Sumerian Limestone Plaque Pendant w/ Incised Canines

Near East, Mesopotamia, Sumerian. A pale limestone plaque of irregular, roughly trapezoidal outline, its smoothed obverse incised with a pair of lean quadrupeds in profile, likely wolves or a related predator, one striding forward with pricked triangular ears and a punched eye, the second reduced to a hindquarter and a tightly coiled, spiral-curled tail. The linear draughtsmanship is spare and confident, the grooves cut with a fine point into a stone described as a magnesian marly limestone, its surface now softened to a warm biscuit tone. A suspension hole drilled through the reverse indicates the plaque was worn, perhaps as an amulet in which the predators served an apotropaic role. Animal friezes of this economy belong to the visual vocabulary of Early Dynastic Sumer, where the hunt and the beast recur on seals, plaques, and inlay. The Early Dynastic period (roughly 2900 to 2334 BCE) gave Mesopotamia its first sustained repertoire of animal imagery, carried above all on cylinder seals, votive plaques, and shell and stone inlay from the city-states of Ur, Lagash, Kish, and Mari. Predators there are rarely decorative: lions, dogs, and wolf-like canids appear locked in contest friezes, guarding herds, or flanking heroes, and small carved pieces bearing such creatures were plausibly worn for protection as much as for display. The coiled or curled tail seen on the second animal is a recurring convention of Sumerian linear engraving, a shorthand that resolves the problem of a long appendage within a cramped field rather than an anatomical observation. Item # 204765

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