When archaeologists were excavating the site of Kish, one of the best-attested of the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, they could not be faulted for blind focus on the task at hand. Occupied from the Ubaid (began 5500 BC) to the Hellenistic (ended 30 BC) Periods, Kish is a treasure-trove of archaeological remains, and one of the most important ancient sites on the planet. But while the excavators were working on that site, in AD 1925, locals came to them with pottery and Cuneiform tablets from yet another, different, site some 26 km (16 miles) away. Luckily, the Assyriologist Stephen Herbert Langdon recognised the importance of these splendidly-decorated polychrome potsherds and Proto-Cuneiform tablets. When he returned with the locals to a site they knew as Tell Jemdet-Nasr, he realised that the unique assemblage formed in this town, over a relatively short period of time, were distinctive enough to constitute an entire sub-culture. Named for its type-site, the Jemdet Nasr culture. Sadly, Langdon, who was hardly a conscientious archaeologist, never completed the excavation he began there; a month into the dig, he caught an incurable fever, and work was stopped prematurely. Subsequent seasons at Tell Jemdet-Nasr, and at other sites in southern Iraq, revealed the geographical extent of this sub-culture, which was limited to a small area near the outflows of the Tigris and Euphrates, as well as its remarkable artistic and cultural achievements. It took a mere five years for the Jemdet Nasr Period to be officially recognised by an archaeological conference in Baghdad.

Among the most delightful of the remains of the Jemdet Nasr Period are small figural representations of cattle. Cattle were, of course, central to the economy of Mesopotamia. Early evidence indicates that cows were used not unlike money; when metallic representations of value were first created, they were formed in the shape of cowhides. While cattle were used for meat, and perhaps very occasionally for milk or – given the lack of refrigeration – cheese, the real economic importance of cattle was as a beast of burden. Oxen and other bovines were used far more frequently than horses or donkeys for the pulling of carts. The invention of the wheel, in Bactria-Margiana or Mesopotamia around 4000 BC, enabled the transportation of much greater volumes of goods over land, and cattle provided the power to do this. And cattle had important religious connotations. In the oldest tale passed down to us in a near-complete form, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the main character Gilgamesh spurns the advances of the goddess Ishtar (Inanna in the Akkadian version). Angered, the goddess goes to her father Anu. She threatens to raise the dead to eat the living if her father does not deal with Gilgamesh, and his companion Enkidu. Anu sends the Bull of Heaven to fight the pair; Gilgamesh, through skill and cunning, defeats he bull, and taunts Ishtar by throwing its hind leg at her. Anu then sentences Enkidu to death (why he does not sentence Gilgamesh in the same way is unclear). Thereafter, the Bull of Heaven became the constellation we now know as Taurus. The importance of the Bull in the Gilgamesh narrative – this scene sets up most of the action for his subsequent exploits – reflects the centrality of cattle in Mesopotamian societies.

This figure of a calf takes a form not infrequently found for seal-stamps in Jemdet Nasr. A bull-calf, with refined facial features which mix the masculinity of a bull with the rounded slenderness of infancy, rises erect from the body. The body itself takes a flat, ovoid form, with bulges representing the hind quarters, and with the legs folded underneath it. However, this sculpture is significantly larger than a seal-stamp, and far too heavy to have been used as such. The underside of the sculpture is smooth, and so it is possible that this figure was some kind of votive object which takes on the form of a seal for ritual reasons. The depiction of a calf in Mesopotamian art may have a number of meanings. Certainly, it may simply be a reflection of the economic and social importance of cattle; artists often choose things that are important to themselves and their people for a subject. But, since most ancient art had a religious or political meaning, we may push this analysis further. The goddess Ninsun was considered the ‘lady of the wild cows’ (nin-sumun), and in fact, all the goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheon were considered to have a bovine aspect. Ninsun was closely associated with motherhood, reproduction, and pastoralism. A calf, then, would be a good votive offering to her. In the complex genealogies of the Mesopotamian gods and demigods, Ninsun was usually referred to as the mother of Gilgamesh. Perhaps, then, an artist might choose to depict the demigod as a calf, in an act of playfulness, given the role of the Bull of Heaven in Gilgamesh’ own tale.