This posting shows a map of Ali Kosh near Mousiyan, Iran and includes the surrounding prehistoric ancient sites as marking Aldebaran and the stars of Taurus in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
The locations are based on an online map of the Deh Luran (Dehloran) plain (by Frank Hole at http://frankhole.commons.yale.edu/ali_kosh/ but the map redrawing, interpretation and astronomical decipherment are by Andis Kaulins, July, 2013. Star positions are from Starry Night Pro.
See http://astronomy.starrynight.com.
Ali Kosh marked Aldebaran, alpha Tauri. The name Kosh is similar to Akkadian Gish-da, Persian Ghav or Gau and Ughuz in Turkey for Taurus. See Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names.
In Indo-European, e.g. Latvian košs "bright" and the phonetically cognate related term gaišs mean "brilliant" viz. "bright" viz. in various contexts related to "light" gaisma. One could venture an educated guess that the bright starry region of Taurus and the Hyades was named for "bright light".
The other stars marked are:
- gamma Tauri by Tepe Musiyan (Mousiyan)
- lambda Tauri by Tepe Khazineh
- Xi and Omicron Tauri by Tepe Muradabad
- Tepe Sefid by epsilon Tauri
- Omicron Orion by Tepe Farukhabad
- 97 Tauri by Tepe Sabz
- iota Tauri by Ashrafabad
- tau Tauri by Chogha Sefid
- the triumvirate of stars at 11 Orionis, 15 Orionis and HIP21497 by Chagh Düzd.
We originally looked for an ancient site minimally to the northeast of Ali Kosh in a direction where we would logically expect an ancient prehistoric site to mark The Pleiades. We have found that site a bit to the southeast, however, about 100 kilometers distant.
It is ČOḠĀ BONUT (CHOGHA BONUT viz. Choga Bonut) at 32°13′20″ N, 48°30′18″ E, Susiana Plain, located 20 kilometers southeast of Dezful and 5 kilometers west of Čoḡā Miš. Dezful is about 9 kilometers southeast of Andimeshk.
Chogha Bonut is located only about 20 kilometers north of the Elamite Chogha Zanbil, viz. Tchogha Zanbil, a world heritage site of later provenance, whose Elamite name has been transcribed for better or worse as Dur Untash.
An ancient name for the Pleiades was in fact the similar term Turanya (Richard Hinckley Allen) and that in our opinion is the origin of the name Dur Untash i.e. durun-tash=Tur-an-ya, a name up to now ascribed to the Elamite ruler. Chogha Zanbil was thus not only possibly a temple to a king but almost surely a ziggurat erected to the Pleiades. That follows in the next posting.
