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The Great Lyre Continued…<br />
• The trapezoid-shaped sound box underneath the bull’s<br />
beard bears four inlaid panels depicting feasting imaginary<br />
composite creatures and is composed of contrasting shell<br />
and bitumen. The first panel from the top features a heroic<br />
human-headed bearded bull embracing other human<br />
headed bulls in a heraldic composition, or in a symmetrical<br />
fashion on either side of a central figure, all shown in<br />
partial profile (Parchin, 1). The other three panels depict<br />
animals attending a funerary banquet such as a scorpionman,<br />
a dog carrying a laden table, a lion serving beverage,<br />
and an ass playing a lyre, all shown in profile. Parchin<br />
contends that the mixture of human and animal features in<br />
some of the figures in the scenes “represents a<br />
Mesopotamian belief in power over the physical world by<br />
combination of various species' physical attributes”<br />
(Parchin, 1). The meaning of the sound box scenes is<br />
much debated among scholars, but some have suggested<br />
that the animals in the scenes are of the dead world and<br />
that “the narrative has a funerary significance”.<br />
(Kleiner, 25)
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