Uncategorized

Troy (Ancient Greek: Troia and Ilion, or Ilios; Latin: Trōia and Īlium; Hittite: Wilusa or Truwisa; Turkish: Truva) was a city situated in what is known from Classical sources as Asia Minor, now northwest Anatolia in modern Turkey, located south of the southwest end of the Dardanelles/ Hellespont and northwest of Mount Ida at Hisarlık. It is the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad (Ancient Greek: Ilias, sometimes referred to

Utu Utu (Akkadian rendition of Sumerian dUD “Sun”, Assyro-Babylonian Shamash “Sun”) is the Sun god in Sumerian mythology, the son of the moon god Nanna and the goddess Ningal. His brother and sisters are Ishkur, Ereshkigal, and his twin sister Inanna. His center cult was located in the city of Larsa. Utu is the god of the sun, justice, application of law, and the lord of truth. He is […]

In archaic times, people perceived the sun, in its shining prime and glory, the giver of heat and light and life, to be the effulgent force of the female. A passionate aspect of the great mother, the versatile jill-of-all-trades who issues forth and supports whole life. She is the heaven Illuminating goddess, Amaterasu Omikame, in […]

The Hittite Empire spread throughout Anatolia, covering a large part of what is now Turkey and Syria as well as some parts far eastward and southward of there (accounts vary). The scarce remains of the texts regarding the deities worshipped by the Hittites are tantalizingly fragmentary but reflect and/or influenced myths from Mesopotamia across the west […]

The Mother Mercury and Venus are visible only in twilight hours because their orbits are interior to that of Earth. Venus is the third-brightest object in the sky and the most prominent planet. Mercury is more difficult to see due to its proximity to the Sun. Lengthy twilight and an extremely low angle at maximum elongations make […]

Cybele (“Kubeleyan Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she has a possible precursor in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where the statue of a pregnant, seated goddess was found in a granary dated to the 6th millennium BCE. This corpulent, fertile Mother Goddess appears to be giving birth on her throne, which has two feline-headed hand rests. The inscription Matar Kubileya at a Phrygian […]

Hausōs One of the most important goddesses of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion is the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman. Her name is reconstructed as Hausōs (PIE *hewsṓs- or *hausōs-, an s-stem), besides numerous epithets. Derivatives of *h₂ewsṓs in the historical mythologies of Indo-European peoples include Indian Uṣas, Greek Ēōs, Latin Aurōra, and Baltic Aušra (“dawn”, c.f. Lithuanian Aušrinė). Germanic *Austrōn- is from an extended stem *hews-tro

“The sun casts a shadow.” No one knows when this revelation occurred to ancient humans, but it is clear from carvings on animal bones from 30,000 ago that some awareness of the sun and moon were thought to be important enough to encode for convenient reference by Shamans. By Dr. Sten Odenwald (Catholic University of […]

Ensi Ensí (spelled pa.te.si in cuneiform script hence occasionally transliterated “patesi”; possibly derived from en si-k, “lord of the plowland”; borrowed into Akkadian as iššakkum) is a Sumerian language title designating the ruler or prince of a city-state. Originally it may have designated an independent ruler, but in later periods the title presupposed subordinance to a lugal (King/Emperor). In the city state of Ashur, the hereditary ruler bore […]

Hausos One of the most important goddesses of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion is the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman. Her name is reconstructed as Hausōs (PIE *hewsṓs- or *hausōs-, an s-stem), besides numerous epithets. Derivatives of *hewsṓs in the historical mythologies of Indo-European peoples include Indian Uṣas, Greek Ēōs, Latin Aurōra, and Baltic Aušra (“dawn”, c.f. Lithuanian Aušrinė). Germanic *Austrōn- is from an extended stem *hews-tro-

The original homeland of all ancient Semitic peoples, including Hebrews, was not northern Arabia, as is currently believed, but northwestern Mesopotamia. Around 6,000- 4,000 years B.C., an ecological catastrophe in the Black Sea area forced the Indo-European tribes to migrate outward in all directions. On their way to the south and the south-east, the Indo-Arians […]

Fixed Stars The Fixed Stars were so called by the ancients to distinguish them from the Planets, or Wanderers, which are heavenly bodies moving perceptibly across the sphere of the Zodiac. Fixed Stars do not move across the ecliptic in the same way as planets do and in classical times were believed to be fixed to a gigantic celestial sphere, which […]

“As an AFOL (Adult Fan of LEGO), I’ve continued my love of LEGO into adulthood and have never really given up my love of these plastic bricks. I also happen to love mythology and reading about it. Recently I’ve found myself coming up with ideas for some characters to render into brick or minifigure form. […]

Dingir Dingir is a Sumerian word for “god.” Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for “deity” although it has related meanings as well. As a determinative, it is not pronounced, and is conventionally transliterated as a superscript “D” as in e.g. DInanna. Generically, dingir can be translated as “god” or “goddess”. The sign in Sumerian cuneiform (DIĜIR) by itself represents the Sumerian word an (“sky” or “heaven”), the […]