The sacred bull as the essence of the rebirth and immortality

Today it was reported that a 2000-year-old tomb was discovered in the ancient city of Tharsa, located near the village of Kuyulu in southeastern Anatolia. The tomb is part of a larger burial complex containing 60 tombs. Surrounding the tomb are arch decorations and two bull heads. The arch decorations, known as arcosolium, suggest that a significant person was buried there. The bull head decorations, known as bucranium, resemble the logo of the Chicago Bulls – a horned bull’s head. This indicates that the tomb belonged to a distinguished person, possibly even a holy figure. The tradition of decorating tombs with bucranium was adopted in Rome, symbolizing either a temple or a person who served in a temple, at the very least, someone whose tomb was considered a “temple-like”, a holy person, or someone with divine gifts, achievements, or exceptional qualities.

To understand why the bull was chosen, one must comprehend the institution of sacrifices and their significance. In ancient Greece, severed bull heads from sacrificial animals were placed on temple walls. However, because organic material decays, smells, and disintegrates, at some point, they preferred to include the severed head in the sacrifice (by eating or burning it) and replace it with marble replicas. The bull symbolized the chief god and his physical power, often representing the thunder and lightning god, associated with rain, fertility, awe, and power. Connection with these gods meant connection with the “operational system of reality”, thus necessitating sympathetic magic to communicate with the gods through symbols representing them.

Bulls were emblems of thunder gods who usually wore horned headgear, hence bulls were sacrificed in their honor. This practice was common among thunder gods in the East, particularly in Mesopotamia and the Levant, such as Baal and Hadad, who were identified with the bull. In Egypt, they were associated with the ram; Amun was a ram, but later, when unified with the god Ra, he was also symbolized as a bull. Specifically, Hathor, representing life and fertility, was symbolized by a cow, and Ra, who regulated her, was born from and fertilized her, symbolized by the bull.

The Greek myth of Europa involves Zeus transforming into a bull to abduct her to Crete. Their son Minos, King of Crete, received a miraculous bull to sacrifice from Poseidon. When Minos chose to replace it with a real bull, he was punished as his wife mated with the bull to produce the Minotaur. Minos refused to acknowledge the Minotaur as his son and decided to imprison it in the labyrinth. Athens owed tribute to Minos, and to repay the debt, Minos demanded human sacrifices to the bull. This ambivalence towards the bull likely stems from the custom of human sacrifices to the thunder god for blessings of rain. The Bible condemns this practice, and the Romans also described it about the Carthaginians.

Those sacrificed were not just ordinary people but individuals chosen for their spiritual attributes, considered “holy” with a special connection to the gods, enabling them to intercede on behalf of humans. Death was seen as necessary, but such individuals were viewed as consciously embracing death, considered as “dying while living.” The emphasis was on returning from death, with those who died intentionally expected to return to life, either physically, becoming saints, or spiritually.

Regarding spiritual return, there were various perspectives: the Indo-European idea of reincarnation and the Egyptian concept of soul rebirth in the “womb of the goddess”, leading to a new birth in the afterlife. Vedic religions also advanced the idea of reincarnation, speaking of liberation from the cycle of life, “samsara”. This means reincarnation wasn’t necessarily returning to our world in another body but continuing the curse of material existence, like restarting a level in a video game instead of advancing. True rebirth was transcending to the realm of immortality, the same as the Egyptian view of the afterlife. In both Vedic and Egyptian religions, bulls were considered sacred. In Hinduism, the bull symbolized reincarnation, and in Egyptian religion, the cow symbolized rebirth and served as a mediator between humans and gods.

This intentional death is the essence of sacrifice, initiating death and thus rebirth. The sacrificed object is the offering’s essence to the gods, hence the bull or other animals symbolizing power. If not a human experiencing intentional death, the god’s emblem was sacrificed. Young sacrifices were often preferred to ensure they were blemish-free, with a higher chance of perfection when young.

Sometimes, the emblematic sacrifice was replaced with human sacrifice, but anthropologically, animal sacrifice was preferred over human sacrifice for what we would call moral reasons or “speciesism”. Religions have always favored redeeming a person with an animal, and once blood sacrifices became disfavored, they advocated for alternatives. In Judaism, this is referred to as “the offering of our lips”, i.e prayer. The sacrificial ritual, the intentional death of a person aiming for rebirth through sacrifice, was replaced with the intentional death of an animal, which then transformed into an intentional death through prayer, meditation, or spiritual experience.