5. The June solstice and the September equinox ought to be possible to find in the G text, these cardinal points just have to be there. Early on side a there are glyphs which I have interpreted as referring to the 'June solstice:
The 'June (winter) solstice evidently is where line a1 changes to line a2. The central figure (tagata rima aueue, see at Da Capo) has no head and his hand is missing too. We can compare with the vigourously running figure in Ga7-21, although this one has no arms - it is a nuku (earth) type of glyph (see at Vero). Light is in front (her right leg is uplifted to let in the light). Her left leg is undulating - like the arm in Ga1-29:
This is at the opposite end of the solar year, but not at the expected 355 - 172 = 183 days later. Arms are 'male, but legs are not. Arms are above and legs below the midline. In a variant of the myth of Lady Godiva - who represents neither 'sea' nor 'land' but the 'reef', I believe, in other words the foam-born Aphrodite, her foot is trailing on the ground: "The love-chase is, unexpectedly, the basis of the Coventry legend of Lady Godiva. The clue is provided by a miserere-seat in Coventry Cathedral, [Miserere is Latin and means 'Have mercy (on me, O God)'. It refers to the opening words Miserere mei, Deus in 'Psalm 51 (Greek numbering: Psalm 50)' according to Wikipedia, where we also can find a connection to the ancient Egyptian ceremony of Opening the Mouth: "Parallels between the Ancient Egyptian ritual text Opening of the mouth ceremony and Psalm 51 are pointed out in 'Psalm 51 and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony', by Benjamin Urrutia, Scripta Hierosolymitana: Publications of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, volume 28, pages 222-223 (1982). The parallels include: Mentions of ritual washing with special herbs (Psalm 51:2,7). Restoration of broken bones (verse 8). 'O Lord, open thou my lips' (verse 15). Sacrifices (verses 16,17, 19)."] parallelled elsewhere in Early English grotesque wood-carving, which shows what the guide-books call 'a figure emblematic of lechery': a long-haired woman wrapped in a net, riding sideways on a goat and preceded by a hare. [To ride sideways should mean facing neither ahead nor back, i.e. represent the opposite of Janus who is looking both ahead and backwards.] Gaster in his stories from the Jewish Targum, collected all over Europe, tells of a woman who when given a love-test by her royal lover, namely to come to him 'neither clothed nor unclothed, neither on foot nor on horseback, neither on water nor on dry land, neither with or without a gift' arrived dressed in a net, mounted on a goat, with one foot trailing in the ditch, and releasing a hare. The same story with slight variations, was told by Saxo Grammaticus in his late twelfth-century History of Denmark. Aslog, the last of the Volsungs, Brynhild's daugher by Sigurd, was living on a farm at Spangerejd in Norway, [The name Spangereid means 'the neck of a small piece of land', ideas which make us remember 'the neck of the turtle' (Te Ngao O Te Honu, the birthplace of the youngest son, see at Hau Tea) and 'the small piece of land' (Te Pei, where the newborn Sun is washed ashore, see at Hanga Hoonu). "Spangereid is a village and a former municipality in Vest-Agder county in Norway. It is located in the southern part of the present-day municipality of Lindesnes, and it is home to the new Spangereid Canal which crosses the Spangereid isthmus. The area is one of Norway's richest archaeological sites. The abundant remnants from the Bronze Age and Viking era show the Spangereid was a very important place at that time. Spangereid is strategically connected at the Lindesnes peninsula, Norway's southernmost point, where the east coast meets the west coast ... The municipality (originally the parish) was named after the Old Norse word Spangarheiši. The first element comes from the Old Norse word spong which means a 'small piece of land' and the last element is eiš which is identical with the word for 'isthmus', since the church is located on an isthmus which connects the Lindesnes peninsula to the mainland." (Wikipedia) However, I suspect the name possibly instead means the little piece of land where a pair of goat kids once were born (hanau):
disguised as a sooty-faced kitchen-maid called Krake (raven). [All signs point in the same direction viz. towards the rising sun. On Easter(n) Island the arrival of the Sooty Tern, Manu Tara, is the obvious parallel. When her eggs are there, spring has arrived, and from there time will no longer stand still:
Even so, her beauty made such an impression on the followers of the hero Ragnar Lodbrog that he thought of marrying her, and as a test of her worthiness told her to come to him neither on foot nor riding, neither dressed nor naked, neither fasting nor feasting, neither attended nor alone. She arrived on goatback, one foot trailing on the ground, clothed only in her hair and a fishing-net, holding an onion to her lips, a hound by her side." (The White Goddess) In contrast, when the dead old ruler Ceasar was carried on a litter it was his hand which was trailing on the ground (see at Death of Ceasar): ... The chaotic tumult in the Curia (where the Senate had their meeting and where they killed Caesar) resulted in his dead body left lying on the floor, while all the Senators panicked and ran out through the doors in different directions. They had planned to throw his body into the river, but the time of plans and order was in the past. Instead, in the afternoon, three of the slaves of Caesar came and fetched his body, and carried him on a stretcher to his home south of Forum - and one arm was hanging down in the corner where the 4th slave should have been ... |
