THE Ancient Egyptians are known to have worn magical amulets and talismans as as rings, necklaces and bracelets ... but now, for the first time, archaeologists have discovered two mummified bodies wearing magical copper toe rings.
The bodies were found only 20 km south of Antinoopolis, though they pre-date the city of Antinous by centuries.
One of the two, a man who lived more than 3,300 years ago and died around the age of 35-40, was buried in textile and plant-stem matting and a copper alloy toe ring on his right foot.
Researchers believe that he likely wore the ring while he was still alive, and not that it was added as a death amulet.
They note that he suffered a number of injuries during his lifetime, including several broken ribs and fractures of his left radius, right ulna, right foot and right femur. So the ring was likely a magical aid in healing these injuries.
The copper alloy ring shown here was found on the second toe of the man's right foot, the same foot that suffered a fracture when he was alive. His right femur was also fractured and never healed properly causing him great pain.
That man's mummified skeleton was found in 2011. In 2012, archaeologists found a second individual with a copper alloy ring originally on one of their toes. The gender of that person is undetermined.
Both skeletons were found in a cemetery just south of the ancient city of Akhetaten, whose name means "Horizon of the Aten."
The ruined ancient city of Akhetaten is located a scant 20 km south of Antinoopolis, the sacred city built on the site where Antinous died in the Nile in 130 AD.
The archaeologists firmly believe the copper rings were intended to be magical medical aids to the wearers. They may well have been "prescribed" by physicians.
The Ancient Egyptians made no distinction between religion, magic and science. That split began with Christianity in its bid to crush paganism by denouncing magic as "demon witchcraft."
And it was cemented by the Age of Reason which split off science (medicine, etc.) from religion.
But the Ancients viewed religion/magic/science as one whole. The Ancient Priests of Antinous were men of religion, but they were also men of science and they were magicians.
If you came to the temple with a broken arm and contusions, they would sterilize the wound and set the bone and apply healing poultices as any modern-day physician would.
But they would also say prayers to bless the medicaments and they would wrap the splint in bandages which were sealed with magical incantations written in iodine-like ink to keep out evil spirits.
They would prescribe a magico-medico-religious drink to kill the pain.
A magical ring or other amulet would be embued with the healing energies of the god to enhance the healing process.
To an Ancient Priest of Antinous, our modern practice of just getting the bone set and splint and taking a pain killer would be barbaric. It might heal the fracture.
But they would consider it woefully inadequate all-around health care.
They would call modern doctors well-meaning but dangerous quacks.
ON JULY 11th each year, the Religion of Antinous takes a moment to ponder the esoteric reflections in the Well of Castalia at Delphi — where Antinous took a sacred bath, and where he was initiated into the Delphi Mystery Teachings.
It is also where one of the most mysterious and inspiring statues of Antinous was found.
The Well of Castalia
is a fresh-water spring that flows from Mount Parnassus at Dephi, the
sanctuary of Apollo.
The Castalian Spring is located about 500
yards/meters from the Apollo Sanctuary itself. Busloads of tourists are
whisked through
the ruins of Delphi, but few ever stray away from their groups to
wander off over to the spring site, which makes it an even more secluded
and magical and mysterious place.
It really is like stepping into the scene pictured here — Tarot Trump XVII "The Star" — the trump card which was inspired by the Well of Castalia.
The spring was created when Pegasus, the winged horse, struck his hoof against a rock at the base of Mount Parnassus and water gushed forth, creating a wellspring of divine inspiration for the gods of Olympus.
The name Castalia is derived from a Nymph named Castalia, a daughter
of the river Achelous, who, when pursued by Apollo, threw herself in the
spring that took her name. It was the most holy spring at Delphi and
was said to be
the place where Apollo and the Muses bathed.
Pilgrims
washed in the sacred water before visiting the Pythoness at the Delphic
Oracle. According to Euripides, washing one's hair was sufficient for
the average visitor, but persons who had transgressed more seriously
against the Gods (he mentions habitual murderers as an example) had to
strip off and wash themselves completely in the purifying waters.
