Ancient Sumerians knew about precession too
The Uruk Vase (from Wikipedia)
In recent weeks I have shown how the Ancient Egyptians must have known about our ancient zodiac and precession of the equinoxes. I've now begun to look at ancient Mesopotamia. There are many obvious links between them which I'll present in the coming weeks. However, in this first look at ancient Sumer I want to focus on one of its oldest and most important artefacts, the Uruk Vase.
A series of Stone-Age cultures inhabited the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys after the Younger Dryas period. This region includes much of present-day Iraq and Syria to the west of the Zagros Mountains. After the 8.2 kiloyear event archaeologists have labelled these people the Halaf, Samarra, Hassuna and Ubaid cultures, which combined take us up to around 3800 BC. After this, in southern Mesopotamia, we have the Uruk period which then takes us into Bronze Age Sumer around 3100 BC.
Uruk is thought to be the largest and most important city throughout the transition from the Uruk period to the Sumerian period. It housed over 50,000 people at its height, including, apparently, the Legendary King Gilgamesh. The Sumerian Kingdom that followed lasted around 1000 years, before being consumed by the Akkadians and then the Babylonians. The Uruk Vase was found in the ruins of Uruk City in 1933, and dates to the Ubaid-Sumer transition, around 3200-3000 BC, shortly after Earth's transit through the core of the Taurid meteor stream. Egypt, to the south west, was just about to unite under the first Dynastic Pharaohs.
The vase likely shows a feast or celebration for Inanna, the major female Deity in this region, who mirrors Hathor in Ancient Egypt. Inanna, also a sky-deity, has both destructive and fertility traits. Like Hathor, in her destructive guise she is often accompanied by leopards or lions. In addition to her human female form, she is also often represented by a curved 'door-post' symbol, a very strange aspect that I will come back to in later posts.
The Uruk Vase shows several levels. The bottom level (not shown) likely represents the Underworld. Above this we have a line of domestic animals, presumably on their way to slaughter for the feast. Above them, there is a procession of people carrying gifts - mainly in the form of food.
The top-most level on the vase represents the heavens - where the Gods live. Inanna is out of shot to the left in the above image. But notice the pair of animals supported by platforms with semi-circles on top. The semi-circles, in my view, represent the sun on the horizon - just like the 'handbags' at the top of the Horus Stone at Gobekli Tepe. Probably, they are telling us these animals actually represent constellations at the solstices or equinoxes. So we should be able to read a date from them.
In fact, two of these animals are the same as those in the Cippus of Horus scenes (see an earlier post about Ancient Egypt). We have a leopard/lion and an ibex/gazelle, representing the summer solstice (Leo) and winter solstice (Aquarius) from around 3400 to 1800 BC. Perfect.
Both civilisations (Sumer and Egypt) also invented writing at around the same time, just before 3000 BC. Clearly, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Sumer are not so different. Both these civilisations likely inherited much of their mythology, language and technology from a much older common 'ancestor' culture, as discussed in Prehistory Decoded.
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