Butt chewing

"Triumphant bull with flowing beard climbing the mountain"? It's from the time of the First Dynasty of Ur...No one knows what it means because: "we have no written documents explaining it"...At least this is what we can read in "A Problem of Early Sumerian Art"

Let's see if we can come out with some sensible explanation for this scene...

"Enki placed in charge of the whole of heaven and earth the hero, the youth Utu (Shamash), the bull standing triumphantly, audaciously, majestically...the great herald in the east of holy An...with a lapis-lazuli beard, rising from the horizon..." from "Enki and the world order"...

Here's the majestic Shamash, depicted as a golden bull with long flowing "lapis lazuli" beard...

Why? To understand this we need to know something about the source of water in Tigris and Euphrates...Well according to the Sumerian legends, the source of these two rivers is Enki.

In "Enki and the world order" we read: "...Father Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris with flowing water [after filling Euphrates]. He was like a wild cow mooing for its young in the wild grass..."

But the actual source of water in the two sacred rivers was to a smaller extent rain which fell during the wet half of the year (Oct/Nov-Apr/May), but majority of water in Tigris and Euphrates came from the snow melt in Anatolian highlands and Iranian Zagros mountains...

This snowmelt is caused by Young (spring) sun, Young Shamash...Here he is depicted on this seal in a short tunic climbing the sacred mountain towards Imprisoned Enki...To free him...

This climbing of the mountain by the sun god represents the heating up of the higher and higher regions of the holy mountains in the spring. The heating up which results in the snowmelt, which is the main source of the water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers...This is the "freeing of Enki" and it happens during the spring. You can see how the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates river system are suddenly sharply rising starting from Feb...Water level charts for

Tigris

Euphrates

Enki is finally free (the water levels peak) in Apr/May, at the beginning of summer.  In Taurus...

So Enki, the god of fresh water, gets freed by Shamash, "the triumphant bull with lapis lazuli beard". And the first thing he does, he starts wanking 🙂 And the moment of his ejaculation, the moment of his climax, the moment of the peak water levels in the rivers he fills with his heavenly semen, is also the moment when "wild cows moo for their young in the wild grass"...In Taurus...Taurus, which marks the beginning of the calving season of the Eurasian wild cattle...

Taurus also marks the beginning of summer. The season dominated by the sun...Hence Golden Bull, symbol of summer, symbol of the sun, with lapis lazuli beard, symbol of flowing water...The water bull...

That's the triumphant bearded bull depicted on the original relief...Standing triumphantly...Having his butt chewed by a winged lion...

Why?

Summer ends at the beginning of August, in the middle of Leo. By the way, why is July-August the part of the year marked by Leo? Well Eurasian Lions are seasonal breeders. And their mating season peaks from August and October. 

During autumn, part of the year symbolised by lion...As you can see the symbol of summer is bull...

I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

So if you wanted to symbolically depict the end of summer (symbolised by bull) and beginning of autumn (symbolised by lion), you could do it like this: Lion killing Bull (actually chewing bull's butt)

Or like a winged lion (actually creature with lion's head and eagle tail) chewing on the butt of a bull...

So what's with lion eagle "monster"? It's a composite calendar marker. It represents autumn, which starts "when lions mate" (Leo) and ends "when vultures mate" (Eagle/Scorpio)...I talked about the vulture as the symbol of the end of autumn beginning of winter in my post "Double headed eagle"...

So I think we can understand early Sumerian art even without written explanation from the creators of the said art...

Amazing how all these things fit into each other like pieces of a jigsaw...What is emerging looks like a "lost first draft" of our religions and mythologies, and what has come to us in writing seems to be a reworked version done by the editors (priests) to make it sell better...