Is This the Oldest Depiction of the Virgin Mary?

The Virgin Mary/Maria is a Christian incarnation of the ancient Mother Goddess, She who has gone by various names throughout written and unwritten history: Mariah/Maya/Mari/Mare/Amaya/Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna/Isis/Hathor/Mut, etc.

The myth of a virgin giving birth to a "god" or demi-god through an "incarnation" is nothing new -- having shown up throughout the ages in various forms and cultures around the world (not just the Middle East). What I find most fascinating about this article is the association of the ancient Mother Goddess with water symbolism which means, essentially, She is the giver and sustainer of life itself.  No water - no life. Thus, she is feared above all others because she controls life itself, and her representatives on Earth -- females -- are feared above all else by the males of all species, and by male homo sapiens sapiens most of all.

Article at The New York Times:

Is This the Oldest Image of the Virgin Mary?

By MICHAEL PEPPARD

JAN. 30, 2016

THE Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the most revered woman in the Christian tradition. In the history of art, she appears almost as frequently as Jesus himself. But for the past 80 years, one of the oldest paintings of her may have been hiding in plain sight.

At the Yale University Art Gallery hang wall paintings from one of the world’s oldest churches. Buried by the middle of the third century, this house-church from eastern Syria had images of Jesus, Peter and David. The gallery showcases a well-preserved procession of veiled women that once surrounded its baptistery, a room for Christian initiation.

Off to the side, seldom noticed among the likes of Jesus and Peter, stands a different wall fragment, faded but still discernible: a woman bent over a well. Holding the rope of her vessel, she looks out at the viewer or perhaps over her shoulder, seemingly startled in the act of drawing water.

A detail of the baptistery painting from Deir ez-Zor, Syria, that may portray the Virgin Mary.CreditTony De Camillo/Yale University Art Gallery

Who is she? The museum’s identification is certainly plausible: “The painting most likely depicts a scene from the encounter between Christ (not shown) and a woman from Samaria,” as recorded in the Gospel of John.

But historians also know that the Samaritan Woman, a repentant sinner who conversed at length with Jesus, was usually depicted in dialogue with him. This woman appears to be alone. Is it possible that a painting from a building excavated in 1932 and publicized around the world has not been correctly identified?

These murals come from the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, a military outpost variously called “Dura” or “Europos” in antiquity. Perched high above the Euphrates in the region that is now called Deir ez-Zor, the ruins of Dura-Europos have yielded more distinct artifacts than almost any other ancient archaeological site: an intact Roman shield, a lavishly painted synagogue, a temple to the gods of nearby Palmyra. It is the “Pompeii of the Syrian desert,” declared Michael Rostovtzeff, director of Yale’s excavations at the site.

 But no Vesuvius buried this Pompeii. Portions of Dura-Europos were buried intentionally, to bolster a rampart against a Sasanian army invading from the east in the 250s. The misfortune of the Roman garrison, which lost the battle, would become good fortune for historians. The earthen rampart sealed cross-sections of many buildings, including the house-church, so that both contents and date were secure.

The church’s painted baptistery remains a unique discovery. Outside of funerary contexts, such as the catacombs in Rome, there are precious few Christian paintings from before Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century. These also offer a glimpse into the beliefs and rituals of Syrian Christians, a community currently in peril.

While the Samaritan Woman at the Well was a respected biblical figure for early Christians, there was actually a more prominent “woman at the well” in Syria: the Virgin Mary during the Annunciation, when an angelic visitor informed her of her miraculous pregnancy. Where does this episode take place? The setting of the canonical account, in the Gospel of Luke, is not specified. But the second-century biography of Mary’s early life, usually called the Protevangelium of James, describes how one day, during a break from her work, “she took the pitcher and went forth to draw water, and behold, a voice said: ‘Hail, you are highly favored, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.’ And she looked around on the right and on the left to see from where this voice could have come.”

During this first encounter, at a well or spring, the angel was heard but not seen. Mary appeared to be alone. Most people, when they imagine the Annunciation, have in mind some western Renaissance masterpiece: a studious, cloistered Mary welcoming the angel from the comfort of home. But Byzantine images of the scene, though coming centuries later than the figure from Dura-Europos, bear an arresting formal resemblance to it.

