acrisius in order to keep Danaë childless imprisoned her in a bronze chamber, open to the sky, in the courtyard of his palace. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, and impregnated her. Soon after, their child was born; Perseus—”Perseus Eurymedon, for his mother gave him this name as well” (Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica IV).

Fearful for his future, but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing the offspring of Zeus and his daughter, Acrisius cast the two into the sea in a wooden chest. Danaë’s fearful prayer, made while afloat in the darkness, has been expressed by the poet Simonides of Ceos.

Mother and child washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys (“fishing net”), who raised the boy to manhood. The brother of Dictys was Polydectes (“he who receives/welcomes many”), the king of the island.

When Perseus was grown, Polydectes came to fall in love with the beautiful Danaë. Perseus believed Polydectes was less than honourable, and protected his mother from him; then Polydectes plotted to send Perseus away in disgrace. He held a large banquet where each guest was expected to bring a gift.

Polydectes requested that the guests bring horses, under the pretense that he was collecting contributions for the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oinomaos. Perseus had no horse to give, so he asked Polydectes to name the gift; he would not refuse it.

Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise and demanded the head of the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa, whose gaze turned people to stone. Ovid’s account of Medusa’s mortality tells that she had once been a woman, vain of her beautiful hair.

Poseidon, the god of the seas, sexually assaulted her inside a temple dedicated to Athena, and as punishment for the desecration of her temple, Athena had changed Medusa’s hair into hideous snakes “that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror”.

Athena instructed Perseus to find the Hesperides, who were entrusted with weapons needed to defeat the Gorgon. Following Athena’s guidance, Perseus sought the Greae, sisters of the Gorgons, to demand the whereabouts of the Hesperides, the nymphs tending Hera’s orchard.

The Graeae were three perpetually old women, who shared a single eye. As the women passed the eye from one to another, Perseus snatched it from them, holding it for ransom in return for the location of the nymphs. When the sisters led him to the Hesperides, he returned what he had taken.

From the Hesperides he received a knapsack (kibisis) to safely contain Medusa’s head. Zeus gave him an adamantine sword (a Harpe) and Hades’ helm of darkness to hide. Hermes lent Perseus winged sandals to fly, and Athena gave him a polished shield. Perseus then proceeded to the Gorgons’ cave.

In the cave he came upon the sleeping Medusa. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his polished shield, he safely approached and cut off her head. From her neck sprang Pegasus (“he who sprang”) and Chrysaor (“sword of gold”), the result of Poseidon and Medusa’s mating.

The other two Gorgons pursued Perseus, but, wearing his helm of darkness, he escaped. From here he proceeded to visit King Atlas who had refused him hospitality; in revenge Perseus turned him to stone.

On the way back to Seriphos, Perseus stopped in the kingdom of Aethiopia. Homer (c. 8th century BC) is the first to mention “Aethiopians”; he mentions that they are to be found at the east and west extremities of the world, divided by the sea into “eastern” (at the sunrise) and “western” (at the sunset).

In Rhapsody A of the Iliad, Thetis visits Olympus to meet Zeus, but the meeting is postponed, as Zeus and other gods are absent, visiting the land of the Aethiopians. Hesiod (c. 8th century BC) speaks of Memnon as the “king of Aethiopia”.

In 515 BC, Scylax of Caryanda, on orders from Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire, sailed along the Indus River, Indian Ocean and Red Sea, circumnavigating the Arabian Peninsula. He mentioned “Aethiopians”, but his writings on them have not survived.

Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 500 BC), is the first that mention Ancient Aethiopia, also known as Ethiopia, as a geographical term. He is also said to have written a book about Aethiopia, but his writing is now known only through quotations from later authors.

He stated that Aethiopia was located to the east of the Nile, as far as the Red Sea and Indian Ocean; he is also quoted as relating a myth that the Skiapods (“Shade feet”) lived there, whose feet were supposedly large enough to serve as shade

Aethiopia in classical documents in reference to the upper Nile region, as well as certain areas south of the Sahara desert. Its earliest mention is in the works of Homer: twice in the Iliad, and three times in the Odyssey. The Greek historian Herodotus specifically uses the appellation to refer to such parts of Africa as were then known within the inhabitable world.

In classical antiquity, Africa (or Ancient Libya) referred to what is now known as the Maghreb and south of the Libyan Desert and Western Sahara, including all the desert land west of the southern Nile river.

Geographical knowledge of the continent gradually grew, with the first century AD Greek travelogue the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describing areas along the Red Sea (Erythraean Sea). The Greek name Αἰθιοπία (from Aithiops, ‘an Ethiopian’) is a compound word, derived from the two Greek words, from aitho (“I burn”) + ops (“face”).

According to the Perseus Digital Library, the designation properly translates as burnt-face in noun form and red-brown in adjectival form. It was used as a vague term for dark-skinned populations since the time of Homer.

It was applied to such dark-skinned populations as came within the range of observation of the ancient geographers i.e. primarily in what was then Nubia, and with the expansion of geographical knowledge, successively extended to certain other areas below the Sahara.

In the legend of Perseus, Aethiopia was ruled by King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, boasted that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the Nērēides (in most later works called by the Roman form, the Nereids).

Cassiopeia, having boasted that her daughter Andromeda was equal in beauty to the Nereids, drew the vengeance and wrath of Poseidon, who sent an inundation on the land and a sea serpent, kētŏs (in a far greater number of European works renamed as the Latinised Cetus), which destroyed man and beast. Poseidon sent the sea monster to attack Aethiopia.

Upon consulting a wise oracle, King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia were told to sacrifice Andromeda to Cetus. The oracle of Ammon announced that no relief would be found until the king exposed his daughter Andromeda to the monster, and so she was fastened naked to a rock on the shore.

They had Andromeda chained to a rock near the ocean so that Cetus could devour her. After finding Andromeda chained to the rock and learning of her plight, Perseus managed to slay Cetus when the creature emerged from the ocean to devour her.

Perseus slew the monster and, setting her free, claimed her in marriage. Perseus married Andromeda in spite of Phineus, to whom she had before been promised. At the wedding a quarrel took place between the rivals, and Phineus was turned to stone by the sight of Medusa’s head that Perseus had kept.

Andromeda (“queen of men”) followed her husband to Tiryns in Argos, and became the ancestress of the family of the Perseidae who ruled at Tiryns through her son with Perseus, Perses. After her death she was placed by Athena among the constellations in the northern sky, near Perseus and Cassiopeia.

Sophocles and Euripides (and in more modern times Pierre Corneille) made the episode of Perseus and Andromeda the subject of tragedies, and its incidents were represented in many ancient works of art.

As Perseus was flying in his return above the sands of Libya, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, the falling drops of Medusa’s blood created a race of toxic serpents, one of whom was to kill the Argonaut Mopsus.

On returning to Seriphos and discovering that his mother had to take refuge from the violent advances of Polydectes, Perseus killed him with Medusa’s head, and made his brother Dictys, consort of Danaë, king.

Rahab – Tannin

Rahab (Hebrew: רָחָב, Modern: Raẖav, Tiberian: Rāḥāḇ, “broad”, “large”, Arabic: رحاب, a vast space of a land) was, according to the Book of Joshua, a woman who lived in Jericho in the Promised Land and assisted the Israelites in capturing the city by hiding two men who had been sent to reconnoiter the city prior to their attack.

In the New Testament, she is lauded both as an example of a saint who lived by faith, and as someone “considered righteous” for her works. The King James Version renders the name as Rachab, after its literal spelling in Greek, which differs from the spelling for Rahab in James and Hebrews. Most modern versions render it as Rahab ignoring the distinction.

The Hebrew ishah zonah, used to describe Rahab in Joshua 2:1, literally means “a prostitute woman”. In rabbinic texts, however, she is explained as being an “innkeeper,” based on the Aramaic Targum. Rahab’s name is presumably the shortened form of a sentence name rāḥāb-N, “the god N has opened/widened (the womb?)”.

The Hebrew zōnâ may refer to secular or cultic prostitution, and the latter is widely believed to have been an invariable element of Canaanite religious practice, although recent scholarship has disputed this. However, there was a separate word, qědēšâ, that could be used to designate prostitutes of the cultic variety.

Josephus mentions that Rahab kept an inn but is silent as to whether merely renting out rooms was her only source of income. It was not uncommon for both an inn and a brothel to operate within the same building; thus entering Rahab’s quarters was not necessarily a deviation from Joshua’s orders.

Indeed, as Robert Boling notes, such an establishment might have represented an ideal location for spies to gather intelligence. A number of scholars have noted that the narrator in Joshua 2 may have intended to remind the readers of the “immemorial symbiosis between military service and bawdy house”.

In the Christian New Testament, the Epistle of James and the Epistle to the Hebrews follow the tradition set by the translators of the Septuagint in using the Greek word pórnē (which is usually translated to English as “harlot” or “prostitute”) to describe Rahab.

William L. Lyons observed that biblical interpreters have viewed Rahab as a model of hospitality, mercy, faith, patience, and repentance in her interaction with Joshua’s spies. Thus the harlot of Jericho became a paragon of virtue.

Rahab (Modern: Rahav, Tiberian: Rahaḇ, “blusterer” is used in the Hebrew Bible to indicate “rage, fierceness, insolence, pride”) is a poetical and emblematic name of Egypt. It might have Egyptian origins that were accommodated to the Hebrew language. However, there is nothing revealing in the Coptic language.

Rahab is also used for the sea. Before the Medieval adoption of “Rahab” to mean demon or sea-beast, the name also appears in Psalm 89: 5-12 and Isaiah 51:9-10. In medieval Jewish folklore, Rahab (splendour) is a mythical sea-monster, a dragon of the waters, the “demonic angel of the sea”. Rahab is also seen as a deity in the text.

It is often assumed that long before the Jewish mythos, the ancient Jews emulated the creation fables told by their predecessors. Rahab represents the primordial abyss, the water-dragon of darkness and chaos, comparable to Leviathan and Tiamat. Rahab later became a particular demon, inhabitant of the sea, especially associated with the Red Sea.

Rahab, in these passages, takes the meaning of primeval, chaotic, multi-headed sea-dragon or Leviathan, a creature with the form of a sea serpent from Jewish belief, referenced in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Job, Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, and the Book of Amos.

The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite Lotan, a primeval monster defeated by the god Baal Hadad. Leviathan figures in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon (Isaiah 27:1).

Some 19th century scholars have pragmatically interpreted it as referring to large aquatic creatures, such as the crocodile. The word later came to be used as a term for “great whale”, as well as for sea monsters in general.

Parallels to the role of Mesopotamian Tiamat defeated by Marduk have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jörmungandr.

The name is a derivation from the root lvh “to twine; to join”, with an adjectival suffix ן-‎, with a literal meaning of “wreathed, twisted in folds”. Both the name and the mythological figure are a direct continuation of the Ugaritic sea monster Lôtān, one of the servants of the sea god Yammu defeated by Hadad in the Baal Cycle.

Most scholars agree on describing Lôtān as “the fugitive serpent” (bṯn brḥ) but he may or may not be “the wriggling serpent” (bṯn ʿqltn) or “the mighty one with seven heads” (šlyṭ d.šbʿt rašm). His role seems to have been prefigured by the earlier serpent Têmtum whose death at the hands of Hadad is depicted in Syrian seals of the 18th–16th century BC.

Sea serpents feature prominently in the mythology of the Ancient Near East. They are attested by the 3rd millennium BC in Sumerian iconography depicting the god Ninurta overcoming a seven-headed serpent.

It was common for Near Eastern religions to include a Chaoskampf: a cosmic battle between a sea monster representing the forces of chaos and a creator god or culture hero who imposes order by force. The Babylonian creation myth describes Marduk’s defeat of the serpent goddess Tiamat, whose body was used to create the heavens and the earth.

The Babylonians, for example, told of a sky-god, Marduk, and a sea-goddess, Tiamat, battling for supreme power over the other gods, in the Enûma Eliš. It can be speculated these two characters in the Babylonian myth are parallel to the creation stories found in the Biblical passages containing the name Rahab.

They are explicitly listed among the creatures created by God on the fifth day of the Genesis creation narrative, translated in the King James Version as “great whales”. The Septuagint renders the original Hebrew of Genesis 1:21 (haggedolim hattanninim) as (kētē ta megala) in Greek, and this was in turn translated as cete grandia in the Vulgate.

The Ugaritic account has gaps, making it unclear whether some phrases describe him or other monsters at Yammu’s disposal such as Tunannu (the biblical Tannin; Syriac: tannīnā; plural: tannīnē; Arabic:‎ Tinnin; Ugaritic: tnn, vocalized tu-un-na-nu). Along with Rahab, “Tannin” was a name applied to ancient Egypt after the Exodus to Canaan.

The tannin or Tunannu is listed in the apocalypse of Isaiah as among the sea beasts to be slain by Yahweh “on that day”, translated in the King James Version as “the dragon”. In Jewish mythology, Tannin is sometimes conflated with the related sea monsters Leviathan and Rahab.

The monster tannin in the Hebrew Bible has been translated as Greek kētos in the Septuagint, and cetus in the Latin Vulgate. Tanninim (-im denotes Hebraic plural) appear in the Hebrew Book of Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Job, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

Tannin was a sea monster in Canaanite, Phoenician, and Hebrew mythology used as a symbol of chaos and evil. The name may derive from a root meaning “howling” or from coiling in a manner like smoke. In modern Hebrew usage the word Tanin means “crocodile.”

Tannin appears in the Baal Cycle as one of the servants of Yam (lit. “Sea”) defeated by Baʿal (lit. “Lord”) or bound by his sister, ʿAnat, a major northwest Semitic goddess. He is usually depicted as serpentine, possibly with a double tail.

The tanninim also appear in the Hebrew Bible’s of Book of Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Job, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. They are explicitly listed among the creatures created by God on the fifth day of the Genesis creation narrative, translated in the King James Version as “great whales”.

The tannin is listed in the apocalypse of Isaiah as among the sea beasts to be slain by Yahweh “on that day”, translated in the King James Version as “the dragon”. In Jewish mythology, Tannin is sometimes conflated with the related sea monsters Leviathan and Rahab. Along with Rahab, “Tannin” was a name applied to ancient Egypt after the Exodus to Canaan.

The word “Tannin” is used in the Hebrew Bible fourteen times. Aaron’s staff becomes Tannin in the Book of Exodus (Ex 7:9-12), it is used in the meaning “snake” in the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut 32:33) and Psalms (Ps 91:13).

It represents the Nebuchadnezzar I (the king of Babylon) in Jeremiah (Jer 51:34) and Pharaoh in Ezekiel (Ezek 29:3, 32:2). In the Book of Job (Job 7:12) the protagonist questions God “Am I the sea or the sea dragon that you have set a guard over me?”

Jonah

Jonah or Jonas (“dove”; Arabic: Yunus or Yunaan; Latin: Ionas) is the name given in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BCE. In Jonah 2:1 (1:17 in English translation), the Hebrew text reads dag gadol which literally means “great fish”. The Septuagint translates this phrase into Greek as kētei megaloi, meaning “huge fish”.

In Greek mythology, the same word meaning “fish” (kêtos) is used to describe the sea monster slain by the hero Perseus that nearly devoured the Princess Andromeda. This was at the start of more widespread depiction of real whales in Greece and kētos would cover proven whales, sharks and the old meaning of curious sea monsters.

Jerome later translated this phrase as piscis grandis in his Latin Vulgate. However, he translated the Greek word kētos as cetus in Gospel of Matthew 12:40. The English opts for the former: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Jonah is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, in which he is called upon by God to travel to Nineveh and warn its residents of impending divine wrath «for their great wickedness is come up before me».

Instead, Jonah seeks instead to flee from “the presence of the Lord” by going to Jaffa and boards a ship to Tarshish. A huge storm arises and the sailors, realizing this is no ordinary storm, cast lots and learn that Jonah is to blame.

Jonah admits this and states that if he is thrown overboard the storm will cease. The sailors try to get the ship to the shore but in failing feel forced to throw him overboard, at which point the sea calms.

Caught in a storm, he orders the ship’s crew to cast him overboard. He is miraculously saved by being swallowed by a large fish specially prepared by God where he spent three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17). After Jonah agrees to go to Nineveh, the fish vomits him out onto the shore.

While in the great fish, Jonah prays to God in his affliction and commits to thanksgiving and to paying what he has vowed. God commands the fish to vomit Jonah out. God again orders Jonah to visit Nineveh and to prophecy to its inhabitants. This time he goes and enters the city crying, “In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

The people of Nineveh believe his word and proclaim a fast. The king of Nineveh puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, making a proclamation to decree fasting, sackcloth, prayer, and repentance. God sees their works and spares the city at that time.

Jonah successfully convinces the entire city of Nineveh to repent, but waits outside the city in expectation of its destruction. Jonah successfully convinces the entire city of Nineveh to repent, but waits outside the city in expectation of its destruction.

God shields Jonah from the sun with a plant, but later sends a worm to cause it to wither. When Jonah complains of the bitter heat, God rebukes him. Displeased by this, Jonah refers to his earlier flight to Tarshish while asserting that, since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would turn from the threatened calamities. He then leaves the city and makes himself a shelter, waiting to see whether or not the city will be destroyed.

God causes a plant (in Hebrew a kikayon) to grow over Jonah’s shelter to give him some shade from the sun. Later, God causes a worm to bite the plant’s root and it withers. Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and desires that God take him out of the world.

