Thread: Inlaid ivory panel depicting "lioness devouring a boy"... From the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, part of an almost identical pair, originally part of a piece of furniture, perhaps a throne. ca 899-700 BC...

There is something very strange about this "boy" being devoured by the lioness...His gold tunic and particularly his golden curly hair, indicate that this is not an ordinary boy...

Where did I see such golden locks??? Ah yes... https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1275073089550704640

I would suggest that this young boy (we know it's a boy because he is wearing short skirt of youth and not the long skirt of adulthood) is the symbolic depiction of the young sun of spring and summer. Shamash (Utu)...

Young sun, "the giver of life" which melts the ice and snow on the sacred mountains and releases Enki (God of Water) from his icy prison so he can fill the two rivers with his life giving semen (sweet water)...Here he is, young Shamash, in his short skirt, climbing towards Enki

This freeing of Enki happens at the beginning of summer. Summer which starts at the beginning of May, in Taurus...

Which is why Shamash is depicted as a golden bull with long flowing "lapis lazuli" (water) beard...

"Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth the hero, the youth Utu (Shamash), the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..."
https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr113.htm

The water flow tables for Tigris (L) and Euphrates (R)...The flow peaks in Taurus...At the beginning of summer. The season dominated by the sun...Hence the Bull, symbol of summer, symbol of the sun, with lapis lazuli beard, symbol of flowing water...The water bull...

Here is Shamash (Utu), the solar water bull again...With the same flowing beard, but this time also with a tail made of wheat...Why?

Because it is in Taurus (Apr-May), that the grain harvest begins in Mesopotamia...

Summer, which starts in Taurus, is symbolised by a bull, because both calving and mating of Wild Eurasian cattle takes place during the summer, May to August...

http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/05/ram-and-bull.html
http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbols-of-seasons.html

Summer ends at the beginning of August, in the middle of Leo. By the way, why is July-August the part of the year marked by Leo? Well Eurasian Lions are seasonal breeders. And their mating season peaks from August and October. During autumn, part of the year symbolised by lion...

So Lion kills the bull. Autumn, which begins in Leo ends summer, which begins in Taurus...Or in our case Lioness kills a gold haired boy...

The young sun, Shamash, in a short skirt of youth, who climbs the mountains to free the waters and fill the rivers at the beginning of summer.

Is followed by the old sun, Nergal, wearing a long skirt of adulthood, who steals the waters and empties the rivers...standing in an empty river bed, canal...At the end of summer...

Here is old Shamash, Nergal again, this time standing in an empty canal "between two lions"...In Leo, the hottest, driest part of the year in Mesopotamia...Shamash "the water bull" is dead... https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1288493473373532165

Now killing of the young boy by a lioness takes place among blue water lilies, wrongly called Blue Lotus, even though they don't belong to the lotus family... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphaea_nouchali_var._caerulea

These beautiful blue flowers, which look like suns in the clear blue sky, are native to both Nile marshlands as well as Mesopotamian marshlands. It is possible that they were transplanted from Egypt to Mesopotamia, or the other way round during Bronze Age or even earlier...

They were believed to be "magic flowers", and were worshiped by both Egyptians and Mesopotamians... https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/256/htm

Blue water lily flowering season is from July until September. Peaking in Leo...At the time when the lioness kills the gold haired boy...So I think that whoever made this ivory plate deliberately placed the murder scene among the flowering blue lilies. As a calendar marker...

When blue lilies bloom, in Leo, young sun dies...Interestingly, Nebuchadnezzar II dedicated the bright blue gate he built in Babylon to the Babylonian "Mistress of Heaven", Ishtar, and covered its façade with Nilotic blue lotus (Blue water lily)...

Ishtar (the warrior goddess) who likes posing standing on a lion...The "mysterious" morning star...Guess who rises with the sun, pretending to be "The morning star" in Leo? Sirius...A very special star indeed...The lioness...Who kills the boy with the golden hair...

By the way remember the "Triumphant bull with flowing beard climbing the mountain"? It's from the time of the First Dynasty of Ur...No one knows what it means because: "we have no written documents explaining it"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41634873?read-now=1&seq=1

That winged lion (actually creature with lion's head and eagle tail) is autumn...Chewing on the butt of summer...Autumn which starts "when lions mate"...

http://oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/09/entemena-vase.html

...and ends "when vultures mate"...

https://twitter.com/serbiaireland/status/1340362265170731010

Amazing how all these things fit into each other like pieces of a jigsaw...What is emerging looks like a "lost first draft" of our religions and mythologies, and what has come to us in writing seems to be a reworked version done by the editors (priests) to make it sell better...

Finally back to the original artifact...All the bits in the image fit into the coherent "mythological" picture found in Mesopotamia from the beginning...Yet the style is not Mesopotamian...Who made these artifacts? To whom in the 8th c. BC gold haired boy equaled sun???

Ha! Just realised I never posted the picture of the water bull with grain tail...Here it is...