Bull and Cow in Religion, Myth and Folklore

In the homes of Çatal Hüyük, near Jericho in the Near East, large heads of bulls modeled in clay extend from the walls. These shrines to bulls date back to the middle of the ninth millennium B.C. Similar shrines to bulls have been found in much of the Mediterranean area. Only very slowly did people lose their fear of these giants. Cattle were not domesticated in Europe until around 3,000 B.C., long after other animals such as the dog, sheep, and goat.

Sacred texts in the religion of Zoroaster made man and bull intimate associates. Ohrmuzd made a lone white bull, “shining like the moon,” as the fifth act of creation and made the first man, Gayomart, as the sixth. The seed of man and bull were then created from “light and the freshness of sky,” so that both would have abundant progeny (Zaehner, pp. 40-41). Zoroastrians believed that when the world drew to an end, Soshyans, a descendant of Zoroaster’s, would sacrifice a great bull named Hadhayans, and the fat of the bull would be used to make the elixir of eternal life.

As the largest of domestic animals, the bull was the supreme sacrificial offering throughout almost all of the ancient Mediterranean. Its skin, bones, gristle, and a small bit of its meat were left on the altar for a god, while the humans feasted on the rest of the animal. Some people, however, thought it impious to give the gods such a tiny share. On important occasions, the Hebrews would perform a holocaust, a sacrifice in which the entire animal was offered up to God. The Bible gives a very detailed description of the bull sacrifice that ac-companied the investiture of priests. Some blood was placed around horns by the altar to purify it, and the rest was poured out onto the ground. Every part of the bull was disposed of according to a precise ritual (Lev. 8:14-17).

In Greece the sacrifice of a bull was generally reserved for tributes to Zeus; in Rome, for tributes to Jupiter. The slaying of the bull became the central rite in the religion of Mithras, which rivaled Christianity in popularity during the latter part of the Roman Empire. Mithras, accompanied by a dog and other animals, would plunge his sword into a great bull at the end of the world so that all things might live again. Artists of the Roman Empire would depict grain sprouting from the wounds of the bull as it was slain by Mithras. In one myth of the Greeks, Poseidon, god of the sea, gave King Minos of Crete an enormous bull, intending that Minos should offer it back as a sacrifice. But Minos kept the bull instead. This act, an allusion to the first domestication of animals, led to a sequence of events in which great buildings were erected, unnatural acts performed, and people sacrificed. The angry god caused the wife of Minos, Pasiphaë, to fall in love with the bull.