Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

'Minoan' Bull-fights

I think, afforded by a lenticular sardonyx found at Orvieto
(fig. 362)1, which represents a man grasping by the horn a couple of
bulls or bull-like figures. The vessels carried in the hands of these

quasi-bulls and the trees (palms ?) between
which they are standing justify the conjecture
that they are engaged in some fertility-rite.
The bull—let us suppose—is a beast pre-
eminently charged with fertilising force2. Its
force is gathered up and culminates in its
horn3, bovine horns being sometimes a synonym
of strength4. Any one who grasps the bull's
horn ipso facto obtains a share in its peculiar power.

At Laussel near Marquay (Dordogne) Dr Lalanne has recently
discovered what we may venture to regard as a prehistoric proto-
type of such rites5. On limestone blocks inside a rock-shelter a man
of slender waist and three steatopygous women are carved with all
the marvellous realism of palaeolithic art6. The man is an archer
in the act of drawing his bow. Of the women one places her left
hand on the lower portion of her body and holds a bison's horn in
her right (fig. 363). This may of course be a graphic hint of the
eating and drinking that resulted from a successful chase. But it
is highly probable that the use of a drinking-horn presupposes the
magical efficacy of the horn as such7. And it is at least possible
that we have here part of the cave-dwellers' ritual—the right hand
raised to grasp the fertilising horn, the left lowered in a gesture
familiar to us from representations of the oriental mother-goddess.

This explanation throws light on sundry other obscure points
in Cretan mythology and ritual. To begin with, Monsieur
R. Dussaud rightly insists that the bull was not the only animal

1 Joum. Hell. Stud. 1894 xiv. 120 fig. 14 after O. Rossbach in the Ann. d. Inst.
1885 lvii. 195 ff. pi. G-H, 8.

2 Infra p. 514 ff.

3 Cp. Eur. Bacch. 743 ravpoi 5' vSpurred /cet's Kepas dvpioijjxevoL with Sir John Sandys' n.
ad loc.y Oppian. cyneg. 4. 33 ovk e\a<pos Kepaeaai dpaatis, KepdetxaL 8e Tavpos,Ai\. de nat. an.
4. 48 vtto dv/xov Tedrj-y/JLivof ravpov /ecu vfipL^ovra es k^pas.

4 B. Stade Biblische Theologie des Alien Testaments Tubingen 1905 i. 121 (citing
Num. 23. 22, 24. 8), G. B. Gray A critical and exegetical Commentary on Numbers
Edinburgh 1903 p. 354 f., and especially I. Scheftelowitz 'Das Hbrnermotiv in den
Religionen' in the Archivf. Rel. 1912 xv. 451 ff.

5 G. Lalanne in V Anthropologic 1912 xxiii. 129 ff. figs, iff., The Illustrated London
News July 13, 1912 cxli. 56 with 3 figs., H. G. Spearing The Childhood of Art London
1912 p. 505 f. I am indebted to Miss Harrison for calling my attention to this interesting
discovery and for suggesting that it may furnish a prototype of the rites in question.

6 The figures are c. 18 inches high, and the relief c. 2 inches deep. That of the
woman here shown is polished, except the head, and there are traces of red paint.

7 See the facts collected by I. Scheftelowitz in the Archiv f. Rel. 1912 xv. 483 ff.