The gate of the year

Relief representing a bull, on the Pillar of the Boatmen, dedicated to the emperor Tiberius, in 14 A.D., by the sailors of the ancient city of Lutetia (ancient Paris). Now it is housed in the National Middle Ages Museum (Musée National du Moyen Âge, Thermes et Hôtel de Cluny), Paris.
The image shows the Tarvos Trigaranus (“Bull with three Cranes”), an obscure Gaulish divinity, represented as a bull with three cranes, or other water birds, perched near it. It was associated with the god Esus, shown on another face of the same monument, as a woodman in the act of felling trees. In various parts of Gaul representations of a bull with three horns have been found, which are unique of this region and could be associated with the bull with the cranes. However, there is no information about the meaning and symbolism expressed by this iconography. Among the continental Celts there is evidence of sacrifices of bulls, and some sanctuaries contained bull skulls, perhaps left there as offerings. The representation on the Pillar of the Boatmen could be referred to a mythical narrative similar to the Irish epic. In the Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), the hero Cú Chulainn, during his pursuit of the sacred brown bull, had to fell a tree as a demonstration of his strength, while the Mórrígan (a war goddess sometimes represented as triple) turned into a bird and advised the bull of the hero’s approach (Duval 1976, p. 37; Agrati-Magini 1982, p. 143). It is thus possible to glimpse a connection between the Gaulish representation of the bull with three cranes and the Irish tradition of the “Brown Bull of Cuailnge”, the protagonist of the most well-known Celtic narrative (the Táin Bó Cuailnge).

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Pilier_des_Nautes_03.JPG]




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Relief representing a bull, on the Pillar of the Boatmen, dedicated to the emperor Tiberius, in 14 A.D., by the sailors of the ancient city of Lutetia (ancient Paris). Now it is housed in the National Middle Ages Museum (Musée National du Moyen Âge, Thermes et Hôtel de Cluny), Paris. The image shows the Tarvos Trigaranus (“Bull with three Cranes”), an obscure Gaulish divinity, represented as a bull with three cranes, or other water birds, perched near it. It was associated with the god Esus, shown on another face of the same monument, as a woodman in the act of felling trees. In various parts of Gaul representations of a bull with three horns have been found, which are unique of this region and could be associated with the bull with the cranes. However, there is no information about the meaning and symbolism expressed by this iconography. Among the continental Celts there is evidence of sacrifices of bulls, and some sanctuaries contained bull skulls, perhaps left there as offerings. The representation on the Pillar of the Boatmen could be referred to a mythical narrative similar to the Irish epic. In the Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), the hero Cú Chulainn, during his pursuit of the sacred brown bull, had to fell a tree as a demonstration of his strength, while the Mórrígan (a war goddess sometimes represented as triple) turned into a bird and advised the bull of the hero’s approach (Duval 1976, p. 37; Agrati-Magini 1982, p. 143). It is thus possible to glimpse a connection between the Gaulish representation of the bull with three cranes and the Irish tradition of the “Brown Bull of Cuailnge”, the protagonist of the most well-known Celtic narrative (the Táin Bó Cuailnge). [Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Pilier_des_Nautes_03.JPG]