Seal with narrative scene

The seals like this one were made by people of the Indus Valley civilisation between 2200BC and 1900BC. They are called "seals with narrative scenes". Except no one has a clue what the "narrative" is about. Example: this narrative seal depicts master of the animals...

I don't know who the guy is. A god? Possibly...But I know who the two animals are and what they represent...

The agricultural year in Indus valley is divided into two parts, two harvests, with two completely different crops: 

Kharif season (May to November) - wet season in Indian subcontinent

Rabi season (November to May) - dry season in Indian subcontinent

The bottom animal is Auroch, the wild Eurasian cattle, now extinct. It marks the period end of Apr, beginning of May. The beginning of Kharif season. This is our Taurus, which marks the beginning of the calving season of the Aurochs...

They are the "unicorns" depicted on Indus Valley seals like this one dated to ca. 2000 BC.

There is another type of cattle, unrelated to Aurochs which was also depicted on Indus Valley seals: Zebu cattle. Like the bull depicted on this seal dated to ca. 2000 BC.

These two symbols are interchangeable because mating of both of these two types of wild cattle took place during the Kharif season, May-Nov...

The top animal is Markhor goat.  

With Ibex goat

it marks the period end of Oct, beginning of Nov. The beginning of Rabi season. This is because the mating season of both Markhor goats and Ibex goats starts in Oct/Nov...

Here are zebu bull and goat (ibex this time) marking two growing seasons in Indus Valley on an Indus Valley civilisation pot. I talked about this in my post "Kharif and Rabi season"...

The whole bull (summer), goat (winter) has to do with their reproductive seasons. Wild cattle mate in summer. Wild goats mate in winter...I talked about this in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Oh yeah, one other very important thing. The grain sowing season in Indus Valley is Oct-Nov (Goat) and the grain harvest season in Indus Valley is Apr-May (Bull)...Kind of important to know if you are an early grain farmer and have no calendar...

Also the planting of the summer crops starts in Apr-May (Bull) and the harvest of the summer crops ends in Oct-Nov (Goat)...So is the man (god) whoever, on the left telling people when to start planting for each growing season?

As for the fish, have a look at the this seal 

and the post that discusses it: "Fig with bulls"

And that's all I have to say about this narrative seal...I think we now have a bit more narrative than we had before. Oh and "the master of the animals" seems to have gone away...Here is what I think about "the master of the animals". In short, there is no such a thing as "Master of the animals"...

More "masters of the animals" to be found in this paper, where the original seal drawing is from …

I will talk about few other items from this paper soon...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...