Monday 28 February 2022

Elamite water bull

c. 3000BC, Proto-Elamite silver figurine of a clothed kneeling bull which "shows a curious blend of human and animal traits"... holding a spouted vessel. Currently in the Met Museum... The artefact page says: "possibly a symbol of a natural force"...So who (or what) does this figurine represent?

My guess is either Enki (Sumerian god of sweet water) or Utu (Sumerian sun god)...Or their unnamed Elamite equivalent who possibly combines both of them in one...

What do either Enki or Utu have to do with bulls?

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. He was like a wild cow mooing for its young in the wild grass..."

You have to imagine this, no pics 🙂

In the same text we also reed: "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..."

Hence Shamash depicted as a golden (solar) bull with lapis lazuli (water) beard... 

These identifications of these two gods with a bull is not coincidental. These are yearly charts of the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates. You can see that they both peak in Apr/May, Taurus, Bull...

Tigris 

Euphrates

This is the result of the heating up of the mountains which are the source of the two great rivers: Anatolian highlands and the Zagros mountains...Which causes the snow to melt, which causes the rivers to swell...

Snow cover (inverted snowmelt), Zagros

River flow, Zagros

Sun (Utu), "the triumphant bull" melts the snow and fees the water (Enki) who then fills the two rivers, right at the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle, when "wild cows moo for their young in the wild grass"...

I talked about this in my posts "Solar bull" "Shamash young and old", "Butt chewing", "Green pastures", "Rain and flood"...

Hence Enki, bull who ejaculates two rivers...Hence Elamite bull holding a water vessel with a spout, pouring rivers in Taurus...

The link between Taurus and the maximum river water levels is also found on the artifacts of the Jiroft culture, which flourished in the Zagros mountains in the 3rd millennium BC. 

Rivers flowing out of bulls. Held by a figure dressed just like the Elamite bull. I talked about this in my post "Jiroft flood vase"...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...


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