This beautiful vase is not a Modern Art Masterpiece...It is almost 6000 years old, and is currently kept in Louvre, Paris in the "Département des Antiquités orientales"...
It was made between 4000BC and 3000BC by the people who lived in Susa, South Western Iran...
The goat depicted in the centre of the vase is our old friend, Ibex goat, The Goat of Rain...
The most depicted animal (calendar marker) in Iran...I talked about it in my post "Iranian goat of rain"...
Why was Ibex goat so important to ancient Iranians? Cause the beginning of the mating season of Ibex goats in this part of the world, Oct/Nov, coincides with the arrival of life giving rains, and with the beginning of the cool, wet half of the year...
Susa climate
Goats were so symbolically powerful, that kings, when they wanted to look really important, depicted themselves carrying baby goats...
I talked about this in my post "Goat carrier"...Follow the links in the article to read more about the the Goat of Rain...
So, Goat of Rain, animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov...
What about flamingos? This is Greater Flamingo
And in Oct/Nov, at the same time when The Goat of Rain starts mating, huge flocks of Greater Flamingos arrive from their northern breeding grounds in Central Asia, to their wintering grounds in the warm Southern Mesopotamian marshes...
Unfortunately, not for much longer...Thousands are caught every year by poachers in both Iraq and Iran and are sold either "alive, to people who want to decorate their gardens with living Flamingos" or "dead, to people who like eating roast Flamingos"...
Two articles about migratory bird (and flamingo) poaching in: Iraq and Iran...
Now Susa is located in Khuzestan Province.
When I started looking at the flamingos in Khuzestan, the first article that I came across was this one that talks about a mating colony of Greater Flamingos in Khuzestan Shadegan Ponds...
Flamingos mate there between April and August...So that screws up the interpretation of the Susa vase flamingos as animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov...
Maybe ibex mating season marks the beginning and flamingo mating season marks the end of the cool wet half of the year???
Well...
The problem is that all the papers about Flamingos in Iran are citing Lake Urmia as the main Greater Flamingo nesting ground in Iran...
For instance, in "Flamingos" By Janet Kear, Nicole Duplaix-Hall we can read that:
"Lake Rezaiyeh (Urmia) is the main Greater Flamingos breeding ground...Southern marshes (including Khuzestan Shadegan marshes) wintering grounds..."
The problem is that the lake Urmia has all but disappeared over last 20 years...
It almost completely dried out...
Which means that the Iranian Greater Flamingos had to find some other place to nest...Or die out...
The 2017 "Birds of Iran: Annotated Checklist of the Species and Subspecies" by Abolghasem Khaleghizadeh, Kees Roselaar, Derek A. Scott, Mohammad Tohidifar, Jiří Mlíkovský, Michael Blair & Pavel Kvartalnov, says:
"Greater Flamingo: Formerly an abundant breeding bird at Lake Urumiyeh, Azarbaijan...common winter visitor to...Khuzestan and entire south coast..."
But:
"recently found breeding in...Khuzestan (at Shadegan)"
So it seems that the birds now nesting in Khuzestan have moved there after their native habitats in Central Asia (listed in "Zoogeographical results of the bicentennial study of the northern part of the asian population of Phoenicopterus roseus" by Boris Yu. Kassal) and the ones in Northern Iran were destroyed...
And that at the time when the Susa vase was made, all the Greater Flamingos found in the Southern Marshes near Susa were winter visitors arriving in huge flocks when Goats of Rain started to mate, in Oct/Nov...
But I might be wrong...BTW this is just one of many vases from the same period depicting Goats and Flamingos...
Most likely not by accident...
BTW, at the same time when people form Susa, Iran, made their Ibex - Flamingos vases, someone in Naqada, Egypt, made this...Looks familiar?
I talked about this in my post "Markhor goat from Naqada"...
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