Semitic = alpu; a wild bull was written / = am, Semitic = rimu, in Hebrew = reem. The difference between tame and wild bull is, therefore, in the ideogram, only
the sign for mountain = A wild bull was in the ancient Sumero-Accadian
language " a bull of the mountains."
Several ancient Babylonian sculptures or cylinder seals and many later Assyrian sculptures show very realistic pictures of a wild bovine, which I formerly identified with Bos primigenius Bojanus (plate 83, fig. I).
My recent studies on fossil remains of the bovines of the Indian Pleistocene have shown me that the Indian (Narbada and Siwaliks) and China Taurina are the exact equivalent of the European urus (Bos primigenius Bojanus), excepting some very slight variations produced by different geographical and local influences; so that the Bos namadicus Falconer & Cautley would represent the European urus for the Asiatic continent, especially the North Indian mountains and their neighborhood (compare fig. 490 with plate 81).
Fig. 490.—Bos namadicus, after Lydekker. Indian Geological Survey.
The buffalo, the other wild bull hunted by the ancient inhabitants of Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria, is Bubalus palceindicus Falconer, or the recent form descending from that Pleistocene species, Bubalus arnee Kerr. It is already represented on the cylinder seals of the kings of Shipurla and of Ur. The best representation can be found on the cylinder seal of Sargon, King of Accad, who reigned B. C. 3800 to 375o. This seal in the collection of M. de Clercq, of Paris, bears the following inscription, " Sar-ga-ni-sar-luh sar Agaddeki Ib-ni-sar tup-sar aradsu" (" from Sargon, King of Accad, Ibnishar the scribe, his servant)."*
*See Clercq et Ménant, Antiquités Assyriennes, p. 79, fig. 46. Paris, 1888.
IIIF Color HighRes
