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A Note on Queen Shub-Ad's “Onagers”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Robert H. Dyson Jr.
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Extract

During the summer of 1955 in the process of relocating the Ur collection in the University Museum my attention fell on a single animal tooth (Museum number 29–22–1) catalogued in 1929 as “of one of the asses from the tomb of Shub-ad.” My interest in the history of domesticated animals led me to send this specimen to Dr. George G. Simpson of the American Museum of Natural History in New York for further identification. The specimen was particularly exciting since it was generally believed at the time that no remains of these animals had been preserved. After examining the tooth Dr. Simpson wrote:

“This tooth certainly does not belong to an onager or to any member of the horse family. It is definitely and unquestionably a member of the bovid, and not of the equid, family. Bovid cheek teeth are all so much alike that it is hardly possible to make an absolutely precise specific identification from a single somewhat broken tooth. Nevertheless among the comparisons that Mrs. Patsuris and I have been able to make this tooth is closest to that of an unusually small domesticated ox. The possibility that it belongs to some wild member of the bovid family is not completely excluded, but I would say that there is a strong probability that it is an ox.”

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 22 , Issue 1-2: Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley , Spring-Autumn 1960 , pp. 102 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1960 

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References

1 Dyson, R. H. Jr. “Archaeology and the Domestication of Animals in the Old World” in American Anthropologist 55.(5) (1953), 661–673 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Woolley, C. L., The Royal Cemetery, U.E. II, Text (1934), 74 Google Scholar.

3 C. L. Woolley, op. cit., 78.

4 C. L. Woolley, op. cit., 409–410.

5 C. L. Woolley, op. cit., 271–272.

6 Reed, C. A., “Animal Domestication in the Prehistoric Near East,” Science 130 (1959), 1629–39CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

7 Hilzheimer, M., “Animal Remains from Tell Asmar,” Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilisations, No. 20 (1941)Google Scholar.

8 Watelin, L. Ch., Excavations at Kish IV (1934), 30–34 Google Scholar.

9 L. Ch. Watelin, op. cit., pl. XXIII, 1.