In Judaism, the story of Jonah represents the teaching of teshuva, which is the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself “greater than Jonah” and promises the Pharisees “the sign of Jonah”, which is his resurrection. Early Christian interpreters viewed Jonah as a type for Jesus. Later, during the Reformation, Jonah came to be seen instead as an archetype for the “envious Jew”.

Jonah is regarded as a prophet in Islam and the biblical narrative of Jonah is repeated, with a few notable differences, in the Quran. Mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the Book of Jonah as fictional and often at least partially satirical, but the character of Jonah may have been based on the historical prophet of the same name mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25.

In the 1700-1800 centuries, the species of the fish that swallowed Jonah was the subject of speculation for naturalists, who interpreted the story as an account of a historical incident. Although the word “whale” is often used in English versions of the Jonah story, the Hebrew text actually uses the phrase dag gadol, which means “giant fish”.

Some modern scholars of folklore have noted similarities between Jonah and other legendary figures, such as Gilgamesh and the Greek hero Jason, an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece featured in Greek literature. Nabī Yūnus is the Arabic for “Prophet Jonah”.

Nineveh

The English placename Nineveh comes from Latin Ninive and Septuagint Greek Nineuḗ (Νινευή) under influence of the Biblical Hebrew Nīnewēh from the Akkadian Ninua (var. Ninâ) or Old Babylonian Ninuwā. The city was also known as Ninuwa in Mari, Ninawa in Aramaic and Nainavā in Persian.

The cuneiform for Ninâ is a fish within a house (cf. Aramaic nuna, “fish”). This may have simply intended “Place of Fish” or may have indicated a goddess associated with fish or the Tigris, possibly originally of Hurrian origin.

The original meaning of the name is unclear but may have referred to a patron goddess. The city was later said to be devoted to “the goddess Ishtar of Nineveh” and Nina was one of the Sumerian and Assyrian names of that goddess.

Inanna

Inanna is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess associated with love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, justice, and political power. She was originally worshipped in Sumer and was later worshipped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians under the name Ishtar.

She was known as the “Queen of Heaven” and was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her main cult center. She was associated with the planet Venus and her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight-pointed star.

Her husband was the god Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz) and her sukkal, or personal attendant, was the goddess Ninshubur (who later became the male deity Papsukkal).

Inanna in her aspect as Anunītu was associated with the eastern fish of the last of the zodiacal constellations, Pisces. Her consort Dumuzi was associated with the contiguous first constellation, Aries.

Atargatis

Atargatis or Ataratheh (Aramaic: ‘Atar’atheh or Tar’atheh) was the chief goddess of northern Syria in Classical antiquity. Ctesias also used the name Derketo for her, and the Romans called her Dea Syria, or in one word Deasura.

Primarily she was a goddess of fertility, but, as the baalat (“mistress”) of her city and people, she was also responsible for their protection and well-being. Her chief sanctuary was at Hierapolis, modern Manbij, northeast of Aleppo, Syria.

She has been called “the great mistress of the North Syrian lands”. Her consort is usually Hadad. As Ataratheh, doves and fish were considered sacred to her: doves as an emblem of the Love-Goddess, and fish as symbolic of the fertility and life of the waters.

She is sometimes described as a mermaid-goddess, due to identification of her with a fish-bodied goddess at Ascalon. However, there is no evidence that Atargatis was worshipped at Ascalon, and all iconographic evidence shows her as anthropomorphic.

Atargatis is seen as a continuation of Bronze Age goddesses. At Ugarit, cuneiform tablets attest the three great Canaanite goddesses. These shared many traits with each other and may have been worshipped in conjunction or separately during 1500 years of cultural history.

ʾAṭirat, described as a fecund “Lady Goddess of the Sea” (rabbatu ʾat̪iratu yammi); she is identified with Asherah.ʿAnat, the war-like virgin goddess. ʿAțtart, the goddess of love, namesake of the Phoenician goddess ʿAštart, called Astarte in Greek.

The name Atargatis derives from the Aramaic form ʿAtarʿatheh, which comes in several variants. The name ʿAtarʿatheh is widely held to derive from a compound of the Aramaic form ʿAttar, which is a cognate of ʿAțtart minus its feminine suffix -t, plus ʿAttah or ʿAtā, a cognate of ʿAnat. Alternatively, the second half may be a Palmyrene divine name ʿAthe (i.e. tempus opportunum), which occurs as part of many compounds.

It has also been proposed that the element -gatis may relate to the Greek gados “fish”. For example, the Greek name for “sea monster” or “whale” is the cognate term ketos). So Atar-Gatis may simply mean “the fish-goddess Atar”.

The author of Catasterismi explained the constellation of Piscis Austrinus as the parent of the two fish making up the constellation of Pisces; according to that account, it was placed in the heavens in memory of Derceto’s fall into the lake at Hierapolis Bambyce near the Euphrates in Syria, from which she was saved by a large fish — which again is intended to explain the Syrian abstinence from fish.

According to a third-century Syriac source, “In Syria and in Urhâi [Edessa] the men used to castrate themselves in honor of Taratha. But when King Abgar became a believer, he commanded that anyone who emasculated himself should have a hand cut off. And from that day to the present no one in Urhâi emasculates himself anymore.”

Baalat

Atargatis was a goddess of fertility, but, as the baalat (“mistress”) of her city and people, she was also responsible for their protection and well-being. Her chief sanctuary was at Hierapolis, modern Manbij, northeast of Aleppo, Syria.

Baal (properly Baʿal) was a title and honorific meaning “owner,” “lord” in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods.

In the Northwest Semitic languages—Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Amorite, and Aramaic—the word baʿal signified “owner” and, by extension, “lord”, a “master”, or “husband”. The feminine form is baʿalah, meaning “mistress” in the sense of a female owner or lady of the house and still serving as a rare word for “wife”.

Bêlit is a form of the Akkadian language word beltu or beltum (meaning “lady”, “mistress”) as used in noun compounds; it appears in titles of goddesses, such as bêlit-ili “lady of the gods”, an Akkadian title of Ninhursag. The word bêlit appears in Greek form as Beltis considered to be the name of the wife of the god Bêl.

Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Baʿal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations.

In close transliteration of the Semitic name, the ayin is represented, as Baʿal. Ayin (also ayn or ain) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʿayin. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Ο, Latin O, and Cyrillic О, all representing vowels.

The Hebrew Bible, compiled and curated over a span of centuries, includes generic use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities, and finally pointed application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god.

The letter name is derived from Proto-Semitic *ʿayn- “eye”, and the Phoenician letter had the shape of a circle or oval, clearly representing an eye, perhaps ultimately (via Proto-Sinaitic) derived from the ı͗r hieroglyph 𓁹 (Gardiner D4).

Eye of Ra

The Eye of Ra or Eye of Re is a being in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as a feminine counterpart to the sun god Ra and a violent force that subdues his enemies.

The Eye is an extension of Ra’s power, equated with the disk of the sun, but it also behaves as an independent entity, which can be personified by a wide variety of Egyptian goddesses, including Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Wadjet, and Mut.

The Eye goddess acts as mother, sibling, consort, and daughter of the sun god. She is his partner in the creative cycle in which he begets the renewed form of himself that is born at dawn.

The Eye’s violent aspect defends Ra against the agents of disorder that threaten his rule. This dangerous aspect of the Eye goddess is often represented by a lioness or by the uraeus, or cobra, a symbol of protection and royal authority.

The Eye of Ra is similar to the Eye of Horus, which belongs to a different god, Horus, but represents many of the same concepts. The disastrous effects when the Eye goddess rampages out of control and the efforts of the gods to return her to a benign state are a prominent motif in Egyptian mythology.

The Eye of Ra was involved in many areas of ancient Egyptian religion, including in the cults of the many goddesses who are equated with it. Its life-giving power was celebrated in temple rituals, and its dangerous aspect was invoked in the protection of the pharaoh, of sacred places, and of ordinary people and their homes.

The Dove

In ancient Mesopotamia, doves were prominent animal symbols of Inanna-Ishtar, the goddess of love, sexuality, and war.[85][86] Doves are shown on cultic objects associated with Inanna as early as the beginning of the third millennium BC.

Lead dove figurines were discovered in the temple of Ishtar at Aššur, dating to the thirteenth century BC,[85] and a painted fresco from Mari, Syria, shows a giant dove emerging from a palm tree in the temple of Ishtar, indicating that the goddess herself was sometimes believed to take the form of a dove.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim releases a dove and a raven to find land; the dove merely circles and returns.[87] Only then does Utnapishtim send forth the raven, which does not return, and Utnapishtim concludes the raven has found land.

In the ancient Levant, doves were used as symbols for the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah. The ancient Greek word for “dove” was peristerá, which may be derived from the Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar, meaning “bird of Ishtar”.

In classical antiquity, doves were sacred to the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who absorbed this association with doves from Inanna-Ishtar. Aphrodite frequently appears with doves in ancient Greek pottery.

The temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on the southwest slope of the Athenian Acropolis was decorated with relief sculptures of doves with knotted fillets in their beaks and votive offerings of small, white, marble doves were discovered in the temple of Aphrodite at Daphni.

During Aphrodite’s main festival, the Aphrodisia, her altars would be purified with the blood of a sacrificed dove. Aphrodite’s associations with doves influenced the Roman goddesses Venus and Fortuna, causing them to become associated with doves as well.

In the Hebrew Bible, doves or young pigeons are acceptable burnt offerings for those who cannot afford a more expensive animal. In Genesis, Noah sends a dove out of the ark, but it came back to him because the floodwaters had not receded.

Seven days later, he sent it again and it came back with an olive branch in her mouth, indicating the waters had receded enough for an olive tree to grow. “Dove” is also a term of endearment in the Song of Songs and elsewhere. In Hebrew, Jonah means dove. The “sign of Jonas” in is related to the “sign of the dove”.

Jesus’s parents sacrificed doves on his behalf after his circumcision (Luke). Later, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism like a dove (Matthew), and subsequently the “peace dove” became a common Christian symbol of the Holy Spirit.

In Islam, doves and the pigeon family in general are respected and favoured because they are believed to have assisted the final prophet of Islam, Muhammad, in distracting his enemies outside the cave of Thaw’r, in the great Hijra.

A pair of pigeons had built a nest and laid eggs at once, and a spider had woven cobwebs, which in the darkness of the night made the fugitives believe that Muhammad could not be in that cave.

Adapa

Adapa was a Mesopotamian mythical figure who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality. The story, commonly known as “Adapa and the South Wind”, is known from fragmentary tablets from Tell el-Amarna in Egypt (around 14th century BC) and from finds from the Library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria (around 7th century BC).

Adapa was an important figure in Mesopotamian religion. His name would be used to invoke power in exorcism rituals. He also became an archetype for a wise ruler. In that context, his name would be invoked to evoke favorable comparisons.

Adapa is also associated with the king Enmerkar (the known text is very fragmentary). In the portions that are known, Adapa and Enmerkar descend into the earth (nine cubits down), and are involved in breaking into an ancient tomb. What happens in there not clear, but the outcome is that they leave and reseal the tomb.

The name of Adapa became pervasive in some rituals of the Mesopotamian religion. Exorcists would state “I am Adapa!” in their rituals. Rituals from Nippur dating to as early as around 1800 BC use Adapa’s name in their incantations. Derivatives of the text remained in use until at least the 1st century AD.

During the Neo-Assyrian period, comparisons to Adapa would be used in reference to the king and so were used to legitimize that king. For example, it was written in Sennacherib’s Annals, “Ea [..] endowed me with vast knowledge equivalent to that of the Sage Adapa”.

Adapa’s story was initially known from a find at Amarna in Egypt from the archives of Egyptian King Amenophis IV (1377-1361 BC). By 1912, three finds from the Library of Ashurbanipal (668-626 BC) had been interpreted and found to contain parts of the story. As of 2001 five fragments from the library are known.

There are differences in several of the known versions of the text. Based on a catalogue of texts, a possible original title, an incipit, may have been Adapa into heaven.

Adapa was a mortal man, a sage or priest of the temple of Ea in the city of Eridu. Ea (sometimes considered his father) had given Adapa the gift of great wisdom but not eternal life. While carrying out his duties, he was fishing the Persian Gulf. The sea became rough by the strong wind, and his boat was capsized. Angry, Adapa “broke the wings of the south wind” preventing it from blowing for seven days.

The god Anu called Adapa to account for his action, but Ea aided him by instructing Adapa to gain the sympathy of Tammuz and Gishzida, who guard the gates of heaven and not to eat or drink there, as such food might kill him. When offered garments and oil, he should put the clothes on and anoint himself.

Adapa puts on mourning garments, tells Tammuz and Gishzida to be in mourning because they have disappeared from the land. Adapa is then offered the “food of life” and “water of life” but will not eat or drink. Then garments and oil are offered, and he does what he had been told.

He is brought before Anu, who asks why he will not eat or drink. Adapa replies that Ea told him not to. Anu laughs at Ea’s actions, and passes judgment on Adapa by asking rhetorically, “What ill has he [Adapa] brought on mankind?” He adds that men will suffer disease as a consequence, which Ninkarrak (Nintinugga) may allay. Adapa is then sent back down to earth. The ending of the text is missing.

Ninlil

In Sumerian religion, Ninlil (DNIN.LÍL “lady of the open field” or “Lady of the Wind”), also called Sud, in Assyrian called Mulliltu, is the consort goddess of Enlil. Ninlil is the goddess of the air, and the South Wind while he is referred to in at least one text as the “East Wind and North Wind”.

She is often called “mother” or “merciful mother” and may be a form of Mother Goddess. Her parentage is variously described. Most commonly she is called the daughter of Haia (god of stores) and Nunbarsegunu (or Ninshebargunnu (a goddess of barley) or Nisaba). Other sources call her a daughter of An and Nammu.

As a benevolent and merciful goddess she intercedes with Enlil on behalf of mortals. She is the mother of the moon god, Sin and daughter of Haia, god of the store and Ninshebargunu, the goddess of agriculture.

After her death, she became the goddess of the air, like Enlil. She may be the Goddess of the South Wind referred to in the story of Adapa, as her husband Enlil was associated with northerly winter storms. As “Lady Air” she may be associated with the figure of the Akkadian demon “Lil-itu”, thought to have been the origin of the Biblical Lilith.

Mullissu

Mullissu is a goddess who is the wife of the Assyrian god Ashur. Mullissu may be identical with the Mesopotamian goddess Ninlil, wife of the god Enlil, which would parallel the fact that Ashur himself was modeled on Enlil. Mullissu’s name was written “dNIN.LÍL”.

Nonetheless, Mullissu, who was identified with Ishtar of Nineveh in Neo-Assyrian Empire times, is usually identified with Ishtar. Also proposed to be Mullissu is a goddess whom Herodotus called Mylitta and identified with Aphrodite. The name Mylitta may derive from Mulliltu or Mulitta, names related to Mullissu.

Aššur was a deified form of the city of Assur, which dates from the mid 3rd millennium BC and was the capital of the Old Assyrian kingdom. As such, Ashur did not originally have a family, but as the cult came under southern Mesopotamian influence, he later came to be regarded as the Assyrian equivalent of Enlil, the chief god of Nippur.

In Sicily, there was the ‘myllos’ in the shape of the female genitals offered to Demeter and Persephone, representing Ishtar’s vagina, were given out freely. To celebrate the festival of Thesmophoria, honey and sesame cakes, a triangular shape called “mylloi”, representing Ishtar’s vagina, were given out.

Demeter and Persephone

Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over grains and the fertility of the earth, and her daughter Persephone, also called Kore (“the maiden”), the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, were often worshiped together and were often referred to by joint cultic titles. In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called the “queens” (wa-na-ssoi).

In their cult at Eleusis, they were referred to simply as “the goddesses”, often distinguished as “the older” and “the younger”; In Rhodes and Sparta, they were worshiped as “the Demeters”; in the Thesmophoria, they were known as “the thesmophoroi” (“the legislators”); In Arcadia they were known as “the Great Goddesses” and “the mistresses”.

The epithets of Persephone reveal her double function as chthonic (underworld) and vegetation goddess. The surnames given to her by the poets refer to her character as Queen of the lower world and the dead, or her symbolic meaning of the power that shoots forth and withdraws into the earth. Her common name as a vegetation goddess is Kore, and in Arcadia she was worshipped under the title Despoina, “the mistress”, a very old chthonic divinity.

Plutarch writes that Persephone was identified with the spring season and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, her return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of immortality, and hence she was frequently represented on sarcophagi.

In the religions of the Orphics and the Platonists, Kore is described as the all-pervading goddess of nature who both produces and destroys everything, and she is therefore mentioned along with or identified as other such divinities including Isis, Rhea, Ge, Hestia, Pandora, Artemis, and Hecate. The Orphic Persephone is said to have become by Zeus the mother of Dionysus, Iacchus, Zagreus, and the little-attested Melinoe.

Homer describes her as the formidable, venerable, majestic queen of the underworld, who carries into effect the curses of men upon the souls of the dead. She becomes the queen of the underworld through her abduction by and subsequent marriage to Hades, the god of the underworld.

In the myth Pluto abducts Persephone to be his wife and the queen of his realm (this is the myth which explains their marriage). Pluto (Ploutōn) was a name for the ruler of the underworld; the god was also known as Hades, a name for the underworld itself.

The name Pluton was conflated with that of Ploutos (Ploutos, “wealth”), a god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, and because Pluto as a chthonic god ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest. Plouton is lord of the dead, but as Persephone’s husband he has serious claims to the powers of fertility.

The myth of her abduction represents her function as the personification of vegetation, which shoots forth in spring and withdraws into the earth after harvest; hence, she is also associated with spring as well as the fertility of vegetation. Similar myths appear in the Orient, in the cults of male gods like Attis, Adonis, and Osiris, and in Minoan Crete.

