Bible Encyclopedias
Cow-Worship

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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Cowan, Andrew

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The Egyptian goddesses Athor and Isis, represented as having the head of a cow; Astarte, the Syrian goddess, as wearing the horns of a cow; and the Grecian Juno as having a cow's eyes. Venus is sometimes figured as a cow giving milk to her calf. Io changed into a cow is an emblem of the earth. The cow of Minos, which on each day was white, red, and black, seems to represent the three different aspects which the earth presents in the bright blaze of noon, in the purple tinge of evening or morning, and in the dark shades of night. In the fables of Brahminism, the earth takes the form of a cow named Kamadhuka, which gives its worshippers all they desire. Among the Adighe, a race of Circassians, a cow is offered in sacrifice to Achin, the god of horned cattle. According to the cosmogony of the Scandinavian Edda, before the heavens and the earth were created, the cow Audumla was produced in the place where the southern fires of Muspelheim melted the ice of Niflheim. This cow denotes the cosmogonic earth. Among the Hindus the cow is held in the greatest veneration, particularly the species called the Brahmin or sacred cow, and by many families a cow is kept for the mere purpose of: worshipping it. (See APIS); (See MOSCHOLATRY).