El Caracol, or the Observatory, is a remarkable structure of the pre-Columbian era that nestles at the very heart of the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza on the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, nowadays southeast Mexico.
Bird’s-eye view of El Caracol, facing northeast
Its name means ‘snail’ or ‘spiral-shaped’ in Spanish apparently due to the winding staircase that spirals up the interior of a cylindrical central tower, atop two nestled platforms on a trademark Mayan superimposed pattern.
The structure, almost 23m high, is estimated to date back to around 906 AD in the so-called Postclassic Mesoamerican age and is reckoned to have served as a space observatory, hence its other name, for the Mayas to track the movements of Venus in the night sky in particular.
Mayan astronomers, who doubled as priests, knew that Venus appeared on the western and disappeared on the eastern horizon on the far ends of a 225 day spell at different times round the year while five such cycles(1) amounted to eight solar years.
Sight lines of about 20 astronomical events of interest to Mayans, such as solstices, eclipses and equinoxes, can be found within the tower there has got to be said.
For that matter, the structure doesn’t look that different from modern observatories as it features that domed tower, comprising two concentric walls that enclose a pair of circular chambers in its lower level, in the middle with relatively small aligned windows on the side.
The Roman Baths and Gymnasium, among the most arresting sights across the city, was constructed towards the late second and maybe into the early third century AD located on the western edge of Sardis, ancient Lydia.
The pictured Marble Court, facing west, shaped the centrepiece that comprised a two-story colonnaded courtyard designated for the Roman imperial cult, featuring a statue of the emperor niched up in the main apse, lying at the very heart of the complex.
On the eastern side (near), lay a large open palaestra that measured a good 600 x 150ft (roughly 183 x 46m) of a sand floor encompassed by a colonnaded portico on all four sides whilst there were small rooms set up for weight training, skill practicing and massage around.
Finally, on the western side, beyond the Marble Court, stood the baths that contained the Frigidarium (cold pool) for the completion of the process towards the centre along with the Tepidarium (warm pool) and the Caldarium (hot pool) on the outer side.
Όπως ανέφερα σε πρόσφατο post μου, το όνομα του Ίον (μάλλον ‘Γιον’ σε πρώιμη μορφή) από τον οποίο πήραν το όνομά τους οι Ίονες (ή πιο σωστά Ιόνες), οι πρώην Αιγιαλείς Πελασγοί, είναι σημιτικό με ρίζα το ‘Ιό-‘ (‘Yoḥ-‘)* ως προς τη σημασία του ‘αφέντης, κύριος, άρχοντας.’
Η Θάλασσα της Γαλιλαίας ή Γεννησαρέτ
Η ίδια ακριβώς λεξική ρίζα στην αρχή εμφανίζεται μάλιστα και σε μερικά σημαντικά σημιτικά ονόματα όπως για παράδειγμα το Johan(n)an (‘Yōḥānān’) το οποίο αποδίδεται σε γνωστά αντίστοιχα ‘δυτικά’ ονόματα ως Ιωάννης, Giovanni, John, Johan(n) και Johannes μεταξύ άλλων.
Το όνομα αναλύεται ως ‘Yο-ḥa’nan’ (σε κάποιες σημιτικές/εβραϊκές διαλέκτους τονισμένο αντιθέτως ως ‘Yο-‘ḥanan’) που αποδίδεται ως ‘Ο Άρχοντας/Κύριος (‘Yoḥ-‘) είναι φιλεύσπλαχνος (‘-ḥa’nan’), όπου το πρώτο συστατικό (εναλλακτικά και ‘Yeḥ-’) αποτελεί μια σύντομη μορφή του θεού Yahweh (ή Yehovah).
Ωστόσο, το όνομα εμφανίζεται παλαιότερα και ως Yeho-cha’nan ή Yo-cha’nan όπου ‘cha-‘nan’ (‘κ(χ)α-νάν’) μπορεί να σημαίνει επίσης ‘βασιλεύει, κυριαρχεί’ από το ρήμα ‘k(h)ana’ που έχει τη σημασία ‘κυριαρχώ, κατέχω, υποτάσσω’ ως προς την απόδοση ‘Ο Yoḥ (Άρχοντας) βασιλεύει/κυριαρχεί’ κατά την άποψή μου.