The Greek version of the abduction myth is related to grain – important and rare in the Greek environment – and the return (ascent) of Persephone was celebrated at the autumn sowing. Pluto (Ploutos) represents the wealth of the grain that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (pithoi), during summer months.

Similar subterranean pithoi were used in ancient times for burials and Pluto is fused with Hades, the King of the realm of the dead. During summer months, the Greek grain-Maiden (Kore) is lying in the grain of the underground silos in the realm of Hades, and she is fused with Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld.

At the beginning of the autumn, when the seeds of the old crop are laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter, for at that time the old crop and the new meet each other. For the initiated, this union was the symbol of the eternity of human life that flows from the generations which spring from each other.

She is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She was commonly worshipped along with Demeter and with the same mysteries. To her alone were dedicated the mysteries celebrated at Athens in the month of Anthesterion.

In Classical Greek art, Persephone is invariably portrayed robed, often carrying a sheaf of grain. She may appear as a mystical divinity with a sceptre and a little box, but she was mostly represented in the process of being carried off by Hades.

Demeter’s emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley. However, though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death.

Her cult titles include Sito (“she of the Grain”), as the giver of food or grain, and Thesmophoros (thesmos: divine order, unwritten law; phoros: bringer, bearer; “Law-Bringer”), as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society.

Poseidon

Poseidon was one of the Twelve Olympians in ancient Greek religion and myth, god of the sea, storms, earthquakes and horses. In pre-Olympian Bronze Age Greece, he was venerated as a chief deity at Pylos and Thebes. He was protector of seafarers, and of many Hellenic cities and colonies. His Roman equivalent is Neptune.

It seems that the Arcadian myth is related with the first Greek speaking people who entered the region during the Bronze Age. (Linear B represents an archaic Greek dialect). Their religious beliefs were mixed with the beliefs of the indigenous population.

The horse (numina) was related with the liquid element, and with the underworld. Poseidon appears as a beast (horse), which is the river spirit of the underworld, as it usually happens in northern-European folklore, and not unusually in Greece.

Poseidon “Wanax”, is the male companion (paredros) of the goddess of nature. In the relative Minoan myth, Pasiphaë is mating with the white bull, and she bears the hybrid creature Minotaur. The Bull was the old pre-Olympian Poseidon. The goddess of nature and her paredros survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered: “Mighty Potnia bore a strong son”.

In the heavily sea-dependent Mycenaean culture, there is not sufficient evidence that Poseidon was connected with the sea. We do not know if “Posedeia” was a sea-goddess. Walter Burkert suggests that the Hellene cult worship of Poseidon as a horse god may be connected to the introduction of the horse and war-chariot from Anatolia to Greece around 1600 BC.

Homer and Hesiod suggest that Poseidon became lord of the sea following the defeat of his father Cronus, when the world was divided by lot among his three sons; Zeus was given the sky, Hades the underworld, and Poseidon the sea, with the Earth and Mount Olympus belonging to all three.

It is almost sure that once Poseidon was worshiped as a horse, and this is evident by his cult in Peloponnesos. However he was originally a god of the waters, and therefore he became the “earth-shaker”, because the Greeks believed that the cause of the earthquakes was the erosion of the rocks by the waters, by the rivers who they saw to disappear into the earth and then to burst out again.

This is what the natural philosophers Thales, Anaximenes and Aristotle believed, which could not be different from the folklore belief. Later, when the Myceneans travelled along the sea, he was assigned a role as god of the sea. In any case, the early importance of Poseidon can still be glimpsed in Homer’s Odyssey, where Poseidon rather than Zeus is the major mover of events. In Homer, Poseidon is the master of the sea.

If surviving Linear B clay tablets can be trusted, the name po-se-da-wo-ne (“Poseidon”) occurs with greater frequency than does di-u-ja (“Zeus”). A feminine variant, po-se-de-ia, is also found, indicating a lost consort goddess, in effect the precursor of Amphitrite, a sea goddess and wife of Poseidon and the queen of the sea.

Amphitrite was a daughter of Doris and Nereus (or Oceanus and Tethys). Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became the consort of Poseidon and was later used as a symbolic representation of the sea and the goddess of calm seas and safe passage through storms.

It is said her voice is the only thing that can calm her husband’s mightiest of rages and lull him to a deep slumber so the ocean could be back at peace. In Roman mythology, the consort of Neptune, a comparatively minor figure, was Salacia, the goddess of saltwater.

Amphitrite’s offspring included seals and dolphins. She also bred sea monsters and her great waves crashed against the rocks, putting sailors at risk. Poseidon and Amphitrite had a son, Triton who was a merman, and a daughter, Rhodos.

Poseidon carries frequently the title wa-na-ka (wanax) in Linear B inscriptions, as king of the underworld. The chthonic nature of Poseidon-Wanax is also indicated by his title E-ne-si-da-o-ne in Mycenean Knossos and Pylos, a powerful attribute (earthquakes had accompanied the collapse of the Minoan palace-culture). In the cave of Amnisos (Crete) Enesidaon is related with the cult of Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth. She was related with the annual birth of the divine child.

During the Bronze Age, a goddess of nature, dominated both in Minoan and Mycenean cult, and Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (paredros) in Mycenean cult.[20] It is possible that Demeter appears as Da-ma-te in a Linear B inscription (PN EN 609), however the interpretation is still under dispute.

In Linear B inscriptions found at Pylos, E-ne-si-da-o-ne is related with Poseidon, and Si-to Po-tini-ja is probably related with Demeter. Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for “the Two Queens and Poseidon” (“to the Two Queens and the King”: wa-na-soi, wa-na-ka-te). The “Two Queens” may be related with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were not associated with Poseidon in later periods.

Poseidon was said to have had many lovers of both sexes (see expandable list below). His consort was Amphitrite, a nymph and ancient sea-goddess, daughter of Nereus and Doris. Together they had a son named Triton, a merman. Poseidon was the father of many heroes. He is thought to have fathered the famed Theseus.

Not all of Poseidon’s children were human. In an archaic myth, Poseidon once pursued Demeter. She spurned his advances, turning herself into a mare so that she could hide in a herd of horses; he saw through the deception and became a stallion and captured her. Their child was a horse, Arion, which was capable of human speech.

Poseidon also raped Medusa on the floor of a temple to Athena. Medusa was then changed into a monster by Athena. When she was later beheaded by the hero Perseus, Chrysaor and Pegasus emerged from her neck.

The illuminating exception is the archaic and localised myth of the stallion Poseidon and mare Demeter at Phigalia in isolated and conservative Arcadia, noted by Pausanias (2nd century AD) as having fallen into desuetude; the stallion Poseidon pursues the mare-Demeter, and from the union she bears the horse Arion, and a daughter (Despoina), who obviously had the shape of a mare too.

The violated Demeter was Demeter Erinys (furious). In Arcadia, Demeter’s mare-form was worshiped into historical times. Her xoanon of Phigaleia shows how the local cult interpreted her, as goddess of nature. A Medusa type with a horse’s head with snaky hair, holding a dove and a dolphin, probably representing her power over air and water.

Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (Greek: Paredros) in Mycenaean cult. The Arcadian cult links her to the god Poseidon, who probably substituted the male companion of the Great Goddess ; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess (Cybele).

The earliest recorded worship of a deity possibly equivalent to Demeter is found in Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos. The tablets describe worship of the “two queens and the king”, which may be related to Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.

Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for “the Two Queens and Poseidon” (“to the Two Queens and the King” :wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te). The “Two Queens” may be related with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were no longer associated with Poseidon in later periods.

Hursag

Hursag (ḪUR.SAĜ) is a Sumerian term variously translated as meaning “mountain”, “hill”, “foothills” or “piedmont”. Thorkild Jacobsen extrapolated the translation in his later career to mean literally, “head of the valleys”.

Mountains play a certain role in Mesopotamian mythology and Assyro-Babylonian religion, associated with deities such as Anu, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursag. Some scholars also identify hursag with an undefined mountain range or strip of raised land outside the plain of Mesopotamia.

In a myth variously entitled by Samuel Noah Kramer as “The Deeds and Exploits of Ninurta” and later Ninurta Myth Lugal-e by Thorkild Jacobsen, Hursag is described as a mound of stones constructed by Ninurta after his defeat of a demon called Asag. Ninurta’s mother Ninlil visits the location after this great victory.

In return for her love and loyalty, Ninurta gives Ninlil the hursag as a gift. Her name is consequentially changed from Ninlil to Ninhursag or the “mistress of the Hursag”.

The hursag is described here in a clear cultural myth as a high wall, levee, dam or floodbank, used to restrain the excess mountain waters and floods caused by the melting snow and spring rain. The hursag is constructed with Ninurta’s skills in irrigation engineering and employed to improve the agriculture of the surrounding lands, farms and gardens where the water had previously been wasted.

Apkallu

Apkallu (Akkadian) and Abgal (Sumerian) are terms found in cuneiform inscriptions that in general mean either “wise” or “sage.” In several contexts the Apkallu are seven demi-gods, sometimes described as part man and part fish, associated with human wisdom; these creatures are often referred to in scholarly literature as the Seven Sages.

Sometimes the sages are associated with a specific primeval king. The terms Apkallu (as well as Abgal) is also used as an epithet for kings and gods as a mark of wisdom or knowledge. A further use of the term Apkallu is when referring to figurines used in apotropaic rituals; these figurines include fish-man hybrids representing the seven sages, but also include bird-headed and other figures.

Representations of ‘apkallu’ were used in apotropaic rituals; in addition to fish-headed ones (similar to descriptions of the seven sages), other human-animal hybrids were used as ‘apkallu’ in this context (generally bird-headed humans).

In a later work by Berossus describing Babylonia, the Apkallu appear again, also described as fish-men who are sent by the gods to impart knowledge to people. In Berossus, the first one Oannes (a variant of Uanna) is said to have taught people the creation myth the Enuma Elis (qv).

During the Neo-Assyrian period, comparisons to Adapa would be used in reference to the king and so were used to legitimize that king. For example, it was written in Sennacherib’s Annals, “Ea [..] endowed me with vast knowledge equivalent to that of the Sage Adapa”.

The Abzu or Apsu (Sumerian: abzu; Akkadian: apsû), also called engur (Sumerian: engur; Akkadian: engurru – lit., ab=’water’ zu=’deep’), is the name for fresh water from underground aquifers which was given a religious fertilising quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology.

Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of fresh water were thought to draw their water from the abzu. In this respect, in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology it referred to the primeval sea below the void space of the underworld (Kur) and the earth (Ma) above.

The first of these legendary fish-man sages is known as Oan/Oannes (Sumerian) or Uanna/U-An (Akkadian); on a few cuneiform inscriptions this first sage has “adapa” appended to his name.

In terms of the name of the first Apkallu both terms ‘adapa’ (“wise”) and ‘ummanu’ (“craftsman”) together form the whole proper name. Additionally, there are closer similarities between the 7th Apkallu Utuabzu, who is said to have ascended to heaven (in the Bit Meseri), and the myth of Adapa who also visited heaven.

Both Adapa and the Apkallu have legends that place them halfway between the world of men and gods; but additionally just as Oannes in the Greek version passes all the knowledge of civilization to people, so Adapa is described as having been “[made] perfect with broad understanding to reveal the plans of the land.”

However, despite some clear parallels between Adapa stories and both the first and last Apkallu, the name used for the first Apkallu is given in both Berossus, and in the Uruk King list – that is Uan.

When the story of Adapa was first rediscovered some scholars saw a resemblance with the story of the biblical Adam, a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible and in the creation story of the Quran.

According to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, he was the first man. In both Genesis and Quran, Adam and his wife were expelled from a Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of a tree forbidden by Yahweh or Allah, though various names are different, as is the sequence of events, the consequences of this disobedience, and Adam’s later biography.

Possible parallels and connections include similarity in names, including the possible connection of both the same word root; both myths include a test involving the eating of purportedly deadly food; and both are summoned before god to answer for their transgressions.

The story of Enoch (“seventh from Adam”) and his ascension to heaven has also been proposed to be a variant or influenced by the seventh apkallu Utuabzu who is also said to have ascended to heaven in the bit meseri.

Anat

Anat (classically Anath; Hebrew: ʿĂnāth; Phoenician: 𐤏𐤍𐤕 ʿAnōt; Ugaritic: nt; Greek: Αναθ Anath; Egyptian Antit, Anit, Anti, or Anant) is a major northwest Semitic goddess. She is often called “sister-in-law of the peoples” or “progenitress of the peoples” or “sister-in-law, widow of the Li’mites”. She is similar to Antu.

Her attributes vary widely among different cultures and over time, and even within particular myths. In Ugaritic texts, Anat is depicted as violent, delighting in war, but also as the establisher of peace; she is depicted as sexual and fertile, bringing forth offspring, while still continuing to be called a virgin and a maiden.

In the Baal Cycle texts, Anat appears as a war-goddess, initially called upon by her father El to set the stage for the coronation of Yam; Anat, however, agitates for her younger brother (and possibly lover) Baal.

Text fragments describe her appearance in battle; in a fragmentary passage from Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria) ‘Anat appears as a fierce, wild and furious warrior in a battle, wading knee-deep in blood, striking off heads, cutting off hands, binding the heads to her torso and the hands in her sash, driving out the old men and townsfolk with her arrows, her heart filled with joy.

“Her character in this passage anticipates her subsequent warlike role against the enemies of Baal”. She is later described ritually re-enacting battle, and then purifying herself, in her temple, where she receives a message from Baal asking her to establish peace on terms favorable to him.

She is initially concerned that new enemies of him have arisen, and notes that she put an end to Yam, “the beloved of El”, and to other enemies of Baal including a seven-headed serpent; Arsh the darling of the gods; Atik (“Quarrelsome”), the calf of El; Ishat (“Fire”), the bitch of the gods; and Zabib, the daughter of El. Anat goes to Baal and washes herself and makes herself beautiful before a feast with her younger brother.

Text fragments then describe Baal and Anat grasping each other’s genitals, aroused, and later Anat giving birth to her younger brother’s child, though Anat continues to be referred to as a maiden and the “virgin Anat”.

When Baal complains he has no (royal) house, Anat vows to intercede with her father El, and threatens to bloody him if he does not grant Baal a house; she also asks Athirat to intercede with El, after which he grants Baal a house.

Anat and Baal rejoice and hold a celebratory feast, but Mot is angered at not being invited, and threatens Baal. After Baal descends to the underworld, El and Anat mourn his death, and Anat searches the world and the underworld for him, her concern described in maternal terms, “like a cow [searches] for its calf”.

Anat finds Baal’s body and carries it to the gods’ sacred mountain, Saphon (Zephon), where she performs funeral rites and ritual sacrifices of animals, after which Baal is revived.

Anat then finds Mot, seizes him, and splits him with a sword or knife, winnows him and burns him, and then grinds him with millstones and sifts him through a sieve like grain, and sows his remains into the sea or to the birds. Nonetheless, Mot returns and struggles further with Baal before finally acknowledging his kingship.

Text CTA 10 tells of Anat seeking out Baal while he is out hunting; she finds him and is told she will bear a steer to him. Following the birth she brings the new calf to Baal on Mount Saphon. Nowhere in these texts is Anat explicitly Ba’al Hadad’s consort.

She is not Baal’s wife, but is the power behind the throne. To judge from later traditions ‘Athtart (who also appears in these texts) is more likely to be Ba‘al Hadad’s consort; however, complicating matters is that northwest Semitic culture permitted more than one wife and nonmonogamy is normal for deities in many pantheons.

Rahmay (‘The Merciful’), co-wife of El with Athirat, may also be the goddess ‘Anat.. Use of dual names of deities in Ugaritic poetry are an essential part of the verse form, and two names for the same deity are traditionally mentioned in parallel lines. In the same way, Athirat is called Elath (meaning “The Goddess”) in paired couplets. The poetic structure can also be seen in early Hebrew verse forms.

Anat is sporadically attested in Egypt since the 18th century, and is found in the name of Anat-her, a fragmentarily attested figure (possibly a Hyksos ruler) of the 12th, 15th or 16th dynasty whose name means “Anat is content” and is taken to indicate Canaanite descent.

As a warrior-goddess, Anat was one of several Syrian / northwest Semitic deities who was prominently worshipped by the warrior-pharaohs of the 16th Dynasty. She was often paired with the goddess Ashtart. In the Contest Between Horus and Set, these two goddesses appear as daughters of Re and are given as allies to the god Set, who had been identified with the Semitic god Hadad.

During the Hyksos period Anat had temples in the Hyksos capital of Avaris and in Beth-Shan (Israel) as well as being worshipped in Memphis. On inscriptions from Memphis of 15th to 12th centuries BCE, Anat is called “Bin-Ptah”, Daughter of Ptah.

She is associated with Reshpu (Canaanite: Resheph) in some texts and sometimes identified with the native Egyptian goddess Neith. She is sometimes called “Queen of Heaven”. Her iconography varies. She is usually shown carrying one or more weapons.

During the 19th Dynasty (in the New Kingdom period), Seti I’s favourite chariot team was named “Anat is content”. Ramesses II made Anat his personal guardian in battle and enlarged her temple in Pi-Ramesses, and also named his daughter (whom he later married) Bint-Anat, “Daughter of Anat”.

Ramesses II furthermore named his sword “Anat is victorious” and his dog “Anat protects” (the dog appears in a carving in a Beit el Wali temple), and named one of his horses “Anat is content”.

