Immigration from Egypt to Scandinavia in Bronze Age

Phoenician colonisation, Rock-carvings, Skepplanda, ritual calendar, Egypt, Crocodile, Canaanite, Carthage, Tyre, Cancer, Horus, Handman, Hippocampus, Entwined Snakes, Tanit, Haugsbyn, hand symbol, Forearm, Pegasus, Balder's myth, mourning mother, Isis, Osiris, Tut's thomb, Herodotos

A friend of mine told about this:

"In London, in 1891, C.W.Skarstedt was awarded the Medal of Merit at the "Orientalist Congress", and he had also represented Lund University at the Congress of the Orientalists in Stockholm in 1889. He received the Award for his thesis, which was sent to the Congress in London, a thesis entitled On the Existence of Phoenician Colonization in Scandinavia."

After 25 years studies and much reading about Northern archaeology it was natural to answer, "No, we have no substantial evidence about immigration from anywhere". Then it is another question that all root people after Ice Age must be seen as immigrants. Two big books around 1000 pages about "Archaeology in North" 1999 do not mention Phoenicians and only Carthage have two notes in the register. Still I felt that I have to look at the question as a challenge.

The fairly new method of DNA could be used if the figures are significant. For instance it tells that people of Scone and part of Lapland has mtDNA in common to around 70 %. Naturally that sets more questions than it solves and is like an enigma. But as a whole the DNA is homogeneous in Scandinavia and it is difficult to se anomalies. Come to think of the review European DNA by Ulf Erlingsson that also mentions Gothenburg and together wit Egypt haplogroup T1 22 %.

Not only that. Around 7 years ago I wrote about the exceptional rock-carvings near Gothenburg in the valley of Gauta Elv. Then I suggested heavy connections to Egypt and that fits the mtDNA as evidence. Normally we need more than one component to prove things like this and speculation is forbidden. This is heavy organic connection between these areas.

Calendar at Giant's rock Alvhem

The site with rock-carvings is around 40 kilometres upstream from centre of Gothenburg. The place is only a little more than a kilometre from the river Gauta Aelv and a kilometre from the Crocodile Rock at Skepplanda. We may ask, have a tribe of immigrants settled at Skepplanda (where ships land) and wrote down their ritual calendar. Rock-carvings of this kind are like the claim for land and telling what kind of year ritual they follow. That is like global use.

Especially the ships are of different kinds than elsewhere.

This does not lead to conclude that different stiles and figures always are import or have been brought by invaders.

They make the carvings at one occasion and become the ritual law and calendar in Alvhem (Elfhome). Some of the ships associate to Egyptian reed boats. It is only the spread thirty to forty cupmarks at the last group of ships that may be of a later date. They may have been used in a celebration of ancestors' day in November or maybe a Remembrance Day. Normally we see loose cupmarks in spring or after harvest so this late celebration tells about another culture like the Egyptian one. There are twelve groups so thinking about twelve months is easy.

When we look at details, we also associate to Egypt. On the boat at left is a dog's head at left and at the other end cone for Khons that symbolised corn and harvest. The normal way to mark the season. Another example is "from empty boat to basket" In Egypt the dog may be Sirius or Canis Major. A cone was the symbol for the harvested grain, so we may read the boat "from the Sirius dog to Cone".

On next figures we se a pair of legs we also find in Egypt so maybe the main issue is underground. At funerals they used a combination of the KA-symbol and a pair of legs under the surface. We may understand both as "to go" and KA is the going spirit and the legs under the surface are the body. The same is happening when the seed is sent away for a journey in the underground.

On this image I suppose that the cone and sickle stands for harvest. The style is not pure Egyptian but surely influenced by the great land in second hand.

The Crocodile at Skepplanda

The 3 metres long Crocodile is carved on a small rising bedrock. It is near the road to Kilanda a few kilometres south of Alvhem near a tributary to Gauta Elv. It looks like a fish or a Crocodile. We may understand it as symbols for the months if we disconnect them from each other.

We may understand it as a year and symbols for the months if we disconnect them from each other. Below the Crocodile the symbol wheels for "Go" and it is found on late medieval calendar staffs too at beginning of the year. The Crocodile do not belong to the same people as the calendar from Alvhem and it seems originally to belong to some Canaanite tribe.

