Garduneh-e Mehr: Mithra's Wheel & the Origins of Yungdrung (1000 BC)

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"...."Shenrabs origins are said to be in Iran-Elam and his name is given as Mithra. The Tibetan word Tsug-Pu (gtsug.phud) meaning 'crown of the head' approximates the actual word Mithra." Campbell, June...."Traveller in Space".....New York:1996...pg 37

"A Persian necklace with swastikas, from first millennium BC, was excavated from Kaluraz, Guilan. In Zoroastrian Persia, the swastika symbolized the revolving sun (Garduneh-e Khorshid), Mithra's Wheel (Garduneh-e Mehr), fire, infinity, or continuing recreation." ......http://sunlight.orgfree.com/history_of_sun_gazing.htm

"A 3000 years old Iranian golden swastika necklace from Marlik, found in Rasht, Iran. Preserved at the National Museum of Iran."

"The swastika was known as ‘the chariot of Mithra’ in Iran....the ancient Iranians used the swastika. It was either called the the revolving sun (Garduneh-e Khorshid), or Mithra's Wheel (Garduneh-e Mehr). In its Indo-Aryan context, it may have originated in central Asia, from the Sintashta Culture (c. 2200-1600 BC) of the Andronovo Complex, since the symbol was found on an Sintashtan cauldron."

"The first surviving record of the name ‘Mithra’ dates back to 1400 B.C., spelled ‘Mi-it-ra’, in the inscribed peace treaty between the Hittites and the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanniin Asia minor (Theim 1960)..... In Iranian mythology the god Mithra appears in the Avesta, the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism.".... ANCIENT COSMOLOGIES AND MODERN PROPHETS.....Proceedings of the 20th Conferenceof the European Society for Astronomy in Culture....Edited by Ivan Šprajc and Peter Pehani

"Mithra, the mediator god of ancient Persia.....Mithra was the preserver of law and order and a god of war, described as riding his four-horsed golden chariot against the demons and their worshipers. This image and description brings to mind of that of Apollo, the chariot riding sun god who rescues the fragments of Dionysus, after he was torn to shreds by the jealous Titans. Mithra was also considered synonymous with Helios, a solar deity. The Orphic Hymn to Helios, otherwise known as the Mithras Liturgy."

"KALURAZ, an archeological site (lat 36°54′ N, long 49°28′ E) situated in the center of the lower Kaluraz valley (Darra Kaluraz) in Gilan Province. ....Marlik, one of the most important Iranian archeological sites, which dates to the early Iron Age of the late 2nd millenium BC, is located to the east, on the other side of the Sefidrud river..... Beyond Marlik, on the other side of Mt. Dorfak (Kuh-e Dorfak, 2,703 m), is Dailaman (aka DEYLAMĀN), another important archeological region of Gilan. Many ancient sites are distributed around the Kaluraz site; the surrounding hillside and valley are especially crowded with very many ancient graves. Thus Kaluraz is one of a number of groups of ruins that contribute to the high density of ancient sites in this area".

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"Shards Bearing Garduneh-e Mehr (Swastika) Motif Found at Elamite site in Khuzestan.....a number of shards bearing a swastika motif by a team of Iranian archaeologists working at Sabz Tepe in the Elamite site of Arjan, Khuzestan Province, 10 kilometers north of Behbahan in eastern Khuzestan Province, Arjan contains many ancient mounds which are believed to be various sections of an Elamite city.....from the treasury of the Elamite king Kidin-Hutran......Archaeologists plan to conduct additional research on the newly discovered shards in order to learn why the swastika motif was used.....For thousands of years, it has been used in ancient Iranian culture as a symbol of the revolving sun (Garduneh-e Khorshid), Mithra's Wheel (Garduneh-e Mehr), fire, infinity, or continuing recreation. The oldest representation of this motif was found in Khuzestan province in 1020s, dated back to 5000 BC.....The swastika has also been important in Eastern religions; to Buddhists, it represents resignation; to Jains, it represents their seventh saint; and to Hindus, a swastika with arms bent to the left represents night, magic, and the destructive goddess Kali.Also the motif were used as a decorative motif in the Americas, China, Egypt, Greece, and Scandinavia. Swastikas have been found in the catacombs of Rome, on textiles of the Inca period, and on relics unearthed at the site of Troy."......The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS)....Website Dedicated to Ancient Iran and Iranian Civilization.

"MĀRLIK, an elite burial ground of the late 2nd-early 1st millennium BCE in the western Caspian basin. Mārlik (called so for the abundance of snakes in the area) or Čerāḡ-ʿAli Teppa (named after the owner of the field) is one of the five natural mounds with archaeological remains, the other four being Pila Qalʿa, Jāzem Kul, Dur-e Bijār, and Zeynab Bijār, was recorded in the fall of 1961 during a survey by an expedition from the Archaeological Service of Iran (hereinafter ASI) on the banks of the Gowharrud River, a tributary of the Sefidrud River in Rudbār area in the western Caspian basin....In total, fifty-three tombs were discovered at Mārlik....The grave goods, numbering over 25,000 individual items, constitute the largest collection discovered from any cemetery of the Early Iron Age anywhere in the Near East. The collection includes gold, silver, and bronze vessels of different shapes and sizes.... the cemetery was used for several centuries, from the 14th to the 10th centuries BCE....Tomb 52 belonged to a “warrior-king.” ....the adjacent Tomb 53, where a set of horse teeth and pieces of a bronze harness have been discovered, presumably the remains of the warrior-king’s horse....generally assumed to have belonged to a group people who spoke an Iranian language and who migrated into Iran from Central Asia in early to mid-2nd millennium BC. ".....http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/marlik

"Mithra is described as having a celestial quadriga pulled by four heavenly white horses, who have front hoofs made of gold and back hoofs made of silver (Mihr Yasht). His chariot is decorated with the stars and his bright face is like the star Sirius....He hears with his thousand ears and watches with his thousand eyes, always stand-ing on the high end of the sky, restlessly, in the north, arising above the Alborz mountain.....He appears before the sunrise and after the sunset and touches both ends of the ball-shaped earth, and he watches everything between the earth and the sky....... the swastika was known as ‘the chariot of Mithra’ in Iran....the seat of Mithra and his quadriga is a celestial body in the sky close to the celestial north pole......If we look out in a clear night sky in the northern hemisphere to the constellation Draco, we can recognize a clockwise swastika. Its center is Zeta Draco, and it consists of four wings and it has four stars as companions....."....Swastika: The Forgotten Constellation Representing the Chariot of Mithras by Reza Assasi....McGill University

"Around 3000 BC the earth’s northern axis was pointing close to the star Thuban (Alpha Draconis), part of the Draco constellation. ...http://www.esotericonline.net/group/astrosymbolism/forum/topics/the-staring-serpent-in-the-tree-the-northern-constellation-of

"The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta-Petrovka culture or Sintashta-Arkaim culture, is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, dated to the period 2100–1800 BC.... The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture....Much of this metal was destined for export to the cities of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central Asia. The metal trade between Sintashta and the BMAC for the first time connected the steppe region to the ancient urban civilisations of the Near East: the empires and city-states of Iran and Mesopotamia provided an almost bottomless market for metals. These trade routes later became the vehicle through which horses, chariots and ultimately Indo-Iranian-speaking people entered the Near East from the steppe....Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements, the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture. It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the 'Andronovo horizon'."

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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

John Hopkins.....Northern New Mexico….December 2014

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