An annunciation scene from a Byzantine 12th-century illuminated manuscript.CreditBibliothèque Nationale de France

The brilliant illumination in James of Kokkinobaphos’s “Homilies on the Virgin” and the grand mosaic from the Byzantine monastery at Chora in Istanbul both demonstrate the importance in eastern Christianity of placing Mary at the well.

Some manuscripts even depict this type among illuminations of the Gospel of Luke itself, showing that artists preferred the evocative iconographic traditions of the noncanonical text over the unspecified setting of the canonical one. At Chora, Mary’s figure can also be contrasted with the portrayal of the Samaritan Woman in the same church, who looks across a well at a pictured Jesus.

The woman at Dura-Europos has yet more secrets to reveal. Archival photographs and drawings made by the archaeologists on site show that the supposed absence behind the female figure is not totally silent — it speaks a couple of lines. That is to say, a field sketch of the wall done “to show additional details” depicts two painted lines touching the woman’s back, along with a kind of starburst on the front of her torso, features described as “unexplained” in the archaeological report. But with the new interpretation of the figure, in connection with the Eastern iconography that came later, the lines invite a rather evident meaning. They appear to represent a motion toward the woman’s body and a spark of activity within it, as if something invisible were approaching and entering her — an incarnation. If correct, this woman at a well is the oldest securely datable image of the Virgin Mary. [Ed. Note: Absolutely major!  There will be vehement scholarly protests, let's see if they trickle down into The NYT in future editions!]

Devotees of the Roman catacombs may demur, since a few female figures there are often presented as Mary. But these are challenging to date with certainty, and many scholars argue that the proposed examples have insufficiently specific iconographic signifiers.

Identifying the oldest image of Mary isn’t an end in itself. Re-identifying this woman helps us to ponder anew the distinctive emphases of early Christians in Syria, who in this baptistery celebrated salvation through images of marriage, pregnancy and birth — as much or more than through participation in a ritualized death [the symbolic eating of the corpse and drinking of its blood]. This is not to undermine the power of Jesus’ passion and resurrection accounts, but rather to rebalance the perspective of modern Western viewers, looking back after centuries of art focused on the cross. In the extant art from Dura-Europos, we see the hope of new spiritual birth, but the death of Christ is not pictured once.

Today the paintings from this church are safe. But further opportunities to understand early Syrian Christianity are slipping away, as the archaeological sites of Deir ez-Zor are being systematically plundered under the auspices of the Islamic State. According to satellite images and reports from the ground, the looting pits at Dura-Europos are innumerable. Even while the human tragedy of the refugee crisis justifiably occupies our attention, the destruction of cultural heritage tells a parallel narrative. Images from this ancient Syrian church are thus much more than museum pieces. They illuminate a people and heritage that need salvation — and not the kind of salvation found in a baptistery. [Ed. Note: And thus damn good reason to NEVER REPATRIOT ANY ARTIFACT THE WEST HAS REMOVED from the Middle East or elsewhere.  There are ISIR/Daesh lurking around every corner, every era.]

Michael Peppard is an associate professor of theology at Fordham University and the author, most recently, of “The World’s Oldest Church: Bible, Art, and Ritual at Dura-Europos, Syria.”

I Am SICK OF SPOILED ROTTEN DUDES Getting Their Way

From The New York Times

She Was Asked to Switch Seats. Now She’s Charging El Al With Sexism.

The Saturday Profile

By ISABEL KERSHNER FEB. 26, 201

JERUSALEM — Renee Rabinowitz is a sharp-witted retired lawyer with a Ph.D. in educational psychology, who escaped the Nazis in Europe as a child. Now she is about to become a test case in the battle over religion and gender in’s public spaces — and the skies above — as the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing El Al, the national airline, of discrimination.

Ms. Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, “this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I’d guess around 50 or so, shows up.”

The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. Soon, Ms. Rabinowitz said, a flight attendant offered her a “better” seat, up front, closer to first class.

Reluctantly, Ms. Rabinowitz, an impeccably groomed grandmother of 81 who walks with a cane because of bad knees, agreed. ”Despite all my accomplishments — and my age is also an accomplishment — I felt minimized,” she recalled in a recent interview in her elegantly appointed apartment in a fashionable neighborhood of Jerusalem.

