Bronze Age Pairhood

Early Bronze Age, Age of Pairhood, pairhood at Fossum, Otherworld or Netherworld, Unêtice culture, fertility, idol, Two lands of Egypt, Seth and Horus, Gemini, Candlemas, pairhood, Gemini as fix-star, Archer the guard

 Early Bronze Age

Suppose I pointed overhead and say "He is ruling" ... then people who know me, would say "Look, the old man has gone religious in his old days". People usually misunderstand me for some reason.

Yet, it is the ecologist within, that make me say that the Sun and its photon-flow keep me and this old world going here in my limited universe. The technician within demands for immediate connection between cause and effect so that we can analyse everything going on in life. However with the saving clause that this is valid if we may measure what is going on. The limit is where the Otherworld or Netherworld begins. We may subjectively imagine the ghosts, but we can never measure or catch them by any medium.

When I learned reading, I ploughed through our public library. Fortunately the library was in our schoolroom and it covered almost one wall. Lighting my fire was easy and I got answers without wearing out my shoes. Then I continued with my own books many elder friends saw I needed ... before that they knew me as the hyperactive and young Mr Inquisitive. They knew me as the one with one eye in north and the other in south, so that I would not miss anything.

Old people had mostly the time to give real answers to my questions and on that road I became reverent to old wisdom. I think they had some fun asking me tricky questions as they saw me as naive. Of course it irritated me when they diddled me. However, it is a very old custom to face the younger generation to an enigma. The relief of life teach us to see things and perhaps their value too. Somehow my special request has always been to see the clue in long sequences and learn how things work over time.

Probably my blood-brother Holger the Dane within has kept my childish habit to only believe what I see. He kept me on earth with two frequent questions when I speculated. "What is it good for?" ... How much money can it make?" He had also a good humour and an easy style if I became deadly serious.

The fusion of this and what else I got from myself and others gave me an attitude to questionless technicians when they go deadly serious about their technique. Hiroshima frightened my generation and what help is in the gallows humour in the sentence "I go maniac, when I go radiac." Unfortunately the worlds do not want to be responsible of the effects of bad technology. My scepticism grows when I see the effects.

Then I also see that there are many questions the physicists have no answer to and then they reject them as negligible. Take for instance the elaboration when I am fifty metres from some woman who looks the other way. As a test and habit I look at her hair. She feels that and shows it by a stroke of her hand on the curl on which I concentrate. Then if I go on, many a woman turns around looking for her admirer. This is of course a tricky question for physicist of the really high school. Still, it is real and no one has an answer.

The male mind often concentrates on only one issue. Especially women with several children and several pots on the stove have the split vision needed to keep everything going. Technicians are totally concentrated on their all-important thingamabob and do care less than not for the environment and consequences in time. Still, what if they moved their eyes to the surroundings and discovered they have to take responsibility. The liberal mind usually manages to say the words. Yet when it comes to practice it is only a wish.

In the historic material I see that our ancestors aimed at an attitude and living towards eternity and preserving Mother Earth. But how they managed to fulfil the aim is another question. Mostly our generation does not care if everything has an end in a few hundreds of years.

That is the big difference between what we about Sumerians and us. They worshipped the Sun and Moons as symbols for the fertility on earth. When man worships he usually does not destroy because it would be contradictory. Only modern men have success in that absurdity.

My two grandmas, the real in Karelia when I was four and my Danish grandma a year later tried to make me understand by birching me. What I learnt was that a good answer and a good question may prevent the most. I asked my real grandma. "How come, You say you love me. Why do you then hit me as you did not love me?" She was set up with this and never touched me with the birch bundle. It is much better with leaves and in the sauna.

A year later I had same success with my new grandma and maybe I reflected that their weakness was that they had no answer to a clever question. So it was for me always to have good answers and questions in the store.

Unfortunately this tactics did not work in primary school always. We named our old teacher Spike-Schweine and I suppose we inspired us by the time. Know and then some German soldiers and SS-men ride through our little village. The first words in German we trained screaming from some corner "Dummkopf and Schweinhund" and with more experience it was a whole sentence "Du bist ein Dummkopf".

