EL TORO CARRIER OF IMAGES - I (cult cars) bull mythology is so vast and varied as can be seen from different conceptual approaches.
This time the analysis is from a religious aspect, where the use of the bull carrying the images of the gods in the processions, using cult car has been well documented in different societies antiquity. The Sumerians used
even the term "driver Toro" to designate one of its spring months.
During the Babylonian New Year holiday, called Nisan (equivalent to March), pictures of local gods were brought from other cities, to Babylon, carried by the Euphrates River, in the processional boats known as "
magur or Mathus, and put on a platform that was carried by a bull, accompanied by the sovereign, as recorded in the impression of a cylinder seal found in the treasury of the temple of Uruk, from the late fourth millennium BC In the days that lasted the New Year celebration , the gods were carried in solemn procession from temple to temple of the Babylonian city, in a kind of penitential pilgrimage.
Another custom in the Middle East, was to engage bulls cars leading the deceased to his final resting place, or in the car parade processional in which the gods or ornaments sacred.
This evidence we find it represented in a gold cup Hasanlu (XIX century BC) found near Lake Urmia (NO in Tehran, Iran) where it appears, among other things, a car driven a winged god and an ox-drawn sky spitting rain, clear exponent of the representation of the god of rain or storms.
The Bible contains a beautiful passage that recounts an episode in which the Ark of the Covenant is carried in a chariot drawn by two oxen, after abandoning the Philistines after suffering great misfortune for having stolen from the Jews, when King David's moved to Zion, "
set the ark of God upon a new cart and taken to the house of Abinadab. They drove the car and Ajio Uzza. David and all Israel played before God with all their forces and singing and playing harps, harps and timpani, cymbals and trumpets. When they reached the age of Cidón, Uzza tended hand to hold the ark, for the oxen recalcitraban ...", ie refused to follow the path, whose action he killed Uzza, for touching the ark. (1Cron.13 ,7-10)
Another curious fact in which the bull is a carrier, not images or gods as just related, but of sacred objects, is the major source of ablutions of the Temple of Solomon built in the 4 th year of King Solomon 971-931 BC, destroyed 587 BC by Nebuchadnezzar II and rebuilt between 520-515 BC and finally destroyed 70 AD by the armies of Titus, known as the " bronze sea ", built by Solomon the founder Hiram, son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali and natural Tyre, whose dimensions were:" ... ten cubits from one to the other side, round (a cubit was equal to 45 cm, total diameter of 4.5 meters), and five cubits high ... It stood on twelve bulls, of which three facing north, three west, three facing south and three in the nascent ... For two thousand baths " (one bath equivalent to 37 liters, 74,000 liters total). (1 Kings 7, 23-27)
The"
bronze sea "was destroyed by Ahaz, the twelfth king of Judah (736-716 BC) ascended the throne at the age of twenty years, away from the Lord y." ...
even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the people ... "(2 Kings, 16.3), the destruction told by the Bible as follows:" King Ahaz
panels destroyed the bases, they removed from the pitcher, got the bronze sea above the bulls that were under him, putting them on the stone pavement ..."( 2Kings, 16, 17-19) Although the Bible
not too explicit about it, find at least two examples that illustrate the use of bulls in the funeral carriage, although separated in time by several centuries, lead us to think that their use was in force for several centuries.
In the passage that relates the death of the king of Judah, Ahaziah (843 BC), at the hands of Jehu, near Megiddo, is stated that "... his servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him ..."( 2Kings, 9, 28)
Elsewhere in the same book also recounts the death of King Josiah (609 BC) by Pharaoh Neco at Megiddo also " His servants moved his body in a chariot from Megiddo, came to Jerusalem and buried him in his grave ..."( 2Ki 23.30).
Although the author does not cite biblical animals dragged the car, we do know, for the iconography of the period, the bulls or oxen were common draft animals and for these matters, and that horses were used only for war and chariots.
