One of the earliest Egyptian gods about which we know was Khnum. Present in the first written records of Egypt, the ram-headed creator god was one of the most significant deities of the Old Kingdom. Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and perhaps the most powerful monarch of Egypt’s early years, dedicated himself to the god in his full throne name, Khnumkhufyw (‘Khnum is my protector’). There is no wonder that Khnum was significant from an early period. He was, after all, one of the ultimate Egyptian creator deities. Whereas Ptah, the Memphite creator god, brought things into existence simply by speaking their names, Khnum used his skill on the potter’s wheel to form beings – especially human beings – and their spirits. For the whole of Egyptian history, well over three thousand years, Khnum was considered the deity who created the Pharaoh before his birth, and who imbued him with the qualities necessary of the kingship. Worshipped as a riverine deity, appropriately enough given his connection to the Nile clay in which he worked, Khnum was predominantly known from the major sites of Upper Egypt, deep in the heart of the country.

The association between rams and birth in Egypt and throughout the Near East was an obvious one. Sheep were important livestock for many ancient peoples – especially in Mesopotamia, where the customary clothing was the kaunakes, a woollen cloak – and their life-cycle was intimately connected to our own. Because of their relatively small size, sheep were often kept within the house, in an area separate from the living quarters by a step or low wall, and were far less expensive to purchase and maintain than the other major livestock animal, cattle. Sheep’s milk and cheese was commonly consumed throughout the Fertile Crescent, rich in fat and a good alternative to the more scarcely-used cow’s milk. The birth of lambs in the Spring was symbolic of renewal and rebirth, as it was for the later Judaeo-Christian tradition. The ram, as the generative partner in the creation of this new life, was therefore an important example of the masculine fertile energy. Aggressive, almost violent, in their lovemaking, rams were also characteristic of the restlessness and combative nature of masculinity – a feature also emphasised by the use of their horns in dramatic displays of rivalry.

This cup, a deep granite vessel, employs an early figurative representation of a ram on one side. Similar to the product of Sumer, this ram cup testifies to the imaginative use of animal imagery by Predynastic Egyptian artists, and also to the wide trading connections which already existed at this early period. With the exception of the ram protome, the cup is plain, steeply rising from a flat foot through an elegant curve to a rolled over rim. This form is well-known from the tombs of the Predynastic Period, and is assigned Petrie’s number 83 (Petrie, W. M. F. (1937) The Funeral Furniture of Egypt, with Stone and Metal Vases. London.). The ram, however, is exceptionally finely carved, with fine details like the wrinkles of the nose and the raised eyebrows executed with phenomenal skill. The ram depicted is a long extinct breed of Egyptian barbary sheep, the Ovis longipes palaeoatlanticus, which is characterised by curled horns held close to the head. This breed was originally associated with Khnum, but later became closely linked to the supreme deity of the New Kingdom, Amun. Instead, later depictions of Khnum depict him as Ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiacus, another breed of barbary sheep, but whose rams are characterised by horizontal spiralled horns.