Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/27

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FOUND IN CORNWALL.
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oxen.[1] This was evidently of Phœnician workmanship, and these workmen had introduced into their productions one of the chosen animals of their cultus. In the Assyrian monuments of Nimroud, discovered by Mr. Layard, some of the Assyrian divinities are represented standing upon calves in circular rings. Which, however, of the many gods of the Assyrian Pantheon is intended, it is not at present possible to determine. On the cylinders found at Babylon or Hillah, the bull appears as an adjunct,—sometimes as the living emblem of the divinity, at others as the Zodiacal sign, Taurus. It would appear from the man-headed bull, and the representation of the bull in Assyria, that it was to a certain extent a national emblem. The single or triple horns of the bull were placed on the heads of the kings and deities, and evidently had a national meaning. When Seleucus appears as King of Babylon, on the tetradrachms struck during his reign, he placed a pair of bull's horns on his helmet, in imitation of the ram's horn which Lysimachus had placed on the diadem of Alexander.

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There is, however, considerable reason for supposing the Cornish relic of the Roman period. Champollion, in his catalogue of the Museum of Charles X. in the Louvre, calls some of the porcelain figures, those of the bull, Onuphis, the symbolical image of Amen Generator. He also mentions two figures of calcareous stone, brought from the tomb of Sethos I., and figures of the bull, Mnevis, in bronze and porcelain.[2] In his description of the figures of Apis in the same collection, he mentions a figure of Apis having a crescent on the flank. On two cippi of the Roman period, in the British Museum, certainly not older than the age of Hadrian, and ornamented with bas-reliefs, relative to Egyptian rites, are two bulls,[3]—-

  1. Kings, vii., 23, and foll.; 2 Chron. iv., 2, and foll.
  2. Notice descriptive des Monumens Egyptiens du Musée Charles X., 16mo, Paris, 1827, p. 41, B. 96, and p. 44, No. 164, 165.
  3. Ancient Marbles, Part X., 4to, Lond. 1845, Pl. LI.