Ο Yahweh (ίσως και Yohweh) ή Yehovah (Ιεχωβά στη γλώσσα μας) ήταν ένας πολεμικός και καιρικός θεός που οι Ισραηλίτες και Ιουδαίοι υιοθέτησαν στο πολυθεϊστικό τους σύστημα μέσω των Βεδουίνων κατά τον 14ο αιώνα περίπου π.Χ. πριν αργότερα ‘συγχωνεύσουν’ με τον κύριο θεό τους El γύρω στον 10ο ή 9ο αιώνα π.Χ. και τελικά επικρατήσει ο ίδιος σαν μόνος θεός τους από τον 6ο αιώνα π.Χ.
Και όπως μπορεί να καταλάβατε, ο Yahweh ή Yehovah είναι ο θεός που γνωρίζουμε ως… ‘Θεός’ στη χριστιανική θρησκεία, όπου το τελευταίο δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο από ένα επίθετό του (όπως και ‘Κύριος’). Ενδεχομένως, πάντως, το όνομά του να είναι ουσιαστικά ‘Yoḥ’ ή/και ‘Yeḥ’ με το Yahweh ή Yehovah να αποτελεί μια ‘προέκταση’ με τη σημασία ‘Ο Άρχοντας υπάρχει.’
Θα πρέπει να σημειωθεί ότι και το όνομα Canaan (λατινικά), Καναάν (ελληνικά) ή Χαναάν (Κοινή), ανάμεσα σε διάφορες παραλλαγές, έχει την ίδια ρίζα με το δεύτερο συστατικό (‘-chanan’) και πολύ πιθανώς σημαίνει ‘κατεχόμενη/δική μας γη’ ή ‘πεδινές περιοχές’ (που βρίσκονται χαμηλά).
Από τα παραπάνω έτσι προκύπτει, με δεδομένη τη ‘βραχύτητα’ του ‘ο,’ ότι το Ιωάννης (όπως και το Ιωάννα) λανθασμένα αποδίδεται με ‘ω’ και κανονικά θα έπρεπε να γράφεται με ‘ο’ ως Ιο-άννης (και Ιο-άννα αντίστοιχα), μια μορφή που υπάρχει.
Η ίδια ρίζα ‘Yoḥ-‘ ή ‘Yeḥ-‘ εμφανίζεται επίσης και στο όνομα Yo-shua ή Ye-shua (Yeshu/Yešu, με ουρανικό ‘σ,’ στα Αραμαϊκά) που δεν είναι άλλο από το (Βιβλικό) σημιτικό όνομα του Ιησού με τη σημασία ‘Ο Άρχοντας (Yoḥ/Yeḥ) σώζει’ σε αναφορά με το θεό Yahweh.
Η ηχητική απόδοση του Ιησούς ως ‘Ι-ι-σούς’ στη γλώσσα μας οφείλεται στην Κοινή και προφανώς προέρχεται από μια προγενέστερη μορφή του ονόματος όπου το ‘η’ προφερόταν ως (μακρό) ‘ε,’ πιο κοντά στη σημιτική του απόδοση, όπως θα ήταν στις ελληνικές ή φρυγικές διαλέκτους.
Trajan’s Kiosk, or Pharaoh’s Bed (summer house?) as known to the locals, is a hypaethral (non-roofed) temple that is located nowadays along with the entire temple complex of Philae on Agilkia Island in the reservoir of the Old Aswan Dam on River Nile, southern (ancient Upper) Egypt.
The temple is attributed to Roman emperor Trajan (98 – 117 AD), depicted as Pharaoh on some interior reliefs(1), but a good part of the structure was apparently already built during the reign of Augustus around a century or even more earlier.
Standing about 16m high, as well as 20m long and 15m wide, it originally served as a prelude to the Philae temple complex on the namesake island before it was all relocated to its current place so as to be saved from the rising waters of the Nile due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.
Sockets within the structure’s architraves suggest that it was probably timber-roofed shaping a slight vault in ancient times. It presents a rectangular room encompassed with a screening wall bound together by fourteen columns that feature lotus-shaped capitals in a 4 x 5 pattern, with entrances on the eastern and western side.
It was when I stumbled on this particular artefact, the terracotta statue group of storm god Zeus abducting Trojan hero Ganymede, that it suddenly struck me that Olympian Zeus is no other than Phrygian king god and Olympian Ti Zeus.
Note, in particular, the rustic outfit, barefoot into the bargain, and the wooden staff of Zeus which are characteristic of the Phrygians and their ways of life as well as many of their deities.
Sabazios, the other king god of the Phrygians, and Cybele, the supreme Phrygian goddess, are also depicted or accounted bearing a wooden staff among others.
There has to be said, furthermore, that ancient historian Pausanias calls Trojans as Phrygians in his account of the Trojan Horse and the fall of Troy in the legendary Trojan War.
