Bull-Lion

This is truly incredible object. Composite Lion and Bull, bronze, Iran, 1500-1000 BC. It is currently kept in the Cleveland Art Museum. The meaning of this object is unknown. It is presumed that it has served as an object of worship in a temple or shrine...

Worship of who? Who else. The beast of course. 

The beast in this case is The Sun during hot, dry season, which in Mesopotamia starts at the beginning of May, beginning of summer and ends at the end of October, the end of autumn.

The hot, dry season spans summer (symbolised by bull) and autumn (symbolised by lion). 

I talked about the animal symbols of the seasons and why these particular animals were chosen to be the symbols of the seasons in my article "Symbols of seasons"

The dry season in Mesopotamia is the season of drought and death...Completely dominated by the blazing summer and autumn sun....The god of death: Nergal...The Late Summer Sun was equated with the God of Death, Mot, in Levant too. 

I talked about this in my post "Oldest Arabic poem"...

And the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia is the end of July beginning of August, the end of summer, beginning of autumn. The moment when lion (symbol of autumn) finally catches bull (symbol of summer)...  This moment is "marked" by all those "lion killing bull" images, like this one from Persepolis...Lion (autumn) killing (ending) Bull (summer)...

This is the lair of the fire breathing dragon...Like the one depicted on this seal from Tel Asmar. 

This, hottest and driest part of the year, Leo, is the seat of the beast...I talked about this in my article "Seven headed dragon"...

This Iranian two headed figurine is showing us that Bull (summer) and Lion (autumn) are just two heads of the same beast. The two phases of the dry season which follow each other...They are just calendar markers...