daglion

TheNemrut Dag Lion

For a larger copy of the lion, drag the picture to your desktop.

In the article "Gods of Nemrut Dag", has a photo of a great lion that is pretty well destroyed. Even so, its celestial pattern represents the night sky on July 7, 62 or 61 BC. The lion looks a bit battered to have such an exact date. If it could be that accurate, was it done with an Arabic star tracking system?¹

According to Mr Dogget of the US Naval Observatory (now deceased), there is a big difference between the star tracking using pregression that we use today and the Arabic tracking system that does not seem to have the pregression data included.

Since the difference between the two star tracking systems are so divergent, let us look at the symbolic language of the Lion and his star companions. The most striking feature of this monument is that around the neck, wtih an image that could be part of the mane, a comet is enter in an area of a "reclining" crescent moon, i.e., Mars, as the comet, and Aphrodite, as the moon goodess, now replaced by Diana the huntress.

This may relate to the Greek story of Hephaestur and his wife Aphrodite who wandered into a tryst with Ares/Mars.³ Why such a pretty story associated with a burly lion? When Hephaestus was informed by the Sun about his cheating wife, he created a bronze net in his forge. The net was used to enclose the two who were in the process of cuckolding him, and their discomfort at being caught made the other sky gods laugh so hard, that they fell out of their seats. What a story! But how does it relate?

First: What are the components of a comet? It has a speeding meteor as its head and a long (or short) gasseous tail. The tail has been reported at times, as being an iridescent blue/green, icy white, or flaming red. Let us assume that the iridescent blue/green is a night time color, but when the sun comes up and meets the comet about noon time in the sky, as recorded in the Maya Popol Vuh,³ it glitters like gold as it enveloped the moon in the sky, and was difficult to look at because one could not see on account of its brightness.⁴

Second: What do comets do when they get close to our atmosphere? Recently, on February 18, 2008, there was a huge fireball that hit the earth in northwest Canada , the states of Washington, Oregon. It lit up the Rockies for more than 400 square miles. It also sounded like a jet that roared overhead: People woke up at the sound as their windows rattling in their frames and with the bright light that shone though the house even when they was shuttered tight. Their pets howled in fear and hid under the beds. In short, it was,[in modern terms,] like a billion-watt light bulb or as if a thousand electric transformers blew up at once.⁵

All the above occured in November of 2008, but it is no longer newsworthy, a bit frightening at the time, but no one got hurt and no one died, so the event was shelved in the dark corners of the newsrooms.

A different comet flew over the Arabian Desert a long time ago and it has never been forgotten. It left several of its meteorites in a huge crater called the Wabar Craters. With every tour, ithe event is recalled by a guide who sings:

From Qariya strikes the sun upon the town;
Blame not the guide that vainly seeks it now,
Since the Destroying Power laid it low,
Sparing nor cotton smock nor silken gown.⁶

There have been many comets striking the earth over the eons, but the comet path we are referring to is noted in the Popol Vuh trasnlated by Adri㌻ Recinos, in 1974:

Pero no fue que llegaran a entregarse todas las tribus, ni que cayeran en batalla las [habitantes de los] campos y las ciudades, sino que se engrandecieron a causa de los Señores prodigiosos, del rey Gucumatz and del rey Cotuhá. Verdaderamente, Gucumatz era un rey prodigioso. Siete días subía al cielo y siete días caminaba para descender a Xibalbá; siete días se convertá en culebra y verdaderamente se volvía serpiente; siete días se convertía en águila, siete días se convertía en tigre; verdadermanete su apariencía era de águila y de tigre. Otros siete días se convertía en sangre coaguilada y solamente era sangre en reposo.⁷

The italized words translate as:

[Gucumatz]" for seven days rose into the sky; and for seven days walked to Xibalbá seven days [later] he became a serpent (truly he turned into a serpent); seven days [later] he became an eagle; again seven days he became a tigre [lion?] (he really became an eagle and a tiger). Another seven days he became coagulated blood but it was only blood at rest" [just before the human threw a rabbit into his face so he would move away from the earth.]

