Gilgamesh, the hero of the world’s oldest poem, conventionally known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, had a problem. After he had killed the demon Humbaba, Gilgamesh washed and dressed himself in royal robes. The great goddess Inanna – known in the extant version of the poem by her Akkadian name Ishtar – saw Gilgamesh changing, and was enamoured; she tried to seduce him, promising all good things. But Gilgamesh spurned her, knowing all to well that Inanna had many lovers in the past, and had discarded them when she lost interest. ‘If,’ he asked, in less than honeyed tones, ‘you and I were to be lovers, would I not be treated in the same fashion as those you once claimed to love?’ (Epic of Gilgamesh ll. 85-7). Insulted, Inanna appealed to her father, the King of the Gods, Anu, to punish Gilgamesh. Anu retorted that she had reaped what she had sown through her own behaviour. Inanna threatened to tear open the underworld if Anu did not give her the means to punish Gilgamesh. While she may have acted like a spoiled child, her father was all too cognizant of her immense power, and gave in, lending her the Bull of Heaven, Gugalanna, to wreak her revenge. Merely one snort from the bull’s mighty nostrils was enough to open the Earth, and cause two hundred men to fall to their deaths. With the help of his companion Enkidu, who distracted Gugalanna by pulling its tail, Gilgamesh was able to kill the bull by plunging his sword into its neck. Gilgamesh then dismembered the bull, offering the various parts to the gods, before throwing the right thigh at Inanna in disgust.

This extraordinary tale relates two features regarding the importance of bulls in ancient Sumeria. The first is as sacrificial animals. In the detailed description of his dismemberment of the Bull of Heaven, recording which parts are dedicated to which deity, Gilgamesh’s tale serves as an example of proper sacrificial practice which could be followed by the priesthood. And the very existence of the Bull of Heaven, a powerful beast that was somehow under the control of at least certain gods, reflects the role of cattle in Sumerian life. Possession of a bull was a significant status-symbol. Cattle were so economically important, that they became means of exchange. Even when means of exchange became monetary tokens, the first such tokens were representations of the stretched hide of cattle. The reason for their economic importance is the same reason that Gugalanna was important to the gods: power. While for the gods, this was political and social power, brought about by the Bull of Heaven’s aggression, Sumerian farmers were more interested in sheer mechanical power. Bulls pulled carts and ploughs, enabling the farmer to work significantly larger plots of land than was possible by manpower alone. It was this capacity to produce large surpluses with less effort which freed up a significant portion of the population to move away from their farmland and into the cities.

The bull is, resultantly, one of the most important iconographical symbols both to the Sumerians and to other ancient peoples across the Near East and Mediterranean. For the Mesopotamians, bulls were important as guardian figures, in much the same way as Gugalanna guarded the heavens. Lamassu, the guardian who was often found in doorways and archways throughout Mesopotamia, well into the later Achaemenid era, was an androcephalic (‘human-headed’) bull. The Sumerian representation of the bull is well described by this little sculpture. Rather than standing in a powerful pose, the Sumerian bull was often depicted recumbent, with its legs bent under its body, as though awaiting a command to action. The programmatic bulge of the legs, and the wrapping of the tail around the body are characteristic of the depictions of bulls in the Early Dynastic Period. Bulls in this posture are well-represented among the relief depictions from stelae like that of Meli-Shipak II (Musée du Louvre Sb.23). This bull also bears the wide, almond-shaped eyes that are characteristic of Sumerian art, both in representations of humans and animals. This remarkable figure stands as a testament to the sensitivity of Sumerian artists; not only do they depict the power and musculature of these great beasts, but they also chose to show them with sympathetic, even human, features.