Crown of horns
A horn crown made of bull horns was an attribute of a god or goddess in the ancient Orient . The number of pairs of horns indicated the rank; hybrids and so-called geniuses usually had only one pair of horns. The Lamassu (bull people as guardian figures) from Dur Šarrukin , however, wear a double crown of horns, the winged lion people from Kalaḫ even have a triple crown of horns. Also Urartian gods were depicted with horns crown.
Some ancient Near Eastern rulers also assumed this symbol of supernatural power, such as Naram-Sin for the first time in his famous victory stele . However, it is limited to a pair of horns.
simple crown of horns in profile
Double horned crown of a lamassu from Dur Sarrukin
Crown of horns of a main god, Akkadian
Alexander the Great is sometimes depicted with horns, but these are ram horns , which are supposed to indicate his descent from the god Amun .
literature
- Helmut Freydank u. a .: Lexicon of the Old Orient. Egypt * India * China * Western Asia. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-928127-40-3 .
- Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, myths, epics. Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2306-8 .
Web links
- Jürg Eggler: Crown of horns. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