So the God Gucumatz is the comet as it moved across the sky. The date on our great monumental lion with the comet and moon around its neck is July 7, 62 or 61 BC. Now, if that date were translated to AH instead of BC, the proper date would be 622 plus 51-2 equaling 673-4 AD. This fits into the Aztec calendar date of 676 AD while the Maya calendar that Linda and her epigraphers calculated from the stelae and other monuments with surrourule after that astonishing event and noted it in their stelae.

Even Kaye Almere Read, in her book, Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos, recorded the poem, "The Birth of the Fifth Sun" that not only described the sound of the comet, but also the meteorites as they dropped into the ocean, bouncing in and out of the water due to their extreme heat,⁸ together with a perfect description of our sun with its sun spots and sun flares that burst from the orb of the sun and flies off into space.⁹ [Wonder where the Aztecs got that kind of susn description without telescopes?]

There is much more data available to this event and subsequent references to it by various rulers. But this is only a short version of those events.

¹ Lobell, J. A. (2002) Gods of Nemrut Dag, Archaeology, pp. 32-35 November/December p. 35.

²Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV - 170 and 189, p. 191, Sun revealed to Vulcan that Venus and Mars were making love. Vulcan fashioned a superfine net of bronze that caught them in the act. Vulcan invited all gods to see disgrace. The goddess of Cythera sought revenge on the Sun.

³Tedlock, Dennis (1996) Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 304 Note for page 161: it is only his [the sun's] reflection that remains.The northwest comet meeting the estern sun in the center of the sky is recorded in Thompson, Eric (1930:132)

⁴ Thompson, Eric (1970) p. 344: The recent discovery of clay mines possibly used for ritual potting is recalled in Eric Thompson's book: Elsie McDougall's report to J. Eric Thompson contained information from an old Kekchi woman who attributed skulls in a cave near Coban to people living before the creation of the sun. When the sun appeared they stayed in caves, was for the light so bright they could not see. By day they made pots; at night they came to the surface. (Thompson 1970:344). (MacLeod & Puleston 2002:4)

⁵Dowd, Allan, Reuters: Fri Nov 28, 1:52 pm Searchers find remains of fireball meteo,VANCOUVER, British Columbia: A comet passsed overhead this month, February 18, 2008 and shook some people awake at 5:30 AM. Came from the west, northwest. Thought to have a light so bright. "It would be something like a billion-watt light bulb," and also over Washington State.
Roach, John (2008) National Georgraphic News, Frebruay 21, 2008: The light was bright enough to wake up people even though the shades were pulled, and then the sonic boom hit, rattling windows and making the dust fly, and the dogs crawled under the bed," Pugh said. "And following the heavy boom, in a number of cases we have rumbling a few minutes later. This kind of sound effect usually indicates there are rocks on the ground."

⁶Ali, Abdullah Yusuf (Ttranslator) (1938) The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an [Koran] Vols. I-II, Arabic-English Text. Vols. I-II, Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Kitab al-Masri, Publishers. Sura CI: Al-Qari'a, [Qariya ] or The Day of Noise and Clamour, pp. 1776-1778.

⁷ Recinos, Adrián (1974) Popol Vuh: Las antigua historias del Quiché, Costa Rica; Editorial Universitará Centroamericana (EDUCA), Tercera Edición. p. 141.

⁸ Read, Kaye Almere (1998) Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos. Bloomington & Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p.53 and notes on page 248: ". . . like grease in a skillet." it has the same description as the Hawaiian meteorites falling into the water and bouncing in and out of the water and breaking up due to its own Kelvin heat [Melville, L. (1969) Children of the Rainbow. Wheaton, Ill. USA: The Theosophical Publishing House, p. 32]

⁹ Ibid, p. 51: Nanahuatzin . . . And his incense consisted of only scabs that he was twisting off ." The scabs were asssumed to be sexual in context, but the sun's flares are thrown away constantly. Is the sexual aspect, the translators or the astronomers view of the sun?