The Tyne Improvement Commission were formed in 1850 and brought together the 4 boroughs of Tyneside to serve the river and maintain it. Their motto means essentially: keeping a vigilant watch together. A more poetic interpretation is assigned to the alter ego of the body, the River Tyne God:
He keeps a watchful eye.
I’ve written about the state of the river and the general animosity around it prior to the forming of the TIC here: penbal.uk/product/fryer-map-1773/
I’ve written about the River Tyne deity here:
And here:
And talked about him as Newcastle’s Genius Loci in this video:
This is a Roman depiction of the Tyne god found at the luxurious governor’s bath house at Chesters. It shows him in the classical reclining style in-keeping with the river gods Arno, Tiberinus and others. Chesters being a few miles from Corbridge, who’s very founding references the river god, shows that worship of the river god was important in this area both for the Romans and the British. Incidentally, he is often depicted as blind.
I’ve written about the name of the river and its Iron Age significance here:
The River Tyne will also be the subject of my next video project where I’ll recapitulate James Guthrie’s masterwork: The River Tyne — Its History and Resources (1880)
Never miss an article. Enter your email or give our FB page a like
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
Photograph: Lee Stoneman
No air-built castles, and no fairy bowers,
But thou, fair Tynemouth, and thy well-known towers,
Now bid th’ historic muse explore the maze
Of long past years, and tales of other days.
Pride of Northumbria!—from thy crowded port,
Where Europe’s brave commercial sons resort,
Her boasted mines send forth their sable stores,
To buy the varied wealth of distant shores.
Here the tall lighthouse, bold in spiral height,
Glads with its welcome beam the seaman’s sight.
Here, too, the firm redoubt, the rampart’s length,
The death-fraught cannon, and the bastion’s strength,
Hang frowning o’er the briny deep below,
To guard the coast against th’ invading foe.
Here health salubrious spreads her balmy wings,
And woos the sufferer to her saline springs;
And, here the antiquarian strays around
The ruin’d abbey, and its sacred ground.
Jane Harvey
From ‘The Castle of Tynemouth. A Tale’ (1806)
IMO the importance of hydrogeology in mythology is not given enough attention.
Etymology provides many clues as to how words for rock were also used in conjunction with water, and how water dissolves or wears down rock. The mechanism of natural water nearly always relates to rock, coming up from rock as springs, or wearing it down to rivers or streams, burns etc. Or having to do the work ourselves and dig into rock to find the life-essential water in wells.
Roots such as Kar and Kal – or Gar and Gal from thousands of years ago filter down like streams to our language, and the languages of people such as the Celts and Romans.
Water is life.
Since Osiris was the Lord of Inundation of the Nile, this has been a stream of significance in all religion and mythology – with Christianity being one major influence bearing the waters of that stream. Osiris was an archetype of the body and blood, the life-giver, who brought bread and wine, the way and the life within the Christian culture, turned into the green man and god of the vine, which we still have traces of in the Os kings. In fact, Oswin means god of the vine, incorporating the Os, and describing Osiris exactly. Were these early kings really as ‘Christian’ as the likes of Bede would paint them? Was early Christianity of Aidan etc. more of a syncretic form of religion, drawing from ancient pre-Christian sources, which the Catholic Church would later consume?
From the days of Hathor the holy cow who brought life giving milk, and the very origins of our language in the alphabet, with A as the horns of the water buffalo which was the primary beast of burden drawing water for irrigation, along the Nile etc., myth has entangled with water/mother goddesses and their holy waters, Lords of seas and rivers, and flood heroes etc.
These words come up time after time relating to rock and water. Streams, rivers and springs are vital, and holy. Holy wells abound. Sacred springs and rivers – sacred in every way as absolutely essential to life.
So we have many related words from Kar to Cor, Gar to garden, Gala waters, Galashiels. Our word galaxy relates to the Milky Way – a sea seen as containing elements of white particulates, just as you would find in milk, the gel (gal) of the cal (calcium), which is related to the dissolution of rock into milky streams.
