Upside down

Another Elamite seal. Iran. From "The Elamite Cylinder Seal Corpus, c. 3500–1000 BC" by Karen Jane Gordon. This one even more amazing...

On the right we see a deer, a fallow deer, common to Iran...

On the left we see a goat, a markhor goat, common to Iran...

So why do we have a fallow deer and markhor goat side by side upside down? Climate and animal behavior again...

The climatic year in Elam is divided into dry season (May-Oct) and wet season (Nov-Apr)...

The driest part of the year is August. There is no rain and the snow runoff from the Zagros mountains has finished. I talked about the climate and water in Iran in my post "Winged bull with ibex horns"...This is also the time when fallow deer start their mating season...

The rains arrive at the end of October beginning of November. This is also the time when markhor goats start their mating season...Is this the symbol for flowing water next to the markhor goat?

The time when fallow deer mate is, for the farmers, the time of death...The time when markhor goat mate is, for the farmers, the time of life...Knowing this, I personally think that the seal was most likely viewed like this: markhor up, life, fallow deer down, death...