Talk:Sacred bull

Notion that world is resting on the horn of a bull
I urgently want to be directed to the information regarding this ancient notion and why it was not included here, i am shocked. I remember this from child hood and even in one of versions of SPAWN it is shown in the comic it self. so it is a very famous ancient notion ( like earth as the center of the cosmos) and I want ot know what civilization believed this and other details. I remember it was thought that when the bull shifted earth from one horn to the other the world trembled and earth quakes and such things happened. I am guessing this to be south asian myth but i need to be sure and I want to read it excatly. please help and add that info here. thanks and regards danraz119.155.126.178 (talk) 09:20, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I have found two references on the net. one is persian where the shifting of earth on the horns is good thing and it is related to the spring and new year. the other is remote river village of russia called MARI and they think that earth quakes are caused when the bull tries to balance the earth on horn and in this myth there is only onw horn on bull and other one is broken in the floods so bull has to balance the earth on one horn and the bull is on the back of a turtle and it is in an ocean. and if the earth falls in the sea there would be great floods and the earht would drown or something. so I am asking good earth people to point me to the wikipedia article that contains this information and I think it should be added in this article. plus is it just me or wikipedia info is getting changed weirdly. like for example some information i had read earlier about things that i was able to varify is gone and some useless filler info has replaced it???? why? danraz 119.155.126.178 (talk) 09:42, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Untitled
Bulll of Heaven: The Bull of Heaven is the constellation we call Taurus. He is controlled by the sky god Anu. The Bull of Heaven appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh. After Gilgamesh upsets the goddess Ishtar, she convinces her father Anu to send the Bull of Heaven to earth to destroy the crops and kill people. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull of Heaven.

The gods are angry that the Bull of Heaven has been killed. As punishment for killing the bull Enkidu falls ill and dies.

Word Choice
"When the heroes of the new Indo-European culture arrived in the Aegean basin..." It's not clear to me why the word "heroes" was used here. It makes no sense in a historical or anthropological context and, indeed, is somewhat offensive. [funkendub]
 * Agreed - shortened to "When the new Indo-European ..." --Damate
 * The word makes perfect sense in a mythological context. &#8212;Charles P._ (Mirv) 19:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Unbelievable confidence. Where do they get it from, one wonders? --Wetman 20:01, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps moving "in the form of the myths that have survived" to the beginning of the sentence will help - and then expounding on which myths and letting the Minoan context continue in a new paragraph. Otherwise, the myth context reads as an afterthought, while "hero" reads as being culturally biased.  Maybe providing the context beforehand will reduce the sense of bias. --Damate


 * An article by Anita Stratos, "Divine cults of the sacred bulls" (google it), a popularized summary of Egyptian bull cults, has been silently deleted from the References, because its host site, www.touregypt.net/ is a blacklisted commercial site. --Wetman 05:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Celtic religion and the bull
I've read much about the bull and the Celts worship of it, as well as Celtic legends that have bulls as central parts of the storyline. Why is the section on bulls in the sacred Celtic world so lacking? Only one, two lines about it? That doesn't seem fair. An expert on Celtic religion and/or mythology would be greatly appreciated for increasing the section on sacred Celtic bulls. 24.14.198.8 18:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC) Chris G.
 * I'll do some effort to add some now (without trying to make it perfect, just an entry edit). --Apotetios (talk) 11:52, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Categorization
I've done some effort to put the article into a structure without removing any of the previous information. My apologies to the original author for seeming initially a bit less coherent to read, but I think now it is an form that can be expanded more easily according to the way wikipedia 'traditionally' works. I see the above comment and I suppose it can now more easily accommodate the 'nationalistic' way some wikipedians tend to view the placeholders for the information they want to include (without getting vandal-ish). --Apotetios (talk) 11:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Why "Hellas" rather than Greece...isn't that pedantic? It seems tantamount to writing Deutschland for Germany in an article in English or kmt for Egypt. In other words, that is a correct name, it just isn't the one used in English. I understand that there was no "nation/state" of Greece in ancient times, but we still descrbe Etruria as part of "Italy," even thought the country did not exist in Etruscan times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.110.200.73 (talk) 02:41, 2 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I totally agree that "Hellas" is not appropriate and "Greece" is. --IfYouDoIfYouDon&#39;t (talk) 13:04, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Nandi and Indus Valley Civilization
I have put citation-needed tags on both the claim that Nandi can be traced to the IVC, and that dairy farming was the primary occupation of the IVC. Some bull on a seal does not a Nandi make. Also, I wish to remove the reference to the nativity scene bull. It's seems a trivial and wanton attempt at inclusion. The bull in the nativity scene is not scripturally significant, and is more of a later tradition of seasonal song and theatre. --SohanDsouza (talk) 17:44, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Bull - in North Caucasus
Caucasian Avars have a farmers' celebrating day in every May mounth of the year. Avarian : "Otsbay" = the bull harnessing day. Symbolic blessing the earth... Another Dagestanian nation the Aguls, have a celebrating day like Otsbay. İnteresting cultural materials, may be researchers will look Dagestan to find descendants of any Hurrian - Urartian. Y chromosome analitics shows Dagestan is relative with middle east. Just a little inf for folks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.232.5.207 (talk) 23:45, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Lunar Mesopotamian?
The first paragraph describes the lunar conception of the bull as Mesopotamian. But in the same paragraph, the bull is identified as "the bull of Utu". Utu is the Sumerian sun god, and thus the Mesopotamian conception would appear to be solar. --WingedEarth (talk) 22:17, 21 May 2012 (UTC)


 * The above appears to be a perfectly valid critique. Why has no one responded for over 3½ years? --IfYouDoIfYouDon&#39;t (talk) 13:11, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

mnevis bull
you left out mnevis bull in ancient egypt — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.230.171.68 (talk) 18:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Opening brief needs formatting into more formal language?
The opening paragraph about bull worship being mostly known in "western world" via the moses/golden calf stories &c - feels informal & original research - needs placing later in article? -- Text mdnp (talk) 00:56, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

"The worship of the Sacred Bull throughout the ancient world is most familiar to the Western world in the biblical episode of the idol of the Golden Calf. The Golden Calf after being made by the Hebrew people in the wilderness of Sinai, was rejected and destroyed by Moses and the Hebrew people after Moses' time upon Mount Sinai (Book of Exodus). In Sumerian mythology, Marduk is the "bull of Utu". In Hinduism, Shiva's steed is Nandi, the Bull. The sacred bull survives in the constellation Taurus. The bull, whether lunar as in Mesopotamia or solar as in India, is the subject of various other cultural and religious incarnations, as well as modern mentions in new age cultures." - Main article copy as of Text mdnp (talk) 01:04, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Above copy needs to be adapted & placed more in the "In antiquity: Levant" section. An improved opening brief to be entered. Text mdnp (talk) 01:04, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposed replacement copy
"The worship of the Sacred Bull throughout the ancient world is a common inter-cultural theme of nascent civilization. The bull & other bovid type animals feature heavily in the mythology & iconography of many archaeo-anthropological subjects. This prolific occurrence of the bull, whether lunar as in Mesopotamia or solar as in India, is the subject of various other cultural and religious incarnations, as well as modern use in architectural-sculptural motifs, media, new age cultures, and crypto-civilization theories." Text mdnp (talk) 02:20, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

The words "theme"/"motif" as describing inter-cultural pattern of the Sacred Bull seems a tad cipher-detached for use? Text mdnp (talk) 01:52, 29 October 2017 (UTC)