Wolf?

Plaque in the shape of a wolf (?)

Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Warring States Period, 8th-6th c. BCE, Ordos Region. Bronze with malachite inlay. The Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin. Inv. Nr. 1965-69

But is it possible that this is not a wolf, but a composite "beast"?

The first thing that looked weird to me was the hair on the animal's back and neck...I have seen this before and not on a depiction of a wolf.

Celtic Bronze boar statue from the sanctuary at Neuvy-en-Sullias (1st c. BC)...

And the real thing

Of course, wolves can also be seen with their hair standing up on their back when they are about to attack...So...

The second thing that looked weird to me was the tail...It didn't look like a wolf tail at all...

It looked like a snow leopard tail...

Or a Siberian tiger tail...

And the whole body,  kind of looked cattish not wolfish...

Of course, wolves also wag their tails, but according to this wolf tail dictionary, not when they are snarling and ready to attack...So...

The only kind of wolfish part of the animal could be the head, with the gaping snarling jaw...But then that could also be actually a leopard or a a tiger head too...

So not sure what is actually depicted on this plaque...

So maybe this is a composite animal, with wolf, wild boar and a leopard parts. Or maybe this is just a very very stylised depiction of a wolf with an aggressive arousal 🙂...

I personally think this is a composite animal calendar marker for winter, cause all of the above animals mate during winter:

Wild boar mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Tiger mating season starts in Oct/Nov...Beginning of winter...

Wolf mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

Leopard mating season starts in Jan/Feb...End of winter...

That's that. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...