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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0727

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Spread of the Hittite Bull-cult 643

argues that Mount Atdbyron or Atdbyris in Rhodes and Mount
Tabor in Galilee, which Iosephos calls Itabyriou1 and Polybios
Atabyrion2, bore the same Hittite name3. We are therefore free
to surmise that the bronze cattle on Mount Atabyron, which
bellowed ominously when any evil was about to befall Rhodes4,
the Sun-god's island, were of Hittite origin5. The small bronze
bulls found now-a-days on the mountain (fig. 502)6 are of later

style and must be regarded as votive offerings to the Hellenic
Zeus Atabyrios7. The cult of this deity spread from Rhodes to
the Rhodian colony Agrigentum ; and we may reasonably con-
jecture that the notorious bull of bronze made by Perillos for
Phalaris the Agrigentine tyrant8 was a late but lineal descendant

1 Ioseph. ant. Iud. 5. r. 11., 5. 5. 3, 8. 2. 3, 13. 15. 4, de bell. hid. 1. 8. 7, 2. 20. 6,
4. 1. 8, v. Fl. Ioseph. 37. So also in the LXX. version of Hos. 5. 1.

2 Polyb. 5. 70. 6. Cp. Hesych. 'Irafiupiov • 8pos, exov ^VJVU fJLLav oOev ra drjpia irivei.
fan de els T-qv TakCKaiav iv 'lovdaia with Hesych. 'Arafivpiov • evda [opos] drip'ia crvvayovTac.
See further I. Benzinger in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. ii. 1888.

3 G. Beloch in the Rhein. Mus. 1894 xlix. 130 had taken'Ara(36pioi' to be a Carian
name derived from rafta, 'rock' (Steph. Byz. s.v. T<x/3cu).

4 Append. B Rhodes.

5 Yet the myth of Katreus, Althaimenes, and Apemosyne, in which ox-hides and ox-
herds play their part (Append. B Rhodes), points rather to a connexion with Crete. The
story of Apemosyne slipping on the freshly-flayed hides strewn by Hermes in the road
reads like a piece of aetiology. Sir Arthur Evans Scripta Minoa Oxford 1909 i. 281
guesses that the ox-hide symbols on the disk found at Phaistos 'have an ideographic
meaning and represent the skins of sacrificed beeves' : he argues [ib. p. 285 ff.) that the
disk came from the south-west coastlands of Asia Minor—'This would not exclude an
insular area, such as the once Carian Rhodes, in close mainland contact.'

6 C. Torr Rhodes in Ancient Times Cambridge 1885 p. 76 pi. 4.

7 Append. B Rhodes.

8 Append. B Sicily.

Fig. 502.

41 — 2
 
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