“For me this is not personal,” Ms. Rabinowitz added. “It is intellectual, ideological and legal. I think to myself, here I am, an older woman, educated, I’ve been around the world, and some guy can decide that I shouldn’t sit next to him. Why?”

That is just what many feminists and advocates of religious pluralism in Israel and abroad have been asking in what by all accounts is a growing phenomenon of religious Jewish men refusing to sit next to women on airplanes. Several flights from New York to Israel, on El Al and other airlines, have been delayed or disrupted as women refused to move, and there have been social media campaigns including a protest petition.

Special Clay Used by First Nations People Proven to REALLY Work

Interesting news today -- see the press release below.

If only so-called "modern" people paid more attention to what their ancestors and "less civilized" inhabitants of this Earth co-existing with us did and do today to treat infections and various illnesses and diseases  -- if only.  Sadly, there is already a FOR PROFIT corporation involved in developing potential "drugs" from this miracle clay given freely to us by Mother Nature. I believe it will just be a matter of time before the Heiltsuk First Nation People who entered into this compact with the Devil are swindled fully out of whatever they think they have retained of their rights by the people behind this corporation.  We, who think we are so damn smart, continue to ignore Culpeper, author of English Physician and Complete Herbal in the mid-17th century:  Culpeper believed medicine was a public asset rather than a commercial secret, and the prices physicians charged were far too expensive compared to the cheap and universal availability of nature's medicine.  Wikipedia.  So what if people die?  It's all about the filthy lucre, darlings.

Press Release issued by the University of British Columbia

First Nations’ ancient medicinal clay shows promise against today’s worst bacterial infections

Media Release | January 26, 2016

Naturally occurring clay from Kisameet Bay, B.C. — long used by the Heiltsuk First Nation for its healing potential — exhibits potent antibacterial activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, according to new research from the University of British Columbia.

The researchers recommend the rare mineral clay be studied as a clinical treatment for serious infections caused by ESKAPE strains of bacteria.

The so-called ESKAPE pathogens — Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae,Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species — cause the majority of U.S. hospital infections and effectively ‘escape’ the effects of antibacterial drugs.

“Infections caused by ESKAPE bacteria are essentially untreatable and contribute to increasing mortality in hospitals,” said UBC microbiologist Julian Davies, co-author of the paper published today in the American Society for Microbiology’s mBio journal.

“After 50 years of over-using and misusing antibiotics, ancient medicinals and other natural mineral-based agents may provide new weapons in the battle against multidrug-resistant pathogens.”

The clay deposit is situated on Heiltsuk First Nation’s traditional territory, 400 kilometres north of Vancouver, Canada, in a shallow five-acre granite basin. The 400-million kilogram (400,000 tonne) deposit was formed near the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 10,000 years ago.

Local First Nations people have used the clay for centuries for its therapeutic properties—anecdotal reports cite its effectiveness for ulcerative colitis, duodenal ulcer, arthritis, neuritis, phlebitis, skin irritation, and burns.

“We’re fortunate to be able to partner with UBC on this significant research program” said Lawrence Lund, president of Kisameet Glacial Clay, a business formed to market cosmetic and medicinal products derived from the clay. “We hope it will lead to the development of a novel and safe antimicrobial that can be added to the diminished arsenal for the fight against the ESKAPE pathogens and other infection-related health issues plaguing the planet.”

In the in vitro testing conducted by Davies and UBC researcher Shekooh Behroozian, clay suspended in water killed 16 strains of ESKAPE bacteria samples from sources including Vancouver General Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital, and the University of British Columbia’s wastewater treatment pilot plant.

No toxic side effects have been reported in the human use of the clay, and the next stage in clinical evaluation would involve detailed clinical studies and toxicity testing. Loretta Li, with UBC’s Department of Civil Engineering, is conducting mineralogical and chemical analyses of the clay as well. MITACS, Kisameet Glacial Clay Inc. and the Tally Fund supported the work.

Kisameet Clay Exhibits Potent Antibacterial Activity against the ESKAPE PathogensmBio American Society for Microbiology
January/February 2016 Volume 7 Issue 1 e01842-15

Those Clever Babylonians and Astronomical Geometry

Hola darlings!

