The "Foundation Stone" Vs. The Death Pit, which came first?

Most have heard the story of Abraham and the sacrafice of his son, which was pre-emptied by a Ram. This story is said to happen at the Rock (aka "Foundation Stone" in some attributions) that is under the "Dome of the Rock" in Jerusalem.

But there is a similar story that appears to preceed the one in Jerusalem. Most know that Abraham was born in the City of Ur and this was one of the citys of the Creator gods, and close to the City of Eridu ( about 5 miles apart).


So, if we take a look at what the Penn. Museum discovered in the City of Ur, it is a restatement of the story of Abraham. Found in the Death Pit of Ur is the image of the Ram and thicket, except the Ram is a Goat.

www.allaboutthebible.net...


www.penn.museum...#

Then these other interesting issues like the Temple in Jerusalem faces to the East and that is the precise direction from Jerusalm to the City of Ur and Eridu region of the Creator gods. Now these similar issues of human sacrifice and a ram/goat substitution.



There is something close in the Iraq Museum, and Ur and Eridu are in Iraq:





From Nat. Geo page:

news.nationalgeographic.com...

The correlation of the stories.

riveting thread. short, to the point. genius in it's simplicity.

Originally posted by randomname
riveting thread. short, to the point. genius in it's simplicity.

Well Thank You. Pleased that you saw the effect of how reading those two pages has a sudden awakening effect.

With all the emphasis given to the so called "Foundation Stone", under Dome of the Rock, it is more important now to consider earlier episodes of the same theme in the area to which Abraham was Born in the City of Ur and the home of the Creator gods that Abraham was said to have walked with since his childhood.

It adds another dimension to the issues of sacrifice origin and change going right to the heartland of the Creator gods around the City of Ur.

There are more associations to connect, like the Holy Water of Gihon Spring and area of City of Ur.

Hi, Magnum...
it IS an interesting correlation, thanks for bringing it to the table. Too bad the other response was a snide one...don't let it bother you...

your scholarship is WAY beyond the capacity of many who work these forums; it saddens me, but to be honest, I think your title is a little off-putting, because many will not even know what you're talking about (I didn't!), but because I have a great deal of respect for you, I clicked on it today.

s/f from lil ole me...
and thanks for furthering the advancement of unraveling ancient mythologies!
~wild

Originally posted by wildtimes
Hi, Magnum...
it IS an interesting correlation, thanks for bringing it to the table. Too bad the other response was a snide one...don't let it bother you...

your scholarship is WAY beyond the capacity of many who work these forums; it saddens me, but to be honest, I think your title is a little off-putting, because many will not even know what you're talking about (I didn't!), but because I have a great deal of respect for you, I clicked on it today.

s/f from lil ole me...
and thanks for furthering the advancement of unraveling ancient mythologies!
~wild

Hello Wild,

You can just call me "Mag"

Thanks for also taking note of the two URL's above, as this one had to have people think a little more deeply to gain the significance of its OP.

This City of Ur goat depiction is just as important as the Ram story of Abraham from Jerusalem. This appears the issue that the Masons use in their search for Ancient Mesopotamian gods, as part of the Blue Lodge initiations. The Masons make use of a goat, and many connect the goat to an association of evil. And the issues of just why any real god would demand destruction of animals, but this burning to ashes is a lot like the theme for Hell, and thus Satin/Devil, etc.




Then those that know about Near East archiology know that the University of Pennsylvania has the largest and best collections to include a huge collection of the Sumerian Tablets, and this gold statue of the Goat in a Thicket.

There is so much that ties together the Sumerian (Near East) area to both Egypt and Jerusalem, and even the Jerusalem temple kept a Egyptian style architecture and the large stone building craft for Solomon's temple and Herod's wall was definitely part of the Sciences of Egypt.

So now, some of those associations can begin to be considered.

One thing appears for certain, is that the religion of Judiasm appears to miss a number of key points that has the religion unable to figure out if it worships the signs for Hell or the signs for Heaven upon the Earth.

One thing one can begin to see is the Islam didn't like this temple burning thing, and they resist the imagery of a temple that would make that type worship as being akin to a real god.


One thing is for sure, since the Temple Mount area now has two religious Islam sites, the rule for the Soloman temple is that they could not build over graves or previous sites of religion temples or altars.

But one can see that the Soloman's temple appeared to have been a combination of heaven and hell and Enki and Enlil and nobody could separate the differences until the Jesus and Essene came along and resisted burned offerings and learned more toward Enki or Ea as being the Father, or Abba, to which Jesus spoke.