Nevertheless our teacher old Spike-Schwein used the pointer on our heads and if he got very exited he used a ruler in our open hands. I do not know whether he wanted us to be like the SS-men that was proud of being hard.

At once I feel something in common with the Sumerians schoolboys. At least some teachers were of the same kind more than 4000 years ago as we learn from a written composition from those days.

For some decades it has been much better in Scandinavia I know, but nowadays is the punishment more subtle. They care for only the bright guys and the less bright may come and go as they wish. And the so-called losers know that no one needs them in the future society anyhow.

I believe there has always been some kind of education within the family or in society. However, with society and increasing population the violence in all senses increases as well as the demand for discipline. If one want to be something, he has to learn to be tough such as our managers learn in a course in "sensitiveness". These issues are more important than specific knowledge. I learned a lot about this when exercising on the military field a summer. My jokes were not popular in the ear of the sergeants that wanted me to be grave-serious. As I see, the Sumerian soldiers sometimes in perfect formation I suppose we have a lot in common in this field too.

We in the Western World easy forget that they do not tie the majority of the religious worlds only to one god and one ideology of capitalism. Christianity and capitalism have not an answer to all questions especially how to care for the weakest in society.

We normally use worlds for quality and desired conditions. Sometimes we use a suffix to an adjective and give the issue a virtual existence as for instance the word fertility. In Christianity the word became nearly forbidden and all kind of natural sex should be abandoned. Naturally we need fertility in our "larder" the nature that feed us.

In Sumerian the icon for this was Inanna and finding the right words to describe it corresponding to our world is difficult. Perhaps idol is an adequate word. Something to like some to follow and learn from. The Sumerians knew that luring the young boys into works in the field were better than to try to force them and foment obstinacy. To the idol Inanna they connected all phenomenon needed to support fertility. So she was normally the New Moon and that stood for rain in a dry environment as in Sumer. Naturally she got the image of the normal Sumerian woman at the time too.

We see they had some problem when they tried to define the abstract world and the virtual ideas necessary to forego the work in society. Even today expressing what they saw as rational language and symbolism in everyday life is quite difficult shortly.

The word god comes out of what is good and also outs of knowledge and ability. In some cases the unknown forces behind the natural processes have to be described too. So, they created the ideas of gods animating the desired processes, but what does a god look like? In the Aegean world we see sometimes headless gods and in the Middle East was an old tradition of gods with bird-head.

The Egyptians gave often the gods animal guise and use some significant detail as the main "doer" For instance that the jackal live on carrion. Thus, it is a suitable symbol for resurrection. Both Egypt and Sumer set their yearly ritual in sky and the gods/idols needed was heavenly and in text and pictures the star symbol shows it.

We are nearer our ancestors than we may imagine. In old Sumer their followers lived until our days Saddam Hussein dried the wetlands of the delta. From seals and pictures we see that not much had changed in more than 4000 years. Their sister-society could be the Indians around the lake Titicaca South America using the nearly the same techniques in many areas. We in the western world do not know too much about the giant China. However we know that they still use many old methods and so on. If modern technology for some reason were whipped out, they would recover more easily because they can use " as we always have done".

Our forerunners seem to have been cautious when they let the gods own the land. Nowadays man makes himself believe that he owns the entire earth. Still he is only an occasional stranger, who indirectly rise from the soil and live for a short moment. It seems that the real degeneration of nature started when man claimed ownership and refused to let overall cleverness guide him.

To our forerunners the living space was like chaos. We meet the word in the old texts as one of the important clues to get hold of. To this comes the preferential right of interpretation taken by the Elder that is men and women in small villages. In early towns it was a matter for the priests. Somehow the old generation in the Old World managed to create an order in chaos by the convention of a yearly ritual. They painted it in night sky and got some order in the chaotic sight of that too.

Chaos is still a difficult area of imagination and still the method to draw a dynamic structured in it is a way to catch it.

Our inner chaos is of course our brain. It has an amazing capacity. I was astonished when I once memorised my childhood. Out of memory I heard long conversations and saw happenings like a video recorder playing what it saw and heard those days. Most irritating is if one start to see a movie on TV and then after a short while see and memorise most of it including the clue because it is a reprise.