The goddess name ‘Anat is preserved in the city names Beth-Anath and Anathoth. Anathoth seems to be a plural form of the name, perhaps a shortening of bêt ‘anātôt ‘House of the ‘Anats’, either a reference to many shrines of the goddess or a plural of intensification.

The ancient hero Shamgar, son of ‘Anat, is mentioned in Judges 3.31 and 5:6, which raises the idea that this judge or hero may have been understood as a demi-god, a mortal son of the goddess. However, a number of Canaanites known from non-Biblical sources bore that title and can have been a military designation indicating a warrior under ‘Anat’s protection. Asenath, “holy to Anath”, was the wife of the Hebrew patriarch Joseph.

Danel

Danel  (Dn’il), father of Aqhat, was a culture hero who appears in an incomplete Ugaritic text of the fourteenth century BC at Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), Syria, where the name is rendered DN’IL, “El is judge”.

The text in Corpus Tablettes Alphabétiques [CTA] 17–19 is often referred to as the Epic of Aqhat. Danel was depicted as “judging the cause of the widow, adjudicating the case of the fatherless” in the city gate.

He passed through trials: his son Aqhat was destroyed but apparently in the missing conclusion was revived or replaced by Danel’s patron god, Rp’u, who sits and judges with Hadad and Astarte and was likely considered to be the equivalent of El.

In the North Canaanite stories of Aqhat, Anat covets a special bow and set of arrows which are given to Aqhat, the son of the judge Danel. These were created for Anat by the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis, but given to Danel to give his infant son.

When Aqhat grows to be a young man, the goddess Anat tries to buy the bow from hom, offering him gold and silver and even immortality, but Aqhat refuses all offers, saying that he accepts that it is the lot of humans to be mortal.

He also insults Anat, saying that bows and arrows are tools for men, not women (asking “what would a woman do with a bow?”), angering the huntress goddess. Like Inanna in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Anat complains to El and threatens to harm El if he does not let her take vengeance on Aqhat; El concedes.

Anat arranges for a her attendant Yatpan, in the form of a hawk or vulture, to attack Aqhat. However, instead of merely knocking the breath out of him and stealing the bow, Yatpan kills Aqhat; Yatpan then runs away and the bow and arrows fall into the sea.

Aqhat’s death makes the land infertile (due to drought) for a time, and his wise younger sister Paghat sets out to avenge him by killing the vulture that killed him; Anat regrets her decision and mourns for Aqhat (and the loss of the bow), but the ending of the story is missing

It breaks off at an extremely dramatic moment when Paghat discovers that the mercenary whom she has hired to help her avenge the death is, in fact, Yatpan, her brother’s murderer. The story parallels that of Anat and her revenge on Mot for the killing of her brother.

Antu

In Akkadian, the form one would expect Anat to take would be Antu, earlier Antum. This would also be the normal feminine form that would be taken by Anu, the Akkadian form of An ‘Sky’, the Sumerian god of heaven.

An (Sumerian) or Anu (Akkadian) is the divine personification of the sky, supreme god, and ancestor of all the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Anu’s consort in the earliest Sumerian texts is the goddess Uraš, but she is later the goddess Ki and, in Akkadian texts, the goddess Antu, whose name is a feminine form of Anu, and the pair were the parents of the Anunnaki and the Utukki.

Antu appears in Akkadian texts mostly as a rather colorless consort of Anu, the mother of Ishtar in the Gilgamesh story, but is also identified with the northwest Semitic goddess ‘Anat of essentially the same name.

It is unknown whether this is an equation of two originally separate goddesses whose names happened to fall together or whether Anat’s cult spread to Mesopotamia, where she came to be worshipped as Anu’s spouse because the Mesopotamian form of her name suggested she was a counterpart to Anu.

In Akkadian mythology, Antu or Antum is a Babylonian goddess. Antu was a dominant feature of the Babylonian akit festival until as recently as 200 BC, her later pre-eminence possibly attributable to identification with the Greek goddess Hera. Antu was replaced as consort by Ishtar or Inanna, who may also be a daughter of Anu and Antu.

It has also been suggested that the parallelism between the names of the Sumerian goddess, Inanna, and her West Semitic counterpart, Ishtar, continued in Canaanite tradition as Anath and Astarte, particularly in the poetry of Ugarit.

The two goddesses were invariably linked in Ugaritic scripture and are also known to have formed a triad (known from sculpture) with a third goddess who was given the name/title of Qadesh (meaning “the holy one”).

Haddad – Ishkur – Teshub

Hadad or Haddu (Ugaritic), Adad or Haddad (Akkadian) or Iškur (Sumerian), the storm and rain god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions, was also called Pidar, Rapiu, Baal-Zephon, or often simply Baʿal (Lord), but this title was also used for other gods. He was attested in Ebla as “Hadda” in c. 2500 BCE.

From the Levant, Hadad was introduced to Mesopotamia by the Amorites, where he became known as the Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) god Adad. Adad and Iškur are usually written with the logogram dIM, the same symbol used for the Hurrian god Teshub.

The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared bearded, often holding a club and thunderbolt while wearing a bull-horned headdress. He was equated with the Greek god Zeus; the Roman god Jupiter, as Jupiter Dolichenus; the Indo-European Nasite Hittite storm-god Teshub; the Egyptian god Amun.

The form Iškur appears in the list of gods found at Shuruppak but was of far less importance, probably partly because storms and rain were scarce in Sumer and agriculture there depended on irrigation instead. The gods Enlil and Ninurta also had storm god features that decreased Iškur’s distinctiveness. He sometimes appears as the assistant or companion of one or the other of the two.

Adad/Iškur’s consort (both in early Sumerian and the much later Assyrian texts) was Shala, a goddess of grain, who is also sometimes associated with the god Dagānu. She was also called Gubarra in the earliest texts. The fire god Gibil (named Gerra in Akkadian) is sometimes the son of Iškur and Shala.

Nergal

Nergal (Sumerian: dKIŠ.UNU or dGÌR-UNUG-GAL) is a deity that was worshipped throughout ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia) with the main seat of his worship at Cuthah represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. Standard iconography pictured Nergal as a lion, and boundary-stone monuments symbolise him with a mace surmounted by the head of a lion.

Nergal’s fiery aspect appears in names or epithets such as Lugalgira, Lugal-banda (Nergal as the fighting-cock), Sharrapu (“the burner”, a reference to his manner of dealing with outdated teachings), Erra, Gibil (though this name more properly belongs to Nusku), and Sibitti or Seven.

A certain confusion exists in cuneiform literature between Ninurta (slayer of Asag and wielder of Sharur, an enchanted mace) and Nergal. In Assyro-Babylonian ecclesiastical art the great lion-headed colossi serving as guardians to the temples and palaces seem to symbolise Nergal, just as the bull-headed colossi probably typify Ninurta.

Nergal has epithets such as the “raging king”, the “furious one”, and the like. A play upon his name—separated into three elements as Ne-uru-gal (light of the great Ûru; lord of the great dwelling)—expresses his position at the head of the nether-world pantheon.

Nergal seems to be in part a solar deity, sometimes identified with Shamash, but only representative of a certain phase of the sun. Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and pestilence, Nergal seems to represent the sun of noontime and of the summer solstice that brings destruction, high summer being the dead season in the Mesopotamian annual cycle. He has also been called “the king of sunset”.

Over time Nergal developed from a war god to a god of the underworld. In the mythology, this occurred when Enlil and Ninlil gave him the underworld. In this capacity he has associated with him a goddess Allatu or Ereshkigal, though at one time Allatu may have functioned as the sole mistress of Aralu, ruling in her own person. In some texts the god Ninazu is the son of Nergal and Allatu/Ereshkigal.

In the late Babylonian astral-theological system Nergal is related to the planet Mars. As a fiery god of destruction and war, Nergal doubtless seemed an appropriate choice for the red planet, and he was equated by the Greeks to the war-god Ares (Latin Mars)—hence the current name of the planet.

Nergal’s chief temple at Cuthah bore the name Meslam, from which the god receives the designation of Meslamtaeda or Meslamtaea, “the one that rises up from Meslam”. The name Meslamtaeda/Meslamtaea indeed is found as early as the list of gods from Fara while the name Nergal only begins to appear in the Akkadian period.

Amongst the Hurrians and later Hittites Nergal was known as Aplu, a name derived from the Akkadian Apal Enlil, (Apal being the construct state of Aplu) meaning “the son of Enlil”.[citation needed] As god of the plague, he was invoked during the “plague years” during the reign of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma, when this disease spread from Egypt.

Amurru

Amurru and Martu are names given in Akkadian and Sumerian texts to the god of the Amorite/Amurru people, often forming part of personal names. He is sometimes called Ilu Amurru (DMAR.TU). He was the patron god of the Mesopotamian city of Ninab, whose exact location is unknown. He was occasionally called “lord of the steppe” or “lord of the mountain”.

Amurru/Martu was probably a western Semitic god originally. He is sometimes described as a ‘shepherd’ or as a storm god, and as a son of the sky-god Anu. He is sometimes called bêlu šadī or bêl šadê, ‘lord of the mountain’; dúr-hur-sag-gá sikil-a-ke, ‘He who dwells on the pure mountain’; and kur-za-gan ti-[la], ‘who inhabits the shining mountain’. In Cappadocian Zinčirli inscriptions he is called ì-li a-bi-a, ‘the god of my father’.

Accordingly, it has been suggested by L. R. Bailey (1968) and Jean Ouelette (1969), that this Bêl Šadê might be the same as the Biblical ’Ēl Šaddāi who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the “Priestly source” of narrative, according to the documentary hypothesis. Bêl Šadê could also have become the fertility-god ‘Ba’al’, possibly adopted by the Canaanites, a rival and enemy of the Hebrew God YHWH, and famously combatted by the Hebrew prophet Elijah.

Amurru also has storm-god features. Like Adad, Amurru bears the epithet ramān ‘thunderer’, and he is even called bāriqu ‘hurler of the thunderbolt’ and Adad ša a-bu-be ‘Adad of the deluge’. Yet his iconography is distinct from that of Adad, and he sometimes appears alongside Adad with a baton of power or throwstick, while Adad bears a conventional thunderbolt.

In a Sumerian poem in pastoral style, which relates how the god Martu came to marry Adg̃ar-kidug the daughter of the god Numushda of the city of Inab. It contains a speech expressing urbanite Sumerian disgust at uncivilized, nomadic Amurru life which Adg̃ar-kidug ignores, responding only: “I will marry Martu!”.

Ašratu(m)

Amurru’s wife is usually the goddess Ašratum who in northwest Semitic tradition and Hittite tradition appears as wife of the god Ēl which suggests that Amurru may indeed have been a variation of that god. If Amurru was identical with Ēl, it would explain why so few Amorite names are compounded with the name Amurru, but so many are compounded with Il; that is, with Ēl.

Asherah, in ancient Semitic religion, is a mother goddess who appears in a number of ancient sources. She appears in Akkadian writings by the name of Ašratu(m) (Ashratum), and in Hittite as Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s). Asherah is generally considered identical with the Ugaritic goddess ʾAṯiratu (Athirat).

Asherah is identified as the queen consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic ʾEl, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons, as well as Yahweh, the god of Israel and Judah. This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon.

Despite her association with Yahweh in extra-biblical sources, Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship. The Book of Jeremiah, written circa 628 BC, possibly refers to Asherah when it uses the title “queen of heaven” in Jeremiah 7:16–18 and Jeremiah 44:17–19, 25.

The name Dione, which like ʾElat means ‘goddess’, is clearly associated with Asherah in the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon, because the same common epithet (ʾElat) of “the Goddess par excellence” was used to describe her at Ugarit.

Belit-Sheri

Another tradition about Amurru’s wife (or one of Amurru’s wives) gives her name as Belit-Sheri (also spelled Beletseri, Belit-Sheri, Belit-Tseri). Married to Amurru, the God of Nomads, she’s known as ‘Queen of the Desert.’

Belet-Seri  in Babylonian and Akkadian mythology is an underworld goddess. The recorder of the dead entering the underworld, she is known as the “Scribe of the Earth”. It is Belet-seri who keeps the records of human activities so she can advise the queen of the dead, Erishkigal, on their final judgement.

Beginning in the Old Babylonian Period, Belet-Seri was identified with the goddess Geshtinanna (also known as Geštinanna or Ngeshtin-ana), the ancient Sumerian goddess of agriculture, fertility, and dream interpretation, the so-called “heavenly grape-vine”.

She is the sister of Dumuzid and consort of Ningisida. She is also the daughter of Enki and Ninhursag. She shelters her brother when he is being pursued by galla demons and mourns his death after the demons drag him to Kur.

She eventually agrees to take his place in Kur for half the year, allowing him to return to Heaven to be with Inanna. The Sumerians believed that, while Geshtinanna was in Heaven and Dumuzid in Kur, the earth became dry and barren, thus causing the season of summer.

Liber(a)

In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber (“the free one”), also known as Liber Pater (“the free Father”), was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome’s plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad.

His festival of Liberalia (March 17) became associated with free speech and the rights attached to coming of age. His cult and functions were increasingly associated with Romanised forms of the Greek Dionysus/Bacchus, whose mythology he came to share.

Before his official adoption as a Roman deity, Liber was companion to two different goddesses in two separate, archaic Italian fertility cults; Ceres, an agricultural and fertility goddess of Rome’s Hellenised neighbours, and Libera, an early Roman goddess of wine, who was Liber’s female equivalent.

Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose cult, myths and mysteries were combined from those of Libera and the Greek Persephone and Demeter, goddesses of grain and agriculture.

The originally Roman goddess Libera was daughter of the agricultural goddess Ceres and wife to Liber, god of wine and freedom. In 204 BC, a new “Greek-style” cult to Ceres and Proserpina as “Mother and Maiden” was imported from southern Italy, along with Greek priestesses to serve it, and was installed in Libera and Ceres’ temple on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

The new cult and its priesthood were actively promoted by Rome’s religious authorities as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, and may have partly subsumed the temple’s older, native cult to Ceres, Liber and Libera; but the new rites seem to have functioned alongside the old, rather than replaced them.

Just as Persephone was thought to be a daughter of Demeter, Romans made Proserpina a daughter of Demeter’s Roman equivalent, Ceres. Like Persephone, Proserpina is associated with the underworld realm and its ruler; and along with her mother Ceres, with the springtime growth of crops and the cycle of life, death and rebirth or renewal.

Her name is a Latinisation of “Persephone”, perhaps influenced by the Latin proserpere (“to emerge, to creep forth”), with respect to the growing of grain. Her core myths – her forcible abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother’s search for her and her eventual but temporary restoration to the world above – are the subject of works in Roman and later art and literature.

In particular, Proserpina’s seizure by the god of the Underworld – usually described as the Rape of Proserpina, or of Persephone – has offered dramatic subject matter for Renaissance and later sculptors and painters.

Tawaret

In modern scholarship, Tannin is sometimes associated with Tiamat and, in modern Hebrew, the name tannin means crocodile. In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret (also spelled Taurt, Tuat, Taouris, Tuart, Ta-weret, Tawaret, Twert, Thoeris and Taueret, and in Greek Thouéris and Toeris) is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility.

The name “Taweret” (Tȝ-wrt) means “she who is great” or simply “great one”, a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, the limbs and paws of a lion, and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile.

She commonly bears the epithets “Lady of Heaven”, “Mistress of the Horizon”, “She Who Removes Water”, “Mistress of Pure Water”, and “Lady of the Birth House”.

Letter T

T or t is the 20th letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is derived from the Semitic letter taw via the Greek letter tau. In ancient times, tau was used as a symbol for life or resurrection, whereas the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, theta, was considered the symbol of death.

In Biblical times, the taw was put on men to distinguish those who lamented sin, although newer versions of the Bible have replaced the ancient term taw with mark (Ezekiel 9:4) or signature (Job 31:35).

The symbolism of the cross was connected not only to the letter chi but also to tau, the equivalent of the last letter in the Phoenician and Old Hebrew alphabets, and which was originally cruciform in shape.

An essay written around 160 AD, attributed to Lucian, a mock legal prosecution called The Consonants at Law – Sigma vs. Tau, in the Court of the Seven Vowels, contains a reference to the cross attribution.

Dingir

Dingir (usually transliterated DIĜIR, Sumerian pronunciation: [tiŋiɾ]) is a Sumerian word for “god.” Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript “D” as in e.g. DInanna.

The cuneiform sign by itself was originally an ideogram for the Sumerian word an (“sky” or “heaven”); its use was then extended to a logogram for the word diĝir (“god” or goddess) and the supreme deity of the Sumerian pantheon An, and a phonogram for the syllable /an/.

Akkadian took over all these uses and added to them a logographic reading for the native ilum and from that a syllabic reading of /il/. In Hittite orthography, the syllabic value of the sign was again only an.

The concept of “divinity” in Sumerian is closely associated with the heavens, as is evident from the fact that the cuneiform sign doubles as the ideogram for “sky”, and that its original shape is the picture of a star. The original association of “divinity” is thus with “bright” or “shining” hierophanies in the sky.

The Sumerian sign DIĜIR originated as a star-shaped ideogram indicating a god in general, or the Sumerian god An, the supreme father of the gods. Dingir also meant sky or heaven in contrast with ki which meant earth. Its emesal pronunciation was dimer.

Dyeus and Dhéǵhōm

Dyḗus (lit. “Daylight-Sky-God”), also Dyḗus ph₂tḗr (lit. “Daylight-Sky-God Father”) is the reconstructed name of the Daylight-Sky-God in Proto-Indo-European mythology. Dyēus was the daylight sky imagined as a deity and the seat of the gods, the *deiwós. Associated with the bright sky and the fertile rain, he was often paired with *Dhéǵhōm, the Earth Mother, in a relationship of union and contrast.