With the Springs Waters one finds the worship of Enki, and with the sacrafice with fire more that of Enlil/Yahweh. Old symbols of triangles one pointed up is Fire and one pointed down is water, and combined it the Shield of David, or David's star. So, even the original gods of Fire and Water appear in the temple's significance.

It appears the temple's original imagery was complex and involved a huge amount of superstition about these creator gods that continued to color all the Jewish thinking and pontifications on god until this very day.


Stories like Soddom and Gomorrah are best told as nature's effects in the Rift Zone at the Dead Sea was part volcanic effects and part oil deposit linked. Nature's forces built and the people were affected by the toxic emissions that caused issues with thinking clearly, retention of calcium and the turn to stone issues, and the sexual effects of many toxic chemicals on the body. What was just a process of nature on man, turned into the highly distorted story of this via old Rabbis sitting around crafting an impressive story to have man fear god and not really adequately understand the process of nature's ways.


But these days, the veil of the temple is lifting and more are beginning to see they really didn't have god in a box or behind the curtain.

A little more on "Great Death Pit"s of Ur, which were not tombs and just mass burial sites with lots of relics and jewelry. One gets to see what Ur was predicted to look like and how it once was beside the river, but the river silted in the the course changed. This killed the City of Ur, thus migrations to Babylon and they left the mud flats for higher ground and found rocks and limestone to build the like monuments of Ur.

Symbols like Lions represented Kings and the King of Earth was nature itself, in the earliest symbols. Later Lions still represented Kings, but the message drifted toward powerful persons. Like King David was the Lion of Judah. Many decendants of this heritage have the symbol of a Lion on their family Shields or Royal Crests.

Similarly, the first monuments of Egypt was the Lion and the Spinx is one such old monument, and one that was modified to carry the face of a Pharoh, or King of Egypt.

www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk...

Golden Ram in Bush. Ur. Royal Graveyard - c 2,500 BC.

This is one of an almost identical pair discovered by Leonard Woolley in the 'Great Death Pit', one of the graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The other is now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. It was named the 'Ram in a Thicket' by the excavator Leonard Woolley, who liked biblical allusions. In Genesis 22:13, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but at the last moment 'Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son'. (4)

The tube rising from the goat's shoulders suggests it was used to support something, most likely a bowl.

archaeology.about.com...

Although ten of the Royal Tombs at Ur contained the remains of a central or primary individual, six of them were what Woolley called "grave pits" or "death pits" like this one. Woolley's "Grave Pits" were shafts leading down to the tombs and sunken courtyards built around the tomb or adjacent to it. The adjacent shafts and courtyards were filled with skeletons of retainers, most of them also dressed in jewels and carrying bowls.

The largest of these pits was called the Great Pit of Death, located adjacent to Queen Puabi's tomb and measuring 4 x 11.75 meters. Over seventy individuals were buried here, neatly laid out, wearing jewels and carrying bowls or cups. Bioarchaeological studies of these skeletons show that many of these people had labored hard during their lives, supporting Woolley's notion that some of these were servants, even if dressed in finery and perhaps attending a banquet on the last day of their lives.

Recent CT scans and associated studies of some of the servants' bodies have revealed that they were killed by blunt force trauma, then preserved with heat and mercury, then dressed in their finery and laid out in rows for the trip to the afterlife.

Basically, Ur's river culture was the mud flat orginal template that formed the model for Babylon's river culture and tower monument, then Egypt as the greatest of the River Cultures with colossal monuments of cut stone.

Some from The greatest of the River Cultures migrated to the deserts in Israel was Jerusalem sits on a large limestone rock and was defendable with a pulsing spring of healthy water below. The temple there used the same sciences and methods of Egypt, and their temple was more Egyptian, than Phonecian design.

Hey there, Mag! Just wanted to say I love reading your threads! Also, coincidentally, I just downloaded a game called Goats In Trees for free on my Android phone, and I had never heard that phrase before. And after reading the Penn State link I saw that exact phrase in a caption under the second picture from the bottom. I thought it was a strange coincidence.

And then I Googled the phrase and discovered that, in Morocco?, they have goats that climb these certain trees to eat the olive like fruits. I wonder if those goats have any relation or relevance to the goats mentioned in your thread or in the Penn State link you provided.

Also interesting, there's a group of people who follow these goats from tree to tree because the goats cannot digest the pit of the fruit, and so they spit it out, or it passes through them, and the people collect these pits and use them to make things like an oil and face cream and stuff. The tree is in danger of going extinct or at least being endangered I guess. It's too bad. I want my grandchildren to see goats in trees, and not just on a video game!

