We are accustomed to the fact that the Christmas tree has to be decorated for the New Year, but in general this custom has to do not with the change of the calendar year, but with the Christian holiday of Christmas. Undoubtedly, here the Christian tradition, as often happened, borrowed elements of earlier, pagan rituals tied to the same seasonal period. But which ones and where did they come from? Historians of culture and religion were interested in the answers to these questions more than a hundred years ago, and they interest us today. Therefore, we have translated (with abbreviations) an article by the British scholar, Sir George Birdwood, published at the end of December 1910 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (Vol. 59, No. 3031), and we invite you to read it (a short annotation to it is published Jstor Daily portal). The views of the author do not correspond to modern ones in everything - this is especially true for the terms "Aryans" and "Aryan",which modern anthropologists no longer use, and linguists reduce them to a specific language family (Aryan), which has nothing to do, for example, with the ancient Scandinavians. Nevertheless, before us is a solid sample of scholarly prose a century ago, prepared for reading at Christmas.
The tree of life that grew
In the middle of Paradise, above all
Trees
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Vol. IV (lane by Ark. Steinberg)
It is only in the last 50 or 60 years that the fashion has spread in England to place the "Christmas tree" as a Christmas tree decoration and the most enjoyable way to give gifts to children on the occasion of the bright Christian holiday of Christmas. They say that this custom came to us from Germany, where it is believed to have come from; perhaps this is a relic of some ritual associated with the pagan Saturnalia, which was celebrated on the day of the winter solstice, and which the Christian church, around the fifth century AD, tried to supplant by instituting the holiday of Christmas. There is, however, another explanation, according to which this custom was borrowed from Ancient Egypt, whose inhabitants used to decorate their homes on the winter solstice with date palm branches - a symbol of the triumph of life over death and, therefore, a symbol of eternal life.triumphant at the onset of another successful and generous year. This idea is often justified by the fact that in Germany, instead of a "Christmas tree", they often install green paper pyramids, hung with wreaths and garlands of flowers, candy beads and other gifts for children. But similar pyramids, together with similar trees, moreover artificial, made of very expensive materials - precious stones and gold, were in India an attribute of Hindu wedding ceremonies, as well as other religious processions, for example, during Holi, the annual procession on the day of the vernal equinox. These pyramids personified the sacred mountain Meru, the earth, trees, including Kalpadruma - the Tree of Eternity - and the fragrant Parajita - the Tree of all perfect gifts, growing on the slopes of Meru. In a broader sense, they symbolized the greatness of the immense,spread out their constellations of the heavens, represented in the form of a tree, deeply rooted in the earth, bending under the weight of golden fruits. Both the pyramids and the trees are phallic symbols of life - individual, earthly, heavenly. Thus, if there is a connection between the ancient Egyptian custom of decorating houses with palm branches on the day of the winter equinox and the German, now widespread in England, custom to put on Christmas, for decoration and as a place for gifts, a brightly lit evergreen tree (most often a spruce), then most likely this relationship is due to indirect, and not direct relationship. This is also indicated by the fact that the Egyptians considered palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.bending under the weight of golden fruits. Both the pyramids and the trees are phallic symbols of life - individual, earthly, heavenly. Thus, if there is a connection between the ancient Egyptian custom of decorating houses with palm branches on the day of the winter equinox and the German, now widespread in England, custom to put on Christmas, for decoration and as a place for gifts, a brightly lit evergreen tree (most often a spruce), then most likely this relationship is due to indirect, and not direct relationship. This is also indicated by the fact that the Egyptians considered palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.bending under the weight of golden fruits. Both the pyramids and the trees are phallic symbols of life - individual, earthly, heavenly. Thus, if there is a connection between the ancient Egyptian custom of decorating houses with palm branches on the day of the winter equinox and the German, now widespread in England, custom to put on Christmas, for decoration and as a place for gifts, a brightly lit evergreen tree (most often a spruce), then most likely this relationship is due to indirect, and not direct relationship. This is also indicated by the fact that the Egyptians considered palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.if there is a connection between the ancient Egyptian custom of decorating houses with palm branches on the day of the winter equinox and the German, and now widespread in England, custom to put on Christmas, for decoration and as a place for gifts, a brightly lit evergreen tree (most often spruce), then most likely, this relationship is due to an indirect, rather than direct relationship. This is also indicated by the fact that the Egyptians considered palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.if there is a connection between the ancient Egyptian custom of decorating houses with palm branches on the day of the winter equinox and the German, and now widespread in England, custom to put on Christmas, for decoration and as a place for gifts, a brightly lit evergreen tree (most often spruce), then most likely, this relationship is due to an indirect, rather than direct relationship. This is also indicated by the fact that the Egyptians considered palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.that the Egyptians considered the palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.that the Egyptians considered the palm branches to be a symbol not only of immortality, but also of the starry firmament of heaven.
