Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

500 '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 force 2 . Its
force, is gathered up and culminates in its
horn 8
, bovine horns being sometimes a synonym
of strength 4 . 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-
limestone blocks inside a rock-shelter a man
type of such rites 5 . On
of slender waist and three steatopygous women are carved with all
the marvellous realism of palaeolithic art 6 . 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
that resulted from a successful chase. But it
eating and drinking
is highly probable that the use of a drinking-horn presupposes the
it is at least possible
magical efficacy of the horn as such 7 . And
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
J T
our n. Nell. Stud. 1894 xiv. 120 fig. 14 after O. Rossbach in the Ann. d. Inst.
1885 lvii. 195ff.pl. G-H, 8.
2
Infra p. 514 ff.
3
Cp. Eur. Bacch. 743 ravpoi 5'
vjUptarai Kels ntpas 6vfj.oiJiJ.evoi with Sir John Sandys' n.
ad loc, Oppian. cyneg. 4. 33 ovk 2\a