This is one of an almost identical pair discovered by Leonard
Woolley in the 'Great Death Pit', one of the graves in the Royal
Cemetery at Ur. The other is now in the University of
Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. It was named the 'Ram in a
Thicket' by the excavator Leonard Woolley, who liked biblical
allusions. In Genesis 22:13, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice
his son Isaac, but at the last moment 'Abraham lifted up his
eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a
thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and
offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son'.
The 'ram' is more accurately described as a goat, and he reaches
up for the tastiest branches in a pose often adopted by goats.
Goats and sheep in the Near East were among the earliest animals
to be domesticated. They were an everyday feature of
agricultural life and are regularly depicted by artists in many
different ways. The figure had been crushed flat by the weight
of the soil and the wooden core had peri