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An Unidentified Sculpture from Iraq
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
Extract
In 1942 the Ashmolean Museum acquired, by gift of the National Art Collections Fund, the small head of a young bull carved in stone, of which five views are given in Plate III. This object is numbered 1942.167 in the Accession Book of the Department of Antiquities, and it is exhibited in the Near Eastern Gallery. The head has been commonly described as “Sumerian”; but no one, as far as I know, has attempted to refine on that description or even to prove that it is correct. In fact, the more carefully the object has been examined in recent years the more doubts have arisen about its identification. I am grateful, therefore, to the Editor of Iraq for printing a description of this little enigma detailed enough, I hope, to enable some perspicacious reader to suggest its proper interpretation.
Three questions present themselves: where was the head made; when was it made; and what was it made for? Its known history does not take us far. The head was first seen in 1942 in the hands of a Baghdad antiquities dealer, who told the Director of Antiquities1 that it had been found “in a tomb not far from Ur”. This was a stereotyped formula from which nothing could be inferred except that the object probably did come from Iraq, otherwise the owner would gladly have said that it was an import.
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1971
References
1 Then Mr. Scton Lloyd, whom I must thank for his recalling the incident twenty years after it happened.
2 A farming acquaintance in Oxfordshire, who breeds and grazes cattle, and who admired the accuracy of the carving in most details, could not remember seeing a drooping inner eyelid on any of his animals. Textbook diagrams likewise fail to confirm its existence: Sisson, S., The Anatomy of the Domestic Animals (Philadelphia and London, 1938), 918–9, figs. 719 and 720Google Scholar.
3 von Bothmer, D., Ancient Art from New York Private Collections (New York, 1961) no. 25, Pl. 8Google Scholar. I am grateful to the authorities of the museum for the views and description of this interesting object and to Mr. Alastair B. Martin for his permission to reproduce them here.
4 The shape of the neck precludes attachment to an animal body.
5 One of the Philadelphia rams has been more than once illustrated: H. Frankfort, Art and Architecture of the Ancient Near East, Pl. 68A; A. Parrot, Sumer (arts of mankind series), Fig. 357A. In each case the object illustrated is wrongly ascribed to the British Museum; it is in Philadelphia. Both the Philadelphia examples and one of those in London (BM 118565) came from C. L. Woolley's excavations at Ur some sixteen years before our bull was acquired. The fourth is of unknown provenance.
6 The wool on BM 115636 is done more perfunctorily.
7 Heinrich, E., Kleinfunde aus den archäischen Tempel-schichten in Uruk, 17Google Scholar, W 15237a, Pls. 7a and 8b (red sandstone); R. D. Barnett, Fifty Masterpieces of Ancient Near Eastern Art, no. 2 (clay); Mitchell, T. C., BMQ 23 (1960/1961), 100–1, Pl. XLII bCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 The splendid creatures in bronze and gold from the Royal Tombs at Ur have them; and so did a bearded cow in the Nintu Temple VI at Khafajeh and a bearded human-faced bull found with it. H. Frankfort, More Sculpture from the Diyala Region, Pls. 46–48 (cow) and 49–50 (human-faced bull).
9 Frankfort, H., More Sculpture from the Diyala Region, 18, no. 330, Pls. 68–9Google Scholar.
10 Encyclopédie Photographique I, Fig. 257A, B.
11 I am grateful to Mr. T. C. Mitchell, Assistant Keeper in the Western Asiatic Department of the British Museum, for the information that BM 118565 came from the Gipar-ku temple, Room C.21 (Isin-Larsa period).
The two Philadelphia rams are mentioned by Woolley, C. L., in AJ 7 (1927), 413Google Scholar, and AJ 11 (1931), 371 and Pl. LII, 2Google Scholar, respectively. They are to be published in Ur Excavations VII, and I am particularly grateful to the Keeper of the Department for allowing me to print the photographs of BM 118565 and 115636 here.
12 For an equally mysterious object from Perscpolis, of similar shape and material but less realistically carved with a lion's head, see Porada, E., Ancient Iran, 162, Pl. 46Google Scholar.