#colchis

[thatshowthingstarted]

Gold Turtle Necklace from the Kingdom of Colchis,

(modern-day Georgia/South Caucasus), c. 450 BCE,

Length: Approximately 33 cm (13 inches).

Composition: It consists of 31 gold pendants (one large central turtle and 30 smaller turtles).

Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Zoomorphic Sculpture from Georgia (South Caucasus) c.800-650 BCE: this sculpture was originally equipped with multiple heads on opposite ends of a four-legged body

This sculpture was unearthed from the central terrace at Vani, which is an archaeological site located in what is now western Georgia (the country, not the state). It was created roughly 2,800 years ago, when Vani served as the religious, cultural, and administrative center for the ancient Kingdom of Colchis.

Above: the full-sized sculpture

The figure was originally designed with three heads on each end of its body, but only two of the original heads remain. Each head is depicted with a crown and an assortment of zoomorphic features.

Several other sculptures with a similar design have also been unearthed at Vani, at the nearby site of Nokalakevi, and at other Colchian sites throughout the region.

Above: a remarkably similar sculpture that was also discovered at Vani

As this article explains:

Terracotta figurines of various animals occur at Vani, but particularly interesting are four-footed figures with multiple heads on opposite ends. The protomes of two-headed and three-headed fantastical creatures with characteristic post-like legs apparently belong to figures of this type.

Above: a two-headed protome from the same site

This design also appears in some Greek sculptures from the same period:

Such figures, also common in the Greek world, have been found in 8th-7th century BCE contexts at Olympia, Delphi, Athens, Crete, Rhodes, Samos, and elsewhere. In Italy, these figures frequently appear in 7th-6th century contexts. Although at present a firm decision on which culture influenced the Vani figures (four-footed with two heads on opposite ends) is difficult to discern, the earlier emergence and wide distribution of such representations in the Greek world suggest a link with Hellenic culture.

Perhaps these new elements in Colchian culture c.800-650 BCE resulted from Greek contacts (still intermittent) in the precolonial era, which were reflected in the great popularity of stories of the Argonauts in the 8th-7th centuries and in the first geographical and ethno-political reports of Colchis. Regular Greek contacts began only c.550 BCE, after the establishment of Greek settlements on the eastern shore of the Black Sea.

Above: another two-headed protome from Vani

Sources & More Info:

The Georgian National Museum: Figurine of a Fantastical Beast

Journal of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies: Vani: an Ancient City of Colchis (PDF)

Phasis: New Discoveries in Colchis (PDF)

[gveleshapi]

the ACTUAL Colchis

I'm convinced that people don't actually care about Medea or Colchis. we're just "Greek mythological people" who never faced any Greek colonization and cultural theft. do Medea "lovers" even know that Colchis are real and their favorite "Greek mythical character" was our deity who wasn't evil until Greeks decided to steal gold from Colchis (which was important to us), and they had to turn Medea into evil "character". Argonauts mythology is there to hide the fact that Greeks colonized us and stole gold from us, they tell a story in a nice way where Colchis are the ones who are evil (sounds familiar? yeah it's European colonization for you). I cannot believe so many people do not know about this. we learned it in schools and there is an awful historical fact behind the argonauts myth everyone chooses to ignore willingly because Greeks "civilized savage Colchis" or smth.

also, I hate how Medea is constantly whitewashed and Greekified. she's portrayed as some evil "character" and people are forgetting that her people actually existed, had their own ethnic features and ethnic clothes. even my people are convinced that it's just a mythology that connects us to Greece. they get happy when Medea is seen as a Greekified woman in Greek attire (bcz it's somehow "civilized"), the cultural erasure and colonization is THIS bad. none of you people actually care about Medea or Colchis. we're just some fairytale people to you who you can turn into aesthetics. it's almost like you've never learned history and/or cultures.

[katerinaaqu]

The image of Medea and Circe talking to each other in Colchian language and Jason just standing there all confused in Argonautica will never stop being funny in my head! 😆😆😆

[owltxt]

my attempted very simplified visualization of Colchis' orbital turn/solar day as explained in Lorgar's primarch book, and interpreted by the ancient desert settlers

:3c for my personal notes but thought i would still share

very longgg passage excerpt below cut from Lorgar: Bearer of the Word containing more thorough details about this world's timekeeping

Translator's Note on Time

The world of Colchis is of a magnitude larger than Holy Terra, and consequently even approximations of time by the accepted nomenclature of 'Terran standard' are unsuccessful in conveying the very different diurnal and nocturnal cycle of its inhabitants. Before we begin, the reader should familiarize themselves with the following information.

The orbit of Colchis around its star takes nearly five years - four point eight to be more precise. Therefore if a Colchisian refers to being six years old, they are in fact twenty-eight or twenty-nine Terran years old.

A Colchisian solar day, that is, one complete planetary rotation, is seven point one terran days, or one hundred and seventy point four Terran hours. Clearly even humans, as adaptable as they are, cannot survive with a ninety-hour day/night cycle, and so Colchisian culture developed a system for intermediary sleep and waking periods.

These periods are often referred to as 'days' in many volumes but this can be confusing and portray an erroneous image of events. In this text I have endeavored to achieve a more literal translation of the Colchisian terminology, which is derived from the language of the ancient desert settlers.

'Day', in the following manuscript, refers to a complete orbital turn of the planet, from sunrise to sunrise. This day is further divided into the following times of approximately twenty-four hours each (the exact length depends further upon seasons and locality, and chronometry on Colchis is a dedicated and difficult scientific discipline in its own right): Dawnaway, Mornday, Long Noon, Post-noon, Duskeve, Coldfall, High Night.

These sub-days are then broken down into three further periods, two of wakefulness and one of sleep, approximating eight hours each. These three periods are called wake-rise, wake-main and rest-eve, with the last being the sleep period (although frequently inhabitants may sleep less than eight hours during Mornday, Long-Noon, and Post-Noon, and slightly longer during the darkness of the remaining time).

One might therefore refer to wake-rise of Dawnaway, being sometime in the first eight hours of the twenty-four-hour period of a new Colchisian day. Custom has it that the hottest time, wake-main of Long Noon, is also a rest period, for when the local star is at its zenith, it is exceptionally deleterious to health to be out of cover. Conversely, rest-eve of High Night is the coldest and darkest period of the Colchisian day.

[hopefully-grimderp]

Started on my next Primarch audiobook, "Lorgar: The Bearer of Words".

I'm on Chapter 1 and I already hate it on Colchis! What do you mean I need an advanced Math degree to tell the time?!!!

[cinematropes]

73 reactions · 62 shares | Ο ΙΑΣΟΝΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟΜΑΛΛΟ ΔΕΡΑΣ ΑΠΟ ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 21 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΛΙ ΣΤΟ ΘΕΑΤΡΟ BADMINTON Το συναρπαστικότερο ταξ

Ο ΙΑΣΟΝΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟΜΑΛΛΟ ΔΕΡΑΣ ΑΠΟ ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 21 ΝΟΕΜΒΡΙΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΛΙ ΣΤΟ ΘΕΑΤΡΟ BADMINTON Το συναρπαστικότερο ταξίδι της ελληνικής μυθολογία

Sharing this trailer from a play I watched years ago: "Jason and the golden fleece"

This was also my inspiration for drawing Medea with curled horns:

More pictures:

I was asked about this by @goldenportobello:))

[tagedeszorns]

Hear me out: Erebus, but he stopped shaving his entire head.

Curly Erebus.

You're welcome.