Saw this on my round of online newspaper reading, article at The Washington Post:

Clay Tablets Reveal Babylonians Discovered Astronomical Geometry 1,400 Years Before Europeans

By Joel Achenbach
January 28, 2016

The medieval mathematicians of Oxford, toiling in torchlight in a land ravaged by plague, managed to invent a simple form of calculus that could be used to track the motion of heavenly bodies. But now a scholar studying ancient clay tablets suggests that the Babylonians got there first, and by at least 1,400 years.

The astronomers of Babylonia, scratching tiny marks in soft clay, used surprisingly sophisticated geometry to calculate the orbit of what they called the White Star — the planet Jupiter.

These tablets are quite incomprehensible to the untrained eye. Thousands of clay tablets — many unearthed in the 19th century by adventurers hoping to build museum collections in Europe, the United States and elsewhere — remain undeciphered.

But they are fertile ground for Mathieu Ossendrijver of Humboldt University in Berlin, whose remarkable findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. Ossendrijver is an astrophysicist who became an expert in the history of ancient science.

For a number of years he has puzzled over four particular Babylonian tablets housed in the British Museum in London.

“I couldn’t understand what they were about. I couldn't understand anything about them, neither did anyone else. I could only see that they dealt with geometrical stuff," he said this week in a phone interview from Germany.

Then one day in late 2014, a retired archaeologist gave him some black-and-white photographs of tablets stored at the museum. Ossendrijver took notice of one of them, just two inches across and two inches high. This rounded object, which he scrutinized in person in September 2015, proved to be a kind of Rosetta Stone.

Text A. (Trustees of the British Museum/Mathieu Ossendrijver)

Officially named BH40054 by the museum, and dubbed Text A by Ossendrijver, the little tablet had markings that served as a kind of abbreviation of a longer calculation that looked familiar to him. By comparing Text A to the four previously mysterious tablets, he was able to decode what was going on: This was all about Jupiter. The five tablets computed the predictable motion of Jupiter relative to the other planets and the distant stars.

Latest Research Shows Simultaneous Domestication of Cats

Hola darlings!

Oh yeah - simultaneous inventions, simultaneous developments of animal domestication, simultaneous invention of agricultural practices that led to the establishment of permanent settlements and a new way of life, not to mention the simultaneous invention of CHESSLIKE games in different areas of the world, etc. etc.  The old argument -- was it diffusion or was it simultaneous inventions and developments by cultures and peoples separated by thousands of miles from each other?  The wise answer is:  It was both.

This latest research demonstrates that when it comes to the domestication of cats, it was simultaneous in different parts of the world, and diffusion of certain breeds that became dominate only took place with the introduction of cross-cultural trade routes thousands of years later.

Paris, 22 January 2016

Cats domesticated in China earlier than 3000 BC

Were domestic cats brought to China over 5 000 years ago? Or were small cats domesticated in China at that time? There was no way of deciding between these two hypotheses until a team from the 'Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique: Sociétés, Pratiques et Environnements' laboratory (CNRS/MNHN), in collaboration with colleagues from the UK and China¹, succeeded in determining the species corresponding to cat remains found in agricultural settlements in China, dating from around 3500 BC. All the bones belong to the leopard cat, a distant relation of the western wildcat, from which all modern domestic cats are descended. The scientists have thus provided evidence that cats began to be domesticated in China earlier than 3 000 BC. This scenario is comparable to that which took place in the Near East and Egypt, where a relationship between humans and cats developed following the birth of agriculture. Their findings² are published on 22 January 2016 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The cat is the most common domestic animal in the world today, with over 500 million individuals. All of today's domestic cats descend from the African and Near Eastern form of the wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica). According to work published in 2004, humans and cats first started to form a close relationship in the Near East from 9000 to 7000 BC, following the birth of agriculture.  

In 2001, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing discovered cat bones in agricultural settlements in northern China (Shaanxi province) dating from around 3500 BC. Was this evidence of a relationship between small Chinese cats and humans in the fourth millennium BC in China? Or was it the result of the arrival in China of the first domestic cats from the Near East? There was no way of deciding between these two hypotheses without identifying the species to which the bones belonged. Although there are no less than four different forms of small cat in China, the subspecies from which modern cats are descended (Felis silvestris lybica) has never been recorded there. 