While its existence is not directly attested by archaeological or written materials, Dyēus is considered by scholars the most securely reconstructed deity from the Indo-European pantheon, and identical formulas that referred to him can be found in later Indo-European languages and myths of the Greeks, Latins, Illyrians, Indo-Aryans and Hittites.

Dyēus was the Sky or Day conceived as a divine entity, and thus the dwelling of the gods, the Heaven. As the gateway to the deities and the father of both the Divine Twins and the goddess of the dawn, Hausōs, Dyēus was a prominent deity in the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. He was however likely not their ruler or the holder of the supreme power like Zeus and Jupiter.

Dyēus was associated with the bright and vast sky, but also to the cloudy weather in the Vedic and Greek formulas Dyaus/Zeus’s rain. Although some of the more iconic reflexes of Dyēus are storm deities, such as Zeus and Jupiter, this is thought to be a late development exclusive to Mediterranean traditions, probably derived from syncretism with Canaanite deities and the Proto-Indo-European god Perkwunos.

Due to his celestial nature, Dyēus is often described as “all-seeing”, or “with wide vision” in Indo-European myths. It is unlikely however that he was in charge of the supervision of justice and righteousness, as it was the case for the Zeus or the Indo-Iranian Mithra–Varuna duo; but he was suited to serve at least as a witness to oaths and treaties.

Proto-Indo-Europeans also visualized the sun as the “lamp of Dyēus” or the “eye of Dyēus”, as seen in various reflexes: “the god’s lamp” in Medes by Euripides, “heaven’s candle” in Beowulf, or “the land of Hatti’s torch”, as the Sun-goddess of Arinna is called in a Hittite prayer; and Helios as the eye of Zeus, Hvare-khshaeta as the eye of Ahura Mazda, and the sun as “God’s eye” in Romanian folklore.

Dhéǵhōm (Proto-Indo-European: *dʰéǵʰōm, also ‌‌*dʰg-em (lit. “earth”), or Plethwih (PIE *plethₐ-wih₁ (lit. the “Broad One”), is the reconstructed name of the Earth-goddess in the Proto-Indo-European mythology. The Mother Earth is portrayed as the vast and dark house of mortals. She is often paired with Dyēus, the daylight sky and seat of the gods, in a relationship of union and contrast. Dhéǵhōm is associated with fertility and growth, and with death as the final dwelling of the deceased ones.

The Earth-goddess was widely celebrated with the title of “mother”, and often paired with Dyēus, the Proto-Indo-European god of the daylight sky. She is called annas Daganzipas (“Mother Earth-spirit”) in Hittite, and paired with the Storm-god of heaven. In the Rigveda, the goddess of the earth Prithvi often has the epithet Mata (“mother”), especially when she is mentioned together with Dyaus, the sky-father.

The goddess of the harvest and agriculture Demeter could also be a cognate, from the Illyrian root Dā- (possibly from *dʰǵʰ(e)m-) attached to māter (“mother”).

Nin

The Sumerian word NIN (from the Akkadian pronunciation of the sign EREŠ) was used to denote a queen or a priestess, and is often translated as “lady”. Other translations include “queen”, “mistress”, “proprietress”, and “lord”.

Many goddesses are called NIN, such as DNIN.GAL (“great lady”), DÉ.NIN.GAL (“lady of the great temple”), DEREŠ.KI.GAL, and DNIN.TI. The compound form NIN.DINGIR (“divine lady” or “lady of [a] god”), from the Akkadian entu, denotes a priestess.

Ninhursag

Ninḫursaĝ, also known as Damgalnuna or Ninmah, was the ancient Sumerian mother goddess of the mountains, and one of the seven great deities of Sumer. Nin-hursag means “lady of the sacred mountain” (from Sumerian NIN “lady” and ḪAR.SAG “sacred mountain, foothill”.

She is principally a fertility goddess. Temple hymn sources identify her as the “true and great lady of heaven” (possibly in relation to her standing on the mountain) and kings of Sumer were “nourished by Ninhursag’s milk”.

Sometimes her hair is depicted in an omega shape and at times she wears a horned head-dress and tiered skirt, often with bow cases at her shoulders. Frequently she carries a mace or baton surmounted by an omega motif or a derivation, sometimes accompanied by a lion cub on a leash. She is the tutelary deity to several Sumerian leaders.

She had many names including Ninmah (“Great Queen”); Nintu (“Lady of Birth”); Mamma or Mami (mother); Aruru, Belet-Ili (lady of the gods, Akkadian). According to legend, her name was changed from Ninmah to Ninhursag by her son Ninurta in order to commemorate his creation of the mountains. As Ninmenna, according to a Babylonian investiture ritual, she placed the golden crown on the king in the Eanna temple.

Some of the names above were once associated with independent goddesses (such as Ninmah and Ninmenna), who later became identified and merged with Ninhursag, and myths exist in which the name Ninhursag is not mentioned.

Possibly included among the original mother goddesses was Damgalnuna (great wife of the prince) or Damkina (true wife), the consort of the god Enki. The mother goddess had many epithets including shassuru or ‘womb goddess’, tabsut ili ‘midwife of the gods’, ‘mother of all children’ and ‘mother of the gods’. In this role she is identified with Ki in the Enuma Elish. She had shrines in both Eridu and Kish.

In the legend of Enki and Ninhursag, Ninhursag bore a daughter to Enki called Ninsar (“Lady Greenery”). Through Enki, Ninsar bore a daughter Ninkurra (“Lady of the Pasture”). Ninkurra, in turn, bore Enki a daughter named Uttu.

Enki then pursued Uttu, who was upset because he didn’t care for her. Uttu, on her ancestress Ninhursag’s advice buried Enki’s seed in the earth, whereupon eight plants (the very first) sprung up.

Enki, seeing the plants, ate them, and became ill in eight organs of his body. Ninhursag cured him, taking the plants into her body and giving birth to eight deities: Abu, Nintulla (Nintul), Ninsutu, Ninkasi, Nanshe, Azimua, Ninti, and Enshag (Enshagag).

In the text ‘Creator of the Hoe’, she completed the birth of mankind after the heads had been uncovered by Enki’s hoe. In creation texts, Ninmah (another name for Ninhursag) acts as a midwife whilst the mother goddess Nammu makes different kinds of human individuals from lumps of clay at a feast given by Enki to celebrate the creation of humankind.

Her symbol, resembling the Greek letter omega Ω, has been depicted in art from approximately 3000 BC, although more generally from the early second millennium BC. It appears on some boundary stones—on the upper tier, indicating her importance.

The omega symbol is associated with the Egyptian cow goddess Hathor, and may represent a stylized womb. The symbol appears on very early imagery from Ancient Egypt. Hathor is at times depicted on a mountain, so it may be that the two goddesses are connected.

Ma

Ma is a Sumerian word meaning “land” that in Sumerian mythology was also used to regard Primordial Land. There seems to be some loss in records as to the transition, but the same name Ma appears again later, also tied to the Earth, in Ma being referred to as “Mother of the mountain” – in this case, Kur (Mountain) the first dragon god. The underworld Kur is the void space between the primeval sea (Abzu) and the earth (Ma). Which seem a likely pairing for parentage, in a fuzzy set of records.

Cybele

Ma was a local goddess at Ma and a Phrygian alternative name for Cybele (Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya “Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”), an Anatolian mother goddess.

She may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, where statues of plump women, identified by some as a mother goddess, sometimes sitting, have been found in excavations dated to the 6th millennium BC.

She is Phrygia’s only known goddess, and was probably its national deity. In Phrygian art of the 8th century BC, the cult attributes of the Phrygian mother-goddess include attendant lions, a bird of prey, and a small vase for her libations or other offerings.

Her Phrygian cult was adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of Asia Minor and spread to mainland Greece and its more distant western colonies around the 6th century BC. In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She was partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”).

She was readily assimilated to the Minoan-Greek earth-mother Rhea, “Mother of the gods”, whose raucous, ecstatic rites she may have acquired. As an exemplar of devoted motherhood, she was partly assimilated to the grain-goddess Demeter, whose torchlight procession recalled her search for her lost daughter, Persephone.

Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention.

Potnia Therōn

In Greece, as in Phrygia, she was a “Mistress of animals” (Potnia Therōn), with her mastery of the natural world expressed by the lions that flank her, sit in her lap or draw her chariot. The Mistress of Animals is a widespread motif in ancient art from the Mediterranean world and the Ancient Near East, showing a central human, or human-like, female figure who grasps two animals, one to each side.

The oldest such depiction, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük is a clay sculpture from Çatalhöyük in modern Turkey, made c 6,000 BC. This motif is more common in later Near Eastern and Mesopotamian art with a male figure, called the Master of Animals.

The word Potnia, meaning mistress or lady, was a Mycenaean Greek word inherited by Classical Greek, with the same meaning, cognate to Sanskrit patnī. Homer’s mention of potnia theron is thought to refer to Artemis; Walter Burkert describes this mention as “a well established formula”.

An Artemis type deity, a ‘Mistress of the Animals’, is often assumed to have existed in prehistorical religion and often referred to as Potnia Theron, with some scholars positing a relationship between Artemis and goddesses depicted in Minoan art and Potnia Theron has become a generic term for any female associated with animals.”

Nammu

In Sumerian mythology, Nammu (also Namma, spelled ideographically 𒀭𒇉 dNAMMA = dENGUR) was a primeval goddess, corresponding to Tiamat in Babylonian mythology. It is she who has the idea of creating mankind, and she goes to wake up Enki, who is asleep in the Apsu, so that he may set the process going.

She was the Goddess sea (Engur) that gave birth to An (heaven) and Ki (earth) and the first gods, representing the Apsu, the fresh water ocean that the Sumerians believed lay beneath the earth, the source of life-giving water and fertility in a country with almost no rainfall.

She is not well attested in Sumerian mythology. She may have been of greater importance prehistorically, before Enki took over most of her functions. According to the Neo-Sumerian mythological text Enki and Ninmah, Enki is the son of An and his mother, Nammu. Nammu is the goddess who “has given birth to the great gods”.

The Atrahasis-Epos has it that Enlil requested from Nammu the creation of humans, and Nammu told him that with the help of Enki (her son) she can create humans in the image of gods. Reay Tannahill in Sex in History (1980) singled out Nammu as the “only female prime mover” in the cosmogonic myths of antiquity.

Tiamat

In the religion of ancient Babylon, Tiamat (Akkadian: DTI.AMAT or DTAM.TUM, Greek: Thaláttē) is a primordial goddess of the salt sea, mating with Abzû, the god of fresh water, to produce younger gods. She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation. She is referred to as a woman, and described as the glistening one. Some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.

It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is a creator goddess, through a sacred marriage between salt and fresh water, peacefully creating the cosmos through successive generations. In the second Chaoskampf Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.

In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of deities; her husband, Apsu, correctly assuming they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, later makes war upon them and is killed. Enraged, she, too, wars upon her husband’s murderers, taking on the form of a massive sea dragon.

She is then slain by Enki’s son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she had brought forth the monsters of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including the first dragons, whose bodies she filled with “poison instead of blood”. Marduk then forms the heavens and the Earth from her divided body.

Akitu

Akitu or Akitum (Sumerian: EZEN Á.KI.TUM, akiti-šekinku, Á.KI.TI.ŠE.GUR₁₀.KU₅, (lit. “the barley-cutting”), akiti-šununum (lit. “barley-sowing”); Akkadian: akitu or rêš-šattim (“head of the year”) was a spring festival in ancient Mesopotamia.

The name is from the Sumerian for “barley”, originally marking two festivals celebrating the beginning of each of the two half-years of the Sumerian calendar, marking the sowing of barley in autumn and the cutting of barley in spring. In Babylonian religion it came to be dedicated to Marduk’s victory over Tiamat.

Puruli

Puruli (EZEN Puruliyas) was a Hattian spring festival, held at Nerik, dedicated to the earth goddess Hannahanna, who is married to a new king. The central ritual of the Puruli festival is dedicated to the destruction of the dragon Illuyanka by the storm god Teshub. The corresponding Assyrian festival is the Akitu of the Enuma Elish. Also compared are the Canaanite Poem of Baal and Psalms 93 and 29.

Purim

Purim (Pûrîm “lots”, from the word פור pur (גורל / fate), related to Akkadian: pūru; also called the Festival of Lots) is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who was planning to kill all the Jews, as recounted in the Book of Esther (Megillat Ester in Hebrew; usually dated to the 4th century BC).

Esther[a] is described in the Book of Esther as a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus (commonly identified as Xerxes I, reigned 486–465 BCE). In the narrative, Ahasuerus seeks a new wife after his queen, Vashti, refuses to obey him, and Esther is chosen for her beauty.

The king’s chief advisor, Haman, is offended by Esther’s cousin and guardian, Mordecai, and gets permission from the king to have all the Jews in the kingdom killed. Esther foils the plan, and wins permission from the king for the Jews to kill their enemies, and they do so.

Her story is the traditional basis for Purim, which is celebrated on the date given in the story for when Haman’s order was to go into effect, which is the same day that the Jews killed their enemies after the plan was reversed.

According to most scholars, the name Esther is derived from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and/or the Persian word stara, “star”

The Book of Daniel provides accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods and “Mordecai” is understood to mean servant of Marduk, a Babylonian god. “Esther” may have been a different Hebrew interpretation from the Proto-Semitic root “star/’morning/evening star'”, which descended with the /th/ into the Ugaritic Athtiratu and Arabian Athtar.

The derivation must then have been secondary for the initial ayin to be confused with an aleph (both represented by vowels in Akkadian), and the second consonant descended as a /s/ (like in the Aramaic asthr “bright star”), rather than a /sh/ as in Hebrew and most commonly in Akkadian.

Even in Talmudic times it was realized that the name Esther was of foreign origin. According to one opinion mentioned in the Talmud (Tractate Megillah 13a) and Yalkut Shimoni as well as Targum Sheni the name Esther comes from (‘īstəhăr), the morning star Venus.

Modern scholars starting with Assyriologist Peter Jensen added on to this by connecting Esther with Ishtar Babylonian goddess of the planet Venus, and this view came to be adopted by almost all commentators.

A. S. Yahuda conjectured that the name Esther is derived from a reconstructed Median word astra meaning myrtle. This would match her Hebrew name as recorded in the Bible, Hadassah, also meaning “myrtle”.

Nu

Nu (also Nenu, Nunu, Nun), feminine Naunet (also Nunut, Nuit, Nent, Nunet), is the deification of the primordial watery abyss in the Hermopolitan Ogdoad cosmogony of ancient Egyptian religion.

The name is paralleled with nen “inactivity” in a play of words in, “I raised them up from out of the watery mass [nu], out of inactivity [nen]”. The name has also been compared to the Coptic noun “abyss; deep”.

The name is spelled phonetically with the nw hieroglyph (may be repeated three times), with the determiners “sky” and “waters”. An alternative phonetic spelling used the phonogram nn.

The Ancient Egyptians envisaged the oceanic abyss of the Nun as surrounding a bubble in which the sphere of life is encapsulated, representing the deepest mystery of their cosmogony. In Ancient Egyptian creation accounts the original mound of land comes forth from the waters of the Nun.

The Nun is the source of all that appears in a differentiated world, encompassing all aspects of divine and earthly existence. In the Ennead cosmogony, Nun is perceived as transcendent at the point of creation alongside Atum the creator god.

Nut

Nut (Ancient Egyptian: Nwt), also known by various other transcriptions, is the goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos, mothers, astronomy, and the universe in the ancient Egyptian religion. She was seen as a star-covered nude woman arching over the Earth, or as a cow. She was depicted wearing the water-pot sign (nw) that identifies her.

The pronunciation of ancient Egyptian is uncertain because vowels were long omitted from its writing, although her name often includes the unpronounced determinative hieroglyph for “sky”. Her name Nwt, itself also meaning “Sky”, is usually transcribed as “Nut” but also sometimes appears in older sources as Nunut, Nent, and Nuit.

Nut is a daughter of Shu and Tefnut. Her brother and husband is Geb. She had four or, in some sources, five children: Osiris, Set, Isis, Nephthys, and in some sources Horus. She is considered one of the oldest deities among the Egyptian pantheon, with her origin being found on the creation story of Heliopolis.

She was originally the goddess of the nighttime sky, but eventually became referred to as simply the sky goddess. Her headdress was the hieroglyphic of part of her name, a pot, which may also symbolize the uterus.

Mostly depicted in nude human form, Nut was also sometimes depicted in the form of a cow whose great body formed the sky and heavens, a sycamore tree, or as a giant sow, suckling many piglets (representing the stars).

A sacred symbol of Nut was the ladder used by Osiris to enter her heavenly skies. This ladder-symbol was called maqet and was placed in tombs to protect the deceased, and to invoke the aid of the deity of the dead.

Nut and her brother, Geb, may be considered enigmas in the world of mythology. In direct contrast to most other mythologies which usually develop a sky father associated with an Earth mother (or Mother Nature), she personified the sky and he the Earth.

Nut appears in the creation myth of Heliopolis which involves several goddesses who play important roles: Tefnut (Tefenet) is a personification of moisture, who mated with Shu (Air) and then gave birth to Sky as the goddess Nut, who mated with her brother Earth, as Geb.

