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By Bill Coffin, Class of 2004

What is the meaning behind those bovine sculptures on the Chicago Board of Trade Building? It’s a perennial question. Two usually useful sources — the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the National Register of Historic Places – say only that the bovines are “stylized”, which is, of course, useless. CAC’s architecture.org claims that the bovines represent “livestock” traded at the Board, but the Board traded only grain when the building opened in 1930. Wikipedia and countless blogs claim that the bovines represent a rising “bull market”, but they cite no authority and discuss none of the sculptures’ unique decorative details.

Many of the Board of Trade’s decorative details are Art Deco, and, like Art Deco, influenced by the art and architecture of the ancient Middle East. Thus, the Board sports papyrus shapes inside and hooded farmers outside. Might the bovines be another Middle Eastern motif?

In ancient Egypt, the most important sacred animal was Apis, a god of fertility and a bona fide bovine. During the annual “running of Apis”, he symbolically fertilized farmland near and far. He was also the embodiment of Ptah, the god of creation, and, thus, an oracle; as the public posed questions, the bull’s movements were interpreted as the god’s answers. He lived with his harem of cows in the temple precinct of Memphis, an early Egyptian capital. When he died, he was mummified, placed in an ornate sarcophagus, and buried in a vast catacomb. (The accompanying photos of Apis are from the Ashmolean Museum and the Louvre.)

In the afterlife, Apis was assimilated with Osiris, the first king of Egypt and god of agriculture. Osiris had been killed by his brother, revived by his wife, and in his next life appointed god of the underworld. Known as Osiris-Apis, his rebirth was symbolized by the flooding of the Nile River each summer, fertilizing the fields for a new wheat crop each fall.

Apis the bull was reborn, too, repeatedly, to live forever on earth. After the bull died, priests scoured the countryside for his successor — a young bull with the 29 physical markings, and eternal spirit, of Apis. The most important marking was a white triangle on his forehead. In art, Apis was also depicted wearing a sun disk, a wig for royalty and deities, and a broad collar or menat, symbolic of fertility.

The eight bovines on the Board of Trade Building suggest a succession of Apis bulls. Each bovine has the semblance of a triangle on his forehead; along with other facial features, that triangle varies from one bovine to another, as it surely did from one Apis bull to another. The bovines’ costumes, however, are all the same. A royal wig with two tresses hangs beyond the chin, and a broad collar with alternating blossoms and buds circles the neck. Borders of blossoms and buds were common in many ancient cultures, and this one closely resembles one popular in Egypt. (The photo at left is from Owen Jones’s 1856 Grammar of Ornament.)

Were the bovines on the Board of Trade Building designed to represent the Egyptian bull-god Apis, a symbol of agricultural fertility and regeneration? They look like Apis, and, as such, they complement the Board’s other ornament that derives from the Mideast or depicts grain from the Midwest. But we may never know for sure. Instead, those bovines may continue to be a fertile source of bewilderment year after year.

Sources:

Ancient History Encyclopedia

https://www.ancient.eu/

The Virtual Egyptian Museum

http://www.virtual-egyptian-museum.org/Collection/FullVisit/Collection.FullVisit-JFR.html?../Content/MET.LL.00887.html&0

Bovine photos:

Terrence Faircloth via Flickr CC By-NC-ND 2.0

Jyoti Srivastava