The number of cells and possible combinations of thoughts and memories is of the same class and size as the universe we see a starry night. Some freaks believe that a computer with a few gigabytes is like a brain. Nevertheless, someone has calculated that all the global computers would fill only a small corner in one human brain. Computers contain a lot of fancy stuff and believe that man could control the world with a computer. This is the stupidity of freaks with no sense of proportions.

An old lady working at ninety-five once said "The work gives life to man". She had found the secret of managing the personal chaos. Work gives the routines that are like the old goddesses, which lead the suites. This method plus the ability of selecting what is necessary to think about and neglect the rest. If one has a plan and stick to it the outer world and chaos is not important at all.

We see they have top hats and we also see them in some carvings in Scandinavia. Pleiades were and is perhaps still used globally by farmers as time-manager of agriculture, although do not forget the precession!

Our precursors got several flashes of genius. One was to see structures in the starry sky and make constellations and figures out of them. They needed many years of observations to be sure how the figures corresponded to their life and doings.

Next flash was to see how it worked in time and season and decide the myths to describe what to be done. It must be understandable for all and especially children and receptive children. In that way the heaven became a closed universe, although it renews the circle every year. Life of humankind as a collective is also without end as long as environments allow, i.e. man himself in these days. Eternity was also an important idea for our precursors. None dare to see too long in a degenerating living space.

However, we can say that the astro-ritual including the myths became a virtual common brain whole to which communities referred their thoughts. It was the common order in living for all with the priests as aldermen or time managers.

It worked as long as they tied the whole society to this order. When private owning became next steps, the nobility formed their own world besides the communities of the temples. While small villages of course lived their own life and using so many rituals as they needed to manage their farming and everyday life.

The meditation above as an introduction is a rhapsodic short comparison between some everyday aspects now and then. It could not have been written in my youth. Partly because of many taboos then, partly because our problems with the greenhouse and so on have made some of us humble. We can never say that our generations are the brightest and most intelligent livings since Big Bang.

Piety was still a useful word in my youth, however then began a period where all things should be young. Wisdom becomes reactionary stuff from old men and evolution is the world of today. Recently I heard a scientist with three children himself say that he with the new-tech hoped to improve his children. As we all know old Mother Earth is too bad a place, so now we aim at growing tomatoes on Mars. Some perhaps want to conquer outer space. This is just continuity from Sargon of Akkad through Ramesses III, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Carlemagne, Karl XII, Napoleon, Hitler, Mac Arthur and later generals at NASA ... all with no sense for proportions.

One may believe that knowledge would enlighten people. However chaos grew with knowledge and creates a new chaos with no order. The Sumerians saw that anarchy destroy the order. The neo-liberal quests for freedom in every sense are of course anarchy and give the individual the right to destroy earth. Thus, knowledge becomes a deadly tool in hands of people with no restrictions. In Indian culture they are speaking about the first incarnation of Shiva. He is the child within man that dances on flames even when the world fades away in misuse.

In the English-spoken world is no word like the Scandinavian "helhet", i.e. entirety with its many aspects. We seek a total outlook and a total consciousness of all things in the entirety. The English culture looks fragmented and it fit perhaps those, which in the pseudo-Darwin way talk about the strongest survival. They say that the world is like a jungle with dangerous creatures in it. Know I am speaking about what we may analyse from the vocabulary in use. Of course many thinkers are near reality even in English language. Yet that is one small difference between Anglo and Scandinavian. Roman and other influence have overtaken what the immigrants brought with them in two waves during the first millennium AD.

Maybe some thinks that I am preaching, yes I am. Nevertheless it is also an introduction to a new era where the priest-kings fade away and now begins some rulers on the scene. However, the main task in heaven was that either a Janus-figure or twins become question of the era.

I have chosen a new word PAIRHOOD to come around the problems with old words not saying what it is about or leading to wrong conclusions. Some perhaps would talk about dualism but Christianity and Descartes have given the issue a kind of opposition and worst contradiction. He divides in body and soul. As Christianity rules, the soul should be former and higher than body.

While managers and doctors until recently meant that raw force is better than if man thinks too much and get mental problems. Not long ago all kind of allergic reactions where said to be mental disease. If one could not stand the magnetic field of computers, it was of course some psychic fancy. We shamans see through that making safe products and industry would be costly ... better with the noble neo-liberal freedom of enterprise.