From the union of Geb and Nut came, among others, the most popular of Egyptian goddesses, Isis, the mother of Horus, whose story is central to that of her brother-husband, the resurrection god Osiris. Osiris is killed by his brother Set and scattered over the Earth in 14 pieces, which Isis gathers up and puts back together.

Constellation Andromeda

Located north of the celestial equator, the constellation Andromeda is most prominent during autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, along with several other constellations named for characters in the Perseus myth. It is named for Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia, in the Greek myth, who was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus.

Because of its northern declination, Andromeda is visible only north of 40° south latitude; for observers farther south, it lies below the horizon. It is one of the largest constellations, with an area of 722 square degrees. This is over 1,400 times the size of the full moon, 55% of the size of the largest constellation, Hydra, and over 10 times the size of the smallest constellation, Crux.

Its brightest star, Alpha Andromedae, is a binary star that has also been counted as a part of Pegasus, while Gamma Andromedae is a colorful binary and a popular target for amateur astronomers. Only marginally dimmer than Alpha, Beta Andromedae is a red giant, its color visible to the naked eye.

The constellation’s most obvious deep-sky object is the naked-eye Andromeda Galaxy (M31, also called the Great Galaxy of Andromeda), the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and one of the brightest Messier objects.

Several fainter galaxies, including M31’s companions M110 and M32, as well as the more distant NGC 891, lie within Andromeda. The Blue Snowball Nebula, a planetary nebula, is visible in a telescope as a blue circular object. Andromeda is the location of the radiant for the Andromedids, a weak meteor shower that occurs in November.

The uranography of Andromeda has its roots most firmly in the Greek tradition, though a female figure in Andromeda’s location had appeared earlier in Babylonian astronomy. The stars that make up Pisces and the middle portion of modern Andromeda formed a constellation representing a fertility goddess, sometimes named as Anunitum or the Lady of the Heavens.

Andromeda is known as “the Chained Lady” or “the Chained Woman” in English. It was known as Mulier Catenata (“chained woman”) in Latin and al-Mar’at al Musalsalah in Arabic. It has also been called Persea (“Perseus’s wife”) or Cepheis (“Cepheus’s daughter”), all names that refer to Andromeda’s role in the Greco-Roman myth of Perseus.

In this myth Cassiopeia, the queen of Ethiopia, bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, sea nymphs blessed with incredible beauty. Offended at her remark, the nymphs petitioned Poseidon to punish Cassiopeia for her insolence, which he did by commanding the sea monster Cetus to attack Ethiopia.

Andromeda’s panicked father, Cepheus, was told by the Oracle of Ammon that the only way to save his kingdom was to sacrifice his daughter to Cetus. She was chained to a rock by the sea but was saved by the hero Perseus, who in one version of the story used the head of Medusa to turn the monster into stone; in another version, by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, Perseus slew the monster with his diamond sword.

Perseus and Andromeda then married; the myth recounts that the couple had nine children together – seven sons and two daughters – and founded Mycenae and its Persideae dynasty. After Andromeda’s death Athena placed her in the sky as a constellation, to honor her. Several of the neighboring constellations (Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cetus, and Cepheus) also represent characters in the Perseus myth. It is connected with the constellation Pegasus.

Andromeda was one of the original 48 constellations formulated by Ptolemy in his 2nd-century Almagest, in which it was defined as a specific pattern of stars. She is typically depicted with α Andromedae as her head, ο and λ Andromedae as her chains, and δ, π, μ, Β, and γ Andromedae representing her body and legs.

However, there is no universal depiction of Andromeda and the stars used to represent her body, head, and chains. Arab astronomers were aware of Ptolemy’s constellations, but they included a second constellation representing a fish at Andromeda’s feet.

Several stars from Andromeda and most of the stars in Lacerta were combined in 1787 by German astronomer Johann Bode to form Frederici Honores (also called Friedrichs Ehre). It was designed to honor King Frederick II of Prussia, but quickly fell into disuse.

Since the time of Ptolemy, Andromeda has remained a constellation and is officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, although like all modern constellations, it is now defined as a specific region of the sky that includes both Ptolemy’s pattern and the surrounding stars.

The official boundaries of Andromeda were defined in 1930 by Eugène Delporte as a polygon of 36 segments. Its right ascension is between 22h 57.5m and 2h 39.3m and its declination is between 53.19° and 21.68° in the equatorial coordinate system.

Hindu legends surrounding Andromeda are similar to the Greek myths. Ancient Sanskrit texts depict Antarmada chained to a rock, as in the Greek myth. Scholars believe that the Hindu and Greek astrological myths were closely linked; one piece of evidence cited is the similarity between the names “Antarmada” and “Andromeda”.

Andromeda is also associated with the Mesopotamian creation story of Tiamat, the goddess of Chaos. She bore many demons for her husband, Apsu, but eventually decided to destroy them in a war that ended when Marduk killed her. He used her body to create the constellations as markers of time for humans.

Constellation Perseus

Perseus is a constellation in the northern sky, being named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus. Perseus is bordered by Aries and Taurus to the south, Auriga to the east, Camelopardalis and Cassiopeia to the north, and Andromeda and Triangulum to the west.

In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between  01h 29.1m and  04h 51.2m, while the declination coordinates are between 30.92° and 59.11°. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) adopted the three-letter abbreviation “Per” for the constellation in 1922.

It appears prominently in the northern sky during the Northern Hemisphere’s spring. Its main asterism consists of 19 stars. It is located near several other constellations named after ancient Greek legends surrounding Perseus, including Andromeda to the west and Cassiopeia to the north.

In Greek mythology, Perseus was the son of Danaë, who was sent by King Polydectes to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon—whose visage caused all who gazed upon her to turn to stone. Perseus slew Medusa in her sleep, and Pegasus and Chrysaor appeared from her body. Perseus continued to the realm of Cepheus whose daughter Andromeda was to be sacrificed to Cetus the sea monster.

Perseus rescued Andromeda from the monster by killing it with his diamond sword. He turned Polydectes and his followers to stone with Medusa’s head and appointed Dictys the fisherman king. Perseus and Andromeda married and had six children. In the sky, Perseus lies near the constellations Andromeda, Cepheus, Cassiopeia (Andromeda’s mother), Cetus, and Pegasus.

In Neo-Assyrian Babylonia (911–605 BC), the constellation of Perseus was known as the Old Man constellation (SU.GI), then associated with East in the MUL.APIN, an astronomical text from the 7th century.

Perseus is also bordered by Aries and Taurus to the south, Auriga to the east, Camelopardalis to the north, and Triangulum to the west. Some star atlases during the early 19th century also depicted Perseus holding the disembodied head of Medusa, whose asterism was named together as Perseus et Caput Medusae; however, this never came into popular usage.

The galactic plane of the Milky Way passes through Perseus, whose brightest star is the yellow-white supergiant Alpha Persei (also called Mirfak), which shines at magnitude 1.79. It and many of the surrounding stars are members of an open cluster known as the Alpha Persei Cluster. The best-known star, however, is Algol (Beta Persei), linked with ominous legends because of its variability, which is noticeable to the naked eye.

Rather than being an intrinsically variable star, it is an eclipsing binary. Other notable star systems in Perseus include X Persei, a binary system containing a neutron star, and GK Persei, a nova that peaked at magnitude 0.2 in 1901.

The Double Cluster, comprising two open clusters quite near each other in the sky, was known to the ancient Chinese. The constellation gives its name to the Perseus cluster (Abell 426), a massive galaxy cluster located 250 million light-years from Earth. It hosts the radiant of the annual Perseids meteor shower—one of the most prominent meteor showers in the sky.

Cetus

The name of the constellation Cetus also derives from this word. It is often now called the Whale, though it is most strongly associated with Cetus the sea-monster, who was slain by Perseus as he saved the princess Andromeda from Poseidon’s wrath. Although the word “whale” is often used in English versions of the Jonah story, the Hebrew text actually uses the phrase dag gadol, which means “giant fish”.

Cetus is located in the region of the sky called “The Sea” because many water-associated constellations are placed there, including Eridanus, Pisces, Piscis Austrinus, Capricornus and Aquarius. Cetus may have originally been associated with a whale, which would have had mythic status amongst Mesopotamian cultures.

Cetus has been depicted in many ways throughout its history. In Greek art it was depicted as serpentine fish. In the 17th century, Cetus was depicted as a “dragon fish” by Johann Bayer. Both Willem Blaeu and Andreas Cellarius depicted Cetus as a whale-like creature in the same century. However, Cetus has also been variously depicted with animal heads attached to a piscine body.

Although Cetus is not generally considered part of the zodiac, the ecliptic passes less than a quarter of a degree from its constellation boundary, and thus the moon, planets and part of the sun will enter Cetus in most of their successive orbits for brief periods of time.

As seen from Mars, the ecliptic passes into Cetus, with the sun appearing in Cetus for around six days shortly after the northern summer solstice. Mars’s orbit is tilted by 1.85° with respect to Earth’s.

What is a Tandoor?

The tandoor is used for cooking in Southern, Central, and Western Asia, as well as in the South Caucasus. The English word comes from Hindi / Urdu tandūr, which came from Persian tanūr, which all mean (clay) oven.

According to the Dehkhoda Persian Dictionary, the Persian word ultimately came from the Akkadian word tinūru, which consists of the parts tin “mud” and nuro/nura “fire” and is mentioned as early as in the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, c.f. also Avestan tanûra and Middle Persian tanûr. So tandoor originated from Semitic.

Words related and similar to tandoor are used in various languages, for example the Dari Persian words tandūr and tannūr, Armenian t’onir, Georgian tone, Arabic tannūr, Hebrew tanúr, Turkish tandır, Uzbek tandir, Azerbaijani təndir, and Kurdish tenûr.

Tandoori chicken is a chicken dish prepared by roasting chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay or metal oven used in cooking and baking.

The dish originated from the Indian subcontinent and is popular in many other parts of the world. Dishes similar to tandoori chicken may have existed during the Harappan civilization.

According to eminent archeologist and vice-chancellor of Deccan College Professor Vasant Shinde, the earliest evidence for a dish similar to tandoori chicken can be found in Harappan civilization and dates back to 3000 BC.

His team has found ancient ovens at Harappan sites which are similar to the tandoors that are used in the state of Punjab. Physical remains of chicken bones with char marks have also been unearthed.

Sushruta samhita records meat being cooked in an oven (kandu) after marinating it in spices like black mustard (rai) powder and fragrant spices. Harappan oven structures may have operated in a similar manner to the modern tandoors of the Punjab.

The Tonir in the ancient Armenian kingdom was a staple of every household and found commonly in the center of the house, acting as a form of heat delivery and Tandoor cooking method.

The underground tonir, made of clay, is one of the first tools in Armenian cuisine, as an oven and as a thermal treatment tool. Armenians are said to have originated underground tonirs. It is, therefore, no surprise that one of the most renown and popular Armenian culinary contributions Lavash is cooked inside the Tonir.

Lavash is an Armenian flat bread that is made with flour, water and salt. In 2014, the United Nations body UNESCO inscribed Lavash into their list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Other popular Armenian dishes cooked in the Tonir are Ghapama, Khorovats, Harissa (keshkeg), Gata and Khorvu.

In ancient times, the tonir was worshiped by the Armenians as a symbol of the sun in the ground. Armenians made tonirs in resemblance with the setting sun “going into the ground” (the Sun being the main deity).

The Leyla-Tepe culture of ancient Caucasian Albania belongs to the Chalcolithic era. It got its name from the site in the Agdam district of modern day Azerbaijan. Its settlements were distributed on the southern slopes of Central Caucasus, from 4350 until 4000 B.C.

The settlement is of a typical Western-Asian variety, closely associated with subsequent civilizations found on the Armenian Highlands. This is evident with the dwellings packed closely together and made of mud bricks with smoke outlets, which closely resemble Armenian tonirs.

The Yamnaya culture, also known as the Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC.

Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Ямна (romanization: yamna) is a Ukrainian adjective that means ‘related to pits (yama)’, and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.

A kurgan is a type of tumulus or mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses.

Originally in use on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asia and Eastern, Western and Northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BC.

The Russian noun, already attested in Old East Slavic, comes from an unidentified Turkic language, compare Modern Turkish kurğan, which means “fortress”. Popularised by its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.

The word tumulus is Latin for ‘mound’ or ‘small hill’, which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *teuh2- with extended zero grade *tum-, ‘to bulge, swell’ also found in tomb, tumor, tumescent, thumb, thigh, and thousand.

Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Archeologists divide kurgan cultures into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.

The structures of the earlier Neolithic period from the 4th to the 3rd millenniums BC, and Bronze Age until the 1st millennium BC, display continuity of the archaic forming methods. They were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas.

The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus, and researchers associate these with the Indo-Europeans. More recently, some very ancient kurgans have been discovered at Soyuqbulaq in Azerbaijan. These kurgans date to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, and belong to Leylatepe Culture.

The people of the Yamnaya culture were likely the result of a genetic admixture between the descendants of Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus.

The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the urheimat (original homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Several genetic studies performed since 2015 have given support to the Kurgan theory of Marija Gimbutas regarding the Indo-European Urheimat – that Indo-European languages spread throughout Europe from the Eurasian steppes and that the Yamnaya culture were Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The Armenian hypothesis of the Proto-Indo-European homeland suggests that Proto-Indo-European was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in “eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia”.

Recent DNA-research has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a ‘pre-proto-Indo-European’. It also lends support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split-off from a common mother language no later than the 4th millennium BCE.

The Anatolian languages, including Hittite, split off before 4000 BCE, and migrated into Anatolia at around 2000 BCE. Around 4000 BCE, the proto-Indo-European community split into Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranians, Celto-Italo-Tocharians, and Balto-Slavo-Germanics.

The Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility” since the Yamnaya partly descended from a Near Eastern population, which resembles present-day Armenians.

Yet, they also state that “the question of what languages were spoken by the ‘Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers’ and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open.”

Amaru Muru , known as the stellar door or “Hayu Marca” which means the city of spirits a sacred mystical and enigmatic place, is an abandoned stone place in Peru, near Lake Titicaca, known as a “Gate of the Gods”.

It is a huge, mysterious, door like structure located in the mountainous Hayu Marca of southern Peru near Titicaca Lake, revered as the City of the Gods. On the main front it has laterals in the form of columns that were apparently Formed by crystals as energy stabilizers.

It remained after Incan civilization. The doorway itself looks like a big T letter, carved into the rock wall. An adult person could fit into the doorway. The place is a popular tourist destination for paranormal pilgrimage.

There are two places, paramount from the historical point of view, bearing the same name – Yazılıkaya («inscribed rock») – in the area of Turkey. The monument, which is described here, also has two other names – Midas Kenti (Midas City) and Midas Anıtı (Midas Monument), that distinguish it from the Hittite sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, located in the vicinity of Hattusa, in central Anatolia.

Phrygian Yazılıkaya is located in the area of the Phrygian Valley, in Eskişehir Province, on a plateau that also bears the name Yazılıkaya, at an altitude of over 1,300 meters above sea level. The site dominates the plain, rising about 70 meters above the surrounding terrain. It covers an area ​​650 meters long, and 320 meters wide.

The earliest traces of human settlement discovered near Yazılıkaya originate from the early Bronze Age. However, there is no evidence of the continuity of the settlement, and the most important monuments of Yazılıkaya are dated to the period from the 8th to the 6th century BC.

At that time Yazilikaya was the second most important place of the development of Phrygian civilization, besides their capital city – Gordion. It was guarded by four fortresses standing on the nearby hills – Akpara, Pişmiş, Gökgöz, and Kocabaş. Their ruins are still visible.

It remains unknown when the Phrygians left the area of Yazılıkaya. Structures and inscriptions found nearby indicate to an occupation of these areas in the later periods of history – in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times.

The most important and the most spectacular structure in Yazılıkaya is called the Midas Monument. It is a beautifully decorated façade, carved into the vertical rock, dating back to the 7th or the 6th century BC.

Its appearance resembles an entrance to a temple, but actually only a very shallow niche is carved into the rock. Most probably it used to house a statue of the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele (Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya “Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”).

She may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, have been found in excavations dated to the 6th millennium BC and identified by some as a mother goddess.

She is Phrygia’s only known goddess, and was probably its national deity. In Greece, Cybele is associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She was partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and the harvest–mother goddess Demeter.

Rhea is a character in Greek mythology, the Titaness daughter of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Uranus, Gaia’s son. She is also the older sister and wife of Cronus. The Romans identified her with Magna Mater (their form of Cybele), and the Goddess Ops.

In early traditions, she is known as “the mother of gods” and therefore is strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, who have similar functions. The classical Greeks saw her as the mother of the Olympian gods and goddesses, but not as an Olympian goddess in her own right.

Meghri (Armenian: Մեղրի), is a town and the center of the urban community of Meghri, in Syunik Province at the south of Armenia, near the border with Iran. The area of present-day Meghri has been settled since the Bronze Age. Many archaeological sites are found in the vicinity of the town dating back to the 7th and 6th centuries BC, during the period of Urartu kingdom.

Historically, it has been part of Arevik canton of ancient Syunik province of the Kingdom of Armenia. With the establishment of Tatev monastery in the 8th century, the region of modern-day Meghri witnessed a rapid social and economic development.

In 906, the settlement of Karchavan was founded by king Smbat I Bagratuni of the Bagratuni dynasty. In 987, the town -known as Meghri- was included within the newly-founded Armenian Kingdom of Syunik.

