Solar deity

Now in part one of this multi-part series, we saw how the most ancient symbol of the sun, the old petroglyph sun, evolved into the central theme of both Christianity and Judaism.

And along with that ancient sun symbol, there was also evolved, obviously, sun gods.

Over thousands of years, there arose at least 37 different suns of God.

S-U-N. Here's a list of 37 sun gods.

Gods of the sun who died, was resurrected.

Most had a mother who was a virgin, had 12 followers.

37 different religions have sun gods and gods who died on a cross.

Let's take a look at some of these sun gods, or shall we say suns, S-U-N of God.

But the poem does not present it that way.

It presents it as a man who wants a child, and he goes to the sun god every day, the poem says.

He offers a sheep, he burns incense, and he says the same thing over and over.

"Lord," he says, "you have crossed the mountains.

We have the recipe and not the ingredient.

And there were plants and rituals specifically for childbirth and for conception, and there are incantations to be said over a woman in labor, and some of them are beautiful, and some of them are very frightened, and among them the phrase turns up for the plant that helps.

So when a king asks the sun god for the plant of birth, he is not asking for a wonder.

He is asking a god who sees everything on the Earth to tell him which plant out of the hundreds in the list and where it grows.

Scarface started once on his journey and traveled for many, many miles.

Sometimes he went cheerfully, saying to himself, "The sun god is kind.

He will give me my bride." Sometimes his heart was sad, and he went heavily, for he thought, "Maybe the sun god desires to marry her himself, and who could expect him to give up a maiden so beautiful?" Through forests and over mountains he went, searching ever for the golden gates which marked the entrance to the country of the great god.

The wild animals he met knew that this time he had not come out as a hunter to take them, so they drew near to him and willingly answered his questions.

But not one of them could tell him where lay the sun god's land.

"We have not traveled beyond the forest," they said.

"Perhaps the birds, who fly swiftly and very far, can tell you what you want to know." Scarface called to the birds who were flying overhead, and they came down and listened.

"We will take you across," they said.

Enkidu got hold of it.

by the horns and then the tail and held it and turned it and Gilgamesh came in past its head like a butcher the poem says like a man who knows exactly where to put the knife and he put it in between the neck and the horns and it was over and they took the heart out and offered it to the sun god and then they sat down together the two of them and rested I like that line more than any of the fighting they killed the thing and they gave the heart to the god who had told them to go to the forest and then the two of them sat down on the ground next to it and rested the way you would after moving furniture that is the whole of the bull of heaven and it is the last time in this poem that either of them is happy.

And then Ishtar came up on the wall of Uruk.

She stood on the great wall, the one from the first chapter of last night, the one you were told to go up on and admire the brickwork, and she looked down at what was left of the bull, and she began to lament, and she said, Woe to Gilgamesh, who slandered me and killed the bull of heaven.

He dedicated them to his father, who was a dead king.

And then he took them home and hung them on the wall of his own bedroom.

two enormous horns from the thing that came down out of the sky on the bedroom wall over the bed and they are there through everything that happens for the rest of tonight they are there while a man is dying in the next room they are there through the six days and seven nights nobody in the poem ever mentions them again and they poured out oil for the god of the city and then they held a celebration in the palace and everybody drank and afterwards the young men lay down to sleep on the couches of the night and Enkidu laid down and Enkidu had a dream Chapter 7 The Council He dreamed the gods were sitting together, Anu and Enlil and Ea, and the sun god, in a room, in conference, and they were talking about the two of them.

Because they have killed the bull of heaven, said Anu, and because they have killed Humbaba, one of them must die.

But by the inspiration of divinity is super vague.

What divinity are we talking about here? Well, the arch might be referencing the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, not the Christian god.

You see, Constantine was a sun god fanboy.

In 310 CE, two years before the Battle of Milvian Bridge, Constantine stopped at a temple of Apollo with his entire army and claimed that Apollo appeared to him in a vision, prophesying that Constantine would live a long life and rule the whole world.

We learn about this vision from a speech given in Constantine's honor after it supposedly took place.

Bye.

So even though our source says that Apollo visited Constantine, it seems that Constantine viewed this god as Sol Invictus instead.

Constantine minted a bunch of coins that depict the sun god alongside the Latin word comes, which means companion, comrade, or associate.

Yeah

... um, good God, uh, [laughs] I don't...

It, it...

I, I forget the exact wording on it, where it's like something happens on Egghead that shakes the foundation of the world or something like it's, it kind of-

He's just been a cartoon this whole time.

That's, that's Nika.

[laughs] But I, I like how they're like, "Oh, God, it's...

You know, the Buster Call's happening.

The three other planets would have had a wretched part to play in comparison with Nebo and Ishtar, if they had not been placed under new patronage.

The secondary solar gods, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, led, if we examine their role carefully, but an incomplete existence.

They were merely portions of the sun, while Shamash represented the entire orb.

What became of them apart from the moment in the day and year in which they were actively engaged in their career? Where did they spend their nights, the hours during which Shamash had retired into the firmament and lay hidden behind the mountains of the north? As in Egypt, the Horuses identified at first with the sun became at length the rulers of the planets.

Moreover, he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home.

But do what he might, he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the sun god, Hyperion.

So the god prevented them from ever reaching home.

Tell me too about all these things, O Daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.

Then, taking to their oars, they whitened the water with the foam they raised in rowing.

Meanwhile, I took a large wheel of wax and cut it up small with my sword.

Then I kneaded the wax in my strong hands till it became soft, which it soon did between the kneading and the rays of the sun god's son of Hyperion.

Then I stopped the ears of all my men, and they bound me hands and feet to the mast as I stood upright on the crosspiece.