Hindus trace their lineage to Idavarshi, the “hidden place” or “garden of Ida”, the wife of Manu (“the thinker”, ie man) and the Mother of humanity. There they place their Olympus, the legendary Mount Meru, the center and "navel" of the earth, the support and axis of the heavens. The Heavenly Ganges is poured on its slopes, that is, the dew and rains of heaven, which flow into the lake of Manasa-sarovara, "the most perfect lake of the Spirit." The earthly Ganges, which is believed to originate in it, having wrapped seven times around Meru, forms four smaller lakes, of which four rivers Idavarshi carry their waters to the four cardinal directions; it is at the source of these four rivers that the Hindus place the aforementioned sacred trees Kalpadrumu and Parajiti. From the point of view of geography, Meru can be localized in the Himalayas, near the Pamir steppes,but Kalpadruma and Parajiti cannot be related to any botanical species known to us. They are simply mythical "Trees of Life" whose idea arose from the primitive cult of trees as phallic deities.
According to ancient Persian traditions, the place of human creation is located in Airyanem-Vaeja. In the first fargard of Vendidad, this is the first of sixteen good lands, according to legend, created by Ohrmazd (Ahuramazda) and subsequently cursed by Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). In the second fargard, Airyanam-Vaej is described as the country of the first man, "the beautiful Yima". 300 winters passed under his golden rule; then, having been warned that his entire earth was already filled with light-flooded houses of people, as well as their herds and flocks, Yima, with the help of the "spirit of the earth", increased the size of Airyanem-Vaej by a third compared to what it was at the beginning. So another 300 years passed, at the end of which he once again increased it by a third, and then again, so that Airyanam-Vaeja doubled its original area. Then Ohrmazd called all the heavenly gods, and with them the "beautiful Yima",and warned them that soon the "last winters" would come to earth with fierce, terrible frosts and snow fourteen fingers deep; before that, all their sheep and other livestock will fall, and the one that grazes in the open steppes, and the one that feeds in the depths of deciduous forests, and the one that is hidden in the barns. Therefore, Yima was sent to build a quadrangular vara, or "sheltered place", with sides two miles long, to place there "the seeds of men and women," "the most daring, best and most beautiful on earth," as well as the "seeds of fire," sheep, cows and dogs; to settle them on the green shores of the sources of living waters gushing inside the vara, and to establish a new dwelling for people there. All this the wonderful Yima performed, and then sealed the var with a golden ring with a signet and made a door and a window in the wall, "glowing from within." Inadequate people - crippled, sick, insane, feeble-minded, childless,the liars and everyone bearing the mark of Ahriman could not enter. On the contrary, those who were admitted to Vara lived happiest lives there, never died, being in the face of Eternal Glory. The Zend-Avesta also mentions Hara Berezaiti, the "heavenly mountain" of Airyanem-Vaej, on which the crystal firmament rests and from behind which the sun rises; the Kinvad bridge, or "Straight" [Sirat], "The bridge of horror, thin as a thread," leading from Mount Hara-Berezaiti through Hell to Heaven; also the Tree of Healing and Immortality, the “White Tree of Homa,” or Gaokeren, growing near a spring called Ardvisura; finally, two rivers, Arvand and Daitya, flowing from Advisura and feeding all the rivers and seas on earth. According to later Pahlavi texts, the Simurg bird sits on the White Tree of Khoma and shakes off the seeds of life of people and animals, birds, fish and plants,the fall of which from the top of Mount Hara is watched by the bird Kamros, which carries them away and scatters them all over the world. The tree is protected by ten fish-like monsters that live in Lake Ardvisura.
