The gate of the year

Copper bull head discovered in Telloh, the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, in Iraq, attributable to the middle of the III millennium B.C. and now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Since Neolithic times, the bull was invested with an important symbolic function and it is often associated with a female goddess. During the Sumerian period the animal became the attribute of several gods: for example, An, the sky god, regarded as the father of the gods, was represented in the shape of a powerful bull, the bellowing of which was heard in thunder. The female counterpart of this god had a bovine aspect too, and was represented as a cow, whose udders were the clouds, that produced the rain (Jacobsen 2005).

[Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Animals

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Copper bull head discovered in Telloh, the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu, in Iraq, attributable to the middle of the III millennium B.C. and now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Since Neolithic times, the bull was invested with an important symbolic function and it is often associated with a female goddess. During the Sumerian period the animal became the attribute of several gods: for example, An, the sky god, regarded as the father of the gods, was represented in the shape of a powerful bull, the bellowing of which was heard in thunder. The female counterpart of this god had a bovine aspect too, and was represented as a cow, whose udders were the clouds, that produced the rain (Jacobsen 2005). [Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]