Another well observed solute in water is iron which makes water run like red blood, and Corbridge was known for its iron, no? Later Northern mythologies would have a lot to say about smithies and hammers shaping iron. Bringing hammers into focus, and the likes of Thor, Wayland etc. And let’s not forget that other blind god Odin.
I suggest that Cor very much resembles ancient Osiris – or wsir – say it slowly wesser, ouse ir, and ir being eye – the ouse of the eye, Lord of the inundation of the Nile. Who later was blind in the underworld. GILgamesh the proto Noah, or NUwah, another water god figure.
The correlations between GILGULs, stone circles, GALllows, and crossing places (perhaps crossing of underground streams which rise as springs?).
Look to other cultures where we have beings such as IshKUR(Cor?)GAL, who brought the waters of life from the underworld etc.
As a descendant of folks from Galashiels and Galway with names such as Fraser (Frossaigh? of inundation), CORcoran and Cooper (what do barrels contain), these etymologies have interested me for decades. Gala-shiels – shiels being related to shells, another reference to containment, like Gar or jar. In fact, a shell is a form of life – a Cell, with a calcium coat. An eye is mainly calcium. And Osiris’s eye brings life to all of the Nile, the original historical archetypal tale. And calcium carbonate dissolved looks milky, as in the milky way or in Indian the -gala, which is stirred into form as the GALAxy.
Now, back to the subject of Cor (a water bearing through rock – or a river) depicted as a god, in the archetypal form of Osiris. The cult of Serapis was popular in Roman times, and this is Osiris and the Apis Bull, Apis being son of the water goddess Hathor, the cow, the sky deity and consort of Horus, son of Osiris (or Osiris the younger form in the eternal cycle). The Egyptians, like other cultures viewed the sky as a body of water in which the gods sailed, and that water came to earth in the old way of thinking – as above so below.
Horus’s eye is also rather famous, and when in the underworld he gave Osiris the eye to complete his task. The blind messiah is another common trope.
So when I see a river god who has blind attributes, with a name of Cor, I immediately think of Osiris, and other deities that evolved from this theme of Lord of the inundation. When I factor in Romans, I think Serapis – wasir-hp – as a link between Greco-Egypto-Romano and British cultures.
I also am drawn to the fact that Emperor Hadrian was a Serapist and built a Serapeum in his villa. So we have very strong connections with Serapis here in our area via Hadrian.
So when we compare images of both Cor and Serapis, I see the same thing. I see inundation, rivers, blind gods, and a mass of corresponding etymology relating to rocks, dissolution of rock and metal in water, too many correspondences from myths from ancient Egypt and Babylon/Sumer, to India, and all over the world, all relating to the waters of life, and the religions that followed. A god of water, fertility and fecundity; who better to guard our sacred river?
So when we compare Cor with Serapis, it is perhaps no surprise:
Cor: https://www.penbal.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/tynerivergod-4.jpg
And here he is as Roman Serapis, with the grain basket on his head:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1805-0703-51
All the best
Ivan
Hi Ivan, take a look at this: https://www.penbal.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Watchful-Eye.webp
What a lovely piece you have created. Thank you.
It rings with authenticity in the style, like the Prose Edda. A visceral impact on me like the reverberations of a smithy’s hammer 😉
You made my day.
All the best
Ivan
I think that the river god as a giant also correlates with Osiris, as Orion. I suspect the ancient image of the rising god, club or throwing stick in hand, ready for the wild birds in the afterlife may have emerged in the forms we have seen in Britain – such as the Cerne Abbas giant etc.
Orion, as Osiris, wounded to pour the waters – or blood – of life at the river heads (the Egyptians perceived this happening at the Elephantine in Lower Egypt). Orion as a giant standing over the southern waters, wounded and pouring out his sacred gift in the annual cycle. To die and be reborn yearly, bringing the prosperity and life.