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These details tell us about the same mixture of mythical and real geography as in the Puranic descriptions of Idavarshi. Thus, although Airyanam-Vaeja points to the real place in Central Asia, where the Iranian Aryans came from, it is also a perfect country, in some of its manifestations - an earthly Paradise, and in some - Elysium, ruled by Yima, who, being the first person to die, also personifies death. For the Persians, he always remained, even being death, the first bright perfect flower of humanity, taken by the grave, the good king of the sinless dead, but in Hindu mythology he begins to turn into the terrible Yama, the god of justice and hell. Consequently, Airyanem-Vaeja is both the place of origin of the Iranian Aryans in the mountains of Central Asia, and the Elysium of their dead ancestors, and the legendary Eden of the Aryans,and in reality, all Caucasian races. The white Khoma tree, botanically, has always been associated with Sarcostemma viminale, or catfish, although I believe that the vine and the date palm can also be attributed to it; but its main meaning, as in the case of the trees of Kalpadrum and Parajita, is to serve as a poetic symbol of an all-encompassing life. The real Hara-Berezaiti and the Arvand and Daityi rivers should be located in the territory of the Hindu Kush (or Parazanisus) mountain system and correspond to some rivers flowing there; these names, like the name of Mount Olympus, appear again and again with slight changes along the line of the Aryan migration to the west - as a result, the Arvand River is found in the names as Mount Elvand, i.e. Mount Orontes in Media from ancient Greek geographers, and in the name of the river Orontes in Syria. Mount Hara-Berezaiti,both under its original name and under its later name - Al-Borji, “survived” even more movements from east to west: it was identified as Mount Elburz on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea, as Mount Elbur on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, and finally as Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus. In the Assyrian inscriptions, its name, in a slightly modified form Alabria, is attached to the Kardian, or Kurdistani, mountains, and it is there, on a mountain called Louvar, according to St. Epiphanius, that Noah's ark is located. The name Baris, given by Nicholas of Damascus to Mount Masis (in Turkish Agrydag) in Armenia, identified by Christian writers with Mount Ararat from the book of Genesis (4: 4), to which, according to the Bible, Noah's ark stuck after the Flood, is most likely a distortion names Berezaiti. This is the original Iranian name,without any doubt, almost unchanged in the name of Mount Berekint in Phrygia - the abode of the Great Mother Earth, Rhea-Cybele. And, we can say for sure, wherever this name moves and wherever it is fixed, an eternally young legend about the Tree of Life came and took root there.
The legends of the ancient Scandinavians, the Aryans of Northern Europe, also point to the colossal distribution area of the white race - from the borders of China to the shores of the Black Sea and beyond, right up to Cape Finisterre in Spain and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco - as the cradle of humanity (of course, we are talking about mythology, and not about real anthropogenesis), since Bor, the progenitor of gods and people in ancient Scandinavian legends, is a personification of all the same mountains. Asgard, that is, the "court of the gods", in mythology is the starry firmament (flammantia mœnia mundi - "fortress of Chronos", ie the god who marked the passage of time by turning the signs of the Zodiac), but from the point of view of history and geography, this is the Sea of Azov, " court of the aes”(that is, the senior gods). The Old Norse Olympus rises from the center of Midgard, the "middle yard", the abode of people,separated by the ocean encircling it from Utgard, the "outer court" of the Jotuns, or giants. Under Midgard there is a dark underworld of the dead - Niflheim. From the center of Midgard and through the upper reaches of Asgard grows the ash Yggdrasil, whose branches, spreading over the whole world, reach the highest heavens, and three gigantic roots penetrate into the lowest regions of Heli, where, wrapped around them, the serpent Nidhogg, "Rodent", Death, which, like the snake Anunte from the seventh hell of the Hindu religion, living under Mount Meru, symbolizes not only death, but also underground volcanic forces that threaten the destruction of the whole world. Here, the paradise Yggdrasil is obviously a symbol of universal life, the joy and glory of Nature. From the center of Midgard and through the upper reaches of Asgard grows the ash Yggdrasil, whose branches, spreading over the whole world, reach the highest heavens, and three gigantic roots penetrate into the lowest