In 1105, the region of Meghri was occupied by the Seljuks. The town was completely destroyed in 1126 and 1157 by the invading Seljuk forces. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, Syunik along with the rest of the historic territories of Armenia suffered from the Seljuk, Mongol, Aq Qoyunlu and Kara Koyunlu invasions, respectively.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Meghri became part of the Erivan Beglarbegi within the Safavid Persia. At the beginning of the 18th century, the region was involved in the liberation campaign of the Armenians of Syunik led by David Bek, against Safavid Persia and the invading Ottoman Turks.

David Bek, an Armenian military commander and one of the most prominent military figures of the Armenian liberation movement of the 18th century, started his battles in 1722 with the help of thousands of local Armenian patriots who liberated Syunik.

After the fall of the Safavids in 1722, Davit Bek established himself as leader of the defenses of the local Armenians of Syunik and Kapan during the Ottoman Turkish invasion and the attacks of the local Muslim tribes.

Davit was successful in preventing the various Muslim tribes from making proper territorial gains. In 1727, in order to put a halt to the Ottoman approach in the area, king Tahmasp II appointed Davit as the governor of the area, and gave him the right to administer the area as a vassal Armenian principality under Iranian control.

In 1726-28, the local Armenians under the leadership of Davit Bek went to war with Turkish armies at Halidsor and had showed great military competence and valor by defeating them easily. Davit Bek, however, died 1728.

After Davit Bek’s death in 1728, command of the area passed to Mkhitar Sparapet (Sparapet meaning “general”, “constable” or rather “supreme commander of the armed forces”), who served as chief aide to Bek and later his successor after his death.

Mkhitar Sparapet(?-1730) was an 18th-century Armenian national hero and participant in the struggle for preserving the Armenian heritage in the Zangezur region of Transcaucasia.

He was instrumental in David Bek’s victories over the forces of Safavid Iran and the Ottoman Empire in Armenia’s Zangezur region. Their main headquarters were at the fortress of Halidzor which also served as the administrative center for Syunik.

In 1730, Mkhitar was murdered by Armenian villagers of Khndzoresk, who had implored him to have his own fortifications destroyed during his conflicts rather than their village.

His head was presented to the Ottoman Pasha at Tabriz, who found this act of treachery detestable and had the murderers decapitated. The tomb of Mkhitar Sparapet is located in a gorge not far from Nerkin Khndzoresk and Old Khndzoresk.

In 1813, Meghri became part of the Russian Empire as a result of the Russo-Persian War of 1804–13 and the signing of the Treaty of Gulistan. It was included within the Karabakh province until 1868 when it became part of the newly-formed Zangezursky Uyezd of Elisabethpol Governorate.

In 1810, young British army officer William Monteith visited the region as part of his service with the British embassy to Persia. His 1856 memoirs paint a vivid picture of the Meghri valley which he describes as a romantic glen that he rates as one of the most beautiful in Persia, or indeed in any country.

Meghri was founded as “Karchavan” in 906 by king Smbat I of Armenia, during the period of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia. Later, it was known as Meghri, meaning “honey town” in the Armenian language.

Meghri is almost entirely populated by Armenians who belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Church of the Holy Mother of God of Meghri of the large neighborhood opened in 1673, is the main church of the town. It is under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Syunik based in Goris.

The 17th century Surp Hovhannes church located in the small neighborhood is also active and famous for its wall paintings. The abandoned church of Surp Sarkis located at the north of Meghri, is also dating back to the 17the century.

Inspired by the beauty and uniqueness of Meghri’s St Hovhannes church, recently restored through Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, the Bars Media created this stunning video!

Two years ago today, Artsakh war veteran, political commentator and activist, Sarkis Hatspanian, passed away in Lyon, France. He was only 55. He was born and grew up in Turkey before relocating to Armenia from France in 1990. He took part in the subsequent Armenian-Azerbaijani war for Artsakh.

Born in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey and former Cilicia, he had left for France in 1980 to avoid persecution of the military dictatorship in Turkey, and then had moved to Armenia to join the Karabakh war in 1990. He participated in the liberation of the Karvajar (Kelbashar) region joining Armenia to Karabagh.

A photo of him with an elderly woman became a symbol of the war. This photo had two stories, one very real, the other a complete lie. The real story was as reported by a French journalist who accompanied the Armenian forces during the campaign, depicting Sarkis with an 80 year old Azeri woman, Shaikha Hanum.

She was left behind, along with other elderly Azeri women and children in the Karvajar district, when all the able-bodied Azeris had fled ahead of the advancing Armenian forces. Her son was a police commander in the district. Sarkis was in charge of taking care of the Azeri civilians, and eventually providing safe passage to Gandzag (Kirovabad).

On the same day that this story and photo was published in France, a fake story was posted in the Turkish daily, Milliyet, using the same photo, depicting Sarkis as an Azeri soldier, rescuing his Azeri grandmother from the Armenian enemy…

After the war, he became politically active and a fierce critic of the bribery and corruption of the oligarchs in the government and in the church, expressing his views very eloquently and articulately during frequent TV appearances.

According to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis, c.q. renewed Steppe hypothesis, the oldest branch were the Anatolian languages, which split from the earliest proto-Indo-European speech community (archaic PIE), which developed at the Volga basin.

The second-oldest branch, the Tocharian languages, were spoken in the Tarim Basin (present-day western China), and split-off from early PIE, which was spoken at the eastern Pontic steppe.

The bulk of the Indo-European languages developed from late PIE, which was spoken at the Yamnaya horizon, and other related cultures in the Pontic–Caspian steppe, around 4000 BCE. The Yamnaya culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the urheimat (original homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Several genetic studies performed since 2015 have given support to the Kurgan theory of Marija Gimbutas regarding the Indo-European Urheimat – that Indo-European languages spread throughout Europe from the Eurasian steppes and that the Yamnaya culture were Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The people of the Yamnaya culture were likely the result of a genetic admixture between the descendants of Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus.

Proto-Celtic and Proto-Italic probably developed in and spread from Central Europe into western Europe after Yamnaya migrations into the Danube Valley, while Proto-Germanic and Proto-Balto-Slavic may have developed east of the Carpathian mountains, in present-day Ukraine, moving north and spreading with the Corded Ware culture in Middle Europe (third millennium BCE).

Alternatively, a European branch of Indo-European dialects, termed “North-west Indo-European” and associated with the Beaker culture, may have been ancestral to not only Celtic and Italic, but also to Germanic and Balto-Slavic.

The Indo-Iranian language and culture probably emerged within the Sintashta culture (circa 2100–1800 BCE), at the eastern border of the Yamnaya horizon and the Corded Ware culture, growing into the Andronovo culture (ca. 1900-800 BCE) which two first phases are Fedorovo Andronovo culture (ca. 1900–1400 BCE) and Alakul Andronovo culture (ca. 1800–1500 BCE).

Indo-Aryans moved into the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (ca. 2400–1600 BCE) and spread to the Levant (Mitanni), northern India (Vedic people, ca. 1500 BCE), and China (Wusun). The Iranian languages spread throughout the steppes with the Scyths and into Iran with the Medes, Parthians and Persians from ca. 800 BCE.

A number of alternative theories have been proposed. Renfrew’s Anatolian hypothesis suggests a much earlier date for the Indo-European languages, proposing an origin in Anatolia and an initial spread with the earliest farmers who migrated to Europe. It has been the only serious alternative for the steppe-theory, but suffers from a lack of explanatory power.

The Anatolian hypothesis also led to some support for the Armenian hypothesis, which proposes that the urheimat of Proto-Indo-European was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia. While the Armenian hypothesis has been criticized on archeological and chronological grounds, recent genetic research has led to a renewed interest.

Recent DNA-research has led to renewed suggestions of a Caucasian homeland for a ‘pre-proto-Indo-European’. It also lends support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split-off from a common mother language “no later than the 4th millennium BCE.”

The Anatolian languages, including Hittite, split off before 4000 BCE, and migrated into Anatolia at around 2000 BCE. Around 4000 BCE, the proto-Indo-European community split into Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranians, Celto-Italo-Tocharians, and Balto-Slavo-Germanics.

At around 3000–2500 BCE, Greek moved to the west, while the Indo-Aryans, the Celto-Italo-Tocharians and the Balto-Slavo-Germanics moved east, and then northwards along the eastern slope of the Caspian Sea.

The Tocharians split from the Italo-Celtics before 2000 BCE and moved further east, while the Italo-Celtics and the Balto-Slavo-Germanics turned west again towards the northern slopes of the Black Sea. From there, they expanded further into Europe between around 2000 and 1000 BCE.

The phonological peculiarities of the consonants proposed in the glottalic theory would be best preserved in Armenian and the Germanic languages. Proto-Greek would be practically equivalent to Mycenaean Greek from the 17th century BC and closely associate Greek migration to Greece with the Indo-Aryan migration to India at about the same time (the Indo-European expansion at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, including the possibility of Indo-European Kassites).

The hypothesis argues for the latest possible date of Proto-Indo-European (without Anatolian), roughly a millennium later than the mainstream Kurgan hypothesis. In this respect, it represents an opposite to the Anatolian hypothesis in spite of the geographical proximity of the respective suggested Urheimat by diverging from the timeframe suggested there by approximately 3000 years.

Haak et al. (2015) states that “the Armenian plateau hypothesis gains in plausibility” since the Yamnaya partly descended from a Near Eastern population, which resembles present-day Armenians. Yet, they also state that “the question of what languages were spoken by the ‘Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers’ and the southern, Armenian-like, ancestral population remains open.”

David Reich, in his 2018 publication Who We Are and How We Got Here, noting the presence of some Indo-European languages (such as Hittite) in parts of ancient Anatolia, states that “the most likely location of the population that first spoke an Indo-European language was south of the Caucasus Mountains, perhaps in present-day Iran or Armenia, because ancient DNA from people who lived there matches what we would expect for a source population both for the Yamnaya and for ancient Anatolians.”

Yet, Reich also notes that “…the evidence here is circumstantial as no ancient DNA from the Hittites themselves has yet been published.” Nevertheless, Reich also states that some, if not most, of the Indo-European languages were spread by the Yamnaya people.

According to Kroonen et al. (2018), Damgaard et al. (2018) aDNA studies in Anatolia “show no indication of a large-scale intrusion of a steppe population”, but do “fit the recently developed consensus among linguists and historians that the speakers of the Anatolian languages established themselves in Anatolia by gradual infiltration and cultural assimilation.”

They further note that this lends support to the Indo-Hittite hypothesis, according to which both proto-Anatolian and proto-Indo-European split-off from a common mother language “no later than the 4th millennium BCE.”

Wang et al. (2018) note that the Caucasus served as a corridor for gene flow between the steppe and cultures south of the Caucasus during the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age, stating that this “opens up the possibility of a homeland of PIE south of the Caucasus.” However, Wang et al. also acknowledge that the latest genetic evidence supports an origin of proto-Indo-Europeans in the steppe, noting:

latest ancient DNA results from South Asia suggest an LMBA spread via the steppe belt. Irrespective of the early branching pattern, the spread of some or all of the PIE branches would have been possible via the North Pontic/Caucasus region and from there, along with pastoralist expansions, to the heart of Europe.

This scenario finds support from the well attested and widely documented ‘steppe ancestry’ in European populations and the postulate of increasingly patrilinear societies in the wake of these expansions.

Kristian Kristiansen, in an interview with Der Spiegel in may 2018, stated that the Yamnaya culture may have had a predecessor at the Caucasus, where “proto-proto-Indo-European” was spoken.

Robert Drews says that “most of the chronological and historical arguments seem fragile at best, and of those that I am able to judge, some are evidently wrong”. However, he argues that it is far more powerful as a linguistic model, providing insights into the relationship between the Indo-European and the Semitic and Kartvelian languages.

J. Grepin wrote in a review in the Times Literary Supplement the model of linguistic relationships is “the most complex, far reaching and fully supported of this century”.

David Anthony in a 2019 analysis criticizes the “southern” or Armenian hypothesis (citing Reich, Kristaiansen, and Wang). He finds that the Yamnaya derived mainly from Eastern European hunter-gatherers (EHG) and Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG), and suggests a genetic and linguistic origin of proto-Indo-Europeans (the Yamnaya) in the Eastern European steppe north of the Caucasus, from a mixture of these two groups.

He suggests that proto-Indo-European formed mainly from a base of languages spoken by Eastern European hunter-gatherers, with some influences from the languages of Caucasus hunter-gatherers.

According to Anthony, hunting-fishing camps from the lower Volga, dated 6200-4500 BCE, could be the remains of people who contributed the CHG-component, migrating from the south-east Caucasus, who mixed with EHG-people from the north Volga steppes. The resulting culture contributed to the Sredny Stog culture, a predecessor of the Yamnaya culture.

Anthony cites evidence from ancient DNA, that the Bronze Age Maykop people of the Caucasus (previously proposed as a possible southern source of language and genetics at the root of Indo-European), had little genetic impact on the Yamnaya (whose paternal lineages differ from those found in Maykop remains, but are instead related to those of pre-Yamnaya Eastern European steppe hunter-gatherers).

In addition, the Maykop (and other contemporary Caucasus samples), along with CHG, had significant Anatolian Farmer ancestry “which had spread into the Caucasus from the west after about 5000 BC”, but is little detected in the Yamnaya. Partly for these reasons, Anthony concludes that Bronze Age Caucasus groups such as the Maykop “played only a minor role, if any, in the formation of Yamnaya ancestry.”

According to Anthony, this, the absence of evidence of significant admixture (including of paternal genetic influence, often associated with language shift) from the south on the Yamnaya suggests that the roots of Proto-Indo-European (archaic or proto-proto-Indo-European) were mainly in the steppe rather than the south. Anthony considers it likely that the Maykop spoke a Northern Caucasian language not ancestral to Indo-European.

Although Armenians were known to history much earlier (for example, they were mentioned in the 6th century BC Behistun Inscription and in Xenophon’s 4th century BC history (The Anabasis), the oldest surviving Armenian-language text is the 5th century AD Bible translation of Mesrop Mashtots, who created the Armenian alphabet in 405, at which time it had 36 letters. He is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet.

Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible. While Armenian constitutes the sole member of the Armenian branch of the Indo-European family, Aram Kossian has suggested that the hypothetical Mushki language may have been a (now extinct) Armenic language.

Altough its vocabulary has historically been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and contains smaller inventories of loanwords from Greek, Persian, Arabic, Syriac and Mongol, and indigenous languages such as Urartian, Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages.

It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups.

Some linguists tentatively conclude that Armenian, Greek (and Phrygian) and Indo-Iranian were dialectally close to each other; within this hypothetical dialect group, Proto-Armenian was situated between Proto-Greek (centum subgroup) and Proto-Indo-Iranian (satem subgroup). Ronald I. Kim has noted unique morphological developments connecting Armenian to Balto-Slavic languages.

There are words used in Armenian that are generally believed to have been borrowed from Anatolian languages, particularly from Luwian, although some researchers have identified possible Hittite loanwords as well.

W. M. Austin (1942) concluded that there was an early contact between Armenian and Anatolian languages, based on what he considered common archaisms, such as the lack of a feminine gender and the absence of inherited long vowels.

However, unlike shared innovations (or synapomorphies), the common retention of archaisms (or symplesiomorphy) is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development.

In 1985, Soviet linguist Igor M. Diakonoff noted the presence in Classical Armenian of what he calls a “Caucasian substratum” identified by earlier scholars, consisting of loans from the Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian languages.

Noting that Hurro-Urartian-speaking peoples inhabited the Armenian homeland in the second millennium BC, Diakonov identifies in Armenian a Hurro-Urartian substratum of social, cultural, and animal and plant terms.

Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, but he suggests they were borrowed through Hurrian or Urartian. Given that these borrowings do not undergo sound changes characteristic of the development of Armenian from Proto-Indo-European, he dates their borrowing to a time before the written record but after the Proto-Armenian language stage.

Loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two languages meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language.

The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann (1875) used the comparative method to distinguish two layers of Iranian words from the older Armenian vocabulary. He showed that Armenian often had 2 morphemes for the one concept, and the non-Iranian components yielded a consistent PIE pattern distinct from Iranian, and also demonstrated that the inflectional morphology was different from that in Iranian languages.

The hypothesis that Greek is Armenian’s closest living relative originates with Holger Pedersen (1924), who noted that the number of Greek-Armenian lexical cognates is greater than that of agreements between Armenian and any other Indo-European language.

Antoine Meillet (1925, 1927) further investigated morphological and phonological agreement, postulating that the parent languages of Greek and Armenian were dialects in immediate geographical proximity in the Proto-Indo-European period. Meillet’s hypothesis became popular in the wake of his book Esquisse d’une histoire de la langue latine (1936).

Georg Renatus Solta (1960) does not go as far as postulating a Proto-Graeco-Armenian stage, but he concludes that considering both the lexicon and morphology, Greek is clearly the dialect most closely related to Armenian.

Eric P. Hamp (1976, 91) supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time “when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian” (meaning the postulate of a Graeco-Armenian proto-language).

Armenian shares the augment, and a negator derived from the set phrase Proto-Indo-European language *ne h₂oyu kʷid (“never anything” or “always nothing”), and the representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels, and other phonological and morphological peculiarities with Greek.

Nevertheless, as Fortson (2004) comments, “by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, the evidence of any such early kinship has been reduced to a few tantalizing pieces”.

Many modern scholars have rejected the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, arguing that the linguistic proximity between the two languages has been overstated. Graeco-(Armeno)-Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have become divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC.

Conceivably, Proto-Armenian would have been located between Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, consistent with the fact that Armenian shares certain features only with Indo-Iranian (the satem change) but others only with Greek (s > h).