Perhaps one of the most representative episodes narrated in the Bible is undoubtedly the famous vision of Ezekiel (627-570 BC) who identified it as " The Glory of the Lord", which occurred when he was among the components of the Jewish people deported on land of Babylon, ordered by Nebuchadnezzar II, back in the sixth century C. The story of Ezekiel itself from Chapter I, begins:
"
found among the deportees, a Kebar River, the heavens opened and beheld a heavenly vision. It was the fifth year of deportation Jeconiah (Joaquin known Judah
598-597). Then came the word of God to Ezekiel ... So I leaned on the Lord's hand, and I saw north came a whirlwind, a great cloud and a zigzag lightning. Cloud halo of light, and between the flashing something like the brightness of electro. In the midst of these appeared the likeness of four living creatures had human form, four faces and four wings each. His feet were like bullock hooves ... His face was this figure: the face of a man and a lion's face on the right side of the four, face a bull on the left side of the four, four eagle face ... I looked I saw a wheel on the ground beside each of the four living creatures ... the four had the same appearance. His workmanship was as if a wheel is fitted inside the other ... to shoot in four directions without turning the film ... on the head of the living beings had a kind of platform ... And on top of the platform, which was over their heads, apparently there was a stone shaped sapphire throne throne on this kind of sticking a figure that looked like a man ... It was the visible appearance of the glory of the Lord . "
Later in Chapter 10.13, Ezekiel describes the vision outlined again and says, "I heard the wheels were called The Chariot"
The prophet Habakkuk (605 BC), apparently a contemporary of Ezekiel, refers to Cart Yahweh when he challenges: "Is it burning, Lord, against the rivers, rivers against your anger, your wrath against the sea, when you ride your horses, your car win?"
And above all these events, the prophet Isaiah (BC According to the apocryphal s.VIII Life Prophets, sawing died during the persecution caused by King Manasseh) in the last chapter of his book, 66-15, says that is the way of your Lord God, when speaking of what will be excluded from the new Jerusalem: "For the Lord will with fire and his chariots like a whirlwind, to vent his anger with fury and indignation flames."
One of the earliest descriptions in Turkey, on trolleys cultic processions carrying images, was found in a cuneiform text of Bogazköy protohitita, the third millennium BC, which tells a party in honor of the god Cappadocia Telipinu " the fourth day, at dawn, the priest (the temple) Hanhanna City hooked to truck the cattle are given away by oxen dios.Dos the priest's house Orijanni (a gentleman whose profession is not required). They place the god and his priest ... The second day ears (those of the oxen) are decorated too ... placed behind the god (ie, behind the horse on the cart). The priest stands with him. Then he (the priest) subject to the god in its place ... " (to prevent the statue or divine wake shift or fall).
The Hittite Storm God Teshub, mounted in a car traveling in very primitive wheels, pulled by his two sacred bulls Urri Sheri and translated by "Day and
night. "
bulls Another form of conveyor frames gods were sacred divinity, commonly used in many areas of well-known " Fertile Crescent, as seen in the god Adad, god storm the Aleppo area and Ebla, which had as a sacred bull mount.
iconography representative of those sacred mounts was a recurring theme in a wide area of \u200b\u200bthe Middle East, within a wide range of media, such as cylinder-seals on clay, copper, basalt, soapstone etc. .
Interestingly a basalt stele found at Ebla, around the year 2,000 BC today at the Archaeological Museum of Idlib. Its four sides were divided into five registers, where the main face is the goddess Ishtar, in a curious aedicule winged (temple to house the deities), put on the back of a bull, the whole framed between two bull-men. On the back are two mythical figures, a winged sphinx and bull androcéfalo.
The same applies to the mount of India god Siva, who was the bull Nandi, who say their horns carved with channels of the Indus and Ganges. This association of the bull and the divinity, Siva in this case might well have been taken in the far ultra-religious conceptions of the Paleolithic population of Hindustan Peninsula, where have found some cave paintings, in particular in the area of \u200b\u200bBhimbetka, near Bhopal, in which a character is a bull that would rather identify with a cow, whose border surrounding him leads us to think that we are in the presence of a deity.
