AAL’S LABYRINTH HISTORY An Alternative Viewpoint…..contd. #53

 NINTH CENTURY BC (899-800)

From the ninth to eighth century BCE, Etruscans occupy north and central Italy, whilst Greeks colonise southern Italy and Sicily. Etruria, the land of Etruscans, will be at its zenith from the seventh to sixth century BCE. Herodotus thought the Etruscans came from Lydia in Asia Minor.

 

Assyrian Fighters

c883 BCE          ASHURNASIRPAL or ASHURNAZIRPAL II (r. 883-859 BCE) As king he takes Assyria to a new peak of revival. He contributed to the establishment of a more centralized Assyrian state by appointing governors to rule the western regions of the Mesopotamian Empire. (114). His leadership will be continued by his son Shalmaneser III. Ashur-nasipal II is to extend the temple town of Nimrud, founded by Shalmaneser I c1250, to make it the capital of his new empire of Assyria.

                        The national god of the Assyrians is Ashur, a god of battle depicted as eagle-headed and winged, usually in combination with the winged solar disc surmounted by a warrior. This is reminiscent of Egypt’s own winged solar disc and that of the Babylonians. Ashur is indeed identified with the storm god Baal (Bal-Marduk) of the city of Ashur and has similarities to Yahweh of the early Israelites, that is, the tribes of Jacob. (114)

Syrian winged Sun God.

[Time Life ‘History of the World’]

c850                  HOMER: the great Greek poet whose works, the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’, record the mythology of the ancients in the form of epic poems. This is primordial mythology suggesting indivisible synthesis of the individual and the universal, a theme that is a strong underpinning to many philosophies. Homer’s writings also show the dual mythological heritage of the ancient Greeks as can be seen in the warring ‘Iliad’ of patriarchal themes, and in the softer ‘Odyssey’ of matriarchal themes. (19)

                  Homer, as a representative of the archaic mind, saw an inseparable connection between the empirical and the archetypal. The endurance of his ideas will be demonstrated in the future great masters, Socrates (c420 BCE) and Plato (c365 BCE) as these philosophers 

Homer’s ‘Odyssey’. Odysseus trying to resist the

call of the Siren or the voice of the feminine soul.

                     Around this time is the first compilation of the Hebrew ‘Five Books of Moses’, the ‘Bereshit’ or ‘In the Beginning’. In the future, its Greek translation will be called ‘Genesis’.  According to this early version, in the beginning god created man and woman at the same time and equal and not in sequence as in a second compilation where Eve is taken from the rib of Adam. Adam and Eve are taken as symbolic of the split in the previously created androgynous human. Adam-Eve in turn can be seen to represent humanity as a polarity of man and woman, reflecting and expressing the fundamental polarity of the Cosmos and Life and as also seen in the Sun and Moon, polarity of day and night. Later, woman or the feminine side of that polarity, is designated as less than the male side or man, and this ‘dark’ side of the feminine moon or the misunderstood nature wisdom of woman, became known as Lilith.

Lilith: personification of the wisdom of the

Dark Night. Sumer c2000 BCE

c837                KING SHALMANESER III (d.824 BCE) the son and successor of Ashurnasirpal II (883 BCE) As King of Assyria (Syria/Iraq) this Shalmaneser leads an expedition during this year and the events recorded are the first mention of the ancestors of the Iranians, that is the Parsua or Persians (Sth Iran), and the Madai or Medes (Nth Iran). The Persians, as descendants of mythological Perseus, inhabit the mountains of Kurdistan. The Medes live on the plains of the Iranian Plateaux. (40) The dominant Persian cult of Mithraism is thought to be a mixture of Greek, Iranian and Gnostic elements, based on the more ancient Aryan fire worship of Mitra.

Arinna sun goddess, Hittite Queen of Heaven and Earth

[Time Life ‘History of the World’]

 

831                   Estimated total eclipse over Tanis and Bubastis in ancient Egypt, during the Third Intermediate Period; (240. 241) and thus, possibly heralding the famous ‘New Kingdom’ development of Ancient Egypt.

 

c800                HALLSTATT, Austria, a lakeside village built on salt mining, is claimed as the first of the early Celtic settlements, a people of the iron-age with developing culture that will spread across Europe. The people were anciently referred to as the ‘Keltoi’. [371]