The hand tell us that and we know it from Carthage. That means the origin could be Tyre and in the temple of Hazor we see hands holding the Eastern Moon. Still the people could be from the Nile Delta since the trading cities surely kept enclaves even in Egypt. It was a necessity to have stores and to have rest place and also rather grow their basic food. So they just established an enclave at Alvhem - Skepplanda

The hippopotamus Taweret was normally a symbol of pregnancy but could also be seen as "running time". This is about one fourth of the ceiling in the tomb of Seti I about 1300 BC. One fourth is to the left with eleven moon carrying idols and it i the moon calendar. There is also a lion with stars all over the outline to the end of the tail and it is fixstars Leo for midsummer. Elsewhere we know that Leo/ Lion all-important constellation in symbolism. At Dendera there is an older illustrated room with Sumerian type Animal round showing Goatfish, Taurus, Virgin as centre of the season animal and Scorpio

The other half of the ceiling I have only seen shortly and much of it have flaked off. These constellations were in use from 4^th millennium until ca 1160 BC when Ramesses IV made the great time/ calendar correction

The Pillar is better known as Cancer in Latin, which comes from the word "hand", but also known as turtle and crayfish in different cultures. Probably Tyre but for sure Carthage used the Hand that then were midsummer stars. We see the Pillar in Dendera and also in Assyria and later Greece and on it is usually a bird supposed to be the Horus falcon that means "time" in plain English. It can also mean that the season or "time" of the year began in that constellation observed in a certain manner. The Amun feathers on the bird (owl) were original palm leaves that were used for counting years and showing beginning of inundation.

It was a time of change in practical astronomy when new fix stars were introduced. It has been working for more than 2000 years. In Egypt it was maybe simple since the temples followed the stars all the time and knew about astronomy and there were only slight differences between temples for the main gods.

For around 1000 years in late Bronze Age we see on rock-carvings at least a dozen constellations showing that somewhere they followed the stars and got new leading stars. Most used was the system listing the asterism from vernal equinox around the sky. In Egypt a few temples used the method of following one star all the year and that happens also for instance in Bohuslen with the Twins at Fossum.

Handman

This stele is the key to symbolism in Tyre and Carthage. It is the only picture I found but it present the idea fully. Kaitos is the big asterism under Perseus and Aries also seen as Taurus instead of the normal Ox under Aurigae. As time went on they merged the Whale and the Horse to the "Seahorse" we see on coins. They call it Hippocampus in Latin and maybe it is easier to see such creatures in Latin.

On top of the stele they normally draw a sun in the crescent. Maybe wrongly called Eastern Moon since it represents sun and moon year. I think the Entwined Snakes opposite to Cnacer/ Hand are more frequent in Mesopotamia seen as the caducei in Inanna's hand. As usual in Middle East they borrow directly symbols from each other and much from Egypt and Mesopotamia

It is easiest to date the Hand after the phase shift in Egypt 1160 BC however it could be older and invented by some of the Canaanite city.

Haugsbyn is exceptional since more than 80 % of the carvings are non-figurative symbolism that could be read as text or as rebus. Figurative carvings occur in the Hand to Horse period in fact. This rock I call Farmer's Almanac and it is obviously instructions for farmers. In one corner there is a symbol that could be read "15 shares" so maybe it was meant for a community that shared the harvest. The bird should maybe be read "When the snipe comes it is time for the farmer", that is the known proverb among farmers today

The standard presentations of Egyptian symbolism are of no use when it comes to adjacent or subcultures. The smaller cultures are consistent only in a few important symbols. In this age of changes for some reason we find that especially Carthage used the Hand = Cancer as main fixstar and compared they maybe celebrated beginning of year at midsummer. But we do not know how they observed the night sky of course.

We find two types of Hand symbols and most frequent is the Forearm with attributes. In Haugsbyn and Austfold it is a Palm. Here we also see two Worms/ Snakes at stern of the ship. It is the same order as the stele above. I have found that "the story is hidden in details" and it counts for rock carvings with the chaos of symbols and somewhere we find the solution to our question.