The scene could be associated with the god of storms, in the event that the animal was a bull represented a broad roots in agricultural societies, or cow if the animal painting, would refer to a scene of fertility, of great strength and importance in these agricultural and pastoral societies.
Bhimbetka name, the location of these paintings, it is believed that the phrase could come from dialectal Bhim ka bait (" Bhima who sat on these rocks ", a character the vast Sanskrit epic Mahabharata text, written around the sixth century BC).
Although information coming to us are not sufficiently abundant as we would like, on the culture developed in the Indus River valley, between 2600 and 1800 BC (now in Pakistan) particularly in the areas of Mohenjo Daro, which means "hill of death
" and Harappa, at least the impressions on clay and iconographic objects found in archaeological excavations reveal a strong presence of the bull in the religious sphere -worship.
example of this is this car wearing a gold ceremonial character, possibly a protective deity and pulled by two bulls.
In the ritual of death and resurrection of Attis, confined to the spring festivals dedicated to Cybele in New Year celebrations, coinciding with the spring equinox, on March 27, the Roman festival ended with a procession to the brook Almo (stream which flows into the Tiber at the foot of the walls of Rome), where the image was taken Herring of the goddess, crudely carved in black stone placed on a cart pulled by oxen, on whose stream was washed the wagon and the image of the goddess by the high priest. A scattered around the bath on the horse cart and spring flowers.
Nile in the country, is well documented the use of carts pulled by oxen to drag the coffin of the mummy to its final resting place, the practice of which we find reflected in the paintings of the royal tombs of Thebes.
later became the Apis bull that served as a vehicle for members reassembled the body of Osiris, after his death at the hands of his brother Set, that fratricidal struggle , Isis, wife and sister of Osiris, after he met members, put them in an edible timber that is transported him to his grave.
are known Greek uncia oxen pulling carts of the sarcophagus of the deceased, as reflected in the Iliad that occurred in the Trojan War, to transport dead soldiers. After the fight between Hector and Ajax it arrives in the presence of Agamemnon that gave him the whole back of an ox. After eating, old Nestor spoke to the sons of Atreus and asked: "... withdraw bodies with the help of mules and oxen, burning them to the ships so everyone can take the ashes of their own to their children ..." . (Rhapsody VII, 327)
also the Greek deity Hera, the jealous wife and sister of Zeus, goddess of marriage and births, whose emblem was a cow, as a maternal-animal had a chariot drawn by two white oxen to go.
This relationship of god with the bull in saddle, as history moved to eastern Iberian Peninsula, can be found in a prehistoric painting of the Old Wrap (Alpera, Albacete ), which in the words of the wise, a large figure, wearing a feather headdress, with three arrows in one hand, supports his left foot on the forehead of a bull while his right leg crosses the quarter rear of a deer. It appears that this image could represent a god of hunting, or it could be related to the storm god, if we consider the three arrows on the right hand as symbols of lightning storm, most of the gods of this power display in the Oriental pictorial.
Other examples that illustrate the use of the bull in the funeral transport, occurred when transporting the body of the apostle James the Major, when he arrived in the Galician coast of the Ria de Padrón.
However, after arriving in Jerusalem, where the apostle was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa, two of his disciples stole the body and prepare it after he was shipped back due to Iria Flavia.
25 of July 44, after a long journey that took them from Israel at the end of the earth, transported on a ship inside a marble sarcophagus and then negotiating the Pillars of Hercules, addressed the English Galician coast. Queen Lupa, who lived in Galicia, outraged, sent yoke, the car that was carrying his coffin, two bulls Wildcats to break it against the rocks, but the bulls impressed by the sign of the cross which became meek lambs and took him to the palace of the queen, who converted and changed his palace into a monastery, the cradle of pilgrimages Santiago.
