52 LexiLine Newsletter 2004 Jordan Tall Al-Umayri Megaliths
Deciphered as Astronomy

Dear LexiLiners,

For the first time, I have now been able to decipher one of the
megalithic sites of the region of Israel and Jordan, in this case,
the megaliths of the Jordanian Temple at Tall Al-Umayri, Madaba
Plains (Ma'daba), Jordan, south of Amman and east of Jerusalem.

The decipherment is uploaded to our LexiLine files at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LexiLine/files
to the new directory "Jordan"
as the file

tallalumayri.png

The Daily Star of August 5, 2004, carries an article by Larry G. Herr
entitled "3500-year-old Bronze Age temple discovered in Jordan".

See
http://snipurl.com/2r57
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?
edition_id=10&categ_id=4&Article_id=6915

Larry G. Herr is Prof. of Archaeology, Canadian University College,
Alberta, Canada and together with Douglas R. Clark, Exec. Director,
American Schools of Oriental Research, Boston, directs the Madaba
Plains Project.

This project, together with the Jordan Department of Antiquities,
headed by Director-General, Fawwaz al-Khraysheh, has found a temple
at Tall Al-Umayri which contains a shrine of megaliths built into an
ancient wall.

The temple consists of four rooms, with the megaliths being found in
the largest room. The megaliths (obviously to symbolize the heavens)
tower 3 meters above the heads of the temple excavators.

see
http://www.wwc.edu/academics/departments/theology/mpp/
http://snipurl.com/8caa
http://www.wwc.edu/academics/departments/theology/mpp/umayri/index.htm
http://www.utoronto.ca/tmap/

The archaeologists have dated the temple to 1500 BC. I do not know
what their basis for this dating is - but my decipherment of the
megaliths indicates that these stones as cupmarked may date to ca.
3117 BC.

If the walls are indeed more recent, then the original - older -
megaliths were integrated into the walls of the temple many years
later than their original creation.

The megaliths are carved and also have cupmarks, especially
the middle large round megalithic stone, which appears to have the
stars of Andromeda cupmarked on it.

To the left we find what I identify provisionally as the stars of
Perseus, the Pleiades and Aries, with Taurus carved on the adjacent
wall.

To the right we find possibly Lacerta, Pegasus, and Aquarius.

Above, the wall marks the Milky Way, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus.

Below we find the clear shapes of fish for Pisces and a large whale
for Cetus including an apparent marking of the South Galactic Pole
near Phoenix.

In the astronomical survey of the fertile crescent, we thus find -
provisionally - that Jordan apparently marked Andromeda, as evidenced
by the large prominent stone in the temple - the one with the stars
of Andromeda cupmarked on it.

JORDAn is a name said to derive from Hebrew YARAD meaning "descend"
or "flow down" and thus originally surely applied to the River Jordan.

We find the ancient Arabic name al 'ARD for Andromeda to be possibly
related to JORDan (see Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names, p. 36).

Perhaps this is origin of the astronomical line marked here at
Andromeda as al RISHA, the band of the fish, which was called ARIT in
Egypt, according to Renouf, an identification supported by the later
Coptic ARTulosia, which referred to the moon station at Alpheratz in
that same constellation Andromeda.

All of those terms are similar matching the geography to astronomy in
the hermetic system.

It is thus perhaps no accident and rather the product of many
thousands of years of tradition that the Madaba Mosaic Map from
Madaba, Jordan (ca. 6th-7th cent. A.D.), though partially destroyed,
is regarded to be one of the best ancient maps of Biblical lands.

See
http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/fai/FAImadmn.html
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/ofm/mad/

Enjoy,

Andis