Leopards

What animal would you say this is? When you see this painted design for the first time, it is hard to recognize it as a leopard. The animal is painted with chain-like repetition of the same imagery, decorated with dots both inside and outside of the outline. It was painted on the rim of a vase to form a ring around the rim Mallowan, Max E.L., and J. Cruikshank Rose. Prehistoric Assyria: the Excavations at Tall Arpachiyah 1933. London [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 1935. Print. pp. 164.

Its identification as a leopard originates from an educated guess made by Mallowan and Rose in 1933 and has stuck around in scholarship since then. The leopard is not present or touched upon as a zooarchaeological record in Arpachiyah, however, a leopard bone was found in Catalhoyuk, TurkeyGrimbergen, L. The social uses of animals in the Halaf Period: On the meanings of animal remains and animal representations. Leiden University, 2016. Unpublished. pp. 68..

The interpretation and identification of this pottery sherd is debatable. Mallowan and Rose’s interpretation conveniently fits a narrative in which a leopard was familiar to the kings of Assyria, and Sargon of Akkad during the Babylonians Mallowan, Max E.L., and J. Cruikshank Rose. Prehistoric Assyria: the Excavations at Tall Arpachiyah 1933. London [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 1935. Print. pp. 164, although it is a stretch to overanalyze the reasons behind using leopards as a design choice. Do you think leopards were observed by the Arpachiyah people 7000 years ago? Or could this odd animal have been a mythical creature from oral tradition, like unicorns are to us?