In Cor, perhaps the staff of Osiris and the throwing stick motif has emerged as the hammer. The forge and hammer, Thor and the thunder strike, with attendant sparks, as storm god, syncretised into a local image. Similarities to the Tau cross brought from later Romans via the missionaries, with heroes wielding them as weapons of light against the dark forces of Set/Satan. Evoked in the Battle of Heavenfield etc. by Christian-influenced writers. Older icons, totems and symbols, easily consumed into the Catholic symbolism and re-presented as the Universal interpretation of such archetypes, in the one cannon. Origin gradually fading from memory and culture.
This, for me, is the origin of the Arthurian myth too (Ar/As/Asar/Osiris), of the dying king/dying land. The importance of the waters in the form of Avon/Avalon, the Lady of the Lake an analogy to the feminine mother goddess.
Like everyone in the western hemisphere, we all see the same sun, the same moon, virtually same night sky, and we all are at the mercy of the forces that come and go in cycles of life and death of the land. The ‘gods’ are our early way to scientifically correlate and quantify Nature’s forces and cycles with predictable cause and effect. Something necessary for survival. To predict, like Merlin, the coming seasons through ‘signs and portents’.
I believe that to understand history, we need to try and walk in their shoes, inhabit them, as it were; see what they saw, step inside their perspective. And always follow the streams where they lead us back to their source 😉
Best wishes
Ivan
I propose that water was one of the most important cultural icons in the ancient world, and has been vastly underrecognized.
From the ancient myths of the summerlands, involving watery tales and flooded plains. The stone circles and henges corresponding with aquifers and springs all over the country.
Take for example what I have said of the milk of the earth and blood of the earth corresponding to natural springs of milky limestone calcium deposits etc. and the iron deposits, and the etymology of Kal, cal and calc emerging as calcium. This can be easily interpreted as extending to the ancient ideas of the cosmic egg and cell (gel/gal) which is a lifeform in the shell (shiel) of calcium. The sacred eye and tears from the sacred cell of the eye, the window to the soul, and symbol of sun and moon etc.
I digress.
Looking at British mythology around the Arthurian lands, we have Stonehenge on top of a calcium deposit and a natural aquifer below. The milk.
Associated with this is Glastonbury, where the iron-rich waters flow from the Tor to the Chalice Well. The blood.
All associated with Arthurian myth, all Osirian and Egyptian in origin – like Cor. (Corbridge, the iron earth blood).
St George of Cappadocia is linked with this area too, and the slaying of the dragon mythology intimately associated with the ley line phenomenon – electromagnetic streams running with the milk and blood of the earth. Areas of particular potency, where they cross – where we have henges. Always associated with nearby springs of significance.
George, as legend has it, had his head cut off and instead of blood, milk issues forth.
Is it any coincidence that our flag is a red cross (convergence of leyline/water streams) on a white background? The milk and the blood motifs going back much further than the Christianised versions.
Furthermore, the Union flag incorporates the blue, of the sea – the de la mer, of the Magdalen myth, and the iconic colour of the Mother Mary – a later manifestation of Isis, who was the Meru of Egypt. The Mother Goddess, always associated with water, the Lady of the Lake, in Avalon.
This is British mythology rather than Roman Catholic, later consumed in religious dogma and imposed on Britain by the Church.
I propose these realities have been deliberately distorted and rewritten by Christian redactors and rewriters in order to hide the pagan roots of the natural religions that pre-existed. Just as they did in Ireland by turning old gods into ‘historic’ saints to hide their origins.
Note the old Celtic cross, denotes a circle (NOT a Tau cross, as was the Catholic way to symbolise the crucifixion), interwoven with streams and cords, rising from the earth towards the cross in a circle, like a spring of an aquifer.
And what of the old sites that became churches, overlaid upon by Christian builders. The ancient Yew trees encircling the sacred groves and their attendant springs below. Natural henges of ancient undying ‘gods’ in the form of trees that bear the ancient name for multitude/infinity from Egypt IU, the ever coming. Later incorporated into the name of the other god IUSA, or Yehoshua, who turned water into wine and gave his body as bread and blood as wine. Osirian mythology through and through. And all relating to water, as The Lord of Inundation.
So why then are we always being diverted from Osiris’s primary origin to his later association with death?
We must follow the water. It is the basis of all civilisation, myth and culture.
