Cattle

Patience, brothers. Soon we will reveal the secrets of this painting.

This article has been identified as being out of date. Please update the article to reflect recent releases and then remove this template once done.

Cattle (Bos taurus), colloquially called by their feminine name cows and their masculine name bulls, are a domesticated species of bovine and one of the most commonly kept large herbivores.

History[]

5th century BCE[]

When the zodiac was created by the Babylonians, the bull was immortalized as the constellation Taurus.^[1]

In Greece, cattle entered the myths most prominently in the form of the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull creature said to have been born from the union of the Kretan Bull and Pasiphae.^[2]^[3] By the time of the Peloponnesian War, the myth of the creature had spellbound the people of Pephka on the island of Krete, and they had turned the city of Lato into a shrine to the beast, emblazoning their banners with its visage, and building their economy around the mythos of the beast.^[4]

During the Peloponnesian War, Daphnae, the acting leader of the Daughters of Artemis at the time, tasked the Spartan misthios Kassandra to hunt down eight legendary beasts,^[5] including the present incarnation of the Kretan Bull, whose lair was located within Fertile Battleground region of Messara on the island of Krete.^[6]

On a more mundane note, local merchants valued cow hooves at 12 drachmae apiece.^[4]

1st century BCE[]

During the 1st century BCE, many cattle were kept by Egyptians living in the rural countryside, where they were used as a source of meat and milk and for grazing. The cattle were also worshipped in the form of numerous Egyptian deities, most notably as Hathor who was often depicted crowned with cow horns, and Ptah in the form of the Apis bull.^[7]

Viking Age[]

During the 9th century, many cattle were kept by English living in the rural countryside, where they were used as a source of meat and milk and for grazing.

In the Norse mythology of Vikings, Auðumbla is the primeval cow who revealed Búri, Odin, Vili, and Vé after Ymir fed from her milk as she nourished herself by licking a salty rime-covered stone for three days.

The Vikings crafted their drinking horns from the horns of either cattle or goats. The pirate Alonzo Batilla found some of these in the 18th century during his adventures in the Caribbean.^[1]