Considered to have been crafted around 480 – 470 BC, the statue group came to light in fragments initially in 1878 and then in 1938 in the southwestern and western area of the ancient stadium of Olympia, pieced gradually together to a substantial degree.
Attested in several inscriptions and sources, Ti Zeus may be scarcely known in our time but shaped a major Phrygian deity in his day that was actually a king storm/sky god, namely wielding thunder and lightning as well as dwelling high in a holy mountain.
The abduction of Ganymede by Zeus
Name
His name comprises the theonym (proper name) of Ti (likely earlier Te), which apparently means ‘god’ (or even ‘lord’), along with the epithet/title ‘Zeus’(1) (pronounced as ‘zdeus’) that is very much certain of Phrygian origin spelling ‘heavenly, mighty,’ customarily attached to a king god in a geographical area or a religious polytheistic system.
The female equivalent of Tiϝeia, meaning ‘goddess’ (or ‘mistress’), spelt with a wau (digamma) in the middle indicates that the name is very old while Ti appears also later as Ti(ϝ)-os(2), with a likely (earlier) further version of Te(ϝ)os, in Old Phrygian which is most likely the root of the word ‘theos’ (‘θεός’(3), meaning ‘god’ in Hellenic) later.
His name also appears in the form of Ti Jes, with Jes (/’zəs/) a later form of Zeus (/zdeus/), in neo-Phrygian towards the late first millennium BC.
Trojan War and Phrygian Olympus
Although his name may not ring a bell to you, Ti Zeus is actually the ‘Zeus’ that appears in the epoch of ‘Iliad’ and the legend of the Trojan War, hence why he seems to favour the defending Trojans, as he watches the battles rage on and weighs up the opposing sides along with the other gods (who may also often interfere in the warfare) from high in the Phrygian holy mountain Olympus.
The Phrygian Olympus, no other than modern Ulu-dağ in Turkey, is the genuine Olympus that commanded a plain view of the Troad and the battlefields beyond, thus shaping the holy mountain referred to by Homer and the other composers of the overall ‘Epic Cycle’ over the Trojan War.
For that matter, the very name Olympus/Olympos (or alternatively Ulympus/Ulympos) is most likely Phrygian itself as there was a very old Phrygian mountain god of that very name, maybe the same as the namesake primordial Oureo (Olympos) in place, who was an early consort of Phrygian supreme goddess Cybele as well as the inventor of the flute and father of the flute-playing Satyrs.
On the other hand, the mount Olympus in Thessaly, nowadays Greece, was originally named Belus(4) apparently after Phoenician storm god Ba’al or Belu, with Herodotus recounting the legend of Phoenician Cadmus and his men gaining hold of the region, and was very likely renamed when Anatolian speakers later settled about and set up their own gods thereon, as place-names in the vicinity suggest.
Mount Ida
Zeus, namely Ti Zeus, is also mentioned by Homer to watch the battles outside Troy from the even closer outlook of Mount Ida in Phrygia, sacred to Phrygian supreme goddess Cybele, and likely from the altar in place dedicated to him as his birthplace, or hiding place after his birth, on a western foothill, near modern Adatepe, below.
The respective Mount Ida in Crete was named after this mountain and the legend of the birth, or hiding, of (Ti) Zeus therein was carried over following the influx of Hurrians, the ranks of whom the Phrygians may have emerged from, along with other Anatolian peoples to dominate over the island in the second age, starting around 1700 BC, of the so-called Minoan civilization.
(Ti) Zeus was also said to have abducted handsome divine Trojan hero Ganymede(5), son of Tros founder of Troy, from nearby Mount Ida employing, or transformed himself as, the Eagle (a symbol and personification of Zeus) and taken him up to Olympus (Phrygia) where he made him the formal Cup Bearer, serving nectar and ambrosia, of the gods.
It is quite interesting that Ganymede’s predecessor as Cup Bearer for the gods, goddess Hebe, was also named Ganymeda which suggests she was apparently part of Trojan or Phrygian tradition and origin herself as well.
Quite simply, these were Phrygian and Anatolian legends that came over with the waves of Anatolian speakers that settled in what is now Greece in the second millennium BC and were much later incorporated in the mythology of the Hellenes that emerged out of them.
Eastern Roman references to Ti Zeus
Stephanus of Byzantium(6) (6th century AD), an Eastern Roman grammarian and historian, identifies Zeus with Ti (Zeus) and says that according to famed ancient Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes he was known as Tios in Bithynia (north Anatolia), as further evidence.
Ti Zeus and Bas
Ti Zeus is also associated, even identified, with further Phrygian god Bas (ΒΑΣ) although the latter could be nothing more than yet another epithet for the former to the effect of ‘shining, bright.’