Ancient man was far more sensitive to the subtle energies of the earth, as well as needing to plot them for the exploitation of life giving water, irrigation, and sources for mining its mineral deposits, etc.
The Templars were a secret society after their dissolution and persecution by the Church, wearing the red and white. Fused with the underground secret orders, to hide advancements in science and esoteric lore. They appear to have discovered significant knowledge too dangerous for the Church. A threat to expose the pagan origins of Christianity?
I digress again.
Water water everywhere
Do any stop to think? (sic)
Regarding your point about yew trees, have you seen this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQSArbpqI1Q
Also, there is a Tynemouth Henge below the houses on Monks Way. If henges occured on key streams with iron or calcium deposits, could it be that the chalybeate spring that flows out onto the Longsands (there are streams at both ends) could be linked? This stream made Tynemouth quite famous in Victorian times after the railways were built and its Lions Head Fountain still sits beneath the sand.
The dune burial written about in these pages where a samian bowl honouring Bacchus was found, lies between these two streams in the middle of the beach and near the henge. Furthermore, the henge occupies an approximate mid-point in a line from Penbal Crag to the Marden settlement.
Good video on Jesmond, and your intuition is right on the money.
All the names you mention, including Yew, go back to Egyptian IU, part of IUSA, meaning the ever coming son ‘later the meaning of messiah’. As in IU-EM-HEPT, the coming prince of peace, an appellation of Imhotep, the first great architect, who became Asclepios of the Greeks, god of healing.
The reason Jesus is mixed in this is because the name is ultimately derived from the same root. As is Jew – IU. The Jews of the bible were the IUs. In Egyptian mythology, your are evercoming to the true life in the afterworld, through the field of reeds to the mount on the horizon, where you unify with the Father Ra, who sails his bark across the sea of the sky in the material world, but ‘heaven’ in the afterlife.
The journey begins with the embalming in a white shroud, and you are reborn in the white swaddling clothes in the afterlife. The resin represents the watery state of the invisible Ka that moves on into the eternal. This process was called KRST, which became an appellation of the baby Jesus when born in swaddling clothes in that Christian version.
So Jesmond as Yew Mound and Jesus Mound, not mutually exclusive!
You referred to the Sekket Burn earlier – did you know that Sekhet was the Egyptian goddess of marshes and reeds?
The Egyptian origins were largely written out of history because of Roman Catholicism’s influence. Early historians and archaeologists were tasked with proving the Bible, and early writers and missionaries tasked with Christianising the earlier indigenous language, religions, myths and characters, making early gods Christian saints, non-Christian kings evil heathens, whilst extolling others as bringing righteous Godly civilisation.
Most historical records therefore have to be tempered with this understanding. For example Bede.
The importance of the Yew recognised as the Tree of Life, throughout western civilisation is extremely important. We find Yew leaf motifs dating back thousands of years. The Yew is a particularly old and multigenerational resurrecting tree, that were the holy groves in the old days. Long gone since they were used for warfare. But some churches still have them, because they pre-existed the churches, as sacred groves that were Christianised.
Even early Babylonian prints show sprigs carried that appear to be Yews, relating to myths such as Gilgamesh and the bringing of the plant of life to the primal Garden.
Nobody knows how old Yews are because they regenerate – the ultimate symbol of resurrection, and equates with the Egyptians’ mode of thought about the eternal cycles and ever-coming spirit.
And all those Jo names in the Bible: same root. Joseph to Jacob to Joseph etc. all in accord with the ancient Atumist cannon, of the ever coming one arising from formless into physical manifestation to return to formless. Atum as an aspect of Ptah (Pater) the Father, who uttered the HU as the breath of life or the ‘word’ – Ih HuH – became YHWH. John said in the beginning was the word – and John is a later variant of Taht, the scribe, who records the life of the gods, and all things, and as the moon in the heavenly waters announces the coming of the sun, as John baptises and announces the coming of the sun Jesus in the waters of the JO(JO/IO/EA/Oannes/ – all water gods)dan river. Dan or den again, as in gar-den (den of the jar, or the carrier of water).
