Zodiacal dating the Gundestrup Cauldron
Interior of Panel A of the Gundestrup Cauldron, image from Wikipedia
The Gundestrup Cauldron is a fantastic piece of large, intricate silverware, weighing around 7 kilos. It was found in a Danish bog in 1891, but its manufacture is thought to date to the first few centuries BC, or perhaps slightly after.
It is formed from several panels displaying mythological scenes, including many animals and humanoid faces. The main panel that concerns us is the interior of Panel A, shown above. This particular panel is very similar to the Pashupati Seal, which features in Prehistory Decoded (shown below).
Pressing from the Pashupati Seal, Mohenjo-Daro, India, image from Wikipedia.
The Pashupati Seal possibly shows an early version of Shiva, known as Rudra, an Indian horned god, surrounded by animals. The zodiacal date of this seal is given in Prehistory Decoded as around 1950 BC, to within a few hundred years, which agrees with its established dating. The similarity of this figure with the seated deity on the Gundestrup Cauldron, thought to be the Celtic deity Cernunnos, suggests they are actually different versions of the same Indo-European 'sky-father' deity.
Later, in Christianity, this image was cast as the Devil, a horned god associated with serpents said to have control over animals. It is clear how this Christian belief developed. The Indo-European image of the 'sky-father' is replaced, in Christianity, with a different image of the 'sky-father' deity - a bearded old man surrounded by Cherubim. But both the Indo-European and Christian versions have clear associations with comets and comet swarms.
Anyway, let's get back to the point - zodiacal dating the Gundestrup Cauldron. Looking at the animals in this scene which correlate with our ancient zodiac, we see the bull, stag, lion, and fish, which correspond to Capricornus, Aquarius or Gemini, Cancer or Leo, and Pisces respectively. This ignores the animal to Cernunnos' right, normally thought to be a canine, which does not (yet) feature in our zodiac.
I have chosen Capricornus instead of Taurus here for the bull because we know from the Pictish symbols that at this time and in this region the bull still represented Capricornus. Likewise, from Pictish symbols we know the fish is used to represent Pisces at this time. But we don't yet know whether the stag is being used here to represent Aquarius or Gemini (see an earlier post 'Stag vs Ibex'), or whether the lion is being used to represent Cancer or Leo.
However, the earliest date for Pisces as the spring equinox is around 100 BC, and the latest date for Capricornus as the winter solstice is around 0 AD. So we have already narrowed down the date to around 100 BC to 0 AD, which agrees perfectly with the conventional date for the Cauldron
This automatically tells us that the lion and stag are being used to represent the summer solstice transition between Cancer and Gemini, which also occurs around 100 BC. This also explains why there are five animals in this scene - the lion-stag pair is being used to represent a transition. We have seen this convention before in pre-dynastic Egypt.
The remaining animal is the canine, which should therefore represent Virgo at the autumn equinox around 100 BC. However, until now, Virgo has always been represented by the bear in our ancient zodiac. Is it possible this figure is not actually a dog or wolf, but is instead a bear? Perhaps. Or it might be that the bear has been replaced by the dog - after all, they are reasonably similar. Indeed, there is precedence for mistaking images of bears for other animals in these kinds of scene. At Catalhoyuk, the bear was initially thought to be a goddess giving birth. And what are probably bear symbols in Palaeolithic art have been described as hyena. The same thing happened for a stone fragment found at Gobekli Tepe. It displays an animal described as a hyena by the site's archaeologists, but which we have decoded as a bear. On the other hand, we expect to find lots of bear-like Pictish symbols, but they actually seem to be very rare. Instead, there are several symbols interpreted as wolves or dogs in Pictish art. So it does seem that by this time in Celtic Europe, the dog/wolf has replaced the bear, in most cases, for the constellation Virgo. Why might this have happened? Perhaps it was simply a copying error in some ancient time that perpetuated.
Ultimately, it seems that the zodiacal date of the Gundestrup Cauldron is 100 BC, to within 100 years.
One final comment. The bottom of the Cauldron has a detailed figurine of a bull lying down next to a dog. It is the centrepiece of the Cauldron, and likely has some significance.
Interior bottom panel of the Cauldron, with bull and dog, image from WIkipedia.
This time the dog is clearly not a bear, but it is 'splayed' in exactly the correct manner for representing Virgo - just like the bear symbols at Gobekli Tepe and Catalhoyuk. I think this seals the matter - the (hunting?) dog seems to have replaced the bear in representing Virgo in Celtic Europe. In turn, this means it is likely that the dog/wolf in Pictish art also represents Virgo. Bingo!
Hi Martin, I've finally had time to sit down and read your book. It's very well written, easy to read and packed full of information. I was constantly saying to myself 'is he going to include X' and within a paragraph or two X would show up. Well researched. I only really have two misgivings with it, it's a shame you couldn't get approval to use big colour photos as I understand it someone wouldn't let you use their GT photos. The other misgiving is chapter 2 seems like it's getting into the meat of it but 3-6 it seems to go into a tangent about uniformitarianism and comets. I recognise these are important to put in, but do represent a bit of monolith early in the book, someone wanting to read about ancient civilizations might get impatient reading them - I know I was even though I like physics.
ReplyDeleteA question though, everything seems to revolve around the taurid meteor stream - were any of the other meteor streams investigated or are they really inconsequential?
And just for your own interest, I was watching some of Brian Foerster's youtube videos and saw that there is massive heat damage at the colossi of memnon on their east face and also at Petra - not too far away there is heat damage there on their western faces. I'm not sure what videos they were as it was a while ago. But I assume those are from the 8.2k event and either both local or pointing to something larger happening in perhaps the north sinai region.
Great book, thank you for taking the time to write it.
Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed (most:) of it. Yes, the DAI wont let me use their images at all - neither in the book or in research papers. They don't like my theory at all, despite the overwhelming evidence.
ReplyDeleteYes, I expect you are right. It would be odd if ancient people were only interested in the Taurids. Although it is much larger than any other meteor stream, we currently only observe a weak and diffuse part of it. It might be difficult to determine whether there was any interest in other meteor streams - probably we should look for snakes emanating from the bodies of other constellations. Perhaps they will show up in further excavations of Gobekli Tepe - a lot remains to be uncovered.
I wonder if massive heat damage to megalithic structures can be dated somehow ...