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A Relief of a Bull from the Early Bronze Age

A depiction of a bull in low linear relief was noted on the base of a holemouth jar from Bethyerah while assembling sherds to complete the vessel.' The vessel (fig. 1) was unearthed by the University of Chicago expedition of 1963, directed by Professor H. Kantor and the late Professor P. Delougaz.2 The jar is handmade, with a wide, flat base and a rim terminating in a sharp edge; the color of the clay varies from brown to grey, and the same clay, diluted, served as a wash. The jar measures 0.37 m in height and 0.42 m in width. It may be attributed to the second or third phase of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000-2500 B.c.), although on typological grounds alone, since the material from the excavation is still unpublished, and absolute dates are not fixed for the occupational strata. The position of the relief is puzzling. It seems unlikely that the relief is a potter's mark; usually these were placed on the shoulder or the handle where they would be visible. Nor is relief decoration suitable for the base of a jar used to store grain. Although this relief is low enough not to impair the vessel's stability, it certainly would have been invisible while the vessel was in use; the wash that still covers the well-preserved decoration suggests that the vessel was moved infrequently. The base of the vessel is in the shape of a disk to which bands of clay were added during the construction of the jar. It is possible that during construction the base was pressed on a flat surface bearing an incised design, thus producing the low linear relief (fig. 2). Incised stones bearing representations of human beings and animals are known from Early Bronze Megiddo (Loud 1948: pls. 271-81) and Arad (dated to EB I by Amiran 1972: 86); and the technique of impressing a design while the clay was leather-hard was also familiar to potters of the period, as evidenced by the use of cylinder or stamp seals. Many seal impressions were found at Beth-yerah, as well as at other EBsites (Ben-Tor 1978: 2; Epstein 1972: 209-17; Schulman 1976: 17, fig. 1). Whether the design was stamped intentionally is a question that we cannot answer; however, the relief itself is interesting and its style probably was influenced by the cylinder or stamp seals of the period.