Mr. Drockton,
As per my reading of your article, it seems that the "d" is actually a
"ph" but that is of little consequence (unless of course you're
looking for search engines to pick it up.) in any case, perhaps my
(novice) mythologist skills can be of some use to you.
Recently, with all the hubbub about the "zodiac" being "wrong" (when
was it ever right?) I opted to examine things and see what I could
find, afterall astrology, as it's described to us, does not make any
proper sense, sure the new age people may say it's rays or something
from stars and planets, but from a few astrologer folks I talked to,
it seems that such is not really the case. As it stands, it seems that
it actually has less to do with the physical constellation, than the
deity which it has been associated with, and every sign has a
particular deity assigned to it, although the modern associations are
jumbled, when compared to the more ancient ones.
This goes back to the Egyptians, at least with a "modern" zodiac, and
likely back to Sumer with the ancient applications, though it seems
little is known to that extent. The egyptians assigned a deity to a
given period of time, these became associated with the constellations
that were visible at the given time period, although exactly as to
why, I do not yet know. (An informative source here:
http://cura.free.fr/decem/10kengil.html
) However with this established, one must question, if it's
associated with a mortal doctor, why the snake wrestling? Their
explanation for this seems somewhat contrived, so I think it safe to
assume that the greecian doctor is a diversion, perhaps the result of
the modern confusions, whether intentional or not, though, I don't
know.
So the question becomes, "What deity is hidden behind ophiuchus?" Of
course you already seem to have made some progress with that, with
regard to nirah, and the deletion of the information on it does make
one wonder. (Though, if the source for that is gone, did you try the
wayback machine at archive.org?) To add to that, my rather sizable
dictionary of mythology (by J.A. coleman) only repeats the same
information of ophiuchus' association with the greek doctor, and of
nirah it says only that it was a son of the god Ea (as it omits
information regarding other creepy deities such as yah of the
canaanites, I know to take sizable chunks of salt with this work as it
was clearly scrubbed of certain information.) Also I ran across this,
it seems that prior to chronos' takeover, a snake-god called ophion
was the chief god (Source here:
http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanOphion.html ) who, interestingly, was
cast into tartarus (underworld, hell etc.) by chronos, whether this is
related or not, I cannot say, save for name and depiction
similarities.
Although it could be chronos wrestling with ophion, for as I read of
nira elsewhere, it seems all the info on him was that he was
considered a protective snake deity. "Nirah, a snake god of the city
of Der, associated with the e-kur temple of enlil at Nippur, where he
was regarded as a protective deity of the temple and a protective
presence." (source:
http://www.bibleorigins.net/serpentningishzida.html )
All things considered, it seems as if chronos fighting ophion might be
the best bet, and as we both know, chronos is the model on which the
roman saturn is based.
I hope this helps in some fashion, Mr. Drockton.
Best Regards,
James