To try to settle the question, a collaboration of scientists principally from CNRS, the French Natural History Museum (MNHN), the University of Aberdeen, the Chinese Academy of Social Science and the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology undertook a geometric morphometric analysis³, which, in the absence of ancient DNA, is the only way of differentiating the bones of such small cats, which have very similar morphologies whose differences are often imperceptible using conventional techniques. The scientists analyzed the mandibles of five cats from Shaanxi and Henan dating from 3500 to 2900 BC. Their work clearly determined that the bones all belonged to the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). Still very widespread in Eastern Asia today, this wildcat, which is a distant relation of the western wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), is well-known for its propensity to frequent areas with a strong human presence. Just as in the Near East and Egypt, leopard cats were probably attracted into Chinese settlements by the proliferation of rodents who took advantage of grain stores. 

These conclusions show that a process comparable to the one that took place in the Near East and in Egypt developed independently in China following the birth of agriculture in the eighth millennium BC. In China it was the leopard cat (P. bengalensis) and not the western wildcat (F. silvestris) that started to form a relationship with humans. Cat domestication was, at least in three regions of the world, therefore closely connected to the beginnings of agriculture. 

Nevertheless, domestic cats in China today are not descended from the leopard cat⁴ but rather from its relation F. silvestris lybica. The latter therefore replaced the leopard cat in Chinese settlements after the end of the Neolithic. Did it arrive in China with the opening of the Silk Road, when the Roman and Han empires began to establish tenuous links between East and West? This is the next question that needs to be answered. 

Notes:

¹ Principally from the University of Aberdeen, the Chinese Academy of Social Science and the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology.
² This work was supported in particular by Labex Bcdiv.
³ Geometric morphometrics is used to study and analyze the shape of a structure (for instance, it enables skulls of different species with very similar morphologies to be compared).
⁴ The leopard cat was again domesticated in the nineteen sixties, producing, by hybridization with domestic cats from the silvestris species, a cat breed known as the Bengal breed.

Bibliography:

Earliest “domestic” cats in China identified as Leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis). Vigne J.-D., Evin A., Cucchi T., Dai L., Yu C., Hu S., Soulages N., Wang W., Sun Z., Gao J., Dobney K., Yuan J. PLOS ONE. 22 January 2016.

Another Ancient Eqyptian Queen Discovered, Another "History" as "Wife" Blown Up

Hola darlings!

Here is an article forwarded from Michelle, daughter of Georgia, my cohort here at Goddesschess, about the unmasking of yet another historical myth about the role a female played in the ancient Egyptian hierarchy of rulers.  When Mr. Don was alive he fondly referred to us as "his" three Goddesses :)

Georgia, Michelle and Yours Truly, New York en route to Statue of Liberty, 2009.
Chess Goddesses :)

Yet another one down (historic myth accepted as fact) and another one down, another one bites the dust...

Early Egyptian Queen Revealed in 5,000 Year Old Hieroglyphs
from Yahoo, as reported at Live Science by Owen Jarus

January 21, 2016:

About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Carved in stone, they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs, archaeologists say.

They reveal new information on the early pharaohs. For instance, one inscription the researchers found tells of a queen named Neith-Hotep who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago as regent to a young pharaoh named Djer.

Archaeologists estimate that the earliest carvings at Wadi Ameyra date back around 5,200 years, while the most recent date to the reign of a pharaoh named Nebre, who ruled about 4,800 years ago.

The "inscriptions are probably a way to proclaim that the Egyptian state owned the area," team leader Pierre Tallet, a professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne, told Live Science.

He explained that south of Wadi Ameyra, the ancient expeditions would have mined turquoise and copper. Sometime after Nebre's rule, the route of the expeditions changed, bypassing Wadi Ameyra, he said.

Early female ruler

The inscriptions carved by a mining expedition show that queen Neith-Hotep stepped up as ruler about 5,000 years ago, millennia before Hatshepsut or Cleopatra VII ruled the country.

While Egyptologists knew that Neith-Hotep existed, they believed she was married to a pharaoh named Narmer. "The inscriptions demonstrate that she [Neith-Hotep] was not [emphasis added] the wife of Narmer, but a regent queen at the beginning of the reign of Djer," Tallet said.

 'The White Walls'

An inscription found at Wadi Ameyra shows that Memphis, an ancient capital of Egypt that was also called "the White Walls," is older than originally believed.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers claimed that Memphis was constructed by a mythical king named Menes, whom Egyptologists often consider to be a real-life pharaoh named Narmer, Tallet explained.