regions of Heli, where, wrapped around them, the serpent Nidhogg, "Rodent", Death, which, like the snake Anunte from the seventh hell of the Hindu religion, living under Mount Meru, symbolizes not only death, but also underground volcanic forces that threaten the destruction of the whole world. Here the paradise Yggdrasil, in an obvious way, is a symbol of universal life, the joy and glory of Nature. From the center of Midgard and through the upper reaches of Asgard grows the ash Yggdrasil, whose branches, spreading over the whole world, reach the highest heavens, and three giant roots penetrate into the lowest regions of Heli, where, wrapped around them, the serpent Nidhogg, "Rodent", Death, which, like the snake Anunte from the seventh hell of the Hindu religion, living under Mount Meru, symbolizes not only death, but also underground volcanic forces that threaten the destruction of the whole world. Here the paradise Yggdrasil, in an obvious way, is a symbol of universal life, the joy and glory of Nature.like the snake Anunte from the seventh hell of the Hindu religion, living under Mount Meru, symbolizes not only death, but also underground volcanic forces that threaten the destruction of the whole world. Here, the paradise Yggdrasil is obviously a symbol of universal life, the joy and glory of Nature.like the snake Anunte from the seventh hell of the Hindu religion, living under Mount Meru, it symbolizes not only death, but also underground volcanic forces that threaten the destruction of the whole world. Here, the paradise Yggdrasil is obviously a symbol of universal life, the joy and glory of Nature.
According to the legends, the inhabitants of Midgard were created by Odin with his brothers, Vili and Ve, from two types of wood, one from ash, the other from elm; the first, turned into a man, received the name Ask, that is, Ash, and the second, who became a woman, was called Embla, that is, Elm. It should be recalled that, according to the ancient Greeks, the “third race of people”, which can be identified with the European Aryans of the Bronze Age, comes from ash (εκ μελιαν, Hesiod, Works and Days, 144). Also among the Greeks, the Caucasus Mountains were considered "the central part of the Earth", "the beginning and end of all things" (Hesiod, "Theogony", 738), the place of punishment for Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, the mythical leader of the Aryans who migrated to Europe (of course, Prometheus was also a god - the sun, therefore, it is naturally associated with the Caucasus Mountains, over which, if viewed from the west,the sun begins its daytime journey). Mount Olympus in Thessaly, according to Homer, was the abode of the Greek gods - until the time when other poets brought them to heaven. But wherever the Greeks went, they took the name of this mountain with them, placing it in Bithynia, Mysia, Lycia, Thessaly, Elis, Lesbos and Cyprus, thereby also unconsciously linking the original habitat of their people with some high-mountainous region, whence their exodus from the East began.thereby also unconsciously connecting the original habitat of their people with some high-mountainous region, from where their exodus from the East began.thereby also unconsciously connecting the original habitat of their people with some high-mountainous region, from where their exodus from the East began.
Semitic traditions differ from the Aryan ones in that in them the birthplace of the first people - Gan Eden, the "Garden of Eden" - is separated from the mountain, to which after the Great Flood Noah's ark with the forefathers of the renewed mankind landed. Every tree, pleasant to look at and good for food, grew in Eden, and with them the Tree of Life and the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eden was supplied with water by a river, which, flowing through it, spread into four branches. There can be no objection to the conclusions of Sir Henry Rawlinson, who identified Eden from the second chapter of the Book of Genesis with Gin-Dunish from the inscriptions of Ashurbanapal or Sardanapal (about 668-640 BC), that is, with the surroundings of Babylon, surrounded by the Pallakopas rivers [Pishon], Shatt-en-Nil [Gihon], Tigris [Hiddekel] and Euphrates [Firat]. This area was well known to the Babylonians as Gan-Dunias, "the garden of (the god) Dunias"and the city of Babylon itself was also called Dintira idi Tintira - the "Sacred Tree", an analogue of the universal Tree of Life, which was often depicted on Babylonian gems and Nineveh reliefs with cherubim guarding it on both sides of the trunk. Later, Sir Henry Rawlinson identified the specific place where the earthly analogue of the Tree of Life was originally located with the city of Eridu - the most ancient place of worship of the Akkadian god Enki, "Lord of the Earth", the Assyro-Babylonian analogue of the Sumerian god Eya. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the Garden of Eden is the same mythological Paradise, similar to Idavarsha among the Hindus, the Airyanem-Vaeje of the Iranian Persians or the Asgard of the Scandinavians, but localized in Mesopotamia by the Semitic peoples (as the Hamite peoples did long before them),after they forgot about the original home of the white race in the mountains of Central Asia or retained their memory only in the form of a legend about the legendary garden washed by a heavenly source, the beginning of all earthly waters. Later, when the Semites settled in Western Asia and their ideas about the surrounding countries expanded significantly, the concept of Gan Eden, like the Hindus' ideas about Mount Meru, began to embrace the entire inhabited world known to them, surrounded by the Oxus Indus, or Pishon, and Nile rivers. Indus, or Gihon, crossed by the Tigris and Euphrates.began to cover the entire inhabited world known to them, surrounded by the rivers Oxus-Indus, or Pishon, and Nil-Indus, or Gikhon, crossed by the Tigris and Euphrates.began to cover the entire inhabited world known to them, surrounded by the rivers Oxus-Indus, or Pishon, and Nil-Indus, or Gikhon, crossed by the Tigris and Euphrates.
Assyriology - which, after its illustrious founder Sir Henry Rawlinson, has long been Mr. Says, a brilliant associate professor of philology at Oxford - has shown in its entirety that the biblical myth of Eden was borrowed from cuneiform inscriptions on clay tablets - Akkadian literature, or the ancient Chaldeans, a people of Scythian or Ural-Altai origin, akin to modern Turks, who, if not a true aborigine of Lower Mesopotamia, was the first to settle in these lands during the period of the comprehensive domination of the Scythians in Western Asia and laid the foundations of that very Hamite-Semitic culture here Assyrian and Babylonian empires, to which the nascent religion and arts of Europe owe more directly and more deeply than even the civilization of ancient Egypt. Jews probablywere already vaguely familiar with this myth since Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees “to go to the land of Canaan,” and after the Babylonian captivity they should have known it very well.
There is a hypothesis according to which monotheism developed among the ancient Semites who migrated to Chaldea and settled in the city of Eridu, from where it, presumably, became known to the Aryans from Persia in the east; and it is known for certain that it was brought to the west, to Syria, by the Jews, thanks to whose Scriptures monotheism took root throughout the Christian and Islamic world. Consequently, if Eridu was the place of residence of the monotheistic sects of the ancient Semites in Mesopotamia, then their descendants, including the Jews, could well, for this reason alone, forever link this place with the primordial Paradise of the human race.
But long before the arrival of the Semites, Eridu seems to have been the center of worship for the Akkadian god of the Earth Enki ("Earth"), called the Assyrians and Babylonians Eya, who also simultaneously personified the arrival of civilization in prehistoric Mesopotamia and the Sun in its movement across the sky in the south over the Indian Ocean; in the same way, Dionysus, the "Assyrian stranger," simultaneously personified throughout the Mediterranean the movement of the Sun to the west and the Phoenician trade and Chaldean-Assyrian civilization. Enki was the great "deus averruncus", the god-protector of the Chaldeans, the only possessor of the terrible secret of the unnamed name of the "great gods" of the seven heavenly spheres - the mere threat to name this name forced a whole horde of wicked demon-spirits from the underworld to surrender. As "the ruler of the world" he is married to Damkina, the female deity of the Earth;as the "lord of the abyss" (absu) and "lord of the bottom" he is married to the goddess Bahu, whose name means chaos (bohu from the Book of Genesis), and as "the lord of the great land", that is, Hades, the land of the dead, he is associated with the goddess Militta, or Ishtar, in its chthonic hypostasis Ninkegal. Like Dagon, the patron saint of fishing among the Philistines, Enki is portrayed as a newt, and, along with all the "great gods", floating in a magnificent cedar-wood ark on the black waters of the traditional Great Flood - this myth, I believe, tells about the south the western monsoon of the Indian Ocean. Enki is portrayed as a newt and also, along with all the "great gods," floating in a magnificent cedar-wood ark on the black waters of the traditional Great Flood - this myth, I believe, tells of the southwestern monsoon of the Indian Ocean. Enki is portrayed as a newt and also, along with all the "great gods," floating in a magnificent cedar-wood ark on the black waters of the traditional Great Flood - this myth, I believe, tells of the southwestern monsoon of the Indian Ocean.
