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The Rapallo Alphazodiac and the Birth of the Sun As the Seed/Word

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The Rapallo Alphazodiac and the Birth of the Sun As the Seed/Word SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 296 February, 2020 On the Origins of the Alphabet: The Rapallo Alphazodiac and the Birth of the Sun as the Seed/Word by Brian R. Pellar Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS FOUNDED 1986 Editor-in-Chief VICTOR H. MAIR Associate Editors PAULA ROBERTS MARK SWOFFORD ISSN 2157-9679 (print) 2157-9687 (online) SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-in-chief actively encourages younger, not yet well established scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including romanized modern standard Mandarin and Japanese, are acceptable. In special circumstances, papers written in one of the Sinitic topolects (fangyan) may be considered for publication. Although the chief focus of Sino-Platonic Papers is on the intercultural relations of China with other peoples, challenging and creative studies on a wide variety of philological subjects will be entertained. This series is not the place for safe, sober, and stodgy presentations. Sino-Platonic Papers prefers lively work that, while taking reasonable risks to advance the field, capitalizes on brilliant new insights into the development of civilization. Submissions are regularly sent out for peer review, and extensive editorial suggestions for revision may be offered. Sino-Platonic Papers emphasizes substance over form. We do, however, strongly recommend that prospective authors consult our style guidelines at www.sino-platonic.org/stylesheet.doc. Manuscripts should be submitted as electronic files in Microsoft Word format. You may wish to use our sample document template, available here: www.sino-platonic.org/spp.dot. All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are free in PDF form. Issues 1–170, however, will continue to be available in paper copies until our stock runs out. Please note: When the editor goes on an expedition or research trip, all operations may cease for up to three months at a time. Sino-Platonic Papers is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. On the Origins of the Alphabet: The Rapallo Alphazodiac and the Birth of the Sun as the Seed/Word by Brian R. Pellar A. B. C. D. E. Figure 1A. Venus Pendant, Chauvet Cave, France. 31,500–33,000 BC. 1B. Selected detail of Shrine A.VI.6, an eight-thousand-year-old Neolithic wall painting (rotated). Catalhoyuk, Turkey (image from Mellaart 1962: Plate VIII). 1C. Selected detail of Susa cylinder seal 2900 BC (rotated) (image from Rice, 1998: 98). 1D. Detail of Egyptian sky chart Senenmut (reversed) (image from Belmonte/Shaltout 2009: 158). 1E. First century AD alphazodiac from Rapallo, Italy, showing only the top letter sequence, in red (adapted from Serres 2010: 45). SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS NO . 296 CONTENTS Introduction 1. The Discovery of Serres and De Clercq 2. The Ursa Mechanism as a Driver of Religious Ideology/Iconography 3. Phase 1: Upper Paleolithic 4. Phase 2: The Ursa Mechanism in the Neolithic 5. Phase 3: Susa, Egyptian Sky Charts, and the Birth of the Sun as the Word in the Alphabet 6. Conclusion Postscript Appendix: The Phaistos Disk References 2 PELLAR, “T HE RAPAL LO ALPHAZODIAC ” INTRODUCTION On the morning of August 15, 2018, I received an email from Abraham De Clercq in South Africa. He said that, after reading both of my papers on the origins of the alphabet (Sino-Platonic Papers [SPP] 196, “The Origins of the Alphabet, and SPP 246, “The Origins of the Alphabet: New Evidence”), he had “found something quite interesting.” He had discovered that the signs of both the first century AD Rapallo and Corneto zodiacs were actually composed of all twenty-four letters of a Roman-era alphabet, with the start of that alphabet being Pisces — the vernal equinox at the time. And, more importantly, each sign of the twelve houses of the zodiac was made up of letter couplets — exactly as my first two SPP articles on the Phoenician alphabet had originally claimed and demonstrated. Thus, De Clercq’s words — “quite interesting” — were in fact an understatement. After revisiting these two Roman-era zodiacs, I came across two important findings. First, I quickly discovered several interesting features regarding the Roman-era zodiacs and how they relate to the earlier Phoenician alphabet and the earlier Egyptian sky charts, upon which the alphabet was based. And, second, after digging a bit deeper into the origins of the sky charts, I also discovered a simple, but ancient, underlying structure for them that appears