The Sacred Cow and Her "Singing" Crow

From The Washington Post:

In my imagination, I can hear the crow singing, and as this sacred cow in a sanctuary in India listens, she could be Isis, reminiscing of the freedom and the millions of worshippers She used to have, before the patriarchal war gods took over the world and ruined it for all of us.  The poignancy of this photograph deeply touched my heart.

Check Out this Isis Ivory Carved by Phoenician Artisans

Volume 91 Issue 20 | p. 8 | News of The Week
Issue Date: May 20, 2013 | Web Date: May 17, 2013

It's exquisite!  The detailed carving of the wings, the depiction of the double crown of Egypt, and Isis holds lotus plants in her hands.  I wonder if Nephthys was on the other side of the broken ivory.  She is often indistinguishable from Isis, except for her headwear (the "cup.") And the figure in the middle - Bes? 

 

This Phoenician sculpture made of ivory was once gilded.

Credit: Courtesy of Musée du Louvre/R. Chipault

 

Archaeology’s Hidden Secrets

Ancient Ivory: Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold

By Sarah Everts

 

Ancient ivory carvings made by Phoenician artists some 3,000 years ago have long hidden a secret, even while being openly displayed in museums around the world: The sculptures were originally painted with colorful pigments, and some were decorated with gold.

Researchers based in France and Germany report chemical analyses showing that 8th-century B.C. Phoenician ivory artifacts bear metal traces that are invisible to the naked eye (Anal. Chem. 2013, DOI: 10.1021/ac4006167).
 

These metals are found in pigments commonly used in antiquity, such as the copper-based pigment Egyptian blue or the iron-based pigment hematite. The metals are not normally in ivory nor in the soil where the artifacts were long buried, explains Ina Reiche, a chemist at the Laboratory of Molecular & Structural Archaeology, in Paris. Reiche led the research, which was performed on ivory originally unearthed in Syria and now held at Baden State Museum, in Karlsruhe, Germany.
 

Phoenicians were seafaring Semitic traders who pioneered the use of an alphabet later adopted in ancient Greece, and they controlled the valuable royal-purple pigment trade throughout the Mediterranean during the period 1500–300 B.C.
 

Scholars had suspected that Phoenician ivory sculptures might initially have been painted, but to date most studies had examined just a few spots on ivory surfaces, Reiche says. Her team used a synchrotron to do X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to analyze the entire surface of the artifacts with micrometer resolution, revealing the spatial distribution of the lost pigmentation.
 

“Knowledge of an object’s original appearance can help us understand why it was so visually powerful to ancient viewers,” says Benjamin W. Porter, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley. And there are plenty of important objects to examine, he adds. “This technique is transferable to other kinds of ancient art whose pigments have been weathered, from the palace wall reliefs of the Assyrian empire to Egyptian tomb paintings to everyday ceramic vessels whose decorations have been worn.”

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

Remains of temple of Isis found

From ANSA.it 2009-05-28 18:38 Workmen find fragments digging inside Florence courthouse (ANSA) - Florence, May 28 - Workmen inside Florence's courthouse have stumbled across a spiral column and hundreds of multicoloured fragments that experts believe may have belonged to a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. Dating to the second century AD, the remains were discovered as the men dug a five by three metre hole, barely four metres deep, for a new water cistern for the courthouse's anti-incendiary system. ''These finds are of extraordinary importance,'' said Alessandro Palchetti, the archaeologist charged with overseeing the works in the courthouse by Florence's archaeology superintendency, who suspected something interesting might be uncovered because of the area's historic relevance. Palchetti said the remains were ''comparable'' to others found over the last three centuries in the immediate area that have also been attributed to the temple of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility who was later adopted by the Greeks and Romans. The location of the temple is unknown, Palchetti said, but it is believed to have been built just outside the Roman part of the city, near the current courthouse building. ...[rest of article unrelated to topic]

