Enkidu and Gilgamesh fighting the Bull of Heaven
| Kategória | Cylinder Seals |
| Description of the seal image | Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill the Bull of Heaven. The former grasps the hybrid creature's tail with one hand and brandishes an axe with the other while stepping on the hybrid creature's legs. He wears a broad-belted, fringed and tasselled kilt decorated with a dot-in-square pattern and has a mace at his waist. Gilgamesh grasps the horn of the human-headed winged bull (aladlammu) with one hand and stabs it with a dagger with the other. He wears a conical headdress and a long, fringed and tasselled, open robe over a short tunic and has a quiver full of arrows and a tasselled bow case on his back. Above the Bull of Heaven is a one-line cuneiform inscription. |
| Figures, motifs/symbols |
- hero 1: Enkidu, bearded, wearing a broad-belted, fringed and tasselled kilt decorated with a dot-in-square pattern, has a mace at his waist, brandishes an axe - hero 2: Gilgamesh, bearded, wearing a conical headdress and a long, fringed and tasselled open robe over a short tunic, has a quiver full of arrows and a tasselled bow case on his back - human-headed winged bull (aladlammu): Bull of Heaven, stumbling - inscription: cuneiform, one line |
| Subcategory | cylinder seal |
| Collection | Museum of Fine Arts Boston / MFA |
| Museum number | MFA 65.1663 |
| Condition, shape | slightly chipped upper and lower edges |
| Culture | Assyro-Babylonian |
| Provenance | ex-Moussa Collection; purchased by the MFA from R. Moussa, through Ali Tehranian (Little Falls, NJ) on 10 November 1965 |
| First occurence | before 1965 |
| Archaeological context | N/A |
| Registration number | N/A |
| Dimensions (mm): height, diameter | h: 35, d: 17 |
| Material and features | "chalcedony" |
| Style | modelled |
| Scene | contest, mythological |
| Transliteration |
1. ša2 mx x x x. |
| Translation | 1. Property of ... |
| Bibliography |
Green 1997, 139, 151 and 154 fig. 9. Green, A.: "Myths in Mesopotamian Art". In: Finkel, I. L. – Geller, M. J. (eds.): Sumerian Gods and Their Representations. (Cuneiform Monographs 7) Groningen, 1997, 135–158. MFA: https://collections.mfa.org/objects/163908/ [accessed: 13-11-2023]. |