Modified Sheep Skulls From 3700 BC Found In Egypt's Mortuary Complex

Intentionally modified sheep skulls, gauged by the deliberate deformities, have been uncovered at the ancient mortuary complex in Hierakonpolis, Upper Egypt, dating to about 3,700 BC. Numbering 6 in total, these large, castrated male sheep were found with horns not oriented in the natural direction, i.e., laterally. In some cases, the horns were found to be removed completely, a practice that continues in most parts of the world even today, a practice now traced to ancient Egypt.

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Special by Castration: Upright, Parallel Horns Through Human Intervention

Led by Belgium researcher Wim Van Neer, the finds have been published in the latest edition of The Journal of Archaeological Science.

“The sheep were deliberately made ‘special’ by castration. In addition, their horns were directed upward, and in one case, the horns were removed,” provided Van Neer at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.

“The horns had been intentionally manipulated to grow upwards and in three cases this resulted in upright, parallel horns… the Hierakonpolis sheep provide the oldest evidence for horn modification of livestock, and the first demonstration of the practice applied to sheep,” researchers noted in the study.

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Evidence of skull modification has been observed on an ancient sheep skull dating back to around 3,700 BC (Wim Van Neer et al., Journal of Archaeological Science).

This practice was prevalent in ancient Egypt primarily because of the nature of society, which was agrarian, and sheep were employed through the pharaonic period, right till the predynastic period. In addition, domesticated cattle supported the nutritional requirements of the population, supplying meat, bone marrow, dairy, and fat (wool was not as widely sought owing to the hot, arid, climate). Most estimates suggest that sheep were part of Egyptian life from around 5000 BC after being introduced from the Near East, or Levant region.

Modification of the horns was a means of exercising greater control, protecting the handler from being gored to death, either deliberately or otherwise. To enable this, ancient Egyptians would fracture the bone and tie the horns together at the base to create a direction of moving parallelly, and upwards.

Depictions: Artistic Depictions Related to Economic Viability?

The oldest known artistic depiction of cattle with deformed horns are found at an elite tomb dating to the Old Kingdom of about 2686 BC to 2160 BC, reports The Independent. In terms of depicting sheep, or ram, there are several notable ones – the early temple at Abydos, for example, depicts “a ram modelled as a clay appliqué affixed to a tall ceramic jar stand”, and “two sheep with long spiral horns painted on a ceramic ritual vessel”.

From the time of the First Dynasty (3500 BC onwards), the frequency of the representations increased due to the incorporation of the ram or the sheep into the writing system in the form of a hieroglyph! At the same time, the sheep found its way into the religious system as an embodiment of various ram gods.

A sheep skull from ancient Egypt exhibits signs of modification (Wim Van Neer et al., Journal of Archaeological Science).

By the time of the Old Kingdom, roughly Fourth Dynasty (2600 BC) onwards, often touted as the ‘golden age’, agricultural scenes found their way to tomb walls, with “flocks of sheep trampling sown seeds”. Incidentally, in these depictions, the horn was the corkscrew-type variant. The ammon sheep appear by the time of the mid-12 th Dynasty (Middle Kingdom, 1991 BC) – the ammon had back-curving crescent-shaped horns, and was possibly a fat-tailed breed.

“Beginning in the Middle Kingdom, iconographic evidence documents the presence of the ammon-type, but the earliest physical evidence comes from the excavations at Tell el Dab’a, where most of the faunal remains date to the Second Intermediate Period. Out of a total of 25 individuals, 2 were of the corkscrew-horn type, 16 were male ammon sheep, 4 were female ammon sheep; there were also 3 hornless females,” write the researchers.

In fact, until the late New Kingdom (roughly 900 BC onwards), sheep with corkscrew horns were depicted among livestock resources. until the late New Kingdom, only to be replaced by the ammon, though the exact point of switching is unclear.

The study debates the prevalence of these depictions with economic viability and importance of the sheep – clearly, what was no longer integrated into the socio-economic setup was unlikely to be venerated in the same manner.

Top image: Ancient Egyptians modified sheep skulls so that their horns would grow upward rather than outward. Source: Wim Van Neer et al., Journal of Archaeological Science

By Sahir Pandey