LATE AKKADIAN, CIRCA 2254-2154 B.C.

This rich green stone is finely carved with addorsed figures holding the hindlegs of inverted animals, including a muscular, nude, bearded hero with a water buffalo and the bull-man with a snarling lion. The torsion of the creatures and the strength of the man/bull-man were indicative of the dynamic style of the Akkadian period, which replaced the earlier conventional form of the Early Dynastic III period. As B. Buchanan explains (p. 145 in Early Near Eastern Seals in the Yale Babylonian Collection), seals with "gods or heroes or bullmen, each opposed by a horned animal or a lion... seem to emphasize the power of individual creatures, stressing their overwhelmingly human aspect even if they were depicted as divine." For a similar example with figures holding animals by their limbs, see no. 417 in Buchanan, op. cit.