Taurus ♉︎
The Bull. The oldest figure in the sky.
Museum label
Catalogue note
Quite possibly the oldest image humanity still uses. A bull with the Pleiades at its shoulder appears on the painted ceiling at Lascaux, some seventeen thousand years before the present — and the same figure still stands in the same stars. This is the record of the Bull.
No other sign carries a deeper provenance. The aurochs painted in the Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux, c. 15,000 BC, is marked with a cluster of dots that many scholars read as the Pleiades — the star group that rides the Bull’s shoulder to this day. If they are right, Taurus is the oldest surviving work of observational art.
Babylon knew the figure as GU₄.AN.NA, the Bull of Heaven, the weapon Ishtar loosed against Gilgamesh in the oldest epic on earth. Greece retold the stars as the white bull of Zeus, who carried Europa over the sea to Crete — the abduction that gave a continent its name. At the bull’s eye burns Aldebaran, counted by Persia among the four royal stars that watched the quarters of the sky.
The sign has always meant what it shows: substance, endurance, wealth held in physical form. It rules the season when the year’s value is planted. The record of the Bull — one canonical asset of twelve — is native on Solana, with its official bridged representation on Base.
Provenance
An aurochs with a cluster of six dots at its shoulder — read by many scholars as the Pleiades — is painted on the cave ceiling: arguably the first surviving star map.
Entered the MUL.APIN catalogues as GU₄.AN.NA, the Bull of Heaven of the Gilgamesh epic.
Fixed as one of twelve equal signs when Babylonian astronomers divide the sun’s path into the first zodiac — the frame still in use today.
Retold as the white bull of Zeus who carried Europa to Crete; the Hyades and Pleiades fixed at its head and shoulder.
Canonized in Ptolemy’s Almagest among the forty-eight classical constellations; carried through the Arabic observatories into medieval Europe.
Engraved in Albrecht Dürer’s celestial planispheres, the first printed star charts of the Western sky.
Minted as the official Taurus record — one canonical SPL asset, entered in the Zodiacs.org registry.
One identity, two official representations: the native Solana origin and its bridged Base counterpart, publicly verifiable in the registry.
The record
Market context
Acquisition
Taurus trades on open markets. The routes below are provided for access; nothing here is a recommendation. Confirm the official mint against the registry before acquiring.
Taurus on the Astrofolio shelf — the related consumer experienceOfficial mint: EjkkxYpf…1WJKMp · Read-only site — no custody, no signing, no transactions.