Maybe the absence of Venus in the night sky was interpreted as (magically) connected to the 'death' of Sun at winter solstice. The head which must come off to make him return again could be the dark head of Venus. In the pictures on the Gateway of the Sun we can imagine the head of Medusa in the left hand of the figure who could be Perseus:

In the Babylonian zodiac the Hired Man has his tail where the 2nd quarter is beginning. At the same time the Old Man has a globular object in his left hand and below him are 6 + 1 stars (presumably the Pleiades) and a waxing Moon crescent:

It is hard to avoid seeing the Old Man as Perseus and his round object as the head of Medusa. The symbol of Venus and the Rainbow indicates Sun is returning.

According to the Mul-Apin text (cfr at Metallah) the Old Man is the 3rd 'star' on the path of Enlil and its name is Enmesharra. The Hired Man is the 4th 'star' on the path of Anu and named Dumuzi. Thus we can guess that Enmesharra is Perseus and that Dumuzi is Aries. Perseus is coming down on the path of Enlil, but Aries is on the ecliptic.

As to Dumuzi (the Ram) we had better read the following from Wikipedia:

"Later poems and hymns of praise to Dumuzid [the Shepherd, who in the Sumerian King List was the 5th predynastic king before the deluge and who ruled for 36,000 years] indicate that he was later considered a deity, a precursor of the Babylonian god Tammuz.

In Tablet 6 of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh rebuffs Ishtar (Inanna), reminding her that she had struck Tammuz (Dumuzid), 'the lover of [her] youth', decreeing that he should 'keep weeping year after year'. Pictured as a bird with a broken wing (an allallu-bird, possibly a European or Indian Roller), Dumuzid now 'stays in the woods crying My wing!' (Tablet 6,ii,11-15).

Another possible identification for this bird is the Northern or Red-wattled Lapwing, both of which species are well known for their distraction displays where a wing is dragged on the ground as if broken in order to divert a potential predator from the lapwing's nest. The mournful two-note call of these birds also evokes the Akkadian kappi, 'My wing!'.

In a chart of antediluvian generations in Babylonian and Biblical traditions, William Wolfgang Hallo associates Dumuzid with the composite half-man, half-fish counselor or culture hero (Apkallu) An-Enlilda, and suggests an equivalence between Dumuzid and Enoch in the Sethite Genealogy given in Genesis chapter 5."

Cfr at Kara Etahi where I have suggested the bird with only one wing refers to Antares.

The death of Julius Caesar (caused by Junius Brutus) comes to mind, it occurred in the middle of March and the birth month of Julius was the 5th in the calendar, the month which became July in honour of him. The calendar must have began in March, otherwise July could not have been the 5th month. But the month Tammuz is also the name for the month of July in the Gregorian calendar in Arabic, Syriac, and Turkish ('Temmuz') according to Wikipedia, and:

"Tammuz was a month in the Babylonian calendar, named for one of the main Babylonian gods, Tammuz (Sumerian: Dumuzid, 'son of life'). Many different calendar systems have since adopted Tammuz to refer to a month in the summer season."

The 'son of life' must of course die because otherwise he would never be alive. Life is like light an impossible concept without its opposite, the 'shadow'. The King, shining in his splendour, must therefore die, or at least someone must die. In my preliminary glyph type dictionary this is the summary page for the rona glyph type:

Rona glyphs possibly depict an effigy, a 'person' taking the place of the king when his time has run out:

"... 'In Upper Egypt', wrote Sir James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough, citing the observations of a German nineteenth-century voyager, 'on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning, that is, on the tenth of September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town chooses its own ruler. This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool's cap and a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand of office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes, executioners, and so forth, he proceeds to the Governor's house. The latter allows himself to be deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a tribunal, to the decisions of which even the governor and his officials must bow. After three days the mock king is committed to the flames, and from its ashes the Fellah creeps forth ..." (Campbell 2)

Rona glyphs appear at the beginning of a new season:


Gb1-13	Ra2-9

Gb1-13 probably refers to how spring has ended and Ra2-9 to how autumn has ended. In addition to the various signs which can be seen in these two glyphs there are also numbers which confirm this interpretation:

If we assign Gb1-13 glyph number 230 + 13 = 243 and Ra2-9 glyph number 39, then the difference is 243 - 39 = 204 or half 408, which in G probably indicates the length of the solar year:


Gb6-25 (408)	Gb6-26	Gb6-27	Gb6-28

Gb7-1	Gb7-2	Gb7-3	Gb7-4

I am no longer so sure about the details, for instance the statements that spring respectively autumn have ended, there are other possible seasons. And the number games are plenty, e.g. seems 11 * 3 = 33 quite possible (in Gb1-13) and 29 seems more probable than 39. The end of Sun could be defined by 243 - 29 = 214 (leaving 354 - 214 = 140 = 10 fortnights to the season of absent Sun.