At the wheel is the attribute "empty boat" and drawn as a "duck type" known from Egypt. One Snake/ Worm is underground symbolising the womb of soil. The other wheel is parted/ regulated only for the half year using feet as symbol of the month. Another abstraction shows the feet of summer in a rectangle and the growers were only interested in the season. It looks like a footprint upon the wheel but is the Sumerian symbol for man but also for moon.

The climate of Scandinavia is different to southern Europe and within our sphere as the spring comes a month earlier in south than north. The earliest seed gave perhaps enough gain in Denmark and Skaane. But it could not acclimatise in the north and gave less and less gain according to light and temperature. In Lapland it will not grow because of lack of light. We may suppose that a lot of trials have been done when man tried the inventions from southern cultures.

Spring has always been the real start of the year. Especially in the northern sphere the winter is the transport to spring. In Europe and also between the Indians of America March was the Crow moon. Main rituals start with the spring moon as it is to day in the church. The early medieval church kept the time. That was earlier the job of aldermen or the king or his mate.

Forearm symbols in Scandinavia

We can not know from where the Forearm developed and spread. But there are so many finds that we can speak about the Age of the Hand. The time wheel with a hand gives us the idea:

In Denmark are 12 more finds of forearms. In Norway and Bohuslen are eight more and many of them are much alike and tell that they made them in the same period.

 ..............

Look at his thumb marked separately. It is the same on the Twins from the votive boat from Grevensvenge S Zealand and a pair could also read brotherhood/ companionship. It is a common development that trades lead to fellowship between traders, monopoly and secret manners.... and if it is extended to political, religious and military powers it becomes an aristocracy that in worst cases can be a tyranny. My old teacher taught "Merchant flag does not know borders" … 3000 years ago we know of no nations in Scandinavia

The Horse is coming

We see two new ideas here. In between the ships there is a Horse and that means surely when Pegasus became vernal stars. The other thing is the trisection of the year seen in three season boats. Other new things are the dancers or acrobats seen in rock carvings and Danish votive boats and other things.

At the back of the Horse we probably see the sun carried by two Egyptian Ureus = "He rises". However in some places they are simply the entwined snakes/worms symbolising opposite stars.

The motif could be compared with Balder's myth from the Edda and in centre the mourning mother kneeling in front of legs and bones. The motif occurs on several rock-carvings in Bohuslen. Here it is maybe some variant of the Isis myth. It is harder to see in the upper wavy lines that the child is sent on a journey on the underground river, i.e. symbolising sown seed.

Those knowing Greek late myth would maybe see the Ferryman on the other side of Styx. Still he has the symbol used for Capricorn on his head and we are in the myth in night sky. Between Sagittarius and Capricorn the Watergate flow down and has in many cultures been seen as the River of Dead, but more practical time of harvest and dead for the animated crops.

It seems that the same people made additions of humanised figures to Rock 1 at the same time as they made Rock06. They added mythic figures and I think there is Osiris as the "dumb"/ corpse they made before sowing as we see in symbolism of the calendar

Bohuslen - S Norway have the heritage Bronze Age culture in rock-carvings with a huge number of motifs as influence from the South, while Denmark has the bronzes and few artefacts that could be imported from south

This sword type draws the spread of the Nordic Bronze Age culture and deep to Europe with some finds here and there. There is also a find in Egypt. They got the skill in handicraft maybe as early as 2000 BC and I guess they sold swords on their trade routes. In that period we have also the trader from Kivik Scone. They got in return a stool that looks like a copy from Tut's tomb. The 14^th century lady from Skrydstrup S Jutland has a coiffure seen on the wall paintings in Minoan palaces and some other of clear origin.

Herodotos tells about northern girls coming to Delos and temple of Artemis especially to worship and learn from Eilithya goddess of birth giving. He knew about this but do not mention more so in his time Hyperboreans were not known too well. However in his time traders did not tell about far places they wanted to keep secret. Instead they told about dangerous water and awful winds and creatures. These descriptions were carried for so long that Adam of Bremen used them for people north of Stockholm.

We have many indications about connections before and after the Crocodile from Skepplanda, but no evidence of immigration. Cultural artefacts are few and it seems the bronze production was highly domestic. Maybe future analyses can tell from where the bronzes came.

In Swedish European DNA