I love the concept of homing snakes, but where do you attach the message?
Posted on 09/25/2007 12:19:09 PM PDT by blam
Snake-bird gods fascinated both Aztecs and pharaohs
Mon 24 Sep 2007, 17:05 GMT
By Robin Emmott
MONTERREY, Mexico, Sept 24 (Reuters Life!) - Ancient Mexicans and Egyptians who never met and lived centuries and thousands of miles apart both worshiped feathered-serpent deities, built pyramids and developed a 365-day calendar, a new exhibition shows.
Billed as the world's largest temporary archeological showcase, Mexican archeologists have brought treasures from ancient Egypt to display alongside the great indigenous civilizations of Mexico for the first time.
The exhibition, which boasts a five-tonne, 3,000-year-old sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and stone carvings from Mexican pyramid Chichen Itza, aims to show many of the similarities of two complex worlds both conquered by Europeans in invasions 1,500 years apart.
"There are huge cultural parallels between ancient Egypt and Mexico in religion, astronomy, architecture and the arts. They deserve to be appreciated together," said exhibition organizer Gina Ulloa, who spent almost three years preparing the 35,520 square-feet (3,300 meter-square) display.
The exhibition, which opened at the weekend in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, shows how Mexican civilizations worshiped the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl from about 1,200 BC to 1521, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs.
From 3,000 BC onward Egyptians often portrayed their gods, including the goddess of the pharaohs Isis, in art and sculpture as serpents with wings or feathers.
"The feathered serpent and the serpent alongside a deity signifies the duality of human existence, at once in touch with water and earth, the serpent, and the heavens, the feathers of a bird," said Ulloa.
Egyptian sculptures at the exhibition -- flown to Mexico from ancient temples along the Nile and from museums in Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria -- show how Isis' son Horus was often represented with winged arms and accompanied by serpents.
Cleopatra, the last Egyptian queen before the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, saw herself as Isis and wore a gold serpent in her headpiece, Ulloa added.
UNCANNY SIMILARITIES
In the arts, Mexico's earliest civilization, the Olmecs, echo Egypt's finest sculptures. Olmec artists carved large man-jaguar warriors that are similar to the Egyptian sphinxes on display showing lions with the heads of gods or kings.
The seated statue of an Egyptian scribe carved between 2465 and 2323 BC shows stonework and attention to detail that parallels a seated stone sculpture of an Olmec lord.
There is no evidence the Olmecs and Egyptians ever met.
Shared traits run to architecture, with Egyptians building pyramids as royal tombs and the Mayans and Aztecs following suit with pyramids as places of sacrifice to the gods.
While there is no room for pyramids at the exhibition -- part of the Universal Forum of Cultures, an international cultural festival held in Barcelona in 2004 -- organizers say it is the first time many of pieces have left Egypt.
They include entire archways from Nile temples, a bracelet worn by Ramses II and sarcophagi used by the pharaohs.
Mexico has also brought together Aztec, Mayan and Olmec pieces from across the country.
"Any visitor to Egypt and Mexico might be disappointed by the gaps in the museums. The only thing Egypt declined to loan were the mummies," Ulloa said.
Whilst were on the pyramid subject...too bad we couldn't have collectively watched the NUTJOB's sacrifice with an obsidian blade.
I love the concept of homing snakes, but where do you attach the message?
I think there's a business opportunity in "Snake-O-Grams".
LOL, this is mentioned right after a list of similarities between the cultures.
Satan
Ya write it on his tail. Just behind his eyeball.
For one thing, they don't float like ducks...they sink, which is good for them as they fish underwater and have to be able to stay down, and a duck's buoyancy would work against them.
Unlike most other water birds, they don't grab fish with their beak, they spear them.
Seems to be a thin line between reptile and bird.
Is that the god of eating habits, the diet deity?
I have believed that there was much more intercontinental travel in the past than the historians can account for. Odd stuff turns up all over.
What bothers me with the nicotine-cocaine mummy issue is that there was no evidence of Egyptians cultivating the plants, or any record of their use or sale. No pictures on the wall of either plant. The Olmecs, on the other hand, had pictures of both plants plus mushrooms, olliloqui, caapi vine, and a number of other entheogens, making it clear that these plants were known and used.
Another oddity is economic- say that they went over to America in reed boats or whatever. If they brought back tobacco and coca, why not corn, potato, tomato, capsicum?
Clearly.
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Thanks Blam. |
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Probably a ‘race memory’ dating back to when dinosaurs started growing feathers and turning into birds. :-)
Sounds like a “tower of Babel” story.
...and developed a 365-day calendar...
http://www.highdown.reading.sch.uk/highdown/pupil/time/calendars/360.html
“This 360 day calendar, like so many others, was changed during the 8th century B.C. to one of 365 days. The extra five days was simply added to the end of the year.”
Plutarch: “Hermes playing at draughts with the moon, won from her the seventieth part of each of her periods of illumination, and from all the winnings he composed five days, and intercalated them as an addition to the 360 days.”
thanks blam!
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