The Cult of the Sun God
The religious concept of "the Bird and the Serpent" has been around since the dawn of man. So widespread is this phenomenon that roots of this ancient religious practice can be found in the early records of European and African civilizations as well as throughout the native tribes of North and South America. The Bird has the power of flight and with it, to be all-seeing. It moves skyward soaring towards heaven where it dwells with the gods. The Serpent is a symbol of all earth-bound creatures. It is a symbol of every living thing that must walk the planet. What differentiates the serpent, or snake, from most other creatures is its ability to shed its skin. This shedding of skin allows the creature to regenerate anew and to be reborn making it a symbol of eternal life. In The Bible, the Book of Genesis portraits the serpent in the Garden of Eden as both evil as well as a deceiver of man. For though it was once dwelled in the branches of the Tree of Life, and was considered the most beautiful of all living creatures, God punished it for its actions, removing its splendor and forcing the animal to crawl on its belly as a sign that it was the lowest form of all animals.
At first glance, the story of the Serpent in the Garden seems to be an innocent tale. In reality, the story is actually a written account of the final days of man's first great religion. The Serpent and the Tree of Life were the cornerstones of pre-biblical belief. They were the symbols of a Pagan religion that worshipped the Sun and the Sun God, the religion of the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia. Referred to in ancient cultures by different names, the Sumerians called their great god Utu. Later the Egyptians would call him Ra, Amun, Ptah, Khnum or Aten. To the Hittites and Hurrians he was Kumarbi. The Assyrian-Babylonians called him Shamash, but to all he was the King of all Gods, the God of Justice, he Creator of Life.
Each culture used the same symbolism of the bird and serpent to represent God. The Egyptians portrayed Ra with a sun disc above his head carrying an ankh or Crux Ansata in one hand and a scepter or staff in the other. The sun disc was the symbol of God the Creator. The ankh, an ancient cross with a circular top, symbolized fertility and the eternal tree of life. The scepter was a symbol of the snake. Held in the left-hand, the staff symbolized the snake's power of eternal life and rebirth. Held in the right-hand the staff symbolized the snake's power to strike out and administer justice. In Egyptian religion the staff possessed a forked bottom designed to trap the head of those to be judged and an upper hook designed to move and redirect them to their fate. Ra was symbolized by the image of a man with the head of a falcon. Being half bird he possessed the ability to see over all lands making him all seeing.
It is in the accounts of the religion of the Sun God that we find the first records of a hockey-like game being played. Referred to by the Sumerians as Pukku-Mikku, the game was designed to honor the rebirth of man and creation. The first archaeological evidence of the story and the game date to c.2750 BC to c.2500 BC and is found on twelve clay tablets. Known as the Akkadian Legend of Creation, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, the tablets recount the tale of the great warrior-king and athlete Gilgamesh, who resided in the Sumerian city of Uruk located in present day Southern Iraq. It is on the twelfth tablet, the tale of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu Tree, which the first mention of Pukku-Mikku being played on a flat dirt surface using a curved stick and a circular hollow wooden ring occurs.
To the ancient Sumerians the Mikku, the stick, was representative of the Tree of Life, the tree that had brought forth the family of man. A tree that, following the Great Flood, had been rescued from the waters and planted on the richly soiled bank of the Euphrates River - the river which we today proclaim in our wisdom as the birthplace of ancient civilization. In addition, the Mikku also represented the Serpent due to its shape and the serpent's symbolic meaning representative of all earth-bound creatures and life. Pukku, the ring, represented the Sun God and the heavens wrapped within the coils of the Serpent. The Epic of Gilgamesh parallels the biblical Book of Genesis and today we know this as the story of Noah and the Great Flood.
By the Middle Kingdom period (c.1975 BC to c.1640 BC), Pukku-Mikku had spread east to North Africa and the region of the Nile River Valley. At Beni-Hasan, the site of thirty-nine Middle Kingdom tombs near Minia, the first Egyptian images of two hockey players armed with curved sticks and a circular ring can be found painted on the tomb of Prince Kheti. The two ancient athletes stand opposite each other in a timeless testament to human rivalry and sport. Neither is prepared to yield; both are oblivious to the passage of time.
It would be the Egyptians who would eventually transform the game utilizing a small ball in replacement for the hollowed ring. The first written evidence of this modified change appears in an Egyptian religious text inscribed on the walls of a tomb from the 6th century BC. It reads: "Hit the ball to the field of Apis." Apis was the bull-god deity also known as Orisis-Apis, the physical manifestation of the Sun God Ra on earth, and the same bull-god deity, Enkidu, found in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Festivals were held to honor the bull-god in celebration of the sun's path, or ecliptic, into the Taurus constellation. This celebration marked the spring equinox, the start of the flooding of the Nile, and the planting of the spring crops.
