Plaque with a Bull-Man Fighting a Lion
Unknown · Isin-Larsa or Old Babylonian period, first half of the second millennium BC
A small terracotta plaque, about ten centimetres tall, shows a creature with the head, torso and arms of a bearded man and the horns, ears, legs and tail of a bull locked in combat with a lion. He wears the horned crown of a divine being and his hair falls in a twisted lock. The two bodies are pressed together in a wrestling hold that fills the whole rectangle of the plaque. The relief was pressed from a single mould, so the crisp detail of the mane and the bull-man's beard was copied from a master model.
The bull-man belongs to the mythological cast of Mesopotamian art from the third millennium onward, a guardian figure who often fights lions on cylinder seals and appears later as a companion of the sun god. Plaques like this were cheap, mass-produced images kept in houses, probably for protection, and they are among the best evidence for what ordinary people in Babylonian cities chose to look at. The piece is thought to come from Eshnunna, modern Tell Asmar in the Diyala valley, and was purchased by the museum in 1930.
Did You Know? Because the plaque was pressed from a mould, dozens of identical bull-men may once have hung in the houses of the same city.
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