Cow and calf ivory

Decorative carved ivory with a cow suckling her calf and licking its tail among (very stylised) papyrus flowers. Neo-Assyrian, 9th-7th c. BC. Found in Nimrud, Iraq. Currently in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad...

Take a good look at the scene depicted on this ivory...

Pic by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin

Now have a look at this: Another decorative carved ivory with a cow suckling her calf and licking its tail among (much less stylised) papyrus flowers.  No idea where it was found. Currently in the Ashmolean museum, Oxford and apparently "it was probably carved in Syria, 850–700BC"

Pic: Ashmolean museum

It must have been a very popular theme at the time...Cause while wondering through Mesopotamian section in the Louvre museum last weekend, I came across three Neo Assyrian ivory plaques, all found in Arslan Tash, all dated 800-700BC and all depicting the same scene: A cow suckling her calf...

Pic: Louvre museum

Pic: Louvre museum

Pic: Louvre museum

Why? Well, one possible explanation could be this: These objects are not (only) decorative...

Well they wouldn't have been if they were made in Ancient Egypt...There, papyrus flowers were sacred to the Egyptian mother goddess Hathor...Celestial Cow goddess Hathor...Who is often depicted emerging from the flowering papyrus thickets...

To understand why papyrus was sacred to Hathor, we need to look at the association of Hathor with Mehet-Weret, another "Celestial Cow goddess" whose name means "Great Flood" and who was thought to bring the inundation of the Nile River which fertilised the land...

Mehet-Weret, had no independent cult of her own. It is presumed that Hathor absorbed most of her attributes as early as the Old Kingdom, as many references of the two as identical are found in Pyramid and Coffin Texts...

Now Mehet-Weret is goddess who causes the annual Nile River flood. The flooding of the Nile is the result of the yearly monsoon Mar/Apr and Jul/Aug causing enormous precipitations on the Ethiopian Highlands...

This rain causes the nile water flow rate and water level to start rising from May/Jun

And interestingly, the period (Apr/May), right before the Nile water level begins to rise, is marked by a bull animal calendar marker...And has been in Eurasia and North Africa since Neolithic...Animal calendar marker which we today know as Taurus zodiac sign...

But which has nothing to do with stars...This animal calendar marker marks the start of the Eurasian wild cattle calving season. So originally it was a wild cow and calf marker...I talked about this in my post "Ram and bull"...

So Hathor, Mehet-Weret (The Great Flood), arrives during the time when wild cows start giving birth to their calves and start producing milk...Interestingly, Hathor was said to be a "wild cow whose udders were spilling milk on the earth"...

Oh yeah, Taurus is also the beginning of summer, the season marked with the bull throughout Eurasia and North Africa since Neolithic too...In Egypt that is the season during which the Nile water levels rise until the river floods Jul/Aug...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Oh and: Hathor arrives carrying sun between her horns...Translation: The half of the year dominated by the sun, starts when the wild cows start calving...In Taurus...

So if the above two ivories were carved by Ancient Egyptian artists, that would explain why the cow and the calf scene wouldn't have been "only decorative"...I think...But what about papyrus?

As I said, papyrus plant was sacred to Hathor. 

The main annual ritual associated with Hathor was the so called "Ritual of Plucking Papyrus for Hathor" which appears to have been an invocation, offering and pacification ritual...

This is the depiction of the ritual. Goddess Hathor emerges from the papyrus thicket on a sacred boat and is greeted by the woman who offers her papyrus flowers...

Apparently: "the ritual has extremely early origins and may have become a ritualised form of the simple act of picking papyrus flowers as votive offerings for the goddess Hathor"...Why papyrus and not some other plant?

Apparently: "papyrus symbolised life, joy and renewal"...Why papyrus and not some other plant?

The answer can be found in this paper: "Ecology and biomass production of Cyperus papyrus L. on the Nile bank at Damietta, Egypt" by Mamdouh S. Serag...

In this article you can find this chart...It seems that if you wanted to go plucking papyrus flowers, the best time to do it was during Taurus (April-May), right at the time of the arrival of the the great flood, Mehet-Weret, Hathor...Calving wild cow...

All of this happens right at the time when the Nile water level start to rise...So flowering of the papyrus plants announces the arrival of Hathor, Mehet-Weret, Great Flood...

I talked about this in my post "Holy cow"...

No wonder papyrus flower symbolised life, joy and renewal. No wonder papyrus flowers were sacred to Hathor and were plucked and offered to her as a sacrifice...No wonder papyrus flowers were sacred to the Ancient Egyptians...

Soooo....The two original carved ivories are calendar markers for Apr/May - when wild cows calve and papyrus plant flowers and Nile water level starts to rise...As I said, a pretty important part of the year in Ancient Egypt...Even more important thing in Ancient Mesopotamia...

As the sun's elevation rises, the earth starts to warm...Which cause the snowmelt to start in the mountains North-East from Mesopotamia...

Which causes the snowmelt runoff to increase and peak in Apr/May (Taurus 🙂)

And it is this snowmelt that is the main contributor to the water flow of Tigris and Euphrates...Which also peaks in Apr/May (Taurus)...

In Mesopotamia the flood was thought to be caused by the god of fresh water and flood Enki who: "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..."

At the same time "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..."

Pic: Penn museum

I talked about the link between bull and flood in my posts "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Butt chewing", "Green Pastures", "Shamash young and old"...

So the above two carved ivories made a lot of sense to Mesopotamians and probably weren't "only decorative" to them either...

Apparently no one knew why Enky was "like a wild cow mooing for its young", or why Hathor was "a wild cow", or why papyrus was so sacred to her, or why these carved ivories depict cow and calf among papyrus flowers...Until I started researching animal calendar markers...Weird...

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...