For the Egyptian and the Hittite Empires the areas around present day Lebanon were each others furthest frontier. With empires being the weakest at their edges, it would be here, where the two great ancient empires lands met, that a new ancient power would emerge. Ramses II's failure to recapture the Hittite held city of Kadesh, located in present day southwestern Syria, in c.1285 BC marked the beginnings of the decline of Egyptian control of the Mediterranean region of Southwest Asia. With a diminishing Egyptian influence combined with the subsequent decline of the Hittite Empire, controllers of the lands of present day Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, a turbulent power vacuum was created in the Mediterranean enabling the Canaanite peoples of Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Syria to emerge independently from the shadows of these two great empires. It would be the Canaanite people of the port cities of Sidon (Zidon) and Tyre (Tyrus) on the coast of Lebanon who would create what would later become the Phoenician Empire. It is of note to understand that the term Canaanite refers to a series of tribes of peoples with similar culture and language, of which included the Phoenicians, and also includes Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Ethiopian, and Hittite along with other cultural groups of the region.
The Canaanite-Phoenicians would travel the length of the Mediterranean spreading their culture and later founding the colonial cities of Utica c.1100 BC and Carthage c.800 BC in what is now Tunisia. These navigators and traders from Sidon-Tyre would eventually turn Utica-Carthage into the Phoenician empire's economic center making the Phoenicians (also referred to as Carthaginians) chief rival to the Greeks and later the Romans for the control of the Mediterranean. In their quest for resources and trade, the Phoenicians would travel throughout the port cities of Italy, Greece, and Spain passing through the Straits of Gibraltar and journeying up the Western European coastline and as far as ancient Ireland. In addition, they traveled south of the Straits of Gibraltar hugging the West Africa coastline down as far as current day Angola.
Masters of economic trade and sea travel, theirs was a world based on the import and export of raw materials and finished products; import skills that could only be realized through the careful study and exploitation of multicultural traits, beliefs, and practices. Due to their advanced trade network, and secret knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean north of the Straits of Gibraltar, it is reasonable to assume the Phoenicians were one of the great ambassadors of ancient hockey. In all likelihood, early Phoenicians, or Canaanite peoples, would be the first to introduce the concept of the stick and ball game to the ancient tribes of Ireland and Britain, sometime between c.1800 BC to c.1300 BC. Here it took on a violent form and was recorded in The Irish Annals under the name hurley.
The history of ancient Ireland is one of slow but constant migration of Indo-Europeans from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. One of these groups was the Tuath de Danann, a mixed-race European-Canaanites tribe with cultural ties to the people of Phoenicia. It has been said of the Tuatha de Danann, that tuath means tribe and Danann the Tribe of Dan. These people would have a common Canaanite ancestry linked to the Danites and the city Dan in Syria. The city of Dan, today Tel-Dan (Tell el-Qadi in Arabic), is about thirty miles inland from the ancient port of Tyre and was an important point connecting Tyre and Damascus along the Silk Road. The ancient Danites had frequent contacts with the people of Tyre in which they had a common heritage and were allied with Tyre-Phoenicians. In Biblical terms, the Dans were one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. There symbol, or crest, being the image of the Serpent.
In The Irish Annals, a body of work mixing Irish history with legend and mythology, records the first account of hurley in association with the Tuatha de Danann. The annals record that in c.1272 BC, the strongest and most skilled warriors of the Tuatha de Danann defeated their rivals, the Firbolgs, in a match to the death at The First Battle of Moytura. There were twenty-seven men on each side and when the game was over, the casualties were afforded a funeral of honor and were buried together under a huge stack of rocks known as a cairn, an ancient equivalent of our modern day monuments and burial headstones. At the Second Battle of Moytura, the Tuatha de Danann leader, Nuada, would be killed by the Formorians, another of the original inhabitants of Ireland. Celtic Sun God Lugh, one of the Danann warriors, would emerge as a hero having killed the Formorian warrior, Balor, by shooting a stone into the giant's eye. Later becoming Danann leader and the last legendry Irish high king, Lugh would be honored in the ancient games of Lughnasadh (the Irish equivalent to the Olympic Games), an event still celebrated to this day.
The Battles of Moytura are an important turning point in the history of ancient hockey. For though the First Battle of Moytura incident appears a simple sporting legend, it is in fact not a sporting contest at all but rather an account of a religious war. Moytura was a Pagan match between Sun God believers, Tuatha de Danann, and non-believers, Firbolgs, for the control of the religious beliefs of Ireland.