BTW, my name means Holy Yew, or more interestingly the ‘wen’ or ‘van’ indicated the crossing place. And the Irish Eowen, is from a similar root (Yew again). Another transliteration of meaning would be therefore a holy place, a church etc. And my clan’s icon is the Yew, and we wear a sprig in uniform. (you can see why I am very much obsessed by this whole topic and how it relates to our area).
It’s significant in my life anyway. An association with Ireland is County Mayo – meaning Plain of the Yews. And it was to Galway that Aidan’s body was transferred by Colman to the Isle of the White Cow Innishboffin (sacred white cow again) and legends of Aidan being buried in Mayo exist. The Celtic ways retaining the more ancient Egypto-Babylonian ways that venerated nature as symbolised by the gods, rather than the gods as incarnate beings.
Consider the significance therefore of the name of that early ‘Celtic’ ‘Christian’ settlement Iona! From whence the early Celtic Christians came in the days of kings bearing names such as Os (Osiris), who would retain the old ways until Cuthbert – who was trained in the land of my ancestors near Galashiels. Who accepted the Roman cannon of the dating of Easter, and became the emblem of early Christianity. (Whose gold and red equilateral sun cross remains important in Christianity).
I recommend a book called The Sacred Yew by Anand Chetan, for background, as well as Yew A History by Fred Hageneder.
I do ramble, but have so much to say, sorry 🙂
Bringing us to George again. That red cross – also a symbol/flag of the Templars and before them the Ligurians, where the nomenclature for rock goes hand in hand with wearing down or boring into rock. The Kar/Kal and Cal links with water.
The cross and George as a symbol of slaying the dragon (taming the waters), goes back thousands of years to the time of the Hittites and earlier. The Hittite/Kassites who became the miners in early Britain, mining kassite for the tin. Hence the flag of the black and white.
Whilst we see the Northumbrian purple and gold, the royal emblems, that we share with Cat-alonia.
It’s all about the water. Where the water shows the runnof of the minerals below, the milky, the ruddy, the black etc. That’s how these things were found, surely? And the gold deposits too in the beds of the rivers.
People didn’t first prospect underground unless something on the surface showed them what was below – and probably why we find mines, henges, etc. associated together.
Mining is key to this, finding what lies below following clues from above.
Coal first seen in the water, traced to the early shallow pits and bell pits of our coast. Iron found by the red burns. Potteries relying on calciferous and magnesium lime (I am also descended from the chief enameller at Spode, and owner of a pottery – HR Daniel – 5th great grandfather through the line of my grandfather, the polis and soldier I spoke about).
The coal and the industrial revolution partly arose from our area, and we became known as Geordies.
Interestingly geordie contains an ancient root of goar, which seems to imply the process of goring out. George again, found in inscriptions going back thousands of years in areas such as Cappadocia, bearing the circular cross.
Goar being linked with gower or gwyr, being the gorge ‘between two rivers’. Linked with etymology of caer etc. I.e. Kar/Gar.
The process of lenition in etymology, being the softening of the hard sounds over time – Kal to Gal etc. – is coincidentally the same mechanics we are discussing with names for hard and rock being intimately associated with the softening of the rock into solutes, and creating rivers etc. Implying always, a link between the above and below, finding water, and exploiting the minerals that the water leads us to.
All of these leave remnants in language, and we see the monuments in our earlier landscape. We have the henge and the iron bearing waters – did they exploit and use this iron in the early ironworks at Coach lane? It would be interesting to track the iron history in our region.
Anyway, search the origins of that phrase you used chalybeate – from the Chalybes in Anatolia Cappadocia – and it takes you right back to the origin of George and the red cross again. The earliest of the iron miners, and of the Hittite (Hatti/Khatti/Kassi) peoples, who became the Phoenicians, who came and mined at Cornwall for the Kassite for tin.
It has been proposed that this area of Asia Minor was the earliest to begin modern civilisation. Some have placed ‘eden’ in the Lake Van region. LA Waddell believed that the Sumerian leaders were from that region, and the progenitors of the Indo-European culture.
