Agni, Barbarian, half-god, dreamtime, baetyl

Babel, half-god, hymn to Agni, barbarian, Hyperboreans, Herodotus, Aristotle, Virgilius, avgud, abgott, dreamtime, algonquian, Baetylus, baetyl, idol, archetype, Genesis, Aphrodite

How can we speak about Babel as fact if some of us do not believe that Babel ever existed or existed as some letters on a paper? I am writing much about understanding the messages not only in text and glyphs but also in the entire message. Another aspect is what kind of language they use in archaeology.

In scientific language we usually expect correspondence between reality and words, otherwise it is speculation and imagination/ fiction. Then this essay on the topic "Archaeology and language" is an introduction to my studies in ancient scripts. It is essential that we use exact language and speak the same language when we are discussing or at least we should have some compiler between different tongues.

The idea to coming essays I got from Discovery where an elderly investigator of cave art spoke about the pictures in a cave. At a particular image of a bison he told that the painter had seen the structure of the cave wall and then he saw the spirit of a bison and outlined the shape with painting. We often hear about those painters making magic out of painting and try to catch the spirit of the animal.

How does anyone know about the thinking of our ancestors? Do they use some special crystal globe when they are on the bike? I think they forget to set a label when they tell things in this way. They should say, "My imaginations tells me usw." … I think those hunter painters discussed the nature of the animal and how to catch and where was the best place to spear it.

Religious people like my grandma, New Age people and some other archaeologists use a very different language and much of it is based on beliefs that should not be questioned or cannot be proofed. It is the preconceived idea that our ancestors were more spiritual than we are. It is supposed they saw spirits in everything. It is much like the language of poets and there is some pattern in the words that could look like a description of the topic on the agenda.

In fact our ancestors used much the same language when they described the unknown world of those days I think. They made odd figures out of known things to describe the unknown. The worst is that the spectator today believes that our ancestors meant the symbol and not the meaning of the symbol that could be an abstract quality. To be a prisoner under the words in religion is very easy.

Surely we could make several categories of languages. Here I set the "poetic" category against the "scientific" that want to understand what the language describes since language is just a tool for describing the unknown. We have to keep track of what is reality and what are abstract ideas with no real existence. That is the way we westerners think. They tell that the Japanese and Chinese think differently since their script consists of pictures or pictorial symbols. When they describe the world they just paint a row of pictures. That is much our "ancestors tongue" and even the spiritual people of today use that technique.

That means that the table your are sitting at could "speak to you" about its shape, its colour, its functions and of course the people around it. Our ancestors were bound to pretending since they wanted to understand the nature around them. This is logic and not imagination. But how should we describe the process of pretending. Some prefer to tell about the spirit of the animal speaking to the spectator, while our western scientific mind ask for some more concrete an detailed description of that process.

Half-god

traduction par / translation by Ian Russell Lowell

Hymn I. Agni.

An Egyptologist told that he always became confused when being in the temples and reading the scripts. It is much like schizophrenia. I think it depends on the ancient language that was filled with metaphors, allegories and analogies. We Westerners are not use to pictorial language and double thinking. It is easy to see the "gods" as persons and the intrigue about human life.

For the Greek mythological world I recommend the Greek Karl Kerenyi. When he write about the mythological persons he mostly give us the meaning of the name

Barbarian

Warm up from Herodotus ca 440 BC Book II

This illustrates the problem in understanding and giving name to foreign people in ancient times … For some reason I think about people from Skaane as well as the Danes speaking deep in the trout. However for people today writing mre or less scientific language there is no reason to copy ancient Greek, I think

Some words make it immediately evident that the writer writes pamphlets to satisfy some ruler or imaginary cultural imperialism.

Greek Aristotle 350 BC means that:

Roman Virgilius wrote in Aeneid ca 19 BC.

But when generation after generation copies the attitude and word we could ask if they ever think about what they mean. There are lots of writers still using the word 'barbarian' about people outside limes. They become Pro-Roman and at the same time they discriminate people.

