Kneeling bull holding a spouted vessel

What you see

What you see

A small silver figure, 16.3 cm high: a bull clothed in a robe decorated with a stepped pattern, holding a spouted vessel. According to the museum's description it blends human and animal traits: the large neck meets distinctly human shoulders, which taper into arms that end in hooves. This page has no photograph: the museum has a public-domain image of the figure, which is not included in this round. Source 1.

What the record says

The record dates the figure "ca. 3100-2900 BCE", and its period and culture fields read "Proto-Elamite". Of the geography fields only the region is filled, "Southwestern Iran"; country, city, locale, locus and excavation are empty. The credit line is "Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1966", and the page as read showed no text under its provenance tab. The museum's description opens with a wider context: soon after the political transformations of the Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia, similar innovations (writing and cylinder seals, the mass production of standardized ceramics and a figural art style) developed "around the city of Susa", and in Iran they took on distinctive Elamite characteristics. Source 1.

What can and cannot be said

The museum writes that the function of the figure "remains uncertain". Traces of cloth found affixed to it "suggest" that it was intentionally buried, "perhaps" as part of a ritual or ceremony; that is a suggestion, not the record of an excavated context, which the record does not give. According to the description, animals in human postures were common in Proto-Elamite art, "possibly" as symbols of natural forces "but just as likely" as protagonists in myths or fables. "Southwestern Iran" is the region to which the museum attributes the figure, not where it was found, and "Proto-Elamite" is a cultural attribution, not a place of manufacture. Source 1.

Placement on the timeline

The record's range, 3100-2900 BCE, lies entirely within the site's Early Bronze Age in Iran, so the figure is assigned to it by date range. On the Met's timeline for Iran the Proto-Elamite period, about 3100-2900 BCE, sits inside the Early Bronze Age, about 3500-2000 BCE, and overlaps Susa III; the figure itself is listed there among the page's works of art. The date and the cultural attribution come from the catalogue, not from an excavated context; the place is even less certain, since the record states no findspot at all. Sources 2, 1.

Where it is now

Held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, record 66.173, in the department of Ancient West Asian Art; purchased in 1966. On 24 October 2026 the record stated "Not on view", and the gallery number field was empty. Source 1.