Sorry if I went off topic. I really enjoy your threads so please keep it up. For every few hundred people who aren't Interested, there is at least one person like me who is extremely interested! And don't forget about the workers who read threads here but do not have accounts. There may be more of them than actual members!

Hi,

Thanks for the good words on my threads. Pleased you enjoy reading them. Most of the religion goat and ram theme is about god associated sacrifice and the goat is caught in a thicket.

Yes, goats are very interesting and do like trees in many areas. If you are in the US, there is an area in Texas that is loaded with goat standing around in trees. Very odd sights. So, even the US has the tree climbing goats.

www.google.com... 59&bih=554

I'll have to check out the product made from the goat droppings!

The Penn Museum has one of the City of Ur Death Pit Goats and the other Goat in a thicket is over in England at the British Museum. There is a pair of them. The British Museum's page gives a lot more details on construction. Copper Ears, Red Limstone Base, lots of gold, and Lapis Lazuli Blue gemstone for horns and fur. Where blue is akin to the Creator god color.

Goats and Rams were akin to god in terms of living high on top of mountains closer of heaven, but these ended up burried in graves. It appears the City of Ur gods didn't approve of god being akin to goats or rams, so they end up being sacrifice items for the City of Ur's Abraham.

www.britishmuseum.org...

From Ur, southern Iraq, about 2600-2400 BC

This is one of an almost identical pair discovered by Leonard Woolley in the 'Great Death Pit', one of the graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. The other is now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. It was named the 'Ram in a Thicket' by the excavator Leonard Woolley, who liked biblical allusions. In Genesis 22:13, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but at the last moment 'Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son'.

The 'ram' is more accurately described as a goat, and he reaches up for the tastiest branches in a pose often adopted by goats. Goats and sheep in the Near East were among the earliest animals to be domesticated. They were an everyday feature of agricultural life and are regularly depicted by artists in many different ways.

The figure had been crushed flat by the weight of the soil and the wooden core had perished. Wax was used to keep the pieces together as it was lifted from the ground, and it was then pressed back into shape. The ram's head and legs are covered in gold leaf, its ears are copper (now green), its twisted horns and the fleece on its shoulders are of lapis lazuli, and its body fleece is made of shell. Its genitals are gold. The tree is covered in gold leaf, with golden flowers, the whole supported on a small rectangular base decorated with a mosaic of shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli.

The tube rising from the goat's shoulders suggests it was used to support something, most likely a bowl.

C.L. Woolley and P.R.S. Moorey, Ur of the Chaldees, revised edition (Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 1982)

H.W.F. Saggs, Babylonians (London, The British Museum Press, 1995)

D. Collon, Ancient Near Eastern art (London, The British Museum Press, 1995)

C.L. Woolley and others, Ur Excavations, vol. II: The R (London, The British Museum Press, 1934)

The other interesting thing is the "lapis lazuli" is blue with little specs of gold color. Blue was the color for the Annunaki gods in City of Ur. The Blue pigments made from this gem ground up end up in religious paintings of all sorts and blue is a Holy Color in Religion.

www.gemstone.org...:sapphire&catid=1:gem-by-gem&Itemid=14

Lapis lazuli is a gemstone of the kind that might have come straight out of the Arabian Nights: a deep blue with golden inclusions of pyrites which shimmer like little stars.

This opaque, deep blue gemstone has a grand past. It was among the first gemstones to be worn as jewellery and worked on. At excavations in the ancient centres of culture around the Mediterranean, archaeologists have again and again found among the grave furnishings decorative chains and figures made of lapis lazuli – clear indications that the deep blue stone was already popular thousands of years ago among the people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome. It is said that the legendary city of Ur on the Euphrates plied a keen lapis lazuli trade as long ago as the fourth millennium B.C., the material coming to the land of the two great rivers from the famous deposits in Afghanistan. In other cultures, lapis lazuli was regarded as a holy stone. Particularly in the Middle East, it was thought to have magical powers. Countless signet rings, scarabs and figures were wrought from the blue stone which Alexander the Great brought to Europe. There, the colour was referred to as 'ultramarine', which means something like 'from beyond the sea'.

Interesting construction for blue lapis fur on this goat. In the Greek and the story for the golden fleece, the fleece is a gold mining technique. It is still used today in sluce mining for gold from streams. Such applications would be of interest to the gold seeking creator gods.