ORIGIN OF THE MYTHICAL SHIP

When you are dealing with ancient stories, symbols, and ritual structures, you have to interpret the story telling and the archaeological findings mythological. Otherwise, you will be left guessing and your interpretations will be short of common and explainable sense. But even so, you also have to connect the symbols and the story telling to some modern plausible scientific and recognizable facts.

Of course, our ancestors have noticed that the stars are revolving. That is, except from the point in the heaven where no movement seems to take place. The seemingly rotating figure on the northern hemisphere symbolizes the Greatest male deity in the Mythological Story from all over the World. This figure symbolizes for instants Chronos, Zeus, Odin, Saturn (not the planet) and several other names.

The Milky Way contours on both Earth´s hemispheres. Galactic center marked on the right female-looking figure.

But the figure are also symbolized with several other phenomenon's, of which the Heavenly Ship and a White Horse, a Bull or a great Serpent are the most common.

Looking at the many Rock Art carvings of the so called "Ship" you will observe that the specific carvings of the shape of the Ships has been very differently carved. Now, if you were to carve a shape into a hard rock surface with just stone tools, you soon have to consider how much effort you will use. The results afterwards depends on how precise you observe the desired object and how precise you carve it.

Different efforts and different observed object details of the artist, gives different carving specifics. From just an effort to carve the Ship as a single line, to carving a Ship with double lines and the so called frame ribs, towards an effort where the artist have carved the whole surface of the Ship.

Regarding Ships with frame ribs, scholars often relate these Rock Art Ships directly to a much later Viking Ship and even to the modern ship. Without any thoughts of the time period in which these symbols was made. That is of course to putting the cart before the horse. The idea comes naturally before the material shape!

THE MILKY WAY SHIP

From all over the World, the telling of a large Ship (and of a Great Flood) is very common. But it is also a common fact that this telling either have been totally forgotten or have been confused or reduced to having other more "obvious" meanings, of which the Mythical Ship is confused to be "a ship carrying the Sun trough the night" which is a totally impossible thing to say! How on Earth can anyone living human accept such an idiosyncratic idea?

Talking mythological about "great ships", for instants Hringhorne in Norse Mythology and Noah Arch in the Bible, in connection with "a Great Flood", one has to look for "the greatest object in the mythological world, and no object is greater than the white Milky Way Band encircling the Earth.

In order to understand the many mythological symbols and mythological telling of the Milky Way, it is necessary to imagine the figure going around a centre point i. e. the north and the south celestial poles. It is also necessary to imagine that the figure mythological changes meaning in different positions around this centre.

Milky Way Symbolism 

If symbolized as a male or female deity, the figure can be symbolized "standing up"; flying in the heaven" "falling down in the Sea"; "going under the Earth"; "from where the deity rise gain"; "reborn and returning" - describing all the stories of the major "gods and goddesses" - an remarkable likeness to the story of Jesus really isn't it? But getting the right key, it's possible to explain the major deities mentioned in cultures all over the World. They are all symbolized with white colour and they are all "the greatest"; overseeing everything on Earth; located in the Sky, etc. etc.

The unfolded Milky Way Contours from a Star Atlas.

The drawn lines shows the simplest shape which is the most common figure of the total Milky Way Contours. The drawn red swirl on the right side represents the Milky Way Centre in the star constellation of Sagittarius.

A 4,51 meter long  Ship carving from Torsbo, Bohuslen County in Sweden.

And if you observe the revolving Milky Way contours long enough, you will discover the point where the Stars seems to stand still. In ancient times, our ancestors marked this point with a Wheel as inserted above on the Star Atlas. (See North Pole Centre)

Different carving efforts showing the same object. 2 Rock Carvings showing Horses and Ships. Both pictures symbolizes the entire unfolded contours of the Milky Way.

Common observations and ideas from Egypt and Sweden. The fact that the pictures are dealing with something that have to do with the Sky, is clear in the Egypt picture Stars.

