The gate of the year

Bull head in copper with eyes in lapis lazuli, Sumerian work made about 2700 B.C. The animal shows a gaudy beard, which seems to allude to a humanlike trait. Several divinities were represented in the shape of a bull: for example, the god of the city of Babylon, Marduk, was a thunderstorm god, imagined as a bellowing young bull; his name was abbreviated from (A)madurak, “Calf of the storm” (Jacobsen 2005). The object comes from Southern Iraq and is actually in the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO.

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




Animals

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Bull head in copper with eyes in lapis lazuli, Sumerian work made about 2700 B.C. The animal shows a gaudy beard, which seems to allude to a humanlike trait. Several divinities were represented in the shape of a bull: for example, the god of the city of Babylon, Marduk, was a thunderstorm god, imagined as a bellowing young bull; his name was abbreviated from (A)madurak, “Calf of the storm” (Jacobsen 2005). The object comes from Southern Iraq and is actually in the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO. [Image: http://library.artstor.org/library/]