The gate of the year

Metal statuette, which was probably the upper part of a standard utilized in religious ceremonies, from Anatolian Bronze Age (2,400-2,000 B.C.). In this period several settlements sprang up in Anatolia, characterized by the production of objects in metal, most of which showing images of animals (primarily bull and deer), that were put into the graves of sovereigns or individuals of high status. Such objects testify the continuity of the symbolic prominence of the bull in Anatolia through millennia, since the early Neolithic to Hittite civilization, where the main divinities are shown standing on the back of a bull.
The artifact is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA.

[Image: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/55.137.5]




Animals

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Metal statuette, which was probably the upper part of a standard utilized in religious ceremonies, from Anatolian Bronze Age (2,400-2,000 B.C.). In this period several settlements sprang up in Anatolia, characterized by the production of objects in metal, most of which showing images of animals (primarily bull and deer), that were put into the graves of sovereigns or individuals of high status. Such objects testify the continuity of the symbolic prominence of the bull in Anatolia through millennia, since the early Neolithic to Hittite civilization, where the main divinities are shown standing on the back of a bull. The artifact is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. [Image: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/55.137.5]