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Happy Mithras Tide

PostPosted: 3:48 pm
by TisILeclerc
Image

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... s-sun.html

This temple has been known about for a long time. At least since it was destroyed by the early church who was making a take over bid.

But modern technology is now being used to verify previously held assumptions etc.

In a new paper published to Philica, Amelia Carolina Sparavigna of Politecnico di Torino argues that the temple at Carrawburgh was likely designed around the birth of Mithras.

Sparavigna used the SunCal.net software to pinpoint the direction of sunrise and sunset at different times of the year for this location.

And, this revealed ‘good alignment’ for the Dec 25 sunrise along with the winter solstice (Dec 21), with a difference of just .2 degrees.

‘As we can see using software giving the sunrise and sunset directions on satellite maps, the orientation of the temple and the direction of the sunrise on winter solstice are in good agreement,’ Sparavigna wrote.


The name seems to echo a couple of themes on this site. Crows and burghs. However, the experts tell us that the original name was Brocolitia. Which is not apparently a vegetable but a badger hole. The Romans named it after the Welsh or Gaelic for the badger holes which may or may not have been in the area.

The Roman name for the Carrawburgh fort then, was Brocolitia, which was probably based on the original name (Welsh/Gaelic) for the area and is possibly translated 'Badger Holes'; if this is the case, then it is very likely that the area was once home to a substantial community of these nocturnal omnivores.

Compare modern Gaelic; broc, bruic badger, toll, tuill hole. Welsh; broch badger, twll, tyllu hole, hollow


http://roman-britain.co.uk/places/brocolitia.htm

I don't know why they associate the area with Gaelic speakers unless they know something nobody else does. Welsh perhaps but officially the Gaels didn't get there and when they did they were too busy fighting the Welsh, Picts and Northumbrians to bother about badger holes or setts as they are commonly called.

But the language doesn't work like that. It would be more normal to say the 'hole of the badger/s'. Crow town would be good English though.

Dwelly points out that broc has several meanings.

broc-luidh see broc-lann. Tha broc-luidh aig na sionnaich, the foxes have holes.
broc † a. Grey, dark grey.
broc-lann -ainn, sm Badgers den. 2 Den of wild beasts. 3 Cavern. 4* Any stinking place.
bruic gen sing & npl of broc.
brochd sm see broc.
broc -ruic, sm Badger, brock (meles meles). 2(AF) Wolf (canis lupus).


http://www.faclair.com/

Anyway for a nocturnal animal he seems to be fond of the sunrise.

Re: Happy Mithras Tide

PostPosted: 10:46 pm
by Boreades
Nice find.

It makes me wonder how many Roman Michraic sites (in Britain at least) had adopted what was already there (after they evicted the pesky druids).

Similar to the way the Romans built temples in Jerusalem on the site of earlier temples. As in, "Solomon's Temple" is actually Hadrian's Temple. The lad got around you know.