including animal files, usually domestic animals, but also wild beasts who engaged in
combat.
Scenes of animal predation are documented among the earliest stamp seal imagery
(Von Wickede 1990 ). Most commonly a feline, lion or lioness, attacks a wild cervid,
goat, or less commonly a bull. During the transition to the first cylinder seals, these
animal combat scenes fell entirely out of favor. However, with the appearance of the
Late Uruk tablets, scenes of predation reappeared alongside scenes of production,
animal husbandry, transport of goods and the like. This scene of combat develops in
the Early Dynastic period to depict wild animals struggling with heroes which becomes
the single most common theme in glyptic art for the next seven hundred years until the
collapse of the Akkadian empire. While it began as a depiction of an actual event
probably symbolizing the competing forces in nature, by the Early Dynastic period its
meaning no longer referred to the actual struggle between felines and horned
quadrupeds but rather it was elevated to a symbolic plane that was probably associated
with the assertion of control over cosmic and real forces of nature and society. Both
its compositional structure and the details of its iconography evolved over the
centuries, but it remains remarkably central to glyptic iconography. While its precise
meaning is allusive, it is clear that is it associated with the court and official power.
By the ED II period, a phase known only through glyptic and other arts and not
through ceramics, the contest scene between felines and horned quadrupeds is
expanded to include several different heroic human figures who must have been players
in the current myths of the day. There is the nude hero wearing the belt, the hero with
erect curls, the bull man, and the human-headed bull who now engage in the struggle.
–– Holly Pittman ––Figure 16.13Ancient impression of City Seal on clay mass
(Ur. U. 14896 a. Penn Museum 31. 16. 604. Courtesy of Richard L. Zettler,
Associate Curator-in-Charge, Near East Section, University of
Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology)