The unknown religion of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) is an extraordinary mystery. The BMAC itself was unknown to scholarship until the relics of this civilisation were discovered, primarily in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, in the middle of the Twentieth Century AD. In a peculiar twist of the Cold War mistrust between the West and the USSR, the knowledge of this civilisation, centred on former Soviet Republics (and Afghanistan, firmly in the Soviet sphere from the AD 1950s onwards) and systematically excavated by a Soviet archaeologist, Viktor Sarianidi, was hidden from Western view until the fall of the Union in AD 1990. The Bactrians’ religious life has been hypothesised to centre on a major goddess, who may be represented in the famous ‘Bactrian Princess’ figures, which are the civilisation’s most distinctive artefacts. Another figure, a monstrous snake-skinned figure known as ‘Scarface’ on account of his characteristic facial injury, is sometimes perceived to be part of a dyad through which the Chaoskampf, the primordial struggle between order and chaos. The other half of the dyad, and ‘Scarface’s’ mortal enemy, could well be the hypothesised Bactrian goddess, or else another figure seen in the elaborate Bactrian composite statuary, an unidentified youth. But clues to the complexity of the BMAC religion are slowly coming to light in excavations and through objects coming to the art market.

This extraordinary sculpture depicts the heads of three rams, conjoined at the back, and connected to some kind of upright pillar or neck. The sculptural quality of each individual ram’s head is phenomenal. Each displays its own personality. The left head is alert and active; its eyes bulge, mouth is taught, nose slightly scrunched, nostrils flared. His head is lifted, and tilted slightly to his left. He is agitated, perhaps even scared or startled, and full of restless energy. The middle head, lowest of the three, is more muted. His nose is steeper, lips tightly pursed, nostrils closed, ears slightly downwards, and an intense stare. The final head is downwards facing, with sad ovoid eyes, and tight nostrils. Each expression is exemplarily well-studied. It is abundantly clear that the artist has spent considerable time with rams, achieving a deep understanding of their behaviour and personalities. Anatomically, each ram is perfectly rendered. Special attention has been paid to the slope of the face, the curl of the horns, the relative positions of the ears, the striations which run down the horns, and the proportions of the features. There is no naivety in this art; this is realism at its finest. In some ways, this goes far beyond the programmatic art associated with the BMAC. This kind of realism is known from Bactrian metalworking, but less so from their stone-carving.

Interpreting this piece relies on a number of difficult, perhaps intractable, problems. First, is this a representation of three rams? Or of a three-headed ram? There is no indication of a neck or torso, and all three heads seem to emerge organically from the stone. Three-headed beasts are not unknown from ancient myth: Cerberus, guardian of the Greek underworld, or the Persian three-headed dragon Zahhak (of unknown antiquity), are two prominent examples. The number three is significant in many human societies. Georges Dumézil proposed in his trifunctional hypothesis that the Proto-Indo-European Society, from which the BMAC evolved, saw itself as being based around three activities – worship, work and toil – which became reflected in various religious and cultural triads. The ancient Hindu religion is based around one such triad, the Trimurti, which may have evolved from religious practices in the Indus Valley Civilisation, neighbours of the BMAC. Other triads of gods – like the Charites (Graces), Moirai (Fates) and Erinyes (Furies) in Greek myth, or the Theban Triad (Amun, Mut and Khonsu) in Egypt – are well-attested from throughout the ancient world. So it is clear that our three rams’ heads may have some kind of religious significance. The three personas of the rams, which we might define as volatile, choleric, and melancholic, may represent individual deities or spirits, or aspects of the same being.

Rams feature frequently throughout ancient religion also. Symbolic of male virility – the aggressive and athletic mating displays of the male ram played heavily on the ancient mind – as well as fertility, rebirth, and resurrection. In Egypt, one ram-god, Amun, was the ultimate creator of the Universe in one of the numerous Egyptian creation myths, while another, Khnum, fashioned human beings – especially future pharaohs – from clay on his potters’ wheel. The Egyptian example is instructive in another respect. The tetracephalic (four-headed) ram was a specific Egyptian iconographical motif of the New Kingdom Period (mid to late Second Millennium BC), associated with the four cardinal directions and the four seasons. Multi-headed rams were, then, apparent in other parts of the ancient world. Rams were also considered representative of Kingship in other ancient civilisations, and it is possible that our ram sculpture is meant to evoke something of the mercurial nature of charismatic leadership in the ancient world.

It is unlikely that we will ever know for certain what this object meant to the people who created it. The use of lapis lazuli, however, demonstrates its value to the ancients. Lapis lazuli was mined in a single valley, in the Sar-i-Sang region of northern Afghanistan. While this area was under the apparent political control of the BMAC, it is unlikely that such a barren and disparate region could have been kept under any form of meaningful control. The valley itself is hostile, with sheer walls, such that Nineteenth Century AD British travellers recommended that only those with a death-wish traverse it. People certainly would have died in the lapis mines, and the gemstone would have been prohibitively expensive. We must presume that this object was therefore of the greatest religious and cultural significance to the Bactrians. It is not, after all, a small lapis votive plaque or similar. This is, comparatively speaking, a huge and significant chunk of the semi-precious stone, the carving of which would have produced significant waste. The skill of the craftsmanship, and the significance of the material, must imply that this was intended for either a temple setting or the burial of a person of importance.