The ancients believed the name Pegasus came from an even more ancient word meaning "wellspring of magical inspiration"
and it was said that Pegasus was drinking from the Castalian Pool when
Bellerophontes (or in later versions Perseus) sneaked up on him to
harness Pegasus to do battle against fearful monsters.
In the Delphic Mystery Teachings, the initiates were called
upon to harness the magical inspiration of Pegasus for their own quest against the inner-demons of darkness towards spiritual
enlightenment.
It was also said that the water of Castalia possessed the gift of
prophecy, and any man who drank there would derive prophetic vision.
Castalia is also a metaphor for the Well of Knowledge, and was said to be the fountain from which wisdom and learning poured from the heart of Apollo.
We know that Hadrian and Antinous visited this spot and it seems
certain that Antinous purified himself in these waters — or at least
washed his luxuriant hair.
An exquisite statue of Antinous was discovered at Delphi. The
forearms had been broken off, but the ancient priests had lovingly
buried the statue standing upright — which was the way it was found in
the 19th Century, incredibly intact except for the missing forearms.
Alas, Antinous would drown in the similarly magical waters of the
River Nile only a few scant months after visiting Delphi, during what we
call the imperial "Three-Year Peregrination" — the wondrous and fateful final three-year Eastern Empire travels of Hadrian and Antinous.
Flamen Antinoalis Antonius Subia explains why this special day, July 11th, is venerated by us Antinoians:
"We venerate the wisdom-gushing Well of Castalia on this day,
half a year distant from the Well of Juturna, and bathe in preparation
for the transition of the Peregrination year. We pray to Castalia to
sweeten our tongue, as Antinous once bathed there, exposing the pure
beauty of his flesh to the cold, fresh-gushing pool that imparts
inspiration of the mind. In reverence of the wisdom and poetic elegance
of Antinous, we bathe in our own Fountains of Castalia."
The
imagery of this purifying plunge into the magically inspiring waters of
the Castalian Well has been used throughout history — even adorning the
walls of early Christian churches, as seen in the mosaic (above) found
in Libya.
The imagery lives vibrantly in the XVIIth Greater Trump in the Tarot as The Star.
Open your Mind and your Heart to the Mystery Teachings of Delphi. Permit yourself to be carried aloft upon the magical wings of Pegasus, whose name means "wellspring of magical inspiration". Become one with Antinous through the wonder of HOMOTHEOSIS and allow yourself to conquer your demons and to soar to glory amongst the stars.
ON JULY 10th the Religion of Antinous
commemorates the Apotheosis of Hadrian. After a prolonged illness, at
Baiae, on the Bay of Naples, Hadrian died on July 10, 138.
His ashes
were placed in the mausoleum on the bank of the Tibur that is now called
Castel Sant'Angelo.
After the death of the gentle Antinous, Hadrian became
embittered and mistrustful, capricious and cruel.
When Hadrian died, the
Senate wished to condemn his memory for atrocities committed against
them during his final years.
But his successor, Antoninus Pius, persuaded them to declare Hadrian a God.
A temple was built for him known as the Hadrianeum on the Campus Marius, the remains of which are now part of the Roman Stock Exchange.
Flamen Antinoalis Antonyus Subia explains:
"Hadrian the God is venerated as the manifestation of Jupiter
Optimus Maximus on Earth, the ruler and guiding force behind the
Antonine Dynasty, the most sacred family of emperors, whose reign is the
Golden Age of Rome, because of the peace and prosperity that it
maintained, which was the result of the wisdom of Hadrian's far-sighted
and divine plan stretching out over the world. We worship and adore
Hadrian the God, Savior of the Cosmos."
WE are proud to announce the most extensive collection of Antinous images in the world!
