Stoned mouflons

Post on twitter: A Byzantine-era mosaic from Antioch (modern Turkey), with a repeating pattern of ram's heads facing each other (some wearing expressions that I can't say I have ever seen on a sheep before). It was part of the border of a now-lost central image.

First reply: Maybe they grazed in a field of poppies...

In this article I will try to give a possible meaning of this "strange" image...

First, the sheep depicted on the picture are Anatolian Mouflon wild sheep. 

Male and female herds of Anatolian wild sheep stay separate from each except during the mating season, which starts in November, with rams fighting each other over the right to mate with the females...

Sooo???

Like everywhere else where we find strange mages like these, it is advisable to check the local climate, to see if there is any correlation between the behavior of the depicted animals and the climate...

Antioch was an ancient Greek city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. Its ruins lie near the current city of Antakya, South Eastern Turkey.

The climatic year in the area is divided into hot and dry part (May-Oct) and wet and cool part (Nov-Apr)

The crazy loud head-butting of the wild rams coincides with the arrival of late autumn rains...Which bring life back to perched land...

Interestingly, the sheep give birth usually in Apr-June after 5 months of average gestation period...Right during poppy flowering and then harvest season...In Taurus...I talked about the poppies on Anatolian artifacts the their link to the Bull riding gods in my article "Poppies"...

Interestingly, the time to sow opium poppies in Turkey varies, according to local climatic conditions, between September and December...The poppies are planted "right after the first autumn rains"...You can read more about this in this UN report "The Cultivation of the Opium Poppy in Turkey"

Right when the wild sheep start their crazy head-butting. 

It is this rain brought by the head-butting mouflon sheep that enables poppies to grow...

Which curiously links the planting seed for poppies with mating of wild sheep. And harvesting of poppies with lambing of wild sheep...

Poppies and wild sheep...

Intoxicating love...

Or maybe whoever made the mosaic just liked sheep and flowers...