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More Monkey Business

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Carole Mendleson
Carole Mendleson
Affiliation:
British Museum
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Extract

It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this short piece to Dr. Barnett. It was his original article, entitled “Monkey Business”, that led to this attempt to find out a little more about monkeys in ancient Mesopotamia.

In the collection of terracottas from Ur now in the British Museum there appear three types of moulded relief plaque depicting a man with monkeys. As far as I am aware, except for one plaque without a provenance, all the known examples come from Ur.

All the plaques clearly show a man with either one or two monkeys.

Type 1 (Pl. XXIVa) shows a bearded man facing right. He wears a close-fitting cap with a wide band and a wraparound skirt down to the calf, with a fringed side edge and a belt. He is bare-chested. In his left hand he holds a lead which is attached to the neckrings of two monkeys, one on his shoulder, the other seated in front of him playing a flute. In his bent right hand the man holds a folded-over object, perhaps another musical instrument (?clappers), possibly to be played by the second monkey which sits on the man's shoulder clutching his cap with its head snuggling down on the head of the man. Both monkeys are long-tailed.

There are three examples of this type of plaque in the museum, one almost complete and two fragmentary.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 33 , December 1983 , pp. 81 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1983

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References

1 Barnett, H. D.. “Monkey Business”, JANES, Vol 5, pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

2 Barrelet, , Figurines et reliefs en terre cuite de la Mésopotamie antique (Paris 1968)Google Scholar, pl. LXXXIII, no. 834.

3 UE VII, pl. 73 no. 89, p. 176.

4 Op. cit. p. 171.

5 The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden 1980) Vol. VGoogle Scholar, entry Kird, pp. 131–4.

6 Oppenheim, A. L., “The Seafaring Merchants of Ur”, JAOS 74, pp. 6–17Google Scholar.

7 Gadd, C. J., “Seals of Ancient Indian Style Found at Ur” in Proceedings of the British Academy XVIII, pp. 3–22Google Scholar, though nowadays the round seals he discusses are considered to be from the Persian Gulf not the Indus Valley.

8 MacKay, J. H., Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro (Delhi 1938), p. 293Google Scholar; a list of 23 monkey figurines found in Mesopotamia and Northwestern India appears in Ratnagar, S., Encounters: The Westerly Trade of the Harappa Civilization (Delhi 1981), pp. 150–1Google Scholar, accompanied by a discussion of monkey figurines and their trade in antiquity. None of the monkeys on the list is playing the flute.

9 R. D. Barnett, op. cit. p. 3, fn. 19.

10 Powell, M. A., “Ukubi to Mother… The Situation is Desperate” in ZA 68, pp. 163–195Google Scholar; Cohen, M. E., “The Monkey Letter: A Different Perspective” in Orientalia 45 (1979), pp. 270–4Google Scholar.

11 UE VII, pl. 73 no. 84. There is a figurine of a flute-playing monkey, from Larsa, which may be contemporary but which is thought by Barrelet (op. cit. pl. LVII, no. 606 and p. 324) to be of the first millennium.

12 Amiet, P., Elam (Auvers-sur-Oise 1966), pp. 210–11Google Scholar.

13 UE II, p. 336 no. 12, pl. 192.12, from PG 1054 one of the Royal Graves.

14 Klein, J., “The Sumerian Word for Monkey”, JCS 31 (1979), p. 153Google Scholar, fn. 23.

15 Klein, op. cit. p. 156. fn. 42.