Flamen Antonyus Subia spent nearly two years assembling the GALLERY OF ANTINOUS ICONS.
What initially was supposed to be one page of images became a massive library.
He says it turned out to entail "months of painful, agonizing, finger-crippling, endless catalogueing, and intricate photoshop enhancing and resizing of countless... countless. ..Antinous images!"
The endeavour proved to be not only a technical challenge but also something of a spiritual initiation.
Antonyus says, "I now feel that I am an expert in Antinous Iconography...as over the process, I have become deeply familiar with each and everyone of Antinous's wonderful, beautiful statues and busts and other images.
"I have to tell you that in the end...it has been the most meaningful, and intimate experience of getting to know Antinous on a level that I have never before felt.
"He is so astonishingly beautiful... I found myself treating each and every one of his images with particular, loving care and devotion.
"It's amazing...when you handle his beautiful image again and again...when you gaze upon him, and study him, and see example after example, they all seem to blur together until you are left with this cumulative impression of what he really must have looked like...like the sum total...as though I had layered translucent leaves of his face and body one over the other, each showing through to the next, cancelling out errors, cracks, chips, peculiarities, the hand of the artist, modern enhancements, slight differences...my own impression of what I always thought he looked like...all blurring together into a ghostly form of his true image...I see him now.
"But I am also deeply familiar with all the different variations...I know them all by name, location, origin, and bits of their history...I know the image of Antinous as I had never known it before."
Antonyus adds that the gallery is not complete and he has issued a call for readers to submit more images.
"My intent is to have the most complete collection of Antinous images in the world," he explains. "We are after all The Temple of Antinous, his modern religion. It is only right that we take his image into our possession and display his form for all to see....with reverance and piety...not as an object of art, or history, but as an object of worship."
ON JULY 8th-9th we commemorate the Ascension and Consecration of Hadrian — when he became master of the world after years of worrying and waiting. Hadrian was declared Emperor by the Legions when Trajan died suddenly while campaigning in Parthia on August 8th, 117.
Hadrian had been on tenterhooks for years wondering whether Trajan would formally adopt him as his heir.
If
Trajan died without the issue of succession being settled, it could
result in civil war — or at least in the assassination of Hadrian by
some other ambitious man.
It is said that the Divine Empress Plotina forged the will of her
husband and gave the throne to Hadrian, who had been her protégé and
friend for years.
After assuming power, Hadrian first settled the conflict with the
Persian King, signing a peace treaty that was to last through the whole
of his reign. As Trajan's military representative in the provinces, he
had seen how the empire was beginning to over-reach its resources. So he
set about consolidating things in the East, lest his Empire become
embroiled in the sort of chronic blood-letting that modern superpowers
now seek to extricate themselves from in that same region.
It is also said that he wanted to let the political dust settle back
in Rome before returning to a city where his critics were waiting. Many
thought him unfit. Hadrian was Hispanic — literally so. He was born in
the province of Hispania and spoke Latin with a provincial "Hispanic
accent" which was the cause of much derision by high-born Patricians
when he was sent to Rome as a boy to be educated. He never liked Rome
and, throughout his reign, spent as little time there as possible.
Settling other matters in the East, Hadrian waited a full year before
returning to Rome, and on July 9th, 118, he entered the Holy City and
was formally and ritually installed as Emperor by the Senate. He was
then consecrated as Pontifex Maximus, highest priest of the Roman Religion, and head of all foreign cults.
He inherited from the warrior-king Trajan the largest empire that the
western world had ever known — Rome at her greatest size and strength —
and he wisely chose not to continue to expand the frontiers, but to
turn instead to the development of the interior.
He visited every province, traveling more than any other emperor
before or after, dedicating his power to art, literature, legal reform
and the promotion of peace, prosperity, and the united religious
consciousness of Roman citizenship after his beloved Athenian model.