Graeco-Aryan has comparatively wide support among Indo-Europeanists for the Indo-European homeland to be located in the Armenian Highlands, the “Armenian hypothesis”. Early and strong evidence was given by Euler’s 1979 examination on shared features in Greek and Sanskrit nominal flection.

Used in tandem with the Graeco-Armenian hypothesis, the Armenian language would also be included under the label Aryano-Greco-Armenic, splitting into proto-Greek/Phrygian and “Armeno-Aryan” (ancestor of Armenian and Indo-Iranian).

Urartu (Ararat) is a geographical region commonly used as the exonym for the Iron Age kingdom also known by the modern rendition of its endonym, the Kingdom of Van, centered around Lake Van in the historic Armenian Highlands (present-day eastern Anatolia). The written language that the kingdom’s political elite used is referred to as Urartian, which appears in cuneiform inscriptions in Armenia and eastern Turkey.

It is unknown what language was spoken by the peoples of Urartu at the time of the existence of the kingdom, but there is linguistic evidence of contact between the proto-Armenian language and the Urartian language at an early date (sometime between the 3rd—2nd millennium BC), occurring prior to the formation of Urartu as a kingdom.

The name Urartu (Hebrew: Ararat) comes from Assyrian sources. Shalmaneser I (1263–1234 BC) recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of “Uruatri”. The Shalmaneser text uses the name Urartu to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom, and names eight “lands” contained within Urartu (which at the time of the campaign were still disunited).

Boris Piotrovsky wrote that the Urartians first appear in history in the 13th century BC as a league of tribes or countries which did not yet constitute a unitary state. In the Assyrian annals the term Uruatri (Urartu) as a name for this league was superseded during a considerable period of years by the term “land of Nairi”.

Shupria (Akkadian: Armani-Subartu from the 3rd millennium BC) is believed to have originally been a Hurrian or Mitanni state that was subsequently annexed into the Urartian confederation. Shupria is often mentioned in conjunction with a district in the area called Arme (also referred to as Urme or Armani) which some scholars have linked to the name of Armenia.

Linguists John Greppin and Igor M. Diakonoff argued that the Urartians referred to themselves as Shurele (sometimes transliterated as Shurili or Šurili, possibly pronounced as Surili), a name mentioned within the royal titles of the kings of Urartu (e.g. “the king of Šuri-lands”).

The word Šuri has been variously theorized as originally referring to chariots, swords, the region of Shupria (perhaps an attempt by the ruling dynasty to associate themselves with the Hurrians), or the entire world.

The name Kingdom of Van (Urartian: Biai, Biainili) is derived from the Urartian toponym Biainili (or Biaineli), which was probably pronounced as Vanele (or Vanili), and called Van in Old Armenian, hence the names “Kingdom of Van” or “Vannic Kingdom”.

The kingdom rose to power in the mid-9th century BC, but went into gradual decline and was eventually conquered by the Iranian Medes in the early 6th century BC. The geopolitical region would re-emerge as Armenia shortly after. Being heirs to the Urartian realm, the earliest identifiable ancestors of the Armenians are the peoples of Urartu.

In the 6th century BC, with the emergence of Armenia in the region, the name of the region was simultaneously referred to as variations of Armenia and Urartu. In the trilingual Behistun Inscription, carved in 521 or 520 BC by the order of Darius I, the country referred to as Urartu in Akkadian is called Arminiya in Old Persian and Harminuia in the Elamite language.

The mentions of Urartu in the Books of Kings[20] and Isaiah of the Bible were translated as “Armenia” in the Septuagint. Some English language translations, including the King James Version follow the Septuagint translation of Urartu as Armenia. The identification of the biblical “mountains of Ararat” with the Mt. Ararat is a modern identification based on postbiblical tradition.

The name Ayrarat that was later used to describe lands located in the central region of the Kingdom of Armenia seems to have been of local usage as no known classical works use this word to refer to Armenia.

Scholars such as Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt (1910) believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after the god Ḫaldi (d,Ḫaldi, also known as Khaldi). He was the primary god of the most prominent group of Urartian tribes, which eventually evolved into the Armenian nation.

Ḫaldi was one of the three chief deities of Urartu. Along with Ḫaldi of Ardini, the other two chief deities of Urartu were Theispas of Kumenu, and Shivini of Tushpa. His wife was the goddess Arubani and/or the goddess Bagvarti.

Of all the gods of the Urartian pantheon, the most inscriptions are dedicated to Ḫaldi. He was portrayed as a man with or without wings, standing on a lion. He was a warrior god to whom the kings of Urartu would pray for victories in battle.

The temples dedicated to Khaldi were adorned with weapons such as swords, spears, bows and arrows, and shields hung from the walls and were sometimes known as “the house of weapons”.

The Urartian Kings used to erect steles dedicated to Ḫaldi in which they inscribed the successes of theimilitary campaigns, the buildings built, and also the agricultural activities that took place during their reign.

According to Urartologist Paul Zimansky, Haldi was not a native Urartian god but apparently an obscure Akkadian deity (which explains the location of the main temple of worship for Haldi in Musasir, believed to be near modern Rawandiz, Iraq).

He was not initially worshipped by Urartians, at least as their chief god, as his cult does not appear to have been introduced until the reign of by the Urartian King Ishpuini, who acquired it ca. 800 BC.

His principle shrine was at Ardini (Muṣaṣir in Assyrian; KURMu-ṣa-ṣir and variants, including Mutsatsir, Akkadian for Exit of the Serpent/Snake), an ancient city of Urartu attested in Assyrian sources of the 9th and 8th centuries BC.

According to Michael C. Astour, Haldi could be etymologically related to the Hurrian word “heldi”, meaning “high”. An alternate theory postulates that the name could be of Indo-European (possibly Helleno-Armenian) or Old Armenian origin, meaning “sun god” (compare with Greek Helios and Latin Sol).

Some sources claim that the legendary patriarch and founder of the Armenians, Hayk the Great or The Great Hayk, also known as Hayk Nahapet; Hayk the “head of family” or patriarch, is derived from Ḫaldi, but other theories about the etymology of Hayk are more widely accepted.

Hayk is the legendary patriarch and founder of the Armenian nation. His story is told in the History of Armenia attributed to the Armenian historian Moses of Chorene (or Movses Khorenatsi, c. 410 – c. 490). The name of the patriarch, Hayk, is not exactly homophonous with the name for “Armenia”, Hayk’. Hayk’ is the nominative plural in Classical Armenian of hay, the Armenian term for “Armenian.”

Some claim that the etymology of Hayk’ from Hayk is impossible and that the origin of the term Hay (“Armenian”) is verifiable. Anyway, Hayk and Haig are usually connected to hay and hayer, the nominative plural in Modern Armenian, the self-designation of the Armenians.

Armen Petroyan believes that the name Hayk can “very plausibly” be derived from the Indo-European *poti- ‘master, lord, master of the house, husband’. Hayk would then be an etiological founding figure, like e.g. Asshur for the Assyrians, etc.

One of Hayk’s most famous scions, Aram, settled in Eastern Armenia from the Mitanni kingdom (Western Armenia), when Sargon II mentions a king of part of Armenia who bore the (Armenian-Indo-Iranian) name Bagatadi (which, like the Greek-based “Theodore” and the Hebrew-based “Jonathan,” means “god-given”).

Mitanni was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatolia from c. 1500 to 1300 BC. While the Mitanni kings were Indo-Aryan, they used the language of the local people, which was at that time a non-Indo-European language, Hurrian.

Kammenhuber suggested that this vocabulary was derived from the still undivided Indo-Iranian language, but Mayrhofer has shown that specifically Indo-Aryan features are present.

A Hurrian passage in the Amarna letters – usually composed in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the day – indicates that the royal family of Mitanni was by then speaking Hurrian as well.

The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian. The poorly attested Kassite language may have belonged to the Hurro-Urartian language family.

Hurrian was the language of the Hurrians (occasionally called “Hurrites”), and was spoken in the northern parts of Mesopotamia and Syria and the southeastern parts of Anatolia between at least last quarter of the third millennium BC and its extinction towards the end of the second millennium BC.

Urartian was probably spoken by the majority of the population in the mountainous areas around Lake Van and the upper Zab valley. It branched off from Hurrian at approximately the beginning of the second millennium BC.

It has also been proposed that two little known groups, the Nairi and the Mannae, might have been Hurrian speakers, but as little is known about them, it is hard to draw any conclusions about what languages they spoke. Furthermore, the Kassite language was possibly related to Hurro-Urartian.

Francfort and Tremblay on the basis of the Akkadian textual and archaeological evidence, proposed to identify the kingdom of Marhashi and Ancient Margiana. The Marhashite personal names seems to point towards an Eastern variant of Hurrian or another language of the Hurro-Urartian language family.

The Mitanni kingdom was referred to as the Maryannu, Nahrin or Mitanni by the Egyptians, the Hurri by the Hittites, and the Hanigalbat by the Assyrians. The different names seem to have referred to the same kingdom and were used interchangeably, according to Michael C. Astour.

The Mitanni dynasty ruled over the northern Euphrates-Tigris region between c. 1475 and c. 1275 BC. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to Hittite and later Assyrian attacks and was reduced to the status of a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.

The Mitanni controlled trade routes down the Khabur to Mari and up the Euphrates from there to Carchemish. For a time they also controlled the Assyrian territories of the upper Tigris and its headwaters at Nineveh, Erbil, Assur and Nuzi.

The Nuzi texts are ancient documents found during an excavation of Nuzi, an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk in modern Al Ta’amim Governorate of Iraq, located near the Tigris river. The site consists of one medium-sized multiperiod tell and two small single period mounds.

The texts are mainly legal and business documents. They have also been viewed as evidence for the age and veracity of certain parts of the Old Testament, especially of the Patriarchal age, but this is no longer widely accepted.

Their allies included Kizuwatna in southeastern Anatolia; Mukish, which stretched between Ugarit and Quatna west of the Orontes to the sea; and the Niya, which controlled the east bank of the Orontes from Alalah down through Aleppo, Ebla and Hama to Qatna and Kadesh. To the east, they had good relations with the Kassites.

The land of Mitanni in northern Syria extended from the Taurus mountains to its west and as far east as Nuzi (modern Kirkuk) and the river Tigris in the east. In the south, it extended from Aleppo across (Nuhasse) to Mari on the Euphrates in the east. Its centre was in the Khabur River valley, with two capitals: Taite and Washukanni, called Taidu and Ussukana respectively in Assyrian sources.

The whole area supported agriculture without artificial irrigation and cattle, sheep and goats were raised. It is very similar to Assyria in climate, and was settled by both indigenous Hurrian and Amoritic-speaking (Amurru) populations.

Their sphere of influence is shown in Hurrian place names, personal names and the spread through Syria and the Levant of a distinct pottery type. There have been various Hurrian-speaking states, of which the most prominent one was the kingdom of Mitanni (1450–1270 BC).

Maryannu is an ancient word for the caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility which existed in many of the societies of the Middle East during the Bronze Age. The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi.

Robert Drews writes that the name maryannu, although plural, takes the singular marya, which in Sanskrit means ‘young warrior’, and attaches a Hurrian suffix. He suggests that at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, most would have spoken either Hurrian or Indo-Aryan, but by the end of the 14th century, most of the Levant maryannu had Semitic names.

Bearers of names in the Hurrian language are attested in wide areas of Syria and the northern Levant that are clearly outside the area of the political entity known to Assyria as Hanilgalbat.

There is no indication that these persons owed allegiance to the political entity of Mitanni; although the German term Auslandshurriter (“Hurrian expatriates”) has been used by some authors.

In the 14th century BC numerous city-states in northern Syria and Canaan were ruled by persons with Hurrian and some Indo-Aryan names. If this can be taken to mean that the population of these states was Hurrian as well, then it is possible that these entities were a part of a larger polity with a shared Hurrian identity.

This is often assumed, but without a critical examination of the sources. Differences in dialect and regionally different pantheons (Hepat/Shawushka, Sharruma/Tilla etc.) point to the existence of several groups of Hurrian speakers.

The Kura–Araxes culture or the early trans-Caucasian culture was a civilization that existed from about 4000 BC until about 2000 BC, which has traditionally been regarded as the date of its end. The earliest evidence for this culture is found on the Ararat plain; it spread northward in Caucasus by 3000 BC.

Altogether, the early trans-Caucasian culture enveloped a vast area approximately 1,000 km by 500 km, and mostly encompassed, on modern-day territories, the Southern Caucasus (except western Georgia), northwestern Iran, the northeastern Caucasus, eastern Turkey, and as far as Syria.

The name of the culture is derived from the Kura and Araxes river valleys. Kura–Araxes culture is sometimes known as Shengavitian, Karaz (Erzurum), Pulur, and Yanik Tepe (Iranian Azerbaijan, near Lake Urmia) cultures.

It gave rise to the later Khirbet Kerak-ware culture found in Syria and Canaan after the fall of the Akkadian Empire. The tell of Khirbet Kerak lies where the Sea of Galilee empties into the Jordan river and the terrain rises by c. 15 meters above the level of the lake.

Khirbet Kerak ware is a type of Early Bronze Age Syro-Palestinian pottery first discovered at this site. It is also found in other parts of the Levant, including Jericho, Beth Shan, Tell Judeideh, and Ugarit. Khirbet Kerak culture appears to have been a Levantine version of the Early Transcaucasian Culture.

Khirbet Kerak (Khirbet al-Karak, “the ruin of the fortress”) or Beth Yerah (Hebrew: “House of the Moon (god)”) is a tell (archaeological mound) located on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee in modern-day Israel.

The tell spans an area of over 50 acres—one of the largest in the Levant—and contains remains dating from the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BCE – 2000 BCE) and from the Persian period (c. 450 BCE) through to the Early Islamic period (c. 1000 CE).

Beth Yerah means “House of the Moon (god)”. Though it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible or other Bronze or Iron Age sources, the name may preserve, at least in part, the Canaanite toponym of Ablm-bt-Yrh, “the city/fort (qrt) of his-majesty Yarih”.

As Ablm (Heb. Abel), this location is mentioned in the 14th century BCE Epic of Aqhat, a Canaanite myth from Ugarit, an ancient city in what is now Syria, and is thought to be a reference to the Early Bronze Age structure extant at Khirbet Kerak. The 2009 discovery at the tell of a stone palette with Egyptian motifs, including an ankh, points to trade/political relations with the First dynasty of Egypt, at approximately 3000 BCE.

The Leyla-Tepe culture of ancient Caucasian Albania belongs to the Chalcolithic era. It got its name from the site in the Agdam district of modern day Azerbaijan. Its settlements were distributed on the southern slopes of Central Caucasus, from 4350 until 4000 B.C.

The settlement is of a typical Western-Asian variety, closely associated with subsequent civilizations found on the Armenian Highlands. This is evident with the dwellings packed closely together and made of mud bricks with smoke outlets, which closely resemble Armenian tonirs.

The Yamnaya culture, also known as the Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC.

Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Ямна (romanization: yamna) is a Ukrainian adjective that means ‘related to pits (yama)’, and these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers.

A kurgan is a type of tumulus or mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons and horses.

Originally in use on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, kurgans spread into much of Central Asia and Eastern, Western and Northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BC. The Russian noun, already attested in Old East Slavic, comes from an unidentified Turkic language, compare Modern Turkish kurğan, which means “fortress”.

Popularised by its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology. The word tumulus is Latin for ‘mound’ or ‘small hill’, which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *teuh2- with extended zero grade *tum-, ‘to bulge, swell’ also found in tomb, tumor, tumescent, thumb, thigh, and thousand.

Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Archeologists divide kurgan cultures into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.

The structures of the earlier Neolithic period from the 4th to the 3rd millenniums BC, and Bronze Age until the 1st millennium BC, display continuity of the archaic forming methods. They were inspired by common ritual-mythological ideas.

The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus, and researchers associate these with the Indo-Europeans. More recently, some very ancient kurgans have been discovered at Soyuqbulaq in Azerbaijan. These kurgans date to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC, and belong to Leylatepe Culture.

In the Obersalzberg Speech, a speech given by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on 22 August 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland, Hitler asked: «Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?»

The Armenian Genocide is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, because scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out. It is the second-most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.

As a response to continuing denial by the Turkish state, many activists from Armenian Diaspora communities have pushed for formal recognition of the Armenian Genocide from various governments around the world. As of 2019, governments and parliaments of 32 countries, including the United States, Russia, and Germany have recognized the events as a genocide.

The term “genocide”, created in 1943, was coined by Raphael Lemkin who was directly influenced by the massacres of Armenians during World War I. Lemkin was moved specifically by the annihilation of the Armenians to define systematic and premeditated exterminations within legal parameters and to coin the word genocide in 1943.

In 1996, Professor Gregory Stanton proposed a formula that seeks to identify the different elements that ultimately lead to the crime of genocide. Surprisingly, genocide is not the final and ultimate stage of his ten stage formula. Denial of genocide is. Denial by the perpetrators, whether by words or by taking active steps to cover their acts.

Denial of the Armenian genocide can be compared to similar negationist historical revisionisms such as Holocaust denial and Nanking Massacre denial. The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. Hopefully Israel will soon join those countries thas has recognized the genocide.

Specially when knowing that Ottoman Jews and the Zionists supported the Armenian genocide’s ‘architect before the Holocaust. They praised the empire even during the slaughter of its minority population, a murder which Israel continues to gloss over today.

At the same time there is an indelible link between the Holocaust and the current situation of the Palestinian people; to deny this simple fact exposes a deep-seated flaw in Zionist ideology. On Holocaust Memorial Day, remember too that the Nakba is an indelible part of Israel’s history.