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

620 The Bull and the Sun in Syria

eastern and southern deities. In the midst is Isis on a hind (?). She
bears a sceptre in one hand, a sistrum in the other ; and on her head
is an Isiac head-dress, composed apparently of a solar disk between
two feathers1. To right and left of Isis is a couple of half-figures
rising from two heaps of stones. They, like Iupiter Dolichenus, are
armed with breast-plates; but they seem to have helmets, not
Phrygian caps, on their heads. Their upraised hands grasp four
flowers with a central spike, probably lilies. And on their helmets
rest busts of the Moon and the Sun : the former wears a crescent;
the latter, a rayed nimbus. The upper portion of the plate was
originally intended to have been shaped like an arrow-head, as may
be seen from the incised lines still traceable on it. The resem-
blance to a weapon2 is strengthened by a raised rib, triangular in
section, which bisects the back of the plate3. With this monument
also, as with that from Lussonium, a small statuette of Victory is
said to have been recovered4. But that such a figure once stood
on the apex is again only an improbable conjecture.

The other plate found at Heddernheim is fragmentary. Its
front (fig. 491 )5 has preserved the reliefs from the top two registers
of a like monument. The upper division contains a bust of
Sarapis; the lower, busts of the Sun and the Moon. The Sun has
the horns of a bull; the Moon, a rayed nimbus: both bear whips.
Over their heads are two stars : beneath them is a third, which
may have stood in relation to a figure of Iupiter Dolichenus, now
lost6. The back of this plate too is decorated with a raised rib7.

Prof. G. Loeschcke has put forward the reasonable conjecture
that these triangular plates of bronze were intended to represent,
by their very shape, the thunderbolt of Iupiter Dolichenus'6. It is

to the Louvre, shows a bull, whose flank is adorned with a large rayed rosette: this,
however, may be merely decorative {Bull. Corr. Hell. 1907 xxxi. 229 fig. 5, 241, Morin-
Jean Le dessin des Animaux en Grece Paris 1911 p. 23 fig. 12). Bronze coins of Neapolis
in Campania have for their reverse type the forepart of a man-headed bull, on the
shoulder of which is a star of four or eight rays (Garrucci Mon. It. ant. p. 86 pi. 86, 1,
cp. id. p. 72 f. pi. 82, 14, Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Italy p. 108 f., Hunter Cat. Coins i. 39,
J. N. Svoronos in Bull. Corr. Hell. 1894 xviii. 113 figs. 33—35).

1 Cp. Reinach Rep. Stat. ii. 341 no. 3, 422 nos. 4, 5, alib.

2 Cp. e.g. the many varieties of Bronze-Age daggers, swords, spear-heads etc.
(J. Evans The Ancient Bronze Implements of Great Britain and Ireland London 1881
pp. 222—342, O. Montelius Die dlteren Kultuiperioden im Orient tind in Europa i Die
Methode, Stockholm 1903, pp. 32—43).

3 G. Loeschcke op. cit. 1901 cvii pi. 7, 3.

4 Kan op. cit. p. 103 f. no. 145, c.

5 Kan op. cit. p. 103 no. 145, a, Custos Seidl loc. cit. xiii. 244 f. with fig.
H Supra p. 616.

7 G. Loeschcke loc. cit. p. 71.

8 Id. id. p. 72.