30

Appendix 30

See P. F. Gossmann, Planetarium Babylonicum (1950), 94: “mulGIR2”TAB dIshara tam-tim. Anton Deimel (Pantheon Babylonicum [1914], pp. 148f.) takes mulGIR.TAB for beta delta alpha Scorpii only: ‘Ishara est dea quaedam partus, quae relationem habet ad Gestin anna, Adad’." See also W. J. Hinke, *A New Boundary Stone of *Nebuchadnezzar 1 from Nippur (1907), pp. 223, 243; A. Jeremias, HAOG (1929), pp. 223, 385; F. Hommel, Ethnologie und Geographie des Alten Orients (1926), pp. 563, 770-74, 783; and D. O. Edzard, “Die Mythologie der Sumerer und Akkader,” in Wörterbuch der Mythologie, vol. 1, P.9.

We might be accused of a clumsy contradiction because of having claimed Sirius to be the “Sea-Star” in appendix #2, when here it is evident that Ishara tamtim, the goddess of Scorpius, is entitled to this dignity. We are not only aware of this apparent “contradiction,” but we also hope to unravel the mystery in the future. It is a mysterious scheme, but not a hopeless case. Clue number one is contained in the Coptic list of lunar mansions, already mentioned in appendix #4 (cf. A. Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus [1653], vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 246), where it is stated with respect to the twentieth lunar mansion, the sting of the scorpion (lambda upsilon Scorpii): “Aggia, Sancta, Arabice al-Sa’ula (i.e., “the sting”); statio translationis caniculae in coelum, unde et siot vocatur . . . Longitudo huius stationis est a quarto Sagittarii usque ad decimum septimum eiusdem. Haec statio ab Aegyptiis quoque vocatur soleka sive Astrokyon . . . statio venationis.” Eduard Stucken (*Der Ursprung des Alphabets und *die Mondstationen [1913], p. 7) identified this soleka immediately with Egyptian Selket/Serqet, the Mesopotamian Ishara tamtim, the Scorpion goddess. Whether or not this is permissible under the stern laws of linguists, it is a fact that we find regularly on the Egyptian astronomical ceilings Selket standing above, i.e., beyond, the bull’s thigh (Big Dipper), which means that Selket represents the opposition to the perpetual center of attention: Sirius/Sothis. (Yes, we are aware of the circumstance that fourteen degrees is no ideal opposition to one star.) Clue number two are the stories spun around Indian mura, “the root” (or “tearer out of the root”), again lambda upsilon Scorpii — compare appendices #4 and #39 — which have to be combined with the ocean of most atrocious yarns dealing with Mandragora (Alraun), the famous root that can be pulled out only by a dog that dies immediately after having completed this feat. Clue number three is carefully hidden away in the Mexican traditions concerned with the hunting festival Quecholli (statio venationis, and Quecholli is not to be separated from the “hunt” for hikuli, the peyote, as undertaken by Huichol and Tarahumare), which rehearses the great “fall” of the gods who had plucked the forbidden flowers, in Tamoanchan, “the house of descending.”