It is interesting that those of Chalebes were the Chaldoi, and the similarity with Celtoi impresses me. Again we have the ‘cel’/Kal link.
I know these links seem speculative, and confirmation bias can affect one badly 😉
But I provide a fair few data points there which are very well evidenced, and when it comes to our region, persist in form, language and myth.
We glimpse traces, and are gradually losing our links to the past as urbanisation continues apace, and as our local dialects are increasingly being displaced by modern languages and where our recent generations would recognise common words, they have become lost. Those of the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries were likely still using the older forms that linked way back to the Romano, which came to us full of Greco-Egypto-Indo-European root words and loan words.
We know the Romans brought Serapism here. We have Cor as Osiris Coventina as a feminine form imaged in the same form as Osiris reclining, with item raised in left hand (possibly even a Yew icon) – at a place named Car-rawburgh (car/kar, again) on the Wall. Goddess of wells and springs! With her jar, a common motif found in Hittite iconography all the way to Babylonian – the god of the jar/Gar or Goar.
I hope this makes a bit of sense. It is a bit ‘off the wall’ and ‘crack-pot’ 😉
Just to emphasise, that these viewpoints remain theoretical.
For certain translations I have relied on the works of LA Waddell, who revised the etymology considerably, having fundamentally disagreed with the Assyriologists of his day. His version of history is really off the wall, and I think he was too literal at times, ascribing historical to the mythological, but I found remarkable consistency in his logic and comparative studies linking early tribes and kingly cultures with extant king lists etc. His translations, for example, conflicted with the idea that Sumerian is a dead language. Rather, he sees it as the true origin of what is broadly termed Indo-European. He had a lot to say of the St George myth as vastly older than ascribed to by the Christian historians.
For the Egyptian, I have used Gerald Massey’s translations – which were based upon the translations of his day, which were also very much at odds with Assyriologists of his time such as Prof Sayce. People who opposed the idea of links between Babylonian and Egyptian mythology with the Biblical.
I personally see the same etymological traces of Waddell and Massey in the later cultures. So I see connections where otherwise they might seem absent.
Still, we have to theorize where proof is absent. And like a lot of history, a good theory can turn out to be a good yarn unless we find the proof. But proof can be rare, and we still remain interpreters of evidence.
The line from Braveheart springs to mind ‘history is written by men who have hanged heroes’. However, it’s just as easy to murder it with erroneous theories 🙂 Hopefully, we get closer to truth than illusion the more we learn.
So thank you for a fascinating discussion Luan, and for allowing me to ramble through my own theories with you. I continue to learn each day from folks such as yourself about the history of our area and feel closer to the land and the ancestors as a consequence.
All the very best
Ivan
Thanks Ivan 👍
And we mustn’t forget also that Cor is the root of corona, which surrounds, or encircles, like the word Kar implies, as a stone worn away by water into a container, cup, jar or chalice. It encircles and protects, in the old sense, as does the Caer.
As such it has become the word for crown. And god Cor here has his crown containing either water or grain (or even coal, associated with our area specifically). Not a crown as we usually understand but a jar to contain that water of life balanced on the head. The modius head dress associated with the measuring of grain.
Further evidence relating the river god Cor to the Tyne is a monument found at Arbeia, supposedly of a freed slavewoman named Regina.
A great yarn has been spun about this statue over the years, and stories of the freed slavewoman of the Catuvellauni tribe married to one Barates, have become almost mythological in themselves.
However, when one examines the statue and inscriptions from a new perspective, we find rather than a basket of wool, a vine of pomegranates or gourds (gourd relating to gar and gal again, as water carriers), on one side, and a box being opened on the other.
The pomegranate was associated with Persephone, another Gaia, also known as Kore or Cora!
The goddess at the mouth and the god upstream.