This miraculous event is related in the Book II, Chapter I of the Codex Calixtinus, an illuminated manuscript of the mid-twelfth century, preserved in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, attributed Pope Callistus II (1050-1124) as follows: "... His disciples, stealthily taking over the body of the teacher, great job with extraordinary speed and take it to the beach, found a ship ready for them, and embarking on her, take to the sea, and in seven days at the Port of Iria, which is in Galicia, rowing and reaches the desired land .... Undertaken, then march to the east, moving the sacred coffin to a small field of a certain lady called Lupa ... ask him to give a small temple where she had placed an idol to worship ... and answers them hipótricamente, "" Go said: seek the king who lives in Dugi, and ask for a place to provide for the burial of your dead ".... Obeying his instructions ... go ... to present the king ... and they tell in detail who and where they are and why they came. The king ... ordered ... that they are secretly preparing an ambush and the killing of the servants of God. But, however, discovered that the will of God, going away secretly fleeing to escape quickly. When the king was informed of his escape ... stubbornly pursues the trail of the fugitive slaves of God. And as we had reached the point of being about to be killed by the inveterate persecutors traverse, they worried, those quiet, a bridge over a river, and in one and the same time, in sudden determination of almighty God the foundations are crumbling crossed the bridge, and falls from high to deep river, completely demolished ...
After
travel the road to the house of that midwife and show how the determination of the king was exasperated lost loved one's death and what God had done against him for punishment.
then to insistent pleas, they ask you to surrender the aforesaid house dedicated to the demons, to consecrate it to God ... ... While urging them to supply part of small plot to bury the body of the blessed man, devised a new and unusual ploy, thinking to kill with some deception, spoke thus: "As said, I see your idea so strongly inclined to that, and do not want to abandon it, go and grab a tame oxen I have on a hill, and carrying with them what you deem most useful and how much need it, build ye the tomb. If you lack food, liberally dároslos will try you and them. " Hearing this, the apostolic men, without receiving the hypocrisy of women, thanking leave, go to the woods and find something else they did not expect. As the tread on the edge of the forest, suddenly a huge dragon, whose Frequent raids were then deserted homes of nearby villages, leaving his own lair, is released, breathing fire on the holy men ... ready to attack them and threatening them with death. But remembering them in the doctrines of faith, unflinchingly opposed the defense of the cross, forced him to back facing him and, unable to resist the sign of the Cross of the Lord, belly busting in half .... This mountain, therefore, called before the ilicina, as it were, which seduces, because prior to that time held there the worship of the devil ... it was called by them Monte Sacro, ie sacred mountain. And
see from there chasing the horse that they cunningly had promised, the brave and roaring contemplate, goring the ground with his high forehead, and hitting the ground with strong hooves. And then, while running one after another by the meadow were a cruel death threat to his dangerous career, so gentle and slowly came upon them, that those who initially came running to cause a catastrophe driven by their outrageous bravery then with the cervix spontaneously low trust their horns in the hands of holy men.
carriers holy body, stroking the animals that had become savages into docile, promptly placed them above the yokes and marching straight down the road, entered the palace of women with oxen yoked. She certainly stunned, recognizing the wonderful miracles, moved by these three obvious signs, you agree to your request, and lost his insolence, after haberles given the small house and have been regenerated with the triple name of faith, becomes a believer the name of Christ with his whole family ... and deeply dug soil, having been destroyed and converted those small dust, building a tomb, a magnificent work of masonry, where deposited with artful wit the body of the apostle. And in the same place was built a church size of the one who, adorned with an altar, opens a fortunate devotee into town. "
All these examples, we just tell, they had their continuity in the Christian world, where the habit carried in a cart pulled by oxen sacred images during the processions, remains a practice as common as abundant and will be processed in the following article.
PLACIDO GONZALEZ BIBLIOGRAPHY Cristina Delgado Linacero .- "The bull in the Mediterranean" Lara Hair and Córdoba Zoilo, "Eastern Mediterranean" Art History No. 6 James George Frazer
"The Golden Bough, Magic and Religion", pag.407 Elisa Castel .- "Dictionary of Egyptian mythology Mircea
Eliade .- "History of the beliefs and religious ideas" Diodorus (90-late first century BC) Greek Historian, "Historical Library"
Bible Nacar-Colunga, Christian Authors Library.
