Winged bull with ibex horns

"Hero and a Winged bull with ibex horns"...Iran, Pre-Achaemenid Period, 8th-6th c. BC, Silver, gold, H-27.5 W-22.2 Currently in Miho museum, Japan

Amazing and weird...Winged bull with Ibex horns??? What could that be??? 

Well a calendar marker of course...

The climatic year in Western Iran is divided into dry season (May-Oct) and wet season (Nov-Apr). The rain that falls on the hills and valleys during the wet season revives the parched dry earth and makes it green again...

Ibex (Bezoar) goat mating season starts at the end of Oct beginning of Nov, with Ibex males, which are normally solitary, gather to fight for females...And so the Ibex became the "Goat of rain", the calendar marker that marks the beginning of the wet season.

I talked about this in my post "Strider", about this weird looking fellow from the same neighbourhood...

The snow that falls in the mountains during the wet part of the year, melts in spring, starting from February, Aquarius :) Pic: snow cover of the Iranian mountains per month

The rivers in the mountain areas of Iran, are fed by rainfall during the winter, but mostly by snowmelt during spring and summer. The snowmelt starts in late Feb early Mar, and peaks in late Apr, early May. In Taurus, Bull...Pic: the flow of Iranian rivers per month

Which is why we find all these depictions of bulls with flowing water on Western Iranian Jiroft culture artefacts. 

I talked about this in these two posts: "Khafajeh vase" and "Jiroft flood vase"

What we know today as Taurus is an ancient calendar marker, marking calving season of Eurasian wild cattle, Aurochs...April-May...

This bull symbol is found with the same meaning (Apr-May) all over Eurasia and North Africa...And interestingly it is linked to rivers and floods in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia

The bull symbol also marks the beginning of summer, hot dry part of the year, making it the opposite of the ibex symbol which marks the beginning of winter, cool wet part of the year...

So....

Back to our "Winged bull with ibex horns"...Here we have both of the above markers. So combined they could mean: 

1. Hot and dry part of the year, May to October (Bull to Goat)

2. Cool and wet part of the year, November to April (Goat to Bull)

Which is it?

Bull is the back part of the composite "creature" (calendar marker) and Goat is the front part. The creature is standing on its hind legs, with an erect penis, just like Ibex goats do during their mating season. 

Originally I thought that this was the marker for the end of the hot and dry part of the year...And that the "Hero" was actually a rain god...Who kills the composite creature which represents hot dry part of the year...

That was before I did my research on Nergal, the god of scorching, destructive sun of the end of the summer (Jul/Aug). I wrote about him in my post "Winged super human hero". Nergal is easily identified by the fact that he always caries a scimitar. 

Just like the "hero" killing the "Winged bull with ibex horns"...

So this is definitely not a rain god killing "hot dry part of the year"...This is Nergal, the god of the hot and dry half of the year, killing cool and wet half of the year...

Now, what about the face? Remember Shamash (Utu) the Mesopotamian sun god depicted as a bull with lapis lazuli beard??? He who frees Enki, the god of water, from his prison (ice) so he can fill the holy rivers, which peak in Taurus...This guy:

In "Enki and the world order" we read that:

"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..."

I talked about this in my posts "Shamash young and old" and "Butt chewing"...

Oh and the wings. I think they were added just to emphasize that we are dealing with heavenly symbols...Sun, Rain, Climate, Solar year...

Finally, the fact that both figures wear masks also indicates that here we are looking at a symbolic ritual role-play, that takes place in heaven every year at the same time...At the end of summer, Jul/Aug...

Cool artefact...Very cool...