Further Explorations of the Word MA

From Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets: Tiamat Sumero-Babylonian "Goddess Mother" (Dia Mater), from whose formless body the universe was born at creation; personification of The Deep, or Tohu Bohu. Babylonians later claimed their municipal god Marduk, Tiamat's son, divided her into heavens above and earth below, as did Marduk's imitator, the biblical God. But the original division was made by the Mother herself, as in the ancient Pelasgian myth of her Aegean counterpart, Eurynome.(1) In derivative Hebrew myths, Tiamat became Tehom, The Deep; and this is how she appears in the Bible (Genesis 1:2). [Gen. 1:2: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. -- King James Version. And from the Living Bible, which is a paraphrase of the Bible in modern English, Gen. 1:1-2: When God began creating the heavens and the earth, (2) the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors".] Patriarchal writers forgot that "The Deep" was a personified womb, a Middle-Eastern version of Kali whose being before creation was "formless." [I visualize it as the center "dot" in the "bindu." In Hindu mythology, although it may have older roots, it is from the bindu that all what we know as creation/universes sprung, rather like the "Big Bang" theory, KA-BOOM.] Most creation myths incorporated the idea of formlessness, in the darkness before the birth that brought "light" and the splitting of the Mother's body, so she became both heaven and earth. The Bible's account is based on the same archetype. In Egypt, Tiamat was Temu or Te-Mut, oldest of deities, mother of the archaic Ennead of four female elements: Water, Darkness, Night, and Eternity.(2) [The Ennead consisted of four paired goddesses and gods, each sister and brother, representing the earliest "Netjer" who were - I'm working from memory here so I hope this is right! - the offspring of that primeval creative force, akin to The Great Goddess or, in biblical terms, that Spirit of "God" roving about the face of the waters. Here is an interesting translation of Gen. 1:2 from the Bible used by the Jehovah's Witnesses, which is called The New World Translation: Gen. 1:2: Now the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of the water deep; and God's active force was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters. I have many different Bibles in my collection :)] She was also Nun, Naunet, or Ma-Nu, the great fish who gave birth to the universe and the gods. [Cf. Jonah inside the great fish's belly for "three" days, only to be "reborn" again by regurgitation]. In repeated cycles of becoming, she periodically swallowed up both gods and universes and gave them rebirth - like Kali.(3) Tiamat's firstborn child seems to have been a duplicate of herself, Mummu, translated either "churning" or "mother." The combination recalled the ancient notion that solid earth was made from "churning" the primordial fluid, like making butter from milk.(4) [Cf. Axis Mundi]. Some myths gave Tiamat a male consort, Apsu, similar to Jupiter Pluvius: a Father Heaven whose job it was to fertilize the Mother's abyss with seminal rain. But he was not her superior, not even her equal. Even in the chaotic conditions before creation, Tiamat was the true source of life. Her consort was subordinate, not even necessary.(5) Various myths said Tiamat alone produced the fluid of creation, which was not semen but her menstrual blood, flowing continuously for three years and three months.(6) Its great reservoir was the Red Sea - comparable to Kali's "ocean of blood"- the eastern shore of which is still called Tihamat by the Arabs. Babylonians said their god Marduk divided his mother Tiamat into two parts, upper waters and lower waters. Likewise, the Jewish God "divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which wre above the firmament" (Genesis 1:7). The Jewish god also divided the Red Sea, which was likened to Tiamat herself. The idea of dividing waters was not original with the Jews. Goddesses did it before gods. The Hindu Goddess Bindumati, "Mother of Life," divided the waters of the Ganges.(7) The Goddess Isis divided the waters of the river Phaedrus, to cross dry-shod.(8) Even an insignificant Egyptian wizard named Zazamonkh divided the waters of a lake to retrieve a courtesan's lost pendant.(9) Yahweh's miracle on behalf of the Israelites was fairly common in contemporary lore. By dividing Tiamat, Marduk established the Diameter (horizon), which was the Greek version of Tiamat's name, meaning Goddess-Mother [Dia Mater]. We still say a diameter divides a whole circle. Though Marduk was supposed to have slain his mother, the Ocean of Blood, he still maintained the menstrual calendar in Babylon, celebrating sabbaths and months of the year according ot the moom's phases.(10) Modern scholars tend to ignore Tiamat's maternal Creatress nature, describing her as nothing more than a "dragon of chaos" slain by Marduk. It is seldom emphasized that this was a myth of matricide, or that the Goddess was the one who created the world. Some traditions indicate that Marduk's murder of his mother may have been motivated by jealousy, like Cain's murder of Abel. Mother Tiamat had overlooked Marduk and chosen another of her sons, Kingu, to be her consort and the king of the universe. [She] exalted among the gods, her sons, that she had borne, Kingu, and made him greatest among them all . . . .placed him on a throne, saying, "By my charm and incantation I have raised thee to power among the gods. The dominion over all the gods I intrusted [sic] to thee. Lofty thou shalt be, thou my chosen spouse; great be thy name in all the world." She then gave him the Tablets of Destiny, and laid them on his breast.(11) Jealous Marduk not only killed Tiamat; he also deposed, castrated, and killed Kingu, and made the first man on earth out of Kingu's blood - which tends to show that Kingu was once the name of the sacrificed god-king, whose blood had the "feminine" power to make life.(12) [Cf. the Christian doctrines related to the sacrifice of Christ's life (blood) and the benefits of "Life's Water" flowing from the resurrected Christ/God.] Kingu was identified with the moon. Chaldeans called him Sin, the Moon-god of Mount Sinai. Apparently he still had the tablets of the Law given him by Tiamat (as Mother Rhea gave sacred tablets of the Law to Minos on Mt. Dicte), for the Old Testament claims he passed them on to Moses. In Southern Arabia, the Goddess was assimilated to Ishtar. The eyes of her idol Tehama wwere said to flow with tears each year as she bewailed the death of Tammuz.(13) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M., 1, 27. (2) Budge, D.N., 211. (3) Neumann, G.M., pl. 91; Erman, 252. (4) Brandon, 22. (5) Stone, 26. (6) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 301. (7) Rawson, A.T., 74. (8) Budge, G.E., 2, 191. (9) Erman, 40. (10) Hooke, M.E.M., 45. (11) Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 287. (12) Larousse, 54. (13) Baring-Gould, C.M.M.A., 279.