Enki's attributes are arrowheads, symbolizing the invention of cuneiform that is attributed to him; the snake, symbolizing his influence, carrying civilization, - it is worshiped in the garden of Eridu in connection with the Tree of Life; and a disc with 50 fiery spokes, apparently deduced from his image of the sun-god and reminding us of the chakra of the Hindu gods and of the "fiery sword" of the cherub in the biblical description of the Garden of Eden, which is "a sword that turns to guard the path to the tree of life" …
In Assyrian sculpture, the sacred Tree of Life is also associated with the symbols of Ashur, who gave its name to Ashur, today Kile Shergat, the first capital of Assyria, or, conversely, got its name from the name of this city. Initially, he was just the ancestor-eponym of the Assyrians, the second son of Shem (the son of the biblical Noah), but later he was identified with the supreme deity of the Babylonians El (cf. Allah) and began to be revered instead of Ila as the head of the official pantheon of Assyria. He was usually depicted either as a winged solar disk ("The Sun of Truth and Healing in its Rays" from the Book of the Prophet Malachi), or as a dove - a fertile white dove from Syria, the world famous symbol of the active, or productive, reproductive power of Nature. In Asia Minor it is still believed that the Almighty appears in the form of this bird.
Often in iconography, the solar disk illuminates a grove (ashera), that is, a conventional image of the Tree of Life, or a dove casts a shadow on it; the dove at the same time, presumably, personifies Nana, Militta, or Ishtar - the common wife of all Assyrian and Babylonian gods, and not Sheruba, the special ghostly spouse of Ashur. Nana was the only goddess known to the ancient Akkadians, the universal Mother Earth, but the Assyrians and Babylonians, with their adherence to monogamous views, singled out and deified her twelve hypostases in order to provide a separate wife for each of their twelve supreme gods. But Nana always remained among the Semitic pagans of Asia Minor the highest and only truly personified personification of a passive, receptive and reproductive natural principle, in which all other goddesses merge,formed by a simple duplication of its functions. She is the ruler of the "sparkling star", Venus, and her true incarnation, the month of Uulu - August-September, the sign of which was the constellation Virgo among the Akkadians. Friday, the seventh day of the week among the Akkadians, was also considered to be dedicated to her - and the wedding, the rituals of which she ruled (cf. Roman Lucina and Greek Ilithia); for this reason, early Christians considered this day of the week evil and cursed - a superstition still known to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coasts, where once, in archaic times, Nana was considered "the divine patroness and helper during childbirth." Just as Venus was sometimes called the "Morning Star" and sometimes the "Evening Star", so Nana among the Assyrians could be both "Ishtar of Arbel", that is, the goddess of war, and "Ishtar of Nineveh", the goddess of love. In her chthonic capacity, she is the Assyrian Allat ("goddess"), in honor of whom Queen Dido was named Elissa (Eliza). In fact, the story of Dido, whose sister Anna was deified by the Romans under the name of Anna Perenna, is considered a myth that tells about the origin of the cult of Venus in Italy. Nana is also the Arab Venus, which Herodotus called Alitta and Alilat, and modern Arabs are called Al-Lat; together with the goddesses Al-Uzzu ("Mighty") and Manat, they are "three daughters of God", who were revered in Arabia even before Mohammed in the form of carvings of various shapes, phallic stones and trees. It is not excluded, by the way, that stambhi, or "columns" covered with letters, presumably of a phallic nature, were installed by Buddhists in ancient India, and today they are represented by dipdans, or "cleansing" columns, standing in front of the entrance to Hindu temples,could borrow their more familiar name lat, "column", from the name of the Arab goddess Alilat. Muslims have always identified the phallic pillars (lingams) destroyed by Mahmud Ghaznath in Somnath in 1024 with the Arab goddess Lat. In the East, Nana, or Ishtar, is, again, the Phoenician Astarte, the Canaanite Astarte, so often mentioned in the Old Testament in connection