Dualism as definition between philosopher and pseudo knowledge is of course pure rubbish. However, saving it from responsibility of totality is convenient.

We cannot either use word like fellowship because it is too narrow even when we see pairhood pictured preferable with male pairs. The issue becomes, like other metaphysic questions, a question of analysing all aspects where two compounds were present. Many thinkers have not come further today, but next step was to use three aspects as a rule and I too have found it useable. Yet I never stick to only one rule, as I am careful and afraid of fundamentalism.

The era of priest-kings between ca 4200--2200 BC began to fade when Sargon of Akkad conquered Sumer about 2300 BC. We see the rise of trade and maybe metal prospecting all over the world. It would be natural that "pairhood" became the issue on the agenda since bartering is a compound situation and rules of living together were needed. About the same time Gemini become the star of the season according to seals from the time. In Sumer it was Utu and in Akkadian Shamash, an idol with two faces in opposite directions

The original Sumerian world consisted of about ten independent city-states ruled by a priest king. Sargon came as a world ruler and conquered the Twin River lands from Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and Anatolia. The priests and temples were no longer the interpreters of the will of gods. Power becomes more a matter for living rulers, which used the temples as their religious weapon.

However this was a long process and some Sumerian dynasty recaptured their land from the Semitic Akkadians. But as a whole the direction was towards worldly rulership. Sometimes it was pairhood with a worldly ruler and a priest with his side or that the ruler himself had both duties. In Scandinavia wee see both systems in the beginning of the Christian kingdom. However some provinces had the old Celtic system with "lagman", i.e. a lawman as leader of the province and its hundreds. In a way we might say that the Babylonn Hammurabi was the first lawman as a ruler. Of course the Sumerians had city laws a thousand years before Hammurabi, but he was more like a modern worldly ruler.

Two lands of Egypt

Pairhood was almost a rule in Egypt and in myth they had the struggle between Seth and Horus. In their symbolism we see this battle and dualism in many places, as they always needed an enemy. The pharaoh needed to show he was able to defend the Two Lands

But it is not the same dualism as in Christianity. The Egyptians knew that evil forces are part of life. Then it was normal that the pharaoh and tribes took the name of Seth as for instance Sethos. However the feast celebrating the rough Seth could be pretty tough.

A Greek traveller told about the battle celebrating Seth that caused many cracked skulls. In our days they have found mounds contending many of them … naturally I compare this fearless style with those surfing down the snowy mountains. Not much increase in intelligence to our days.

We know maybe more about the last centuries of the third millennium and that gives a picture of a period of disturbances in the Twin River land. However, the same was the case in Egypt where they had called the ruler Horus, which we may interpret as chief alderman and priest.

The first step was to take a vice in charge for the administration. At the same time they divided the big Twin Land in provinces with selected local administration, while the temples kept their own property and administration. With growth in population and wealth the powers of the local nobility grow and the struggles for power lead to disturbances. The annals tell about the seventh dynasty ca 2200 BC as seventy days and seventy rulers. Is it an expression for anarchy or were they seventy rulers? However it was a process from the Horus, i.e. time as ruler to the better-known pharaohs.

In the name of Mentuhotep I ca 2061 - 2010 we see that the Egyptians also had Gemini as leading star as Montu corresponds to this constellation. This god has falcon head and it may be a direct continuity from Horus. They describe the god as a warrior and it was perhaps necessary because they had to reform the Old Kingdom. Fortunately the reign of Mentuhotep was long so he got order in the valley. In Egypt were Gemini leading stars at the normal beginning of season at Candlemas.

Pairhood was early a natural structure in Egypt because it was the idea of the united two lands. All rituals and ideology were that of pairhood. The ruler as a time manager travelled there and back between upper and Lower Egypt. By a subtle ritual he kept the lands united. Another factors of power were that the temples with their gigantic central stores were the foundation of a mixed economy.

Surely it started with the gigantic works on the pyramids which needed huge stores of food and other things. Consequently the workers become dependent upon the ruler, and there were some risks too if the bad years were too bad. There seem to have been periods of seven years when the Nile not was as generous as usual. If sand storms and hot summer come to this, it was a catastrophe. Yet, overall the administration had the knowledge and power to keep wealth and peace in the valley normally.

