Essays on various subjects / by Cuthbert Collingwood.

  • Cuthbert Collingwood
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on various subjects / by Cuthbert Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    301/318 (page 27)
    Landseer, whose volume of Sabsean Researches is a model of acuteness. But it has always beeu a matter of surprise to mo that Layard, surrounded by interesting cylinders similar to those which Landseer so admirably elucidated, should be content to dismiss his ingenious researches with a line which savours less of acknowledg- ment than of unappredating indifference.* The hehacal rising of Taurus was symbolised by the ancient Assyrians, by placing a disc of stone or metal representing the Sun, between the horns of the Bull. Many such sculptured Tauri are still extant, of Phoenician and Assyrian workmanship; and we are not left merely to speculate as to the signification of the disc, for He- rodotus (Euterpe, c. 132) describing the image of a cow at Sais, tells us that /xera^u 5e tSiv Kepeuv, 6 rod t]\Iov kiikKos ixetxiix-niJ.4vos This disc was of stone or metal, and was often moveable, and probably placed in situ at the great vernal festival, for which purpose a deep square hole was cut in the head of the bull. Such appearances are by no means uncommon t iu the remains of ancient art which have come down to us. Now, in the celestial sphere, the head of the Bull is that part of the asterism which was turned towards the constellation Gemini, consequently the part which in the most early age was first reached by the Sun. In later periods of art, we find the disc transferred to the back of the animal, as in the oblong Zodiac of Denderah, marking the gradual recession of the equiuoxial point through the sign — and proving further, that precession was known and observed at a very early age. It becomes highly probable that the Brahmin Bull, so extensively worshipped in India, and which has a hump upon its back, derives its claim to adoration from that significant circumstance. Such a bull appears to have been known • Layard. Discoveries in Niniveli and Babylon : Second Journey, p. 609, note, t Knight's Inquiry, sect. 32. E