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EveryCow

Bull of Heaven

The divine bull sent against Gilgamesh in the Mesopotamian epic, killed by him and Enkidu.

A tile drawn for this page, not a picture of Bull of Heaven.

Also: Gugalanna

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the goddess Ishtar, angered when Gilgamesh rejects her, asks her father Anu to send the Bull of Heaven to punish him. The bull comes down to Uruk, and its snorting opens pits in the ground that swallow men. Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu fight and kill it, and Enkidu flings a piece of it at Ishtar. The gods then decree that Enkidu must die, which sets Gilgamesh on his search for immortality. The Bull of Heaven has often been linked with the constellation Taurus, and some scholars connect it with Gugalanna, named in Sumerian sources as the husband of Ereshkigal.

See also

Apis Tauroctony Europa and the bull

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