Goat buried in Great Death Pit but resurrected in House of Ashes
In the Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes I came across a mysterious creature, long buried and forgotten, who was rediscovered and reborn, before transcending into the immaterial realm and crossing over into a parallel dimension…
Screenshot from The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes PC game. (Supermassive Games)
Only fleetingly appearing in House of Ashes, at first glance to me this looked like some sort of demon with long gangly fingers, but upon closer inspection it is in fact a goat standing on its hind legs, peering through a bush. An accurate recreation of an actual Sumerian statuette known as the ‘Ram in the Thicket’.
Sir Leonard Woolley, who excavated the statuette in the late 1920s, named it ‘Ram in the Thicket’ in reference to a biblical tale, ‘The Binding of Isaac’ (from which the game called this also takes its name). It is from Genesis 22, wherein God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to him. The story goes that whilst Abraham was pondering this over, he found a ram with its horns caught in a bush, so took this as a sign, burning it as an offering in place of his son. The naming decision somewhat makes sense, as the bible says that Abraham came from Ur, and that is where this statuette was found.
“The Ram in the Thicket “ (The British Museum)
The Sumerians were a Civilisation that arose around the 4th Millenium BC. They created the earliest cities, of which Ur was one of the most prestigious. Its modern day remains are at Tell el-Muqayyar (Arabic: تل ٱلْمُقَيَّر) in southern Iraq. It once stood near the mouth of the Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf (although the coastline has now shifted), providing its people with water, floodplains for their crops, and a means of transportation. Permitting Ur to serve as a centre of trade, with extensive resources, wealth, and power. Encouraging craftsmanship of items such as the ‘Ram’ to flourish and to be found by us thousands of years later in the form of astonishingly elaborate funerary remains.
The statuette was made between 2600-2400 BC, making it around 4500 years old. The face and legs of the ‘ram’ are inset with gold leaf, as is the tree in front of it and the stand holder coming out of its back. Its belly is silver, its ears a copper alloy, and its eyes, horns, and the fleece on its shoulders are of lapis lazuli, a deep blue, semi-precious stone.
“Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.”
The longer strips of fleece on its body are made from white shell. And the base of the stand is covered with a mosaic of white shell and red limestone.
Top and Bottom of the Ram at the Penn Museum. (Penn Museum)
It was found alongside its almost identical twin, both have an upright pole emerging from their neck, so they were probably originally the base of a stand, perhaps supporting a tray. One is now kept at the British Museum in London, the other at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, USA. As these were the two institutions who jointly funded Leonard Woolleys exploratory expeditions and archaeological digs.
A reimagining of the table that ‘The Ram in the Thicket’ pair may have supported. The ram on the left belongs to the Penn Museum and the ram on the right to the British Museum.
The Great Death Pit
During these excavations vast cemeteries were discovered at Ur, a few discernible as specific individual’s tombs, but many difficult to decipher from limited written records or damaged remains. Some tombs were named ‘Death Pits’ by Leonard Woolley as they were found to contain numerous human sacrifices. Thought to be members of a household who had sacrificed themselves in order to be buried with their master or mistress. The ‘Ram in the Thicket’ pair were discovered within the ‘Great Death Pit’, so named because it contained such a large number of bodies, 6 males and 68 females!
The human remains were often found with small vessels, thought to have contained poison, but some skeletons had fractured skulls as if clubbed to death, perhaps because they had refused to imbibe the poison or it had failed to take effect. There are all sorts of morbid speculations to be made. Whether these were Royal tombs, wealthy private individuals, priests and priestesses or offerings to the Gods, is still debated to this day.
The Ram as it was discovered in the Great Death Pit at Ur. (Penn Museum)
Ur Excavations (1900) by the joint expedition of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia. (Internet Archive)
Markhor in a Thicket
A Buz-Baz artist making Markhor puppets dance to the dombra.
The spiralling horns have led archaeologists to believe that the ‘rams’ are in fact Markhors (Capra falconeri), a native species of South and Central Asia. They can often be seen standing in this fashion as they feed on leaves in the wild.