The new inscription shows that Memphis actually existed before Narmer was even born.

"We have in Wadi Ameyra an inscription giving for the first time the name of this city, the White Walls,and it is associated to the name of Iry-Hor, a king who ruled Egypt two generations before Narmer," Tallet said. The inscription shows that the ancient capital was around during the time of Iry-Hor and could have been built before even he was pharaoh. [Could "The White Walls" be a reference to the prehistoric White Goddess, who later cropped up in culture after culture, in many different forms?]

Board Game Pieces Found in Ancient Roman Settlement in Germany

By ​LAURA GEGGEL LIVESCIENCE.COM September 21, 2015, 10:56 AM

Board game pieces found in ancient Roman settlement

The remnants of ancient water wells, pearls and hairpins are proof that a group of villagers set up a settlement on top of a military fort in ancient Roman times.

About 1,900 years ago, a group of Roman soldiers lived in a fort in what is now Gernsheim, a German town located on the Rhine River about 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Frankfurt. Shortly after the soldiers left the fort in about A.D. 120, another group of people moved in and built a village literally on top of the settlement, researchers found.

Archaeologists have known about the site itself since the 1800s, but the new finding sheds light on its inhabitants and what they did for fun. (An ancient die and game piece were among the discoveries.) 

Image credit: Thomas Maurer

[See Photos of the Dice and Artifacts Found in the Roman Village]

Chess, Gambling, and Cards: Tudor Indoor Pasttimes

Maybe the Saudi Mufti read this article before he issued his condemnation of chess as "gambling" (typical silly male religious nonsense -- see post below).

From BBC History Magazine online:

Chess, gambling and cards: Tudor games and indoor pastimes

Thursday 14th January 2016
Submitted by: Emma Mason

Hundreds of years before the invention of radio or television, how did the Tudors occupy themselves of an evening, or during long, winter nights? Melita Thomas, the editor of Tudor Times, investigates…

Wandering around a Tudor house or garden on a sunny day is a delightful experience. We can imagine the lady of the house in her velvets and French hood picking flowers and herbs, or the maid turning those herbs into cooking ingredients or medicine. Visiting during the day, we seldom think of what the evenings must have been like – long hours, with no entertainment other than what the household could provide. How did they while away the evenings? The answer is board games – some of which we still play to similar rules today, and some that have been adapted over time. 

Chess

The most enduring game of all is chess, which has been played in western Europe since the early Middle Ages – witness the beautiful Lewis Chessmen (chess pieces of walrus ivory, found on Lewis in 1831, but likely made in Norway in around AD 1150–1200). The rules of chess, however, underwent a significant change in the mid-to-late 15th century when the queen, originally a weak piece, became the most dominant figure on the board. 

From The Book of Chess and Games commissioned by
King Alphonso X of Castile, c. 1283.  Two ladies playing.
Hand/finger positions indicate clues to moves.  Source.

The romantic among us might date the change to the emergence of powerful  female rulers, such as Isabella I of Castile or Anne of Beaujeu, regent of France from 1483-91.

Chess-playing was an essential social skill for the upper classes in the Tudor period. The inventory of goods belonging to Catherine of Aragon, taken after she had been banished from court in 1531, revealed two ivory chess-boards with pieces; a set of red and ivory chess men; and a further box of ivory chessmen. These were all commandeered by Henry VIII.

Katherine Parr, Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I are also known to have played chess. The game was so much a part of court life that Henry VIII’s accounts show a payment made to a cook for creating two chessboards and men of sugar, decorated with gold, for a banquet. 

Again? Islam Prohibits Playing Chess

Let's see, how many times, over the course of Herstory have males in their long flowy feminine robes from various "religions" attempted to outlaw/ban chess as somehow "sinful?"  Need you any further proof that chess is, indeed, The Game of the Goddess?  But try as they might, the religious patriarchs have not succeeded in abolishing Her, and they never will.

Checkmate: Saudi grand mufti makes move against chess

By Don Melvin, CNN

January 22, 2016

(CNN)   So does everyone need to roll up their rooks and box up their bishops?  Maybe not, but some people in Saudi Arabia might be wondering.

