Bull or Taurus is the provisional name for a predynastic ruler, the existence of whom is highly controversial. He is considered a ruler of the late

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

Naqada III Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating from approximately 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which began in Naqada II, became highly visible, w ...

culture of southern

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. If "Bull" actually represents a ruler's name, it is mainly known from

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals i ...

tablets from the Abydos tomb U-j of

Umm El Qa'ab Umm El Qaʻāb (sometimes romanised Umm El Gaʻab, ar, أم القعاب) is a necropolis of the Early Dynastic Period kings at Abydos, Egypt. Its modern name means "Mother of Pots" as the whole area is littered with the broken pot shards of of ...

and from a rock carving on the

Gebel Tjauti Gebel Tjauti is a rock formation in Egypt. The rock is named after Tjauti, an ancient Egyptian official who lived at the end of the Eighth Dynasty, around 2150 BC. The rock is known for a series of rock inscriptions known as the Gebel Tjauti r ...

mountain.

Attestations

Egyptologist Günter Dreyer deduced the existence of King "Taurus" from incisions on a statue of the god

Min Min or MIN may refer to: Places * Fujian, also called Mǐn, a province of China ** Min Kingdom (909–945), a state in Fujian * Min County, a county of Dingxi, Gansu province, China * Min River (Fujian) * Min River (Sichuan) * Mineola (Am ...

, which he interpreted as rulings. He suspected that the grave goods, which were intended for King

Scorpion I Scorpion I was a ruler of Upper Egypt during Naqada III. His name may refer to the scorpion goddess Serket, though evidence suggests Serket's rise in popularity to be in the Old Kingdom, bringing doubt to whether Scorpion actually took his name ...

, came from the state domain goods of King "Taurus" and thus the bull symbol originated from the name of the latter.Günter Dreyer: Umm el-Qaab I .: the predynastic royal tomb U-j and its early documents (= Umm el-Qaab, 1st volume). von Zabern,

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-west, with Ma ...

1998, ., pp. 87 & 176.Ludwig David Morenz: picture letters and symbolic signs. The development of the writing of the high culture of ancient Egypt (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 205). Friborg 2004, ., pp. 130–134, 172, 190–193. Further confirmation of the existence of this ruler is the interpretation of a rock drawing discovered in 2003 on the

in the desert west of Thebes. It apparently represents a successful campaign by King Scorpion I against King Taurus. This battle was possibly part of the concentration of power in late prehistoric Egypt: Scorpion I, operating from Thinis, conquered Taurus' realm in the Naqada area.

Doubts

However, since the bull sign is never accompanied by a horus falcon or a gold rosette – indicators of rulers in the pre-dynastic period – some researchers doubt that it refers to a king. For example, the writing expert

Ludwig David Morenz Ludwig David Morenz (born 4 April 1965) is German professor in Egyptology at the University of Bonn.Tait (2003), p. xi-x. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig and Habilitation from the University of Tübingen. His fields of researc ...

and the Egyptologist Jochem Kahl point out that Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was still in the early stages of development during the pre-dynastic period and that it was extremely unsafe to assign individual pictorial symbols. The reason for this is the fact that in this early writing development phase no fixed determinatives for "locality", " nomes" and "region" existed. A representation of a bull could represent the king as an attacking force, but it could also be part of a name for a certain place or district (e.g. for the mountain bull district). There were also depictions of bulls in connection with the archaic ceremony "Catching the wild bull" as a pre-form for the later Apis run. A bull representation therefore does not necessarily confirm a king's name.

Wolfgang Helck Hans Wolfgang Helck (16 September 1914 – 27 August 1993) was a German Egyptologist, considered one of the most important Egyptologists of the 20th century. From 1956 until his retirement in 1979 he was a professor at the University of Hamburg. H ...

: Studies on the Thinite period (= Egyptological treatises. (ÄA) Vol. 45).

Harrassowitz Harrassowitz Verlag is a German academic publishing house, based in Wiesbaden. It publishes about 250 scholarly books and periodicals per year on Oriental, Slavic, and Book and Library Studies. The publishing house is part of the company Otto Ha ...

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

1987, , (restricted online version), pp. 147 & 153.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bull Predynastic pharaohs People whose existence is disputed