with the Asherah (plural Asherim), that is, the traditional image of the Tree of Life, and Atargatis, whose cult The Phoenicians spread throughout Asia Minor, where its priestesses, who venerated Atargatis in the double hypostasis of the "goddess of war" and "queen of love", were warlike courtesans, known to the Greeks as the mythical Amazons. This name is usually formed from the combination of the prefix α, meaning the absence of a sign, and the word μαζος, "chest", because, according to this generally accepted,but absurd etymology, the Amazons cut off their right chest so that it would not interfere with archery. But it is much more likely that it goes back to the affectionate names Um or Zumu, usually given to the spouses of the Assyrian-Babylonian gods, and in particular Nana, or Ishtar, who, under this name, Um-Uruk, was revered as the "(chthonic) Mother of Uruk" in Erek, the great necropolis of Chaldea, as well as under the Iranian (Aryan) name Ma-god, "mother of the gods", in Heliopolis, or Bambis, present-day Baalbek in Syria (today - on the territory of Lebanon - approx. Transl.), And, finally, just like Ma, "mother" - in the Cappadocian temple complex of Comana and in the Phrygian city of Pessin. Her Amazons can be compared with the Syrian dancers in Roman circuses and with the bayadères, or the dancers of the sacred orders of Baswi, Bhavin and Mahari in India,whose connection with the image of the Amazons I pointed out in the "Guide to the British-Indian Section at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878". About 500 BC, Nana entered the pantheon of distorted Iranian Zoroastrianism under the names of Tanata, Anea, Nanea or the Greek Anahit - her statue in the city of Knidos by Praxiteles (Aphrodite of Knidos) in ancient times was considered the pinnacle of this sculptor's work. The spread of her cult to the east under the Persian kings from the Achaemenid dynasty is noted in the names of a number of cities, for example, the Afghan city of Baby-Nani, i.e. "Our Lady Venus." But even more interesting proof of the predominance of her cult in the west we find in the Greek comedy Ναννιον, created by Eubulus (c. 37 BC) and named after the heroine, courtesan - that is, in accordance with the original meaning of the word, the priestess of the goddess Nana …Nana, or Ishtar, was a ubiquitous "Asian goddess": the great "Syrian goddess", "Phrygian goddess", "goddess of the city of Pessinunt", "goddess of Mount Berekinthia", "Mother Dinimena", "Idea mother" or "good goddess "The Greeks and Romans, also called Opa, Rhea or Cybele.
Historically, Nana is identified with Aphrodite of Paphos, Aphrodite of Cnidus and Artemis of Ephesus, and in a number of her features she resembles Athena. It is believed that her name Rhea is the Assyrian word ri, meaning her sacred number, fifteen. Cybele, I believe, simply means "great" goddess (cf. al Kabir, "Great" is the thirty-seventh of ninety-nine Muslim names for God). The mysterious cabirs related to her rituals, in my opinion, are the "great gods" of the seven planetary spheres, reduced to talismanic figurines, similar to figurines of older gods and chosen gods that can be found in any Hindu temple - they stand around a large image the god or goddess to whom this temple is directly dedicated.
In the most ancient images, Nanu looks like a naked woman with a child in her arms, and it can be assumed that the sublime image from Revelation: “a woman clothed in the sun; the moon is under her feet, and on her head is a crown of twelve stars”- that is, of the twelve (phallic) towers (cf. στοιχεια, "upright", "first principles") of the Arab zodiac, - was inspired by the idea of Ishtar as a sacred libertine, Mother Nature. Among the Phoenicians, she is dressed in a mantle, with four wings, a conical or truncated cone-shaped hat, and usually with a dove that sits in her arms or on her shoulder. And sometimes, as in Arabia, it can be symbolized by a simple acacia or a rough phallic stone; and, relying on my own observations made in India, I have no doubt that it is in such guises that she, Ilu,Ashur and other pagan gods of the Semitic pantheon first began to be worshiped in Mesopotamia, and it was on the basis of these very guises that the traditional image of the Tree of Life was born in Chaldean-Babylonian and Assyro-Phoenician religions and art.
Per. from English Anna Roitberg, Dmitry Ivanov