Dear AEklof

Thank you for your comments and for your scepticism. This is natural and healthy even essential for any progress to be made. I appreciate my views are unorthodox and challenging to the scientific community, but as I believe they are based on factual evidence they may be of interest.

Yes, there is an immense time gap between the Venus figurines and Egyptian deities. Consider though that throughout the Palaeolithic the earth goddess was a dominant aspect of hunter gatherers. There was no need to change. This only happened with the advent of agriculture, and here belief systems changed with different circumstances, becoming more paternalistic.  Just as the Catholic church included pagan beliefs, customs and even locations to build their places of worship so to do I think the earth goddess imagery transformed, evolving to newer situations.

Like Flinders Petrie I believe that migrations from the Caucasus to the Nile Valley happened, and as I suggest as the result of a catastrophic flood.  This was real and had to involve a marine deluge. How it happened I do not know, but the geomorphology testifies to it. In 2018, I made a presentation to the Azerbaijan Institute of Geology and Geophysics (GIA) who agreed with my deductions.  

Racist motivation aside it is worth noting that Petrie was not alone in his conviction and only came to know about the connections as a result of research done by Professor Reginald Fessenden. Fessenden was an eminent scientist and inventor with a passion for the Classics and historical puzzles.  His work is available on-line at Radiocom.net under the Deluged Civilisation of the Caucasus Isthmus.  His archive material show that he was in communication with a great many researchers and he expressed his indebtedness stating in his work: ‘The writer is of course indebted to hundreds of other workers. More especially to Petrie, Sayce, Clay, Chiera, Budge, Breasted, Olmstead, Jansen, Peters, Rawlinson, and the other great masters of archaeology.’  While an expedition to the Caucasus was being planned through the Smithsonian to look for cultural connections with Egypt, sadly Fessenden had a stroke and subsequent ill health prevented any progress. Access restriction were in place due to the Russian Revolution.

I should add that Dr. Leonid Marsadolov, of the State Hermitage Museum is also supportive of cultural migration from Central Asia to Egypt, based on the transfer of large anthropomorphic images.  He too equates these migrants as possibly creating the Sphinx. 

In this regard it is important to demonstrate that a massive flood happened, and when. This was the catalyst for change. Also important is recognising that and animistic culture of anthropomorphism prevailed in the early to mid- Neolithic. This seems to be attested by the carvings at Gobekli Tepe.

Interestingly, human DNA genomic studies are beginning to show migration from the Caucasus into the Levant and from there into the Nile Valley.  Reference:

The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant.  Agranat-Tamir et al., 2020, Cell 181, 1146–1157, May 28, 2020 ª 2020 Elsevier Inc., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.024.
Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods. Schuenemann, V.J. et al. 2017, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15694.

What is needed now is to delve back into time and compare the DNA of skeletal remains of Caucasians with early Nile settlers such as the Badarians.  Perhaps then scientific evidence may, or may not confirm the extent to which Caucasian migrations occurred.

Lastly, in reference to Venus figurines and Flinders Petrie, Dr Margaret Murray in the Antiquity Journal wrote an article titled ‘Connexions Between Egypt and Russia’.  She states:

Some years ago Sir Flinders Petrie claimed that there were definite connexions between ancient Egypt and southern Russia, more particularly with the Caucasus; but as his opinion was based entirely on literary and philological evidence archaeologists have been slow to accept it. Archaeological evidence in support of that claim is, however, coming in by slow degrees, and it seems probable that in time the evidence will prove that the founder of the science of Archaeology was right in his conjecture. I bring forward now two pieces of evidence in support of his claim; the first is literary and pictorial, the second is purely archaeological.

In the context of figurines she states:

FIGS. 5 and 6 are two views of a seated female figure in pottery, found on the same site as the soul-houses. This should be compared with the figures in Petrie’s Prehistoric Egypt, pls. IV, 9 ; v, 4, 5 ; VII, 15, for figures leaning backward ; and pl. VII, 16, for a figure leaning forward. In both the Egyptian and Russian examples there is the same attitude with outstretched legs, the same beak-like face, the same treatment of the breasts, and where the arms occur in the Egyptian figures the position is the same as in the Russian. In the forward leaning figure (Petrie, pl. VII, 16) there is the same extension of the buttocks, a detail which was probably necessary to keep the balance of the backward-leaning figure, but quite unnecessary in the Egyptian example. The dating of this Egyptian figure is interesting. Petrie dates it tentatively only by the shape of the boat in which it was found, but at the same time he says of a similar, though much rougher figure on the same plate, that he would date it to the XIIth dynasty by the pottery.

In the Russian figure the flattening of the back of the head, and the flattened excrescences pierced with holes at the sides of the head, representing ears pierced for earrings, are reminiscent of the pottery figurines of women-usually called dolls-found in Egypt and dated to the XIIth dynasty, which are known to have a foreign origin."

Judging by the archaeological evidence Professor Gordon Childe considers that ' on a short chronology the whole Tripolye development would lie within the limits of periods 11 to IV'. This would coincide with the XIIth dynasty of Egypt, a period to which soul-houses and

certain types of female figurines belong. It was a time when Egyptian connexions were with the North. At present those connexions are known as being almost exclusively with Crete, probably because Crete has been well and scientifically excavated and other countries are still unexplored. The archaeological riches of ancient Russia are as yet almost untouched.

M. A. MURRAY.

I trust that the above information is of interest and relevant to the discussion on Venus figurines and how I suspect they evolved through time liking to Ancient Egypt