El Arquero

A common scene on Mesopotamian terracotta plaques features a couple having sex on a bed, viewed from above (BM 115719).

A set of 7th century Akkadian incantations were designed to produce “ŠÀ.ZI.GA” (“rising of the heart”), a term for successful male sexual performance, which I translate below as “erection.”  In other words, they were the ancient Mesopotamian equivalent of Viagra.

This is one of the most concise and well-preserved examples.  I have included the accompanying ritual and the Akkadian transcription of the spell, in case anyone wants to try this at home (Results Not Guaranteed).  This particular ritual is one of the simpler ŠÀ.ZI.GA ones; others include tying a live ram to the man’s bed or rubbing his genitalia with a mixture of oil and iron ore.

Incantation: May the wind rush and the garden tremble! [1] May the cloud thicken and the shower fall! May my erection be rushing river water. May my penis be a harp string, [2] so it cannot slip out of her. [3]

Ritual: Take a harp string.  Tie three knots in it.  Recite the incantation seven times.  Tie it around his right and left hands.  

Etruscan Bronze Cista Feet, 4th Century BC

Each in the form of a winged female deity, perhaps Lasa, standing on a beaded groundline with voluted ends, surmounting a lion paw, the deity depicted frontally with her feet turned out, pulling her tunic to the right with her right hand and up over her shoulder with her left hand, wearing a necklace and a beaded fillet in her hair, with her wings upraised, the details of the feathers incised, with two perforations and a tenon on the reverse for attachment.

Syro-Hittite Terracotta Horse and Rider, Late 2nd - Early 1st ML BC

Very Rare Celtic Coin of the Cantii

This gold quarter stater is from the reign of Dubnovellaunus and was struck circa 25 BC to AD 5. Obverse: ‘Pentagram’ type, blank die with banding. Reverse: Horse right, ring-pellet above, pentagram below, dispersed pellets in field.

The Cantii or Cantiaci were an Iron Age Celtic people living in Britain before the Roman conquest, and gave their name to a civitas of Roman Britain. They lived in the area now called Kent, in south-eastern England. Their capital was Durovernum Cantiacorum, now Canterbury. They were bordered by the Regnenses to the west, and the Catuvellauni to the north. Julius Caesar landed in Cantium in 55 and 54 BC, the first Roman expeditions to Britain. He recounts in his De Bello Gallico v. 14: “Ex his omnibus longe sunt humanissimi qui Cantium incolunt, quae regio est maritima omnis, neque multum a Gallica differunt consuetudine.”  - Translation - “Of all these (British tribes), by far the most civilised are they who dwell in Kent, which is entirely a maritime region, and who differ but little from the Gauls in their customs.”

Rare Luristan Master of Animals Bronze Bracelet, 10th-8th Century BC

Large Gothic Rock Crystal Loop Buckle with Garnets, 5th Century AD

Of gilt-bronze with carved rock crystal loop and inlaid garnets

A small number of belt buckles made from rock crystal have been found and mostly related to the Ostrogoths, the Eastern branch of the Gothic confederacy of tribes; the Western branch being the Visigoths who would go on to settle Southern France, Spain and North Africa. The Ostrogoths traced their origins to the Greutungi – a branch of the Goths who had migrated southward from the Baltic Sea and established a kingdom north of the Black Sea, during the third and fourth centuries, and their name would appear to mean ‘glorified by the rising sun.’

ZIGGURATS: STAIRWAYS TO HEAVEN

This is an excerpt from my post: THE SUMERIANS, FOREFATHERS OF CIVILIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA.

The great step-pyramids of Mesopotamia are known as ziggurats (Akkadian zaqāru;”to build on a raised area”, “to rise high”. Babylonian ziqqurratu, “rising building”). The precursors to the ziggurats were simple platforms used to elevate the temple, these date as far back as the 4th millennium BCE while the eventual step-pyramids arose a millennium later. These ziggurats and their temples were seen as focal points that linked Heaven and Earth, the higher they reached, the closer to heaven they were. In the later city of Babylon, there was a ziggurat named Etemenanki, “temple/house of the platform/foundation between/of heaven and earth”, a ziggurat that consisted of 7 terraces, each a different color, with a total height of almost 300 feet and a ground floor measuring to about 300 by 300 feet.

^ Reconstruction of the Etemenanki ziggurat of Babylon.

The ziggurat was part of a greater temple complex which included a shrine, storage house for rations, courtyards, living quarters for its priestly inhabitants as well as their inevitable resting place, cemeteries in and outside the ziggurats. The ziggurats were not meant for public worship and were restricted to all but the priests, believing that the gods themselves would descend from the heavens and dwell within the shrine.

“On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple with a fine large couch in it, richly covered, and a golden table beside it. The shrine contains no image, and no one spends the night there except one Babylonian woman, all alone, whoever it may be that the god has chosen. The Chaldaeans also say – though I do not believe them – that the god enters the temple in person and takes his rest upon the bed.” – Herodotus, Histories 1.181-2.

The majority of them were built by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians but they were also found in Elam and the Iranian Plateau, the latter of which has the earliest known Ziggurat in existence (c.3000 BCE), Tepe Sialk (modern day Kashan, Iran).

^ CAD rendering of Sialk ziggurat based on archaeological evidence.

The construction of the Great Ziggurat of Ur was started by Ur-Namma and finished by his son, Shulgi. A rectangular pyramid with a diameter of 210 by 150 feet and a height of 70 to 100 feet; the vast range here is due to the fact that the height is speculative being that only the foundation of the step-pyramid has survived.

^ US soldiers at the Ziggurat of Ur, Tell el-Mukayyar, Iraq.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein “reportedly has customarily placed military installations near cultural locations”, parked his soviet-made MiG-21 fighter-bombers “right next to the pyramid” of Ur assuming that, according to Dick Cheney, “obviously an effort to use the archaeologically significant facility to protect his military capabilities”. Dick Cheney places blame on Saddam Hussein for the unintended destruction inflicted on the “civilian neighborhoods, cultural sites and other non-military facilities” by allied bombers. [SOURCE]  

^ Ruins of a ziggurat at the Sumerian city of Kish. Babel Governorate, Iraq.

It is believed that the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of languages was inspired by both the ziggurats and the ancient Sumerian story of ’Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta’. In the Sumerian myth Enmerkar the king of Uruk wages war against the King of Aratta, and is to recite the ‘Incantations of Nudimmud’ which causes the languages spoken by the lands of Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Akkad and Martu to either be confused or united under one spoken tongue. According to Dr. Samuel Noah Kramer, one of the foremost authorities on the Sumerians, the text reads:

“The whole universe, the people in unison To Enlil in one tongue [spoke].”

“(Then) Enki, the lord of abundance (whose) commands are trustworthy, The lord of wisdom, who understands the land,the leader of the gods, endowed with wisdom, the lord of Eridu Changed the speech in their mouths, [brought] contention into it, Into the speech of man that (until then) had been one.”

If there are any errors please privately inbox me so I can update it. As always, if you’d like to read or learn about any specific historical subjects just let me know what they are and I will take note of them.

See Also:

For information on one of the earliest recorded civilizations on earth, the Mesopotamian flood myth, the evolution into city-states and their rivalrous history - read: THE SUMERIANS, FOREFATHERS OF CIVILIZATION IN MESOPOTAMIA.

Etruscan Bronze Mirror, 4th-3rd Century BC