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Taurus the Bull
Taurus the Bull is a potent and powerful symbol
in ancient South and West Asian civilizations.
Mesopotamia, "the land between the rivers,"
was the ancient Greek name for the triangular area between
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that stretched northward from
a point a little above modern Baghdad to the mountains of
Armenia. In modern usage, however, in reference to antiquity,
the term Mesopotamia refers to most of what is now Iraq. This
broader definition-the one used here-adds to the original
territory the land east of the Tigris, ancient Assyria, and
the lower Tigris-Euphrates Valley from Baghdad to the Persian
Gulf, ancient Babylonia.
 Some
parts of Mesopotamia were sparsely inhabited-and others not
at all-until after about 8000 BC, when the domestication of
plants and animals brought about an agricultural revolution.
This key step in the development of human civilization made
possible an increased food supply and an accompanying growth
of population and allowed nomads and cave dwellers to become
farmers and herders. People began to move down from the mountains
to the grassy uplands and well-watered plains of northern
Mesopotamia. By 6000 BC, primitive villages stretched from
Assyria along a fertile strip just below the Armenian hills
to the Euphrates River and beyond.
In the centuries after 3100 BC, Sumerian civilization
was borrowed and adapted by the people of northern Mesopotamia
as well as by those in the region now called Iran and by countries
west of the Euphrates bordering on the Mediterranean Sea.
Mesopotamia, unlike Egypt, was a land open to invasion, and
therefore as time passed the country came under the political
domination of a succession of conquerors. These people often
enriched Mesopotamian culture as they introduced their traditional
beliefs, practices, and customs. However, because of environmental
conditions peculiar to Mesopotamia and the existence of an
already complex civilization there, these later peoples adopted
Sumerian culture as the basis for their cultural innovations.
Through all these wars, culture changes and
assimilations, the Bull has consistently been favoured by
Middle-eastern and South-Asian cultures as a symbol of both
power and artistry. The Assyrians and Babylonians have portrayed
their rulers in monumental sculptures as winged-bulls with
human heads, representing a guardian spirit that rules the
land. In the Bible, the bull has come to represent all that
is immoral and un-Godly, perhaps citing the powerful, yet
fearful, image that Taurus the Bull has portrayed in ancient
history.
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