How do they define 'barbarian'? The Greeks meant simply that it was a foreigner with language they did not understand … and linguists tells that maybe because foreigners were bearded. It is much like my foster mother that told I should not visit her if I had bear ... I know everything about being the Barbarian. The hubris of the Greek implied that they thought the Greek culture was much better higher than outside Greece. They did not mention Egyptians and Persians with much older and wider culture I guess, since that would lower Greek culture.

We also learn that Barbarians are uncultured, but compared to what and according to which references? Do writers of today really know if the Barbarians lacked culture and that they were crueller than Roman imperialists? To me it seems that most Roman writers told rumours about Barbarians and never visited or spoke with Barbarians. I see it as bad science if we in our time just copy ancient writers without analysing the truth and intentions. They just copy the behaviour of some ancient writers. I do not know if they think they become more sophisticated cultural beings? Anyway it is like borrowed feathers.

To the same category of language with bias is the Christian words and values mixed into the text. That is not objective language that could fit 21^st century with Human Right and whatever high stuff we say we use. In Scandinavian and German we have the word avgud, Abgott that does not exist in English since we use the more neutral 'idol' with more positive sound. The word 'pagan' has the understood value of unenlightened and irreligious. How do they know that. As far as we can see most ancient people even in the wilderness practised some kind of religion and were enlightened as much as they needed in everyday life

Here I borrow a definition from Wikipedia and some sociologist I believe:

A non-pejorative, simply functional concept of "barbarian," as sociologists have redefined the term, depends upon a carefully-defined use of "civilization," denoting a settled, urban way of life that is organized on principles broader than the extended family or tribe, in which surpluses of necessities can be stored and redistributed and division of labor produces some luxury goods (even if only for gods and kings). The barbarian is technically a social parasite on civilization, who depends on settlements as a source of slaves, surpluses and portable luxuries: booty, loot and plunder.

Take the last sentence that sounds like our neo-liberals. They tell that social welfare sector in state is parasite on private enterprise. However as soon as social welfare is produced as private enterprise it is not parasiting???

The first sentence led to the conclusion that only city-life is civilised and then non-parasite. However how would the cities live without food produced by "parasites". It is a tricky question since I would see the Roman urban societies as parasites in the countryside and when they subdued other people. The word 'barbarian' was also used outside the empire about people that could not parasite the empire.

I see the definition as pure rubbish and I ask do we need the word 'barbarian' at all?

Dreamtime

From Australia and their Dreamtime we can take this cut from a present folk memory:

In the short piece we see how focus change from the bird to man and mankind and everyday life. That is because the Dreamtime is endless of course since time is added all the time. Dreamtime has no timeline and there is not border/ step between the idea and reality. The Australians have their language and we have ours.

We hardly understand that our ancestors for instance the Celts were using the concept "worlds" instead for grammatical tenses like past tense, future tense and present time. For people living at that time it was no problem to move between the past world/grave and the present. It is like a reflex that many believe that our ancestors were more spiritual than we are. They created animated language they believe was used in those days. That creates distance between now and then and sometimes it gives the flavour of primitive ancestors and that is not my worldview

Many writers set focus on the abstraction instead for on the reality behind. Many philosophers through the ages have done the same mistake by believing that the word as such is reality. That means, "when the word is outspoken the problem is solved", they think. The Sumerians told that the hero Gilgamesh fell in dreams when the problems came and then his mate Enkidu (the first to do it) did the hard work. In our words this means split of mind and body. In reality we cannot make the split and the ideas of the mind need hard work to get results. Normally the outcome is in the focus for the people.

The word Algonquin means "At the place of spearing fishes and eels". The meaning tells about people living in the countryside and that is reflected in their language that tells, "nature is our brother". Environment, available technology and size of population decide what kind of culture grows in a certain place. It can be measured only within the frames of the place. It is just cultural imperialism if urban people try to apply urban frames on the countryside. And it is just stupid foolishness.

