detail from "Cosmology"

Featured are Ma'at as the Libra constellation, and Sagittarius, who face off with Scorpio; Osiris as Bootes/Dionysos, guarding the seven-starred crown; King Gilgamesh as Hercules; and Thoth as Cygnus. Gilgamesh, the ancient King of Babylon, challenges Ophiuchus in an attempt to obtain the seven-starred crown (Corona Borealis).

I based the Ophiuchus figure on the Estela Raimondi, originally located at the Temple of the Jaguar in Chavin, Peru. A detail of the stela's design is pictured here, from two perspectives:

This detail (from a photograph taken at Lima's National Museum) depicts, conversely, a staff-bearing shaman looking upward, and a jaguar deity descending. The Chavin culture is one of the earliest known to use contour rivalry, in which an image takes on different meanings when viewed from varying perspectives. Many other Peruvian cultures -- the brutal as well as the peaceful ones -- used similar motifs in their temples. In the Huaca Cao Viejo, one of the ancient Moche temples, the figure of the jaguar deity is carved into a woman's tomb. The jaguar's feet are flanked by snakes, symbols of the underworld and the feminine creative powers, while its head is flanked by condors, symbols of the upper world and the masculine. The jaguar symbolizes the middle world. Many shamans still perform their work through the balance and resolution of dualities (light and dark, masculine and feminine, and upper and lower realms), between which the jaguar is a messenger. The staff-bearing figure is often shown holding two Huachuma (San Pedro) cactus plants instead of staffs, with the tip of one cactus flowering and the other bare to denote a female and male cactus and the representation of dual creative forces.

Similar symbolism is found in the Ophiuchus constellation: Ophiuchus holds two snakes (or one long snake, depending on whose interpretation you look at), one of which points toward the "female" symbol of Ariadne's crown, while the other points toward the "male" symbol of Aquila, the eagle/vulture/phoenix. When you look at the painting one way, it depicts the headdress-sporting Ophiuchus figure with its mouth open in an expression of surprise while being beaten over the head by King Gilgamesh. Turned upside-down, the scene depicts the descending jaguar, who pushes Gilgamesh toward the mouth of Draco, the element of reincarnation who swallows souls and eventually re-births them through its tail at the north pole. From this perspective, Gilgamesh has failed to realize the true meaning of his quest, and will have to start all over again in another life.

Gilgamesh, whose journeys are described in the ancient Sumerian text The Epic of Gilgamesh, has many similarities to Hercules (the Greco-Roman hero after whom this constellation is named). Both are half-gods, known for their brute strength, who killed Earth spirits/guardians of sacred objects. Hercules, for instance, killed the Lernean Hydra (a many-headed serpent who guarded an entrance into the underworld) and captured Cerberus (another guardian of the underworld). Hercules also killed the Kretan bull by strangling it (in other stories, the Athenian prince Theseus killed the bull); but in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian King Gilgamesh is credited with killing the bull of heaven during a feud with Ishtar (the Babylonian version of Inanna). Gilgamesh also killed the guardian of the ancient cedar forest, thus laying the entire forest to waste. Gilgamesh's best friend was killed as punishment for these actions, and the king, fearing his own death, set out on a failed quest to obtain eternal life.

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