Flamen Antinoalis Antonyus Subia says the following about this Sacred Day in our Liturgical Calendar:
"On this day, Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus was
to assume responsibility as the spiritual leader of the Empire, Father
of the Country with a vigor unparalleled by his predecessors, and was to
be one of the foremost builders of cities, temples, and public
structures world-wide. For his love of Antinous and the extraordinary
gesture of deifying our god, we worship and venerate Hadrian as the
founder of our faith and as our immortal father, the lover of Antinous."
EXPERTS have found iron beads in Egypt dating back 5,500 years ... thousands of years before the dawn of the Iron Age when mankind mastered the art of smelting iron.
Where did these beads come from? Surely they didn't just fall from the sky. Or did they?
Diane Johnson, a professor at the Open University in Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom, and several colleagues have solved the puzzle. The team reports in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science that the iron beads found Gerzeh Egypt did, indeed, fall from the sky.
These beads are made from meteoric iron, which is so pure it doesn't need to be smelted.
Johnson and her coauthors point out that the Gerzeh "iron seems to be used exclusively for high-status funerary goods, implying that a particular importance was placed upon it."
The ancient Hittites of Turkey were the first to smelt iron, around 1500 BC. In Egypt, the earliest iron smelting dates to around 700 BC. That's why it came as a considerable surprise when archaeologists recovered a handful of iron beads from the Gerzeh cemetery near Cairo dating to around 3500 BC.
Did the ancient Egyptians understand that meteorites came from the sky and is this why the iron was held in such esteem?
Maybe so because the ancient Egyptian term for iron ... "bja" ... might be translated as "stuff of which the sky is made."
There was no iron smelting in North America until around AD 1000, when Vikings brought the technology with them to the briefly occupied site of L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. It didn't catch on among the indigenous population and wasn't reintroduced until after 1492.
But just as in Egypt, iron artifacts are found at much earlier sites in North America, and the explanation is the same ... native peoples made use of "stuff of which the sky is made."
BRITISH
archaeologists have uncovered the remains of circular stone building
with red and white painted walls that was once a Roman-era shrine which
possibly could have been dedicated to Antinous in the guise of the Celtic war god Antenociticus.
Uncovered in Cornwall
near the Rutland Water Nature Reserve, the shrine consists of a circular
stone building with red and white painted walls, and the skeletal
remains of a man who had been buried in its center.
The Cornwall discovery shares headlines today with the discovery of a stone head of ANTENOCITICUS near Hadrian's Wall in County Durham.
At the Cornwall site, archaeologists
also found more than 200 Roman coins, a small bronze figurine, pottery,
and animal bones that were probably left behind by the ritual slaughter
of lambs and cattle in ritual sacrifices.
“Finding Roman shrines
is not the norm, so we were delighted,” said Jo Everitt, environment
and heritage assessor for Anglian Water.
The shrine was found on land that will be added to the nature reserve.
The shrine is thought to be dedicated to Cocicius, a form of Antenociticus, who is believed to be a Celtic form of Antinous.
Another
Celtic god with whom Antinous was assimilated, according to an
inscription found at Hadrian's Villa is another form of Apollo, is the
god Belenus whose cult was worshiped all over the Celtic world, but is
said to have been particular to Cornwall.
So Antinous has a Cornish connection for some reason.
Roman
sites had been found in the area at Collyweston Great Woods, 14km
(eight miles) to the south-east of Rutland, and another to the
north-west of Rutland Water, near Oakham.
They also found more
than 200 Roman coins, pottery jars, part of a small bronze figurine and
deposits of animal bone, probably from the ritual sacrifice of lambs and
cattle.
A skeleton of a man, aged about 30, was buried in a grave in the centre of the shrine.
The archaeologists believe the shrine fell out of use in 300 AD.
Ms
Everitt added: "We've recreated part of the foundation and wall of the
shrine from the original stone on an area outside of the lagoons so
visitors to Rutland can see what it looked like."
The findings from the dig are currently being displayed at the Rutland Water visitor centre.
