Tarvos Trigaranus or Taruos Trigaranos is a divine figure who appears on a relief

Relief

Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...

 panel of the Pillar of the Boatmen

Pillar of the Boatmen

The Pillar of the Boatmen is a square-section stone bas-relief with depictions of several deities, both Gaulish and Roman...

 as a bull with three cranes

Crane (bird)

Cranes are a family, Gruidae, of large, long-legged and long-necked birds in the order Gruiformes. There are fifteen species of crane in four genera. Unlike the similar-looking but unrelated herons, cranes fly with necks outstretched, not pulled back...

 perched on his back. He stands under a tree, and on an adjacent panel, the god Esus

Esus

Esus or Hesus was a Gaulish god known from two monumental statues and a line in Lucan's Bellum civile.-Imagery:The two statues on which his name appears are the Pillar of the Boatmen from among the Parisii and a pillar from Trier among the Treveri. In both of these, Esus is portrayed cutting...

 is chopping down a tree, possibly a willow, with an axe.

In the Gaulish language

Gaulish language

The Gaulish language is an extinct Celtic language that was spoken by the Gauls, a people who inhabited the region known as Gaul from the Iron Age through the Roman period...

, tarvos means "bull," found in Old Irish

Old Irish language

Old Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are extant. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, by which time it had developed into Middle Irish....

 as tarb and Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

 as tarw (compare "bull" in other Indo-European languages

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...

 such as Latin taurus or Lithuanian

Lithuanian language

Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...

 taŭras). Garanus is the crane (garan in Welsh, Old Cornish

Cornish language

Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...

 and Breton

Breton language

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

; see also geranos, the ritual "crane dance" of ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

). Treis, or tri- in compound words, is the number three.

A pillar from Trier

Trier

Trier, historically called in English Treves is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BC....

 shows a man with an axe cutting down a tree in which sit three birds and a bull's head. The juxtaposition of images has been compared to the Tarvos Trigaranus and Esus panels on the Boatmen monument. It is possible that statues of a bull with three horn

Horn (anatomy)

A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various animals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone. True horns are found mainly among the ruminant artiodactyls, in the families Antilocapridae and Bovidae...

s, such as the one from Autun

Autun

Autun is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in Burgundy in eastern France. It was founded during the early Roman Empire as Augustodunum. Autun marks the easternmost extent of the Umayyad campaign in Europe.-Early history:...

 (Bourgogne

Bourgogne

Burgundy is one of the 27 regions of France.The name comes from the Burgundians, an ancient Germanic people who settled in the area in early Middle-age. The region of Burgundy is both larger than the old Duchy of Burgundy and smaller than the area ruled by the Dukes of Burgundy, from the modern...

, France, ancient Augustodunum) are related to this deity.

External links

• http://www.monde.de/tarvos.html The three-horned bull
• http://www.chronarchy.com/mjournal/patrons/aboutesus.html Discussion of Tarvos Trigaranus and Esus, with photos
• http://www.tarvos.nl/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1 Dutch language site telling the story about the battle between Esus and Tarvos Trigaranus