Nevertheless, I personally feel that ‘Bas’ more likely means ‘(divine) guardian/hero,’ thereby also bearing light, and it’s rather a potential similar form of ‘8as’ (‘8ΑΣ’) very likely pronounced as ‘fəs,’ out of the same root that could carry the sense of ‘shining, bright.’
The latter would also have a genitive form of ‘8os’ (voiced as ‘fos’) which would make the very likely root of Hellenic ‘φως’ (light).
The sense of ‘(divine) guardian’ in ‘bas’ could be drawn out of the respective suffix in ‘Cory-bas,’ the singular form of Phrygian Cory-bant(e)s (the priest-guardians of Cybele), for instance.
Here, the first component either refers to the particular crested helmet (corys) they wore as ‘crested helmet guardian’ or even more so means mountain (corys) to the sense of ‘mountain guardian,’ as Corybantes were.
For that matter, the rare letter ‘8’ is rather erroneously given formally as equivalent to ‘B’ in Phrygian as judging by its pronunciation in the few other ancient alphabets that contain it, such as neighbouring Lydian, it is most likely voiced as ‘f’ instead.
The epithet ‘Bagaios’
Ti Zeus seems to also carry the epithet Ba-gaios which may spell ‘earth guardian’ as he resides on (Phrygian) Olympus which was a primordial guardian of the earth as an Oureo (or Oreo).
Furthermore, the structure ‘gaios’ (devoted to/of the earth) recommends a certain feminine form of ‘gaia’ (devoted to/she of the ‘ge’ (ΓΗ), which means ‘earth’) and therefore the origin of the same word that appears in the so-called ‘Homeric Hellenic,’ which is heavily influenced by Luwian and Phrygian.
Ti Zeus, the god behind Olympian Zeus
Working up to a crescendo, Phrygian Ti Zeus is actually the Olympian Zeus celebrated at the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia (modern Greece). Yes, you read that right!
That is actually clearly demonstrated by the multi-figure Late Archaic terracotta statue group displaying Zeus carrying young Ganymede up to mount Olympus that adorned the Olympic complex, dated to around 480 – 470 BC.
As accounted earlier, that is a Phrygian/Anatolian myth that regards Ti Zeus and the abduction of the Trojan Prince to nearby Phrygian Olympus to serve as Cup Bearer for the gods invoked in the statues.
On top of that, Ti Zeus was Olympian anyway as he resided, and presided, among the gods in the Phrygian Olympus.
After all, the very founding of the ancient Olympics lay in the victory of legendary Phrygian Pelops, venerated himself in Olympia, in a chariot race to become king of Pisa, Peloponnese, so that makes perfect sense.
Peloponnese itself was named after him, meaning ‘Pelops’s Island,’ as along with his son Atreus and their line that included the likes of Agamemnon and Menelaus formed the effective second and more powerful Phrygian dynasty of what much later became known as ‘Achaean’ world, a name that also looks as though originating in Anatolia.
(1) As I have reiterated, ‘Zeus’ is not a theonym (actual name of a god that is) but an epithet meaning ‘heavenly, mighty’ that is of Phrygian origin attributed to a king god in a polytheistic system or a geographical area.
It always followed the theonym in an honourary function as can further be attested in Ma Zeus (apparently Cybele) where the same Phrygian structure was applied with ‘ΔΕΥΣ’ or ‘ΔΕΣ’ (meaning ‘god,’ but not a king one) as occurs in ΜΗΝ ΔΕ(Υ)Σ.
The Hellenes later adopted the epithet in the very same form and pronunciation, as well as the above mentioned structure.
(2) ‘Tios’ was originally the genitive form of ‘Ti’ incidentally.
(3) The letter ‘θ’ was pronounced as aspirated ‘t’ in ancient Hellenic.
(4) Apparently, Thessalian Olympus retained ‘Belus/Belos’ as a second name.
(5) Unlike what is given around, ‘Ganymede’ seems rather likely to mean ‘Beautiful/Beaming (gany-) Prince (mede),’ where the stem ‘gan-‘ exists in Phrygian (possibly spelling ‘craft,’ ‘skill’), but it could also trace all the way back to ancient Sumerian ‘gan’ (‘slave/depended’) to the effect of ‘Slave Prince’ that also fits the profile.
Furthermore, the original form ‘Ganymede’ without a final ‘-s’ falls in line with the early Phrygian formation of nouns.
(6) The attributive ‘of Byzantium’ was apparently attached to him much later.
Breaking through History 