I posted a blog on long-necked Taurus<\/a> in April 2016, but was reluctant to add a specific picture of a red bull with a strikingly long neck. My focus was zodiac symbols and I didn’t want to include dozens of bulls that were not in zodiacs. I’ve decided to post this one, because the manuscript does have a zodiac series and the bull (which is in a different section) is so strikingly similar to the VMS.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are two drawings of bulls in the VMS, one painted a little darker than the other. The placement of eyes and style of the nose differ, but their bodies are essentially the same shape:<\/p>\n
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In another manuscript that predates the VMS by about half a century, we find this drawing of a bull. It’s not a zodiac symbol, it’s in the bestiary section, but it is labeled “Taurus”:<\/p>\n
<\/a>I lightened the background (right) to make it easier to see the shape and pose. Note the long neck, long white curved horns, raised front leg, reddish coloration, very long tail, narrow pointed penis, and landscape background. Even though the background is rectangular and more ornate, the bull is very similar to the lighter VMS Taurus, including the angle of the head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This drawing is more similar to the VMS bull than the one in the zodiac section. The zodiac Taurus is amber and faces the other way (and doesn’t have the front leg raised). The rest of the zodiac is based on traditional symbols and differs from the VMS in a number of ways\u2014Sagittarius is a centaur, Leo has a man-face, the scorpion is more-or-less naturalistic, and the Libra scales are held by a female figure. It fits in with the H 437 tradition in the previous blog<\/a>. The only significant commonalities with the VMS are the crayfish and the long noses on Pisces.<\/p>\n
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Are the similarities between the VMS zodiac bull and the bestiary bull coincidental? Why would these two long-necked bulls look so much alike when the zodiac drawings have little in common?<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s not entirely a coincidence. If we look at Scorpius in BPL 14a,<\/em> it is roughly like a scorpion, and yet the scorpion in the bestiary section (right), with fatter legs and body and snake-like tail, leans more toward medieval drawings of lizards and tarasques than a scorpion. Even though it’s drawn at a different angle, in some ways the bestiary critter is more similar to lizard-style Scorpiuses than the slightly more realistic one in the zodiac:<\/p>\n