Saudi's grand mufti, the kingdom's top cleric, was appearing on a religious TV channel, taking questions about faith and sin and that sort of thing.  And he got one about chess.

Not one to hesitate, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin-Abdullah al-Sheikh said chess and similar games are "forbidden" in Islam because they're a form of gambling.  He supported his statement with a verse from the Quran: "Indeed wine, gambling, idols and the divining arrows are abominations of Satan's doing, so avoid them, so that you may be felicitous." [But dressing pre-puberty boys like girls and making them dance for adult males and then sexually assaulting them with anal intercourse is just fine.]

The grand mufti called chess "a waste of time, money and a reason for the enmity between players."

The clip was posted on YouTube last month. It is unclear when it aired on TV; CNN was trying to reach the channel, Saudi station Al-Majd, for comment.

A member of the Saudi Chess Association said the group was surprised by the video but had received no formal notification, and the group is hoping for clarification.  The chess association began a two-day championship in Mecca on Friday. Another two-day tournament, the Riyadh Chess Championship, is scheduled for early June.

Twitter users reacted to the comments with humor and sarcasm. [Comments omitted.]

CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali and Melissa Gray contributed to this report.

Was Eve Created From Adam's Penis? Or - The Origin Of Knight Moves

How could I possibly resist posting this article - well, I couldn't, and here it is.  Perhaps this hypothesis holds the key as to why ALL human embryos start out as females and then some morph into males in a later phase of development.

From Discovery online:

Eve Was Created From Adam's Penis: Bible Scholar

DEC 30, 2015 03:59 PM ET // BY ROSSELLA LORENZI

Eve was not made from one of Adam’s ribs, but was instead created using a bone in his penis, a Biblical scholar has claimed, causing much stir.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 says God made Adam from of the dust of the ground, then created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs.

Ziony Zevit, distinguished professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University in California, argues that the Biblical story has been wrongly interpreted since a mistranslation confused rib with baculum, or penis bone.

First presented in the 2013 book “What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” Zevit’s shocking claim has recently resurfaced in a paper published in Biblical Archaeology Review [Bravo to Hershel Shanks], causing heated controversy among outraged Christian readers.

According to Zevit, the bone of contention — literally — centers around the Hebrew word “tsela,” used in the Old Testament to indicate the bone taken from Adam to create Eve.

“This Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, where it refers to the side of a building or of an altar or ark, a side-chamber, or a branch of a mountain. In each of these instances, it refers to something off-center, lateral to a main structure,” Zevit wrote.

Tsela was first translated as rib in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible dating to the mid-third century B.C.

It would have then lost its original meaning, which according to Zevit relates to “limbs lateral to the vertical axis of an erect human body: hands, feet, or, in the case of males, the penis.”

“Of these appendages, the only one lacking a bone is the penis,” Zevit wrote.

This would explain why the human penis has no “os baculum,” or bone, unlike most mammals, including primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees.

It would also clear up why men don’t have an uneven number of ribs compared to women.

In this view, the part in Genesis 2:21, in which God closes the flesh beneath the “tsela,” should be interpreted as to God closing up the flesh that exists on the underside of the penis.

Not surprisingly, Zevit’s phallic interpretation of the Biblical story has come under fire, with several readers of Biblical Archaeology threatening to cancel their subscription.

Israel’s daily Haaretz also entered the debate, arguing that ancient linguistics provide no support for the theory.

“Ziony Zevit’s theory is even more unlikely than the original story,” journalist Elon Gilad wrote.

He remarked that ribs generated life in stories predating the Hebrew bible, such as the Sumerian myth Enki and Nihursag.

He noted that tsela is still used in post-biblical Hebrew to mean rib, and has cognates meaning rib in other Semitic languages.

“That powerfully indicates that tzela meant rib thousands and thousands of years before proto-Semitic split up into the different Semitic language,” Gilad concluded.

