- Bull (mythology)
Appearances of the
Bull (also known as "Taurus") inmythology and worship are widespread in the ancient world. It is the subject of various cultural and religious incarnations, as well as modern mentions innew age cultures.Appearances in History
Paleolithic findings
Aurochs are depicted in manyPaleolithic European cave paintings such as those found atLascaux and Livernon in France. Their life force may have been thought to have magical qualities, for early carvings of the aurochs have also been found.Mesopotamia
The
Sumeria nEpic of Gilgamesh depicts the killing of the "Bull of Heaven",Gugalana , husband ofEreshkigal , as an act of defiance of the gods. From the earliest times, the bull was lunar inMesopotamia (its horns representing the crescent moon).Eastern Anatolia
We cannot recreate a specific context for the bull skulls with horns ("
bucrania ") preserved in an 8th millennium BCE sanctuary atÇatalhöyük in eastern Anatolia. The sacred bull of theHattians , whose elaborate standards were found atAlaca Höyük alongside those of the sacred stag, survived in the Hurrian and Hittite mythologies as Seri and Hurri ('Day' and 'Night') — the bulls who carried the weather godTeshub on their backs or in his chariot, and who grazed on the ruins of cities. [Hawkes and Woolley, 1963; Vieyra, 1955]The impressive and dangerous aurochs survived into the
Iron Age in Anatolia and the Near East and was worshiped throughout that area as a sacred animal.Minoan Civilization
The Bull was a central theme in the
Minoan Civilization , with bull heads and bull horns used as symbols in theKnossos palace. Minoanfresco s andceramic s depict thebull-leaping ritual in which participants of both sexes vaulted over bulls by grasping their horns. "See also, 'Minotaur and The Bull of Crete' below for a later incarnation to the Minoan Bull".Indus Valley Civilization
Marduk is the "bull ofUtu " and the Hindu GodShiva 's steed is Nandi, the Bull.Nandi the bull can be traced back toIndus Valley Civilization , wheredairy farming was the most important occupations. The bull Nandi is Shiva's primary vehicle and is the principal gana(follower)of Shiva.Cyprus
In
Cyprus , bull masks made from real skulls were worn in rites. Bull-masked terracotta figurines [Burkert 1985] and Neolithic bull-horned stone altars have been found in Cyprus.Egypt
In Egypt, the bull was worshiped as
Apis , the embodiment ofPtah and later ofOsiris . A long series of ritually perfect bulls were identified by the god's priests, housed in the temple for their lifetime, then embalmed and encased in a giantsarcophagus . A long sequence of monolithic stone sarcophagi were housed in theSerapeum , and were rediscovered byAuguste Mariette atSaqqara in1851 . The bull was also worshipped asMnewer , the embodiment ofAtum-Ra , in Heliopolis. "Ka" in Egyptian is both a religious concept of life-force/power and the word for bull.Judeo-Christian traditions
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Old Testament
The Bull is familiar in
Judeo-Christian cultures from theBiblical episode wherein an idol of theGolden Calf is made byAaron and worshipped by the Hebrews in the wilderness of Sinai ("Exodus "). Young bulls were set as frontier markers atTel Dan and atBethel the frontiers of theKingdom of Israel .Christianity
In some Christian religions,
Nativity scene s are assembled atChristmas time. Most of them show a bull or anox near babyJesus Fact|date=October 2007, lying in a manger. Traditional songs of Christmas often tell of the bull and the donkey warming the infant with their breath.Greek world
----When the heroes of the new Indo-European culture arrived in the Aegean basin, they faced off with the ancient Sacred Bull on many occasions, and always overcame it, in the form of the myths that have survived.