Because the Northern climates made agriculture difficult, the Algonquin were a semi-nomadic people, moving their encampments from one place to the next in search of food, which came from hunting, trapping, fishing and the gathering of various plant roots, seeds, wild rice and berries. They travelled on foot and by birchbark canoe in the summer months, and used toboggans and snowshoes in the winter. Their clothes were made from animal skins, as were their tents, also known as wigwams; sometimes also covered with birchbark.

Baetylus

It is quite annoying when some words in a text is non-intelligible for me. I read in 30 lines about Tanit and I wonder if the writer understood the text himself:

baetylic column, astral baetyl, baetylic form,

cuippus, altar-cippus, acroteria

… and I could not find these words in my Concise Oxford Dictionary. Especially 'astral baetyl' puzzles me. Normally I leave such texts since at Internet there are bunches of easily read articles. But I can also make a search on 'baetyl' and get bunches of suggestions. Since I have recently met the word in several places I made a check and got some etymology in 7630 URLs:

I would not use word like these: endowed with life. These fetish objects … since that is disparaging and could be understood as political flavour and baetyls were made also of other material than meteoric stone. … Sometimes when I have to remember something I make a knot on my handkerchief or set a rubber band around my ear. Then I am making it "baetylic" as a natural act. We have a lot of baetylic things in society. That is when we make icons and idols for common use with underlying meanings. "Already" the Sumerians and early Egyptians made baetyls and usually of stones since stone is eternal. For long it was use that pillars, altars and other ritual facilities were made of stones (sometimes wood) with no engraving that could tell anything.

In our time we need wide definition of 'baetyl' that is carrying the known or unknown convention of the ritual stone, stone row or part, stone circle or part, pillar and other details in shrine or temple. Local people could carry the meaning for thousands of years as for instance Bride's Suite used about a stone row in Bohuslen and many more foundations with a name that sound reasonable as heritage from Stone Age.

Even god, deity and godhead need wider definition in connection with baetyl. For instance they gave names Rahu and Ketu to rising and descending node of the moon. Sometimes the names are misunderstood as planets, but in late time they are manifested as Dragon Eye and Dragon Tail and then certain stars. In ancient days they used the same word for star and planet. Many more "gods" are just important concepts in every day life. Nearest example that some tells that baetyl was Baetyl son of Ouranos.

I rather use neutral common words like idol and archetype for picturing abstract entities. It is not the place for adding some pseudo-values about pagan to this when we look at the general use. Who would blame Moses for the use of the baetyl: Genesis 28:22 "And this stone which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house" … It was an elegant scapegoat since it was forbidden to picture God, but not to make a house for him.

I understand this that a stone = bethel as such can symbolise god or anything else as soon as the community make the convention. The language of those days was not poor but many poetic metaphors were used and strange words were created.

The most famous ancient baetyl is the black stone in the Aphrodite temple at Paphos Cyprus … the Danish king Erik Ejegod visited the temple in 1096 AD and died there. Maybe the experience was too hot for the king who usually kept a "harem" at home. Local people tell that the Lady is so wonderful that she cannot be pictured.

Lucian of Samosata wrote in middle first century in his Dea Syria

It is his knowledge and opinion of the time but the events go a few thousand years back as we see the use in the Negew Desert in Stone Age. The Egyptians probably started with baetyls and the temples in the Levant were influenced especial few hundred years before the Hyksos when Egyptians dominated in the entire Levant in early second millennium.

In the Levantine temples were usually one, two or three pillars representing deities. For instance the Asheras seem to have been the lotus stalks that symbolises the helpers of the fertility goddess Ashera/ Astarte. We see lotus stalks at both side of the goddess also in India and in some connection they are named Asvins. Same developments from stones to statues we see in Greece were Cadmus = the Phoencians brought some new ideas during a period. There is a rumour that Baetylus was son of Ouranos so the high gods must have created the idea.

To be continued