Ibex and Leopard

Do you want to buy this Sumerian cylinder seal from Late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr Period, Circa 3200-3000 BC?  Too late. Someone already payed 23,500 $ for it...

Anyway, I would like to talk about the meaning of the scene depicted on the seal...

Christie's describes the scene as "lioness attacking a goat on a rocky landscape...with a tree growing behind the lioness". Well it's actually a leopard attacking a Bezoar goat...You need to know your animals if you want to understand what the makers of this seal wanted to convey

The climate in Mesopotamia is divided into dry season (May-Oct) and wet season (Nov-May). It is the rain (and snow in the northern Mesopotamia and Armenian highlands) that falls during the wet season that makes life possible in Mesopotamia...

Bezoar goats mating season starts in Oct-Nov and ends in Jan-Feb...And because the beginning of the mating season of the Bezoar goats coincides with the beginning of the rain season, they were used as a solar calendar marker to mark this significant annual event...

Western Asian and Central Asian leopards mating season starts in Jan-Feb...The end of winter. The coldest, wettest and darkest part of the year in the Northern Hemisphere...Which is why Leopard is a symbol of dark part of the year and is opposed to lion which is the symbol of the light part of the year...Because of the Eurasian lion's mating season which starts (or once started when these lions still lived in Europe and Western Asia) in August, the end of summer, the hottest, driest and brightest part of the year in the Northern Hemisphere...I talked about leopards in my article "Leopard and tiger" and I talked about lions in my article "Entemena vase"... 

So Leopard mating season starts at the end of the Bezoar goat's mating season...Leopard's mating season "follows" Bezoar's mating season...Hence Leopard "attacking" Bezoar goat from the back...

It is the rain season, which spans Bezoar mating season and Leopard mating season, that is the "green" season in Mesopotamia...The season represented by the "Tree of life" (or just a tree full of green leaves enjoying the rain)...