Markhors have been an iconic animal across cultures within these regions for generations. In Afghanistan there is a traditional form of musical goat puppetry called ‘Buz-baz’ (‘goat-play’). As a musician plays Afghan folk music on the dombra (a long-necked string instrument), they tie the strings of wooden markhor goat puppets to their fingers, making them dance in time to the music as they strum.
Markhors are also the national animal of Pakistan. The name is thought to come from Persian, combining mâr (مار, "snake, serpent") and khor (خور, "-eater"), to make ‘markhor’, a snake eater. There are myths about markhors eating and killing snakes, perhaps due to their long, coiled, snakelike horns. And so, people are said to have collected the foam that fell from the mouth of the markhor whilst it was chewing the cud, believing that the goats were chewing snakes, and that this foam must therefore act like some sort of antivenom!
A female Markhor and her kid feeding from a tree. (Indus Caravan)
Unfortunately, because of this supposed power to protect against serpents they were heavily hunted for their medicinal properties, as well as for their horns, which were and still are desired trophies, apart from being killed for their meat and hides. Plus, much of their native territory exists in regions where people have gone through extended periods of warfare which obviously aggravates everything. Leaving the markhor with a current IUCN status of Near Threatened. Luckily conservation efforts are starting to be carried out to ensure that they do not become as rare as these Sumerian representations of them are!
So much history and extra content to what at first seemed to be nothing but an odd little bit of background decoration in a video game! Which brings me back to where I spotted the ‘Ram’ and what triggered me to write this article in the first place…
The Goat Paradox in House of Ashes
In the Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes, which is based somewhere in the Zagros Mountains, which run along the border between Iran and Iraq. The initial scene is set in Akkad, the city which was the centre of the Akkadian Empire. The Akkadians were the civilisation that took over Mesopotamia after the Sumerians. The precise location of Akkad is still unknown, so fair play with the geographical ambiguity there. We are at the Palace of Naram-Sin, who was an Akkadian King who reigned from 2254-2218 BC. The ‘Ram in a Thicket’ was made around 2600-2400 BC and excavated from a burial site in Ur at the end of the 1920s. Ur is over a hundred miles from the Zagros Mountains…
Map of the Kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The Zagros Mountains, where House of Ashes is set, are clearly far away from the city of Ur. (World History Encyclopedia)
The game then jumps forward a few millennia to American marines fighting in the Iraq war, who are on the search for weapons of mass destruction but instead inadvertently discover the buried city of Akkad. Whilst searching for a way out they find research notes and artifacts excavated by a team of archaeologists who were in Akkad in the 1940s. Resulting in them going past a statuette on a table that looked suspiciously identical to the ‘Ram in the Thicket’!
‘Ram in the Thicket’ in the buried palace of Naram-Sin in the city of Akkad, somewhere in the Zagros Mountains, in The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes. (Supermassive Games)
In which case it would have had to have been a third copy of the ‘Ram’, if the game were to be set in our timeline. As there would not have been any other way for it to have been dug up in a pit in Ur in the 1920s whilst also simultaneously being excavated in Akkad, somewhere in the Zagros Mountains, 20 years later. Otherwise, the game is most definitely set in an alternate reality for the statuette to possibly be there. It is of course all mad sci-fi anyway so purely fiction, but I felt some burning need to reason it out nonetheless!
Regardless, it was a nice little reminder of this beautiful artifact, the attention to historical detail was highly immersive, and it was great to see that the Game Devs from Supermassive Games put the extra effort in to recreate the ‘Ram’ digitally. Along with numerous other real Sumerian artifact based easter eggs. Which I encourage you to hunt for in the few breaths you have between quick time events!
To me this is truly the pinnacle of human creativity. When for some reason over thousands of years, hundreds of generations, we have really honed in on this one type of goat! The markhor has travelled across millennia through every possible medium. Growing from a flesh and blood animal into a mythical beast who eats snakes and dribbles antivenom. From a wooden puppet, dancing to music, amusing children in a village, to a golden statuette buried with Sumerian Royalty in their human sacrifice filled Death Pits! Before transcending into the immaterial realm and crossing over into a parallel dimension by being reconstructed into a digital form for us to view in The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes…
The Markhor really is one hell of a boundary breaking, death defying, little goat!
References
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