Serpentine bowl decorated with recumbent lions

sketchfab

BLMJ 04564 Late Uruk - Jemdet Nasr period, roughly between 3300 and 2900 BCE in Southern Mesopotamia's Uruk. The bowl is carved with exceptional skill in stylized relief, showing lions and calves crouched before a reed hut roof(?), which is topped by two reed poles. Similar scenes of striding lions and bovines are seen on seal impressions from the city of Uruk. On this bowl, the poles are capped with a single rolled-up reed bundle forming a volute. This type of cult reed pole was found only in archaic Uruk, and is identified as the symbol of An, Sumer's god of heaven, since it appeared on blocks at the false door of the cult repository beneath the ziggurat of An.