Although the Dananns were the victors, what the Moytura account fails to mention is that the tribe assimilated with the Firbolgs and, in doing so, their religion and culture would be adopted by the native Irish Firbolgs. Years later, their descendants would author the Brehon Laws and serve as the overall masters of pre-Christian religious ceremonies throughout Ireland as well as other parts of the British Isles. In the Brehon Laws such was the violence and danger associated with ancient hurley that it was declared a form of Irish military service. The laws asserted if a man was killed or injured by a hurley, either his surviving family or himself are eligible for life-long financial assistance. This could be considered the earliest example of a military disability or widow's pension. Also stipulated in the laws, all sons of kings and chieftains were to be supplied with hurley sticks during the traditional period of fosterage with another noble family. Today we now know these descendants, as the Druids. Their religion, the worship of the Serpent and Sun God, is symbolized by the great stone monoliths that exist throughout ancient Ireland, Wales and England - the best known being Stonehenge.
While the Canaanite religious game of ancient hockey spread to the British Isles, the Egyptians, during the New Kingdom period (c.1539 BC to c.1075 BC), controlled Lower Nubia (Northern Sudan). This region would become part of the Aksumite Empire, an empire that stretched from the Red Sea inland across northern Ethiopia to the Nile River encompassing much of modern day Yemen. Since the 10th century BC Ethiopia has existed as an identifiable state and was a chief African supplier of gold dust, ivory, leather hides and aromatics to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and later the Romans. This area was a major trading power and cultural force from c.1000 BC to c.700 AD with Axum, home to the legendary Queen of Sheba, serving as its capital.
The Ethiopian game of Ganna is similar to modern day hockey. Its name is the same as the Ethiopian word for Christmas and is played in celebration of that day each January 7 by the country's youth. January 7 is the traditional day given for the birth of Christ in accordance with the old Julian calendar day of Christmas. According to Ethiopian legend, after receiving word of the birth of Christ, shepherds tending to their sheep used their crooks as sticks and began celebrating by playing a ball game. In truth, Ethiopians have been playing this ancient stick and ball game long before the birth of Jesus, learning the game through cultural contacts with the people of the Mediterranean, specifically, the ancient Egyptians.
In 2000 AD, University of Calgary professor, Dr. Bill Glanzman, and a team of international researchers revealed they had found the 3,000-year-old temple of Mahram Bilqis buried beneath the sands of Rub al-Khali desert in Yemen. This sanctuary was a sacred site for pilgrims throughout the region from c.1200 BC to c.550 AD, and believed to have been used throughout the reign of the Queen of Sheba. Glanzman wrote to the Canadian Press news agency:
Although they were off the beaten path as far as European history is concerned, they were just as cosmopolitan and culturally important in that they served as a crossroads to a variety of cultures: Egyptian, Sudanic, Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Indian. Perhaps an indication of this cosmopolitan character can be found in the fact that the major Aksumite cities had Jewish, Nubian, Christian and even Buddhist minorities.
Glanzman's observations show that this region was an epicenter of ancient culture where knowledge would be sought and exchanged. The Temple of Mahram Bilqis would have been a place where this ancient stick and ball game could be shared and spread to other cultures.
King Ezana ruled Aksumite at its cultural peak from c.325 AD to c.350 AD. About c.333 AD, he converted to Christianity and declared Aksumite the first Christian state in the history of the world. It was at this time that many Ethiopian cultural legends were created. Throughout the ages these legends became very vital and uplifting and have endured to the present day, a testimony to the living expressions and lasting values of Christian-Ethiopian culture. Unfortunately, what Christianity failed to explain, Christianity simply appropriated. In the case of Ganna, the ancient Sumerian religious game was Christianized and made to appear to be of Christmas origin rather than of a more ancient religious source.
The winter solstice, the shortest day of sunlight, was the time when ancient religious worshippers celebrated the birth of the Sun God - the Creator. With King Ezana's conversion to Christianity in the 4th century AD, Aksumite essentially converted Ganna from a Pagan game, celebrating the Sun God, to a Christian game, celebrating Jesus Christ. It is ironic that today, the Sumerian religious game of Pukku-Mikku, and the tale of the Tree of Life, still exists and is recreated in simplistic form each Christmas in Ethiopia.
In addition to spreading westward and later down the Nile River Valley, the ancient Sumerian game of Pukku-Mikku had also spread eastward via the ancient trade routes of western Asia. Evidence of this is found at Manipur, in North Eastern India bordering on Myanmar (formally Burma) were the games of Khong Kangjei, hockey on foot, and its evolved form of Sagol Kanjei, polo, are played. The people of Manipur place the origins of the games to an ancient scripture (Puyas) and to the mythological age when the game of hockey was played by the gods.
It is here, among Manipuris, Meiteis, and the ancient horse-riding peoples of Iran, that the horse became revered as a divine creature. In the ancient religious scripture, The Story of the Mahabharata, the Sun God Surya is described as riding in a horse drawn chariot carrying the sun across the sky. The people of Manipur believe The Mahabharata, written c.300 BC to c.300 AD, describes the Jewel City (Mani - Jewel and Pur - City or place), and is evidence that they are the lost ancient civilization of Aryan India.
Manipuri hockey is a seven-a-side game in which each player plays with a cane stick, shaped very much like a present day hockey stick. The game starts when a small ball made from the root of a white bamboo plant is lobbed into play at center field. A player is permitted to carry the ball with his stick and kick the ball with his feet while the ball is in play. However, a goal can only be scored when the ball is struck by the stick over the goal line. Generally, this game is played by children until they are of age to play the game on horseback. As in Ethiopia, the Manipuri play Khong Kangjei and Sagol Kanjei as part of their Christmas celebration. It is these ancient horse-riding peoples who adapted the game of Khong Kangjei, hockey, to horseback becoming the game of Sagol Kanjei, polo, and where today religion remains a key factor in both games continued play.
It is this binding of religion and games that links hockey to its past. It is appearent that by c.600 BC a version of hockey had become common among the ancient Greeks. It appears that the Greeks went so far as to incorporate the sport into their Isthmian and Olympic Games. The first record of the Olympic Games dedicated to the supreme god Zeus appears in c.776 BC. In Waldo E. Sweet's book Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece, he writes that "the games of 776 BC were not the innovations of a new ceremony but rather the reorganization of older games." Sweet describes some of the early history of the Olympics:
[Greece] was not a political entity. It was a group of independent city-states that shared many attributes . . . They had a belief in a common origin and in a tradition of migrations from the North. They had common religion and a colorful mythology. They inhabited not only the area called Greece today but also most of the islands of the Aegean, Egypt, Cyrene on the coast of Africa, the lower half of Italy, Sicily, and the coast of the Black Sea. They all stressed athletics and their cities sent their best athletes to Olympia and other religious festivals.
In 500 BC . . . there were about 50 sets of games held at regular intervals. Six centuries later, in 93 AD, the number of games had increased to over 300. Among these many sets of games, 4 were preeminent: Olympic Games, Pythian Games, Isthmian Games, and Nemean Games. The sites for all 4 were religious shrines.
The Greek philosopher, Homer writes in the Iliad, Book 23, that the first games were held to honor Patroclus' funeral. In Greek legend Patroclus was a slain hero who fought against the Trojans at Troy. Homer's "Funeral Games" in other words, are rooted in the religious ideal of eternal life. The late University of Cincinnati professor, P. V. Myer wrote:
The celebrated games of the Greeks had their origin in the belief of the Aryan ancestors that the souls of the dead were gratified by such spectacles as delighted them during their earthly life. During the Heroic Age these festivals were simple sacrifices or games performed at the tomb, or about the pyre of the dead [pyre: a combustible heap for burning a dead body as a funeral rite]. Gradually these grew into religious festivals observed by an entire city or community, and were celebrated near the oracle or shrine of the god in whose honor they were instituted; the idea now being that the gods were present at the festival, and took delight in the various contests and exercises.
Though the popular belief remains that no team sports were being played by the Greeks in their Isthmian or Olympic Games, many scholars indeed believe evidence of the playing of unknown ball games by teams of men does exist. The ancient Olympic Games would last about 1000 years before disappearing. It would be the Emperor Theodosius who would order all pagan sites destroyed in the name of Christianity, effectively ending the Greek Olympics in c.393 AD.
The evidence of the widespread use of primitive skates by early man has given rise to the theory of ancient winter sports. The first skates were fashioned from the shank bones of oxen, reindeer, horses, or sheep. From ancient archaeological sites near Budapest, Hungary remains of bone skates dating to the Early Bronze Age c.2800 to c.2000 BC have been found implying the practice of ice-skating in ancient times was widespread in Eastern Europe. It has even been suggested that ancient hockey may have been played on the frozen winter ponds of ancient Hungary and Macedonia effectively making the mysterious lake dwelling Illyrian tribes the first known practitioners of a recognizable form of ice hockey as early as c.500 BC . In addition, bone skates have also been uncovered among the Roman ruins of early Londinium dating back to c.50 BC. This discovery may indicate that during times of severe winters primitive ice hockey may very well have also been played along the banks of the River Thames by early Romans.
This theory of a possible Roman link to ice hockey seems practical given the Roman love of team sports and competition as the Romans were major innovators in the development of stick and ball games. For it was the Romans who invented the cambuca or chole stick, a three and a half foot shaft with a curved blade. Borrowing from the Egyptians, the Romans also adapted the use of a lightweight ball, incorporating horse hair, feathers and linen into the lining of the leather, allowing the ball to be hit harder, to roll faster, and to be hurled skywards rather than merely passed along the ground. They called this new form of play Pila Paganica or Harpastum - a complex reference to the games of cambuca and chole being played on the ground using sticks and small goal posts.