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I am fascinated with the root meanings of words.  Could it be possible that tsela, a word of Semitic origin, might be demonstrated by the ancient Egyptian god Min (ancient Egyptian is closely related to Semitic languages), a pre-dynastic god of male fertility and power and also, perhaps, the original inspiration for "knight moves" (pun intended) - see image below - from the Tour Egypt article referenced below (no attribution of the image was given in the article):

Check out this information from touregypt dot com, under "Min":

Min was always a god of fertility and sexuality. He was shown as a human male with an erect penis. In Egyptian times, he was usually an ithyphallic bearded mummiform man, standing with both legs together, an arm raised holding his symbol or a flail and wearing the same low crown with twin plumes as Amen. (The way he holds his flail might be symbolic of sexual intercourse - the flail forms the V while his upraised forearm seems to thrust inside the V.) The Egyptian paintings and reliefs on tomb walls and temples didn't show Min's other arm, but the statues of the god show him with his hand encircling the base of his penis. During New Kingdom times he was sometimes shown as a white bull, an animal sacred to the fertility god.

Notice the "L" shape made by Min's bent arm upthrust (a 90 degree angle) into the "V" formed by the flail he is holding (actually, sort of balancing on his fingertips).  Notice also the "L" formed by Min's erect penis 90 degrees angled outward from his legs.

Perhaps the Creator was "killing two birds with one stone," as the old saying goes: demonstrating sexual intercourse (Min's upright arm thrusting into the inverted "V" for vagina formed by the flail), and in case you missed that allusion it is difficult to miss Min's "stiff as a bone" erect penis, the 90 degree angle that incorporates the knight's move -- and hey - could those possibly be boardgame pieces to the right of Min at approximately thigh level (located underneath Min's erect penis, reminding us, perhaps, of the origins of the slang term "boner").  

Just as a reminder, here is a graph of potential moves a knight could possibly make on the chessboard - covering eight potential target squares (don't they make a lovely rosette in honor of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna):

From Reddit.com

Now darlings, lest you think I am completely insane, please read this very interesting article on why there are so many different words for "penis" in Hebrew, and then you tell me why tsela should NOT be included with, for instance, the Hebrew word zayin, as just another euphenism for penis:  Why Hebrew Has So Many Words for Penis, July 15, 2015, Haaretz.  Also informative was Strong's Concordance on the word tsela.

Ancient "Go" Board Excavated as Part of Marquis of Haihun's Tomb

I'll just get right to it!  Here's the pic of the game board -- I'm so glad they actually photographed it and included that photo in the article released to the general public about some of the magnificent items uncovered in the excavation of this tomb:

Chessboard found at the excavation site of royal tombs of Marquis of Haihun State, inNanchang, capital of East China's Jiangxi province. [Photo/jxnews.com]

A chessboard was also found in the "Haihunhou" tomb, according to Jiangnan City Daily. 
The chessboard is not complete, but was apparently used for playing games. According to
experts, it resembles the modern game "go", but has yet to be fully identified. If the 
chessboard was for "go", it would be the earliest "go" chessboard unearthed in China.

Link to full article at The Daily Mail (December 27, 2015), with link to article and photographs at China Daily article that was updated on November 19, 2015.

While the article refers to this as a "chessboard" it is far too large to have anything to do with Xiangqi, which was played on a 9 by 9 square board. [While the chessboard of the West is 8 by 8 squares, Xiangqi pieces were placed on the intersections of the squares and thus the board playing surface was reduced to the equivalent of an 8 by 8 board.]  My guess if that this is probably a board on which "Go" was played, but appears to be less than one-half of the board, assuming it was a square board.  It is unclear from the description quoted above whether the rest of the board is missing or if it is still underneath what appears to be layers of mineral deposits that have yet to be chipped away???

The tomb is that of the Marquis of Haihun, who briefly sat as Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty in China (206 BCE - 24 CE) before being deposed.  This is what the article said about him:

It is thought the main tomb at the site in Jiangxi, an eastern Chinese province where archaeologists were digging at Christmas, belongs to Liu He, who was the grandson of Emperor Wu.

Liu was given the title Haihunhou, or Marquis of Haihun after he was dethroned after 27 days as emperor.  It is believed he was deposed because he lacked both talent and morals.

Evidently he wasn't killed or forced to commit suicide immediately -- which I find extremely unusual.  Why wasn't he killed?  That was the usual modus operandi for the Chinese (of course, not only for them, when disposing of some inconvenient heir to a throne) back in the day.  In any event, he was some years after his "impeachment" in 74 BCE given the title of Marquis of Haihun and given a marvelous royal burial when he died, in 59 BCE.

I find reading about Chinese successions to emperor, etc. confusing at best, but Wikipedia tries to put it into plain English here.