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Ponderings:

As a totally irrelevant aside, I do believe that my given name, "Janet," which under traditional patriarchal interpretations is a derivative from "John," meaning something like "God's Gift [to men] ("Ja" = shortened name for God in Hebrew), is actually a derivative from the much older Naunet -- the "et" syllable denoted a female or the feminine in ancient Egyptian, much as "ette" denotes female or the feminine today in French). Perhaps the older name of "Nanette," which is out of style these days (as is my name, Janet), is an ancient carry-over from the times when the Goddess reigned supreme. Therefore, darlings, I am named after the Goddess of Creation, and not after "St. John." I always thought he was rather wimpy and - well, swishy. Oh, slap my face, I'm a bad girl for saying such a thing :)

Various myths said Tiamat alone produced the fluid of creation, which was not semen but her menstrual blood, flowing continuously for three years and three months.

Is this why the use of red ochre was so predominate in Neolithic times in sacred cave drawings and painted on stone, ivory and bone carvings -- to show life and a link to the Mother Goddess, from whom all life flowed through the sacred menstrual blood? Is this why the color "red" - as in "red blood" is associated with life and living? Is this why the mythical elixir of life, called "Soma" in Sanskrit and "Homa" in Pahlavi, was linked to menstrual blood? And is this why black (blood lacking oxygen from cessation of breathing, is a darkish, sort of black looking color = lack of life) is associated with funereal rites in many cultures to this day? I was going to put up an image of Tiamat with this post, but without exception those that I found were images of ugly beasts - sort of like Lizard-Dragons with huge claws and teeth -- ancestral memories of dinosaurs? Traditionalists would say I'm nuts for even thinking of such a thing, but based on the record -- actually lack thereof, to this point in time -- who's to really say? Wish I could live another 100 years to see what the archaeologists, paleontologists, anthropologists and historians come up with! Er - got sidetracked there for a second - back to finding an image of Tiamat: Since Tiamat is "formless" it occurred to me (duh, Jan!) that all images of her thus far discovered, without exception, were from much later times, after Marduk had "killed her off," and she was thereafter depicted as a monstrous being. As dondelion says, history is (re)written by the victors.

More Photos from Christmas, 2008

dondelion, Isis and yours truly, at Isis and Michelle's new house. This photo was taken by Michelle in the living room - the fireplace (not seen) is in the background. Behind the curtains on the right is a sliding door to one of the patios and the pool. The chair that dondelion and Isis are sharing is Michelle's papasan chair. I was sitting on a "hard" chair to avoid pet dander. No - dondelion is not Chinese and no, I do not have lights embedded in my cheekbones. Isis and Michelle's pool. Even in December it's inviting! Isis had new grass laid in, the concrete surfaces around the patio and house were resurfaced, textured and painted, and the block fence was also painted to coordinate with the painted concrete and the newly-painted trim on the house. To the right is the golf course. During the early part of our visit, there was a sun-shower, it was raining on the golf course but on the other side of the fence where we were standing, it was dry! Later a fierce rain storm rolled in and blew branches and debris into the pool and pounded us as we drove back to the hotel. Here is Michelle in one of the 360 degree chairs - it turns in a circle 360 degrees so you can face the wide flat-screen t.v., the patio doors with a view of the pool or the fireplace. Behind is the "formal" front entry to the house. On the wall to the right of the entry is one of Isis' oil paintings (among other things, Isis is a painter). In the breakfast room where we ate brunch, dondelion relaxes next to another of Isis' paintings. No, it's not Twiggy although it does resemble the model during her hey-day in the mid 1960's. The table isn't visible - it's a Saarinen style white pedestal table surrounded by four deeply cushioned button- upholstered 360-degree rotating chairs in ecru.

Shriner's Temple

No need to tell you that Isis and Michelle are beautiful - I've got their photographs plastered all over this blog and in our anniversary articles at Goddesschess! Here they are outside the Shriner's Temple in Milwaukee. The Temple is a replica (but not in marble) of the Taj Mahal.