The black spots above the male figure represents Stars as also on the Egypt picture next and the Swedish to the right.

Mythological and Cosmological explanation to the Egyptian Ship.

The Solar barge/Sun chariot confusion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_barge

Ra in his "solar" barge

A "solar barge" (also "solar bark", "solar barque", "solar boat", "sun boat") is a mythological representation of the sun riding in a boat. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-meter-long vessel that was sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example which may have fulfilled the symbolic function of a solar barque. This boat was rediscovered in May 1954 when archeologist Kamal el-Mallakh and inspector Zaki Nur found two ditches sealed off by about 40 blocks weighing 17 to 20 tonnes each. This boat was disassembled into 1,224 pieces and took over 10 years to reassemble. A nearby museum was built to house this boat.[1]

Other sun boats were found in Egypt dating to different pharonic dynasties.[2]

Examples include:

Neolithic petroglyphs which (it has been speculated) show solar barges

The many early Egyptian goddesses who are related as sun deities and the later gods Ra and Horus depicted as riding in a solar barge. In Egyptian myths of the afterlife, Ra rides in an underground channel from west to east every night so that he can rise in the east the next morning.

The Nebra sky disk, which (it has been speculated) features a depiction of a solar barge.

Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs, including those found in Tanumshede often contains barges and sun crosses in different constellations.

A "sun chariot" is a mythological representation of the sun riding in a chariot. The concept is younger than that of the solar barge, and typically Indo-European, corresponding with the Indo-European expansion after the invention of the chariot in the 2nd millennium BC.

Examples include:

Trundholm sun chariot of the Nordic deity, Sól, drawn by Arvak and Alsvid

Greek Helios riding in a chariot,[3] (see also Phaëton[4])

Sol Invictus depicted riding a quadriga on the reverse of a Roman coin.[5]

Vedic Surya riding in a chariot drawn by seven horses

The sun itself also was compared to a wheel, possibly in Proto-Indo-European, Greek hēliou kuklos, Sanskrit suryasya cakram, Anglo-Saxon sunnan hweogul (PIE *swelyosyo kukwelos).

- The "Solar Barge" has nothing to do whit the Sun! The Barge/Boat/Ship has everything to do with the crescent Milky Way contours of both Earth hemispheres, hence a Female Boat in the southern ("underworld") hemisphere, and a Male Boat in the northern hemisphere.

These Barge/Boat/Ship "sails" around the respective polar center points/wheels on both hemispheres.

Mythological Ships in Norse Mythology:

Hringhorni

Naglfar

Sessrúmnir

Skíðblaðnir

CHURCH-SHIP AND WORSHIP.

Mythically and historically in Denmark we have had a tradition concerning in which side the woman and men should be placed when visiting the Church. Historically we also have the tradition of mention the interior of the Church as a "Ship".

It is my believe that the tradition have its origin in old mythological rituals to follow the heavenly ideas of the Great God and Goddess. Above you can see the idea from the star map Milky Way contours of the Heavenly Couple over the schematic ship-like drawing, to the picture of a stone row ship and to the drawn collage on picture 3 with the whole idea concept connected.

When sitting in the church, the male side to the North in the Church, was mentioned at the "Sword" side and the female side to the South was mentioned the "Spinning" side. Now, most churches are aligned in the east/west direction with the so called side ships or the rows of benches to the north and south.

Looking at the Contours above at picture 1 and 2 it is easy to see why the northern side was mentioned the sword side. But what could then be the reason to call the female and southern Milky Way the "Spinning" side? Well, as mentioned in "The Milky Way Spiral Centre" the most specific feature of the southern Milky Way contours are, that it's here, in the direction of the star constellation of Sagittarius, you can find the centre in our Galaxy and the spiral arms with the whole Galaxy spinning around itself once every approximately 210 millions of years. That spinning fact could very well be the origin to the myth and tradition.

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