By Luljeta Dano
In the national Albanian costumes, one can see features inherited in a faithful line from the Illyrian culture. However, the archaic and stiff shape of the xhublet롧oes as far back in time as the pre-Illyrian age. The Black Xhublet묠the women’s dress of Mal촩 e Madhe and Dukagjin is the oldest and has an indisputably quadrimillennial passport. According to foreign and Albanian scholars, the xhublet롣losely approximates the ancient dress of Knossos in Crete, being in common use in the entire Mediterranean world predating classical antiquity. The Albanian xhublet롡lso bears a resemblance to the figurine of the bronze period in Dalmatia: the terracotta of Klicevac (Bosnia). It can also be found as an item in the Musꥠde l’Homme in Paris and in the British Museum as an ancient bronze figurine representing a dancing woman.
In the Albanian territory, it was first encountered in a bimillennial Illyrian cemetery, and discovered by G컩m Uru詠in 1984, between the villages of Melgush롡nd Bushat, near Shkodra. It was contained in the tomb of a woman, a dentist by profession, whose laboratory apparatus pieces testify to a high stomatologic quality.
In the ethnographic material of the national legacy of Albanians, one can notice a multitude of cultic symbols. In my recent hypothesizing stage of my research on them, I argue that they make valuable study material for the scientific disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, and after careful consideration – maybe even further back in time, for the study of the myths of cosmogony. These signs are proprietary symbols of either potent kings or gods.
This research focuses mainly on the figure of Athena and her myth, relying principally on an analysis of ornaments embroidered in two sashes of the xhublet뮍
Let us identify the illustrated figures in two sashes of the xhublet련as per Heinrich Schliemann) – the prominent figure which is to be found in twenty-two thousand circles of terracotta from ancient Troy – the figure of the goddess Athena, the protector of the Trojans, according to the archaeological finds of Schliemann! It is precisely Athena with all the parameters that Schliemann identified in the finds of Troy. She has a face in the shape of an owl, big bulging eyes, is without legs or wings, and has a bust height that in all the depictions of Pallas Athena does not go below her navel. The navel of the legendary Pallas, with a circle ten times bigger than that of the breasts and the umbilical cord, are associated with the symbols of Zeus. A swastika with a sun in the centre, as well as an image of a shield, is found in the middle.
The basis of composition of the ornaments in these ethnographic items is the left-right symmetry in relation to a single figure in the centre, similar to the symbols of the Solar Cult, or with four Evangelists and Christ Pantocrator in the middle. Elsewhere, one encounters the links of ADN, the spectrum, constellations, a foetus, a uterus, the letter S which in most of the cases emerges lying crosswise and which symbolizes a sun crescent and a half-snake. In optics, S represents the path to the realization of seeing and in the ornamentics of the dress of northern Albanian women, a commonly found sign is that of the infinite, a horizontal eight, etc., whereas the counting of signs is always a cultic number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16, 24, ƥtc. For instance, a symbol which is found in the centre of a xhublet롡pron is three horizontal rows with the number of symbols starting from the lower row in the ratio: 13:7:5, a ratio which conveys significant pyramidal codes, as yet unknown to us.
Originally, I paired this symbol with the spread of sound waves, but after some deliberation I noticed a similarity with: (1) a graphic representation of the gravitational magnitude of planet Earth (2) a structure of the spiral arms of the galaxy of the Milky Way (3) a conceptual photo of NASA. If we were to see outside of our home galaxy, our galaxy of the Milky Way, we would observe the extrapolated spiral arms of the Milky Way with the neighbouring spiral galaxy NGC7331, which is likened to the Milky Way, whose age is considered ‘as old as the universe itself.’
Thus, we juxtapose our tiny ethnographic symbol with the two similar macroscopic ones from the field of physics and astronomy. The possibilities offered today by the internet for such matching and contrasting practices are infinite.
Millions of web pages bearing such titles as: the Cosmic Egg, the Zeus Symbols, the Mystic Tree (of Life), the Mystic Flower (of Life) the Egyptian Lock of Life, the Spider, the Scorpion and the Cockroach, the Mystic Beetle, the Sacred Eight, the Delphic Phallus, the Trefoil Leaf Of The Sacred Oak and the Two Crossed Leaves of The Sacred Oak, and an abundance of other symbols of gods on our planet, which are for the most part related to the Sun and the Dragon, etc., and the juxtaposition of these embroidered symbols in the traditional dress of Albanian highland women, encourages me to read them in such a way as to believe that internet is not a sixteen- year-old, but ‘is as old as the Universe’!
Dr. Moikom Zeqo points out especially for this edition that: “In my opinion, the shape of the hairstyle of the highland women who use the xhublet묠and that of the women of the region of Zadrima, altogether strange and special, has escaped the attention of scholars. Many terracotta goddesses found in Durr쳬 belonging to the fifth to third centuries B.C. have a striking similarity of hairstyle to that which is still used in the north of Albania and Zadrima. Please do compare the hairstyle in the frescoes of the palace of Knossos, and that in the terracottas uncovered by Arthur Evans. The influence from the south of Greece or even from Egypt is real. The mental map, in particular that of the xhublet묠is synchronically a clear structure of cosmogony in four primordial elements. My friend Alexander Stipcevic, one of the great Illyrologs of our time, has deciphered and pronounced the cosmogonic ornamentics in a more reliable and more universal way.
The xhublet롨as entwined several self-contained cults. This special dress, the heritage of Albanian Folk Culture, is a kind of mental map of the ancient mythic legacies. This publication endeavours to modestly complement this field, which for various reasons is considered to be a grey area.
This is how the mental mythologies of the Illyrians and the Albanians are perceived in the xhublet롷hich can metaphorically be compared with the Lock of David, which locks and unlocks the great legacies. The Bible says: That which the Lock of David can lock, nobody can unlock, and what the Lock of David unlocks, nobody can lock.”
Albanian scholars assert that, if the Polyphony of Lab쳩a was placed under the auspices of UNESCO, as a precious part of world culture, the Black Xhublet묠as the oldest dress in the world at four thousand years, must be placed under the patronage of the Albanian State and the Western institutional authority.
