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Concept
Bull-leaping
Summary
Bull-leaping (ταυροκαθάψια, taurokathapsia) is a term for various types of non-violent bull fighting. Some are based on an ancient ritual from the Minoan civilization involving an acrobat leaping over the back of a charging bull (or cow). As a sport it survives in modern France, usually with cows rather than bulls, as course landaise; in Spain, with bulls, as recortes and in Tamil Nadu, India with bulls as Jallikattu.
Ritual leaping over bulls is a motif in Middle Bronze Age figurative art, especially in Minoan art, and what are probably Minoan objects found in Mycenaean Greece, but it is also sometimes found in Hittite Anatolia, the Levant, Bactria and the Indus Valley. It is often interpreted as a depiction of a rite performed in connection with bull worship.
Younger (1995) classifies bull-leaping depictions in Bronze Age Aegean art as follows:
Type I: the acrobat approaches the bull from the front, grabs the horns, and somersaults backwards
Type II: the acrobat approaches the bull from the front, dives over the horns without touching them and pushes himself with his hands from the bull's back into a backward somersault
Type III: the acrobat is depicted in mid-air over the bull's back, facing the same way as the animal
The Type III depictions are often found in Late Minoan IIIB art (14th to 13th centuries BC). The Minoan frescoes from Tell el-Daba (Avaris, Egypt) dating to the 18th dynasty (16th to 14th centuries BC) show similar designs besides genuinely Egyptian motifs, for which reason they have often been ascribed to Minoan-taught Egyptian craftsmen rather than to Minoan ones directly, though this is disputed. They could also have been included as palace decorations because the palace was built for an Aegean princess diplomatically married to a Hyksos pharaoh.
Other examples of bull-leaping scenes have been found in Syria, such as a cylinder seal impression found in level VII at Alalakh (Old Babylonian period, 19th or 18th century BC) showing two acrobats performing handstands on the back of a bull, with an ankh sign placed between them, another seal belonging to a servant of Shamshi-Adad I (c.
Official source
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