We can speculate in the question whether some big families from Egypt and Sumer were forced to emigrate during the disturbances. That is because we see an era of new cultural elements as the Isis-dagger connected to slab cist culture. To this we see the artefacts showing that cultivating and sowing of corn and wheat become fashion at least for a period on places inland. We can also see a new kind of organisation as the cists in some area almost cover a province as if they organised it in parishes.

It does not have to be emigration of people but of new ideas and trials in growing crops. The Evenstorp carving and the surrounding area with finds are complements to each other. On the carving we find pairs of figures, as they were leaders or idols. If they used traditional observations, Gemini were actual about Mayday at the time and suitable as time of sowing.

On the constellation is a notch as if it were made for an observation star. This was actual in the gap between 2400 - 2050 between Taurus and Perseus and we see a flood in the symbols of time. Note on the plate we may see the star signs showing that the text is about goddesses.

The flood is maybe the wrong name and should be the Channel and symbolises the channels of the inundate-culture. The symbol may be mistaken for or mixed with the two snakes locked in an embrace, which surely is the combination of a water-snake and a harvest snake. They are the real explanation why the snake becomes safe guard of larders.

Pairhood at Fossum

Stars of Gemini were actual for Mayday during the entire Bronze Age if one observed it the normal way. However, another method is to follow the star whole the year. Then we can see it in different directions during the year and the solstices and equinoxes give the lead. Some parts may be younger or from about 1300 BC as a sword chap date it to that time. But some of the small boats and a S-shaped axe shows that some parts may be older than that.

Fossum is one of few untouched carvings in Bohuslaen and we see a calendar made during a short time. As usual they were only interested in spring and to organise the growing season. On the overlook we see 2 x 3 moon ships plus a little one above the main part of figures. The little ship with eleven strokes marks the days between twelve moons and a sun year. It is surely the winter half-year, and the rest is explaining customs in summer.

Nils think they have made the observations at a point in the empty circle and that the spring Gemini are then in southwest. Their lures are of the early type. They stand on each side of a big cupmark symbolising the descending to Underworld and the little girl is symbolising the seed and its journey.

Autumn is time for hunting then the animals are fat and especially they may hunt the males.

Winter is more like a distance and waiting for the spring with the lure blowers on board.

We do not know for sure if it were meant that way. The corner with many figures can confirm many standard ideograms of summer in astro-icons or other ideograms. We can only explain them one by one.

Three moon-ships at the bottom are the moons between February and May where they send Daddy Longleg away in waiting for spring. Al animals may freely live on grass and this period was a little warmer than today even during Bronze Age. The Scorpio and the little pig puzzle me, but it may be of older origin.

Then we see Archer the guard as start of the growing season. Above him is a scene of weighing a little dog, which may be Procyon and it is before Gemini and above that the descending.

Four men are guarding the late summer scenes, which end in hunting, baiting animals and initiation. The shield dance is still practice in some places and was maybe initiation. I had my confirmation at fourteen, while the Jewish car mitzvah is at thirteen.

The very big cupmark as full moon symbolises the end of season on one boat of Ramadan. The little dog above it plus the two big cupmarks are signs of the same.

We may ask where are the women? They are behind the cupmarks and full-cut feet, the little girl and overall the New Moon Mare of course. The Girl with marked calves on her legs like in Greece may be Kore. She is found on razors and usually she has two male servants. She was the daughter of Demeter whom they sent to Underworld for three months with the birth giving Lady and her mate.

We do not know if they grew corn and wheat, but pea, lentil, turnip, millet and others were grown during Stone Age. Maybe they did least in some places. Maybe the figures lefts of the full-cut feet are icons for burn-beating.

We cannot read a straight story in their words about farming in the carvings. However the symbols, icons, ideograms give us the building bricks for a story about a normal farming collective. I remember it from some places in archipelagos and wilds in the fifties. The separator for milk was the only modernity. Otherwise the tools, means and methods were as old as farming for the most.

Why did their bread and butter taste much better than anything I ever have eaten?