4. Jar with Long-Horned Cattle

This jar was made to store a liquid, such as milk or beer. A long-horned cattle is incised on one side; the reverse depicts the same motif in abbreviated form, showing only the bucranium (bull's head). The jar was part of a funerary assemblage; both the functional form and the decoration allude to abundance and nourishment in the afterlife. Long-horned African cattle (Bos primigenius) were first domesticated in Nubia around 7000 BCE, near Kerma and in the Western Nubian Desert (other variants of the species also existed in Asia and Europe). Their descendants (domestic cattle) became important ritualistic symbols of power and fertility in several Nilotic cultures. For example Egyptian kings fashioned themselves as ‘strong bulls’ and consorts of the goddess Hathor, while Kerman kings deposited many bucrania in their tombs to assert their power. A Protodynastic jar with similar decoration was found at Aksha (Serra West) in Nubia in the tomb of an A-Group elite, pointing to barter or gift exchange between the Protodynastic and A-Group cultures.