This hydrophonomic Kar – is found all over the world relating to cowls, caers, core, etc. The KR is also there in the nomenclature of Karst limestone, which is stone worn away buy water. It is an important source of natural aquifers and springs, and was used in the smelting of copper. Again traced back to that same area in Anatolia/Turkey where we find the earliest evidence of modern civilisation at places such as Catal Huyuk. Even earlier we see the Vinca culture in the Danube region providing the earliest forms of alphabetic writing, including the sun cross (George Cross) and Andrew cross in the circle etc. Ish Kur as Ar Tor and his consort Ishtar, is clearly evident as the earliest form of the myth of King Arthur, and his wife Guinevere (Gun effer – the water/earth goddess) as Ishtar.
The 2 inscriptions may well be dedicated to a woman. However, they include symbols of Cora Kore and also Pandora. Symbolizing Gaia again, the Great Mother or Mater of the Romans. The Ishtar/Britannia of the Britons, from their Celtic sources, as tribes of ancient Tuatha De Dannan, and (followers of Danu/Inanna/Ishtar), who merged with the Scots through the Celtic ‘Church’, with their fellow Phoenician cousins in the Celtic tribes in England and Wales.
They are also a form of Cybele, who originated near Barate. And there exist numerous statues including ones very similar to Regina’s. The nimbus around the head tends to give away the game, as a god or goddess allusion.
So the inscription could just as well read something akin to ‘to the manes (Egyptian for spirits of the dead), Regina the consort of Barate’. It was Hadrian who made the people of Palmyra free peoples of Rome. So the allusion to ‘freedwoman’ may not at all relate to a freed slave. Palmyra is a famous trade centre from ancient times. And it has a famous temple to Bel – who is the male consort – derived from the mountain god Iskur, whose consort is Ishtar – another version of the Gaia or Earth Mother. And is therefore associated with Persephone/Pandora/Kore/Cybele.
Given the supposed name of Regina – this is no ordinary name. It means queen or ruler. An unusual name to give a slave!
his sounds more like Cartemandua, queen of the Catuvellauni and Brigantes.
The origin of Britannia appears from Barat Anna – or land of the tin, when the Phoenicians came to exploit our reserves, who were of the ancient ‘Barat’ type, of the Hatti or Khatti clan, a noble cast of the Phoenicians.
The Cat in Catuvelauni, Cartemandus, Cars rooted words in general and Hat root words – as in Hadrian of Hattia, whose mother was of that other famous Phoenician trading city Caddiz (Cad). Wors descending from the Hittite culture of Anatolia are in the same forms everywhere: Cad, Khat, Khass (as in Kassite and Kassiterite – the Kassites gave their name to the Tin Ore when they mined here), Hat, Hatti, etc. And their mountain god was also known as Attis.
Britannia was a form of Cybele and other Mother Goddess types. The presence of the crescent moon and box is found on old coinage relating to Britannia – the land of the Barats, under the Mother Goddess of the Waters. The land of the ‘free Regina’ of the Catuvellauni.
I also cannot unsee an image of a kitten under Regina’s hand, described as a distaff. Again, the lion is intimately associated with Cybele, and cats in general with those of the Catti female goddess forms.
Hadrian is consequential also for giving Judea in the land of Canaan – an ancient Phoenician/Philistine port for the Sea Peoples/Peleset who raided our lands for resources, the name we now use – Palestine after the bar Kochba Revolt.
So, following my hypothesis, using Regina’s tomb as another Rosetta Stone to unlock the mysteries of the past, we have a definite association of the Tyne and the god and goddess forms under Cor and Cora. With Arbeia as the mouth of the Tyne and vitally important for the Romans, bearing some of the religious and mythological iconography that were popular in Roman times, linking Serapeism with Greco-Roman and Anatolian and Syrian forms.
I believe that scholars need to start re-examining these findings through fresh eyes, with a mind to their context in the Roman Empire, and related histories of cultures of the entire empire. Considering that South Shields was at one time the ruling capital of Rome, when the emperors were there. Here we have a convergence of historically important elements that relate to early kings and queens, the Romans, the Celtic church and the Roman church, which was finally accepted as the religion of Britain by Oswy.
Tyne and Tynemouth being an extremely important part of our formative history in Britain. Indeed our entire coastal area from Lindisfarne to Whitby has played such an important role in British history, and the Christian religion in general – not least through the likes of Bede.