to have its rudiments in the Upper Paleolithic, been solidified in the Neolithic with the incorporation of the cycle of grain, and then went on to influence the Egyptian sky charts and the Phoenician alphabet. In regard to the first finding, more specifically, in asking the question, “why does the tail of Pisces spiral down to the center of the zodiac on the Rapallo coin?” I discovered that, since Pisces was the vernal equinox at the time that the Rapallo coin was made, the tip of its tail in the center of the coin is none other than the north celestial pole (because the equinoxes culminate at the pole). Furthermore, it turns out that Pisces, which is composed of the letter couplet “A/N” in the Rapallo zodiac, is a southern counterpart on the ecliptic of the spear of the northern hawk-headed “Anu” (3n[w]) of the Egyptian sky charts (the constellation Bootes), whose spear symbolizes the fall/vernal equinox. Not only that, but the tip of that spear symbolizes the north celestial pole that the later Rapallo coin mirrors. Thus, the Egyptian sky charts show that it is from the tip of Anu’s spear in the northern sky in the womb of the sky goddess Nut that the sun as a seed is both sown into (fall) and cut loose from (spring) the back/horizon of an androgynous bull. Once that seed/sun is cut loose in the spring, it is then born from 3 SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS NO . 296 the “double doors” of Nut on the ecliptic, which is the entrance/exit of the Egyptian Duat (heaven) that is located in the constellation of Gemini in the center of the Milky Way. The sun as the seed then journeys through the consonant couplets that make up the houses of the two-dimensional zodiac, as the divine Word or vowel that brings light, understanding, and material nourishment to the three- dimensional world (i.e., the sun/seed as the Word made Flesh). Thus, the Rapallo zodiac, along with the earlier Phoenician alphabet (which led to the Hebrew alphabet and our modern Latin alphabet), is just an extension of the much older Egyptian sky charts, which were used to help a deceased Pharaoh (or official) navigate the afterlife. But more importantly, the underlying structure of those sky charts appears to emulate the cycle of wheat, a critical food staple that was linked to Egypt’s political, socioeconomic, military, and religious well-being. Given this reliance on wheat, the Egyptian sky charts highlight a three-figure group that includes an adult male as sower/cutter, an adult female as the vessel/horizon, and a son as the chosen divine seed that perpetually resurrects himself as the sun god Re. This three-figure group is located in the “upper” northern circumpolar region of the sky (with Anu symbolizing that adult male as sower/cutter), but the group is also found to have a “lower” counterpart in the southern sky on the ecliptic. This lower group centers around Orion (sah) as the counterpart to Anu, with Virgo as the counterpart to the Great Cow/Bull, and Aries as the newborn sun/seed/Word. Thus, the sky charts show a link between the northern “upper” sky and the southern “lower” sky, and this helps to explain why the Phoenician alphabet has two loops. But why the complication of two loops? First, it highlights the vital intersecting point of the four starting/ending letters of the two loops of the alphabet. That special point, the seventh letter zayin, is in the center of the Milky Way on the ecliptic (the entrance into/out of Nut) — the old vernal equinoctial point where the Egyptians located the entrance to the Duat (heaven). Second, it establishes the link between the northern and the southern skies as seen in the Egyptian sky charts, and thus the reversal of the direction of the letters from the small (upper/northern) loop to the larger (lower/southern). Third, it highlights a relationship to Pi — twenty-two letters that are divided at/join at the seventh letter zayin = 3.14. This “lower” relationship to Pi also reflects the “upper” twenty-two-star Great Cow/Bull in the northern sky being divided by its seven-star calf (Ursa Minor as the sun/seed) that is born from its back/double horizon. 4 PELLAR, “T HE RAPAL LO ALPHAZODIAC ” But more importantly, after digging deeper into the structure of the alphabet and the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sky charts, I discovered a simple underlying structure that appears to have its roots in the Upper Paleolithic. The conceptualization of the animal/plant/human head of an Earth Mother or Great Goddess as the eternal sun that both penetrates into and resurrects from her mortal body seemed to have spurred a simple Upper Paleolithic solar lion/lunar bull (bovine) belief system.
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