Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/455



is every reason to suppose that the constellation Taurus was one of the first to be invented. In ancient Akkadia it was known as "the Bull of Light," and before the time of Abraham, or over four thousand years ago, the Bull marked the vernal equinox. For the space of two thousand years therefore, Taurus was the prince and leader of the celestial hosts.

The sun in Taurus was deified under the symbol of a bull and worshipped in that form, and evidence of this idolatry is seen in the sacred figures found among the ruins of Egypt and Assyria, in the form of a bull with a human face, or a human shape with the face and horns of a bull.

On the walls of a sepulchre excavated at Thebes, Taurus is shown as the first of the zodiacal signs, and the representations of the Mithraic Bull on gems of four or five centuries before Christ prove that Taurus was at that time still prominent in the astronomy and religion of Persia and Babylon.

The Egyptians regarded Taurus as the emblem of a perpetual return to life. They identified it with Osiris, the Bull-god, the god of the Nile, and worshipped it under this figure by the name "Apis."

Plunket considers that the Apis Bull of Egypt was looked upon as a living representation of the zodiacal Bull, and that