Minotaur and The Bull of Crete
For the Greeks, the bull was strongly linked to the Bull of Crete:
Theseus of Athens had to capture the ancient sacred bull of Marathon (the "Marathonian bull") before he faced the Bull-man, theMinotaur (Greek for "Bull of Minos"), whom the Greeks imagined as a man with the head of a bull at the center of thelabyrinth . Earlier Minoanfresco s andceramic s depictbull-leaping rituals in which participants of both sexes vaulted over bulls by grasping their horns. Yet Walter Burkert's constant warning is, "It is hazardous to project Greek tradition directly into theBronze age "; [Burkert 1985 p. 24] only one Minoan image of a bull-headed man has been found, a tiny seal currently held in the Archaeological Museum ofChania .Twelve Olympians
In the Olympian cult,
Hera 'sepithet "Bo-opis" is usually translated "ox-eyed" Hera, but the term could just as well apply if the goddess had the head of a cow, and thus the epithet reveals the presence of an earlier, though not necessarily more primitive, iconic viewFact|date=October 2007. Classical Greeks never otherwise referred to Hera simply as the cow, though her priestess Io was so literally a heifer that she was stung by a gadfly, and it was in the form of a heifer that Zeus coupled with her. Zeus took over the earlier roles, and, in the form of a bull that came forth from the sea, abducted the high-born Phoenician Europa and brought her, significantly, to Crete.Dionysus was another god of resurrection who was strongly linked to the bull. In a cult hymn from Olympia, at a festival for Hera,Dionysus is also invited to come as a bull, "with bull-foot raging." "Quite frequently he is portrayed with bull horns, and inKyzikos he has a tauromorphic image,"Walter Burkert relates, and refers also to an archaic myth in whichDionysus is slaughtered as a bull calf and impiously eaten by the Titans. [Burkert 1985 pp. 64, 132]In the Classical period of Greece, the bull and other animals identified with deities were separated as their "
agalma ", a kind of heraldic show-piece that concretely signified their numinous presence.Ancient Macedonia
Alexander the Great 's famous horse was namedBucephalus ("ox-head"), linking the self-proclaimed god-king with the mythical power of the bull.Fact|date=October 2007----Late Hellenistic and Roman Era
The bull is one of the animals associated with the late Hellenistic and Roman syncretic cult of
Mithras , in which the killing of the astral bull, the "tauroctony ", was as central in the cult as theCrucifixion was to contemporary Christians. Thetauroctony was represented in everyMithraeum (compare the very similarEnkidu tauroctony seal). An often-disputed suggestion connects remnants of Mithraic ritual to the survival or rise ofbullfighting in Iberia and southern France, where the legend of SaintSaturnin us (or Sernin) of Toulouse and his protegé in Pamplona,Saint Fermin , at least, are inseparably linked to bull-sacrifices by the vivid manner of their martryrdoms, set by Christianhagiography in the 3rd century CE, which was also the century in which Mithraism was most widely practiced.Celtic Polytheism
A prominent
zoomorphic deity type is the divine bull.Tarvos Trigaranus ("bull with three cranes") is pictured on reliefs from the cathedral atTrier ,Germany , and at Notre-Dame deParis . InIrish literature , theDonn Cuailnge ("Brown Bull of Cooley") plays a central role in the epic "Táin Bó Cuailnge " ("The Cattle-Raid of Cooley").Pliny the Elder , writing in thefirst century AD , describes a religious ceremony inGaul in which white-claddruid s climbed a sacredoak , cut down the mistletoe growing on it, sacrificed two white bulls and used the mistletoe to cure infertility:Miranda J. Green. (2005) "Exploring the world of the druids." London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-28571-3. Page 18-19]Irish mythology features the tales of the epic hero
Cuchulainn , which were collected in the 7th century CE "Book of the Dun Cow ."Interpretations of Bull Worshipping
Christian Eucharist analogies
Walter Burkert summarized modern revision of a too-facile and blurred identification of a god that was identical to his sacrificial victim, which had created suggestive analogies with the Christian Eucharist for an earlier generation ofmythographers ::"The concept of the
theriomorphic god and especially of the bull god, however, may all too easily efface the very important distinctions between a god named, described, represented, and worshipped in animal form, a real animal worshipped as a god, animal symbols and animal maskes used in the cult, and finally the consecrated animal destined for sacrifice. Animal worship of the kind found in the Egyptian Apis cult is unknown in Greece." ("Greek Religion," 1985).Astrology connections
The sacred bull's myth survives in the constellation Taurus.
It has been suggested that the development of Taurus worshipping was based on ancient traditions giving weight to the astrological
Age of Taurus (which was followed by the astrologicalAge of Aries ).Notes
References
*Burkert, Walter, "Greek Religion," 1985
*Campbell, Joseph "Occidental Mythology" "2.The Consort of the Bull", 1964.
*Hawkes, Jacquetta; Woolley, Leonard: "Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization", v. 1 (NY, Harper & Row, 1963)
*Vieyra, Maurice: "Hittite Art, 2300-750 B.C." (London, A. Tiranti, 1955)
*Jeremy B. Rutter, "The Three Phases of the Taurobolium", Phoenix (1968).ee also
*
Camahueto
*Nandi
*Taurobolium External links
* [http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/First_Cities/death_anatolia.htm An exhibit on the tombs of Alaca Höyük] at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art includes one example of the bull standards.
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