Folia archeologica 36.

Lovag Zsuzsa: Egy XI. századi bronz korpusz

EARLY MEDIEVAL AUROCHS 215 characteristics they considered most important in Aurochs are the same ones we do today. On the basis of Paleolithic drawings and of fossil-subfossil complete skeletons, the most importât characteristics of the statue of Aurochs are as follows: the trunk is long, the neck is short, the head is small in comparison with the body. The contour of the back is sinuous; high whithers and pelvis, and a curved, deeply concave lumbar region. The head and neck rise from the trunk-line. The edge of the neck is generally concave. The throat region is more deeply concave. The head is long, low, and not fleshy. The chest is full and very deep. The breast-line is steep in front. The chest-abdomen line is long. The horns of cows are more curved than those of bulls. On the contrary, however the Augsburg Thür has the following characteristics: the trunk is short, the neck is long; the head is big, even huge. Body proportions:

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0 the length of the back is 5/9, that of the neck is 2/9, the height of the neck (throat) is 2/9, while the whithers-height is 5/9 parts of the full body length. The contour of he back is straight with scarcely rising whithers. The head and the neck are in a line with the back. The edge of the neck is convex. The neck is strongly muscular, the line of the throat is almost horisontal. The head is long, deep, fleshy. The chest is shallow. The brest-line is not steep in front. Its entire habit is reminiscent of a phenotype of a primitive "meat producing" species. If the Augsburg picture was painted in Middle Europe: 1. The "Polish Thür" name may refer to the Polish origin of both the customer and the painter. At the same time, it cannot be excluded that he spoke another Slavic language, eg. Russian, Czech, Slovakian, etc. 2. The name of "Polish Thür" may refer to the depiction of a cattle originating from Poland. In this case the name of this animal was inscribed in the corner of the painting. If the name "Thür" was really inscribed in the corner of the Augsburg painting then — since the Slavic name of Aurochs, Bison, wild Bison, Bubalus, wild bull, wild ox, forest bull, forest ox, etc. is Tur (without an ,,h" in it) — the word was not written in accordance with Slavic (Polish) orthography. At the same time it corresponds with Medieval German orthography. For these reasons even the Polish character of the name of the animal cannot be proved let alone its origin. In the Augsburg painting the Slavic name of an animal was inscribed in accordance with German orthography. At the beginning of the 16th century, Augsburg was an important centre and market for Hungarian, Polish, Moldavian and Austrian beef cattle exports. Thus, in Augsburg, different breeds of cattle of types and habits originating from different countries could be found. Of these types, Hungarian cattle was considered the best for beef. Because of the wildness of these animals the Augsburg town council and the guild of butchers enacted certain measures to avoid accidents during cattle-driving.

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1 The Augsburg town council declared •— among others things — that "Hungarian oxen are the best". Their meat can be characterized by a document from Augsburg as well; "zwischen polnisch und hungarisch Ochsenfleisch ain grosse 8

0 Because of reduction the length of the animal on the pictures is exactly 9 cm. 8

1 Hankó, В., Ősi magyar háziállataink (Ancient Hungarian domestic animals). Alföldi Magvető. NS II/3. (Debrecen 1940) 27.