by Mary Harrsch © 2026
This terracotta wheeled animal, likely representing a ram, which I photographed at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago, was found at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna), House XXXI, Room 14, and dates to the Akkadian period (ca. 2330–2150 BCE). Objects like this blur modern distinctions between toy, amulet, and ritual object.
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| Tell Asmar (House XXXI), Akkadian period: Wheeled ram with differentiated head and facial features, reflecting its role as a domestic toy-amulet used in everyday household religion. Photographed at the Institute of the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch. |
Unlike similar wheeled animals recovered from Early Dynastic temple contexts—such as those from Khafajah’s Temple Oval II, where they functioned as votive offerings dedicated to a deity—this example comes from a domestic setting. Its findspot within a private house suggests it belonged to the sphere of household religion, where families actively sought divine protection for their children within the home.
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| Khafajah (Temple Oval II), Early Dynastic period: Wheeled animal votive with barrel-shaped body and minimally defined head, emphasizing symbolic presence within a formal temple precinct. Photographed at the Institute of the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago by Mary Harrsch. |
The choice of a ram is significant. In Mesopotamian symbolism, the ram conveyed strength, vitality, leadership, and divine protection, and was associated with major protective deities such as Enki/Ea and Shamash. As a wheeled object, it was meant to be pulled along the floor—likely by a child—making protection dynamic and continuous, embedded in daily life rather than confined to formal ritual moments.
This object illustrates a broader Mesopotamian pattern: concern for children’s survival and future was addressed both publicly in temples and privately in the home. The same symbolic language—animals, motion, and clay—was adapted to different ritual settings.
By contrast, ancient Egypt followed a different path. Wheeled pull-toys are extremely rare there before the Middle Kingdom and are almost never associated with temples. Egyptian parents instead relied on amulets, figurines (such as Bes or Taweret), and magical texts to protect children.
For the Predynastic period, we have no texts, no depictions, and no securely identified ritual objects that can be tied specifically to children acting as ritual participants. There are no scenes of children in cultic processions, no identifiable “novice” priest figures, no votive objects clearly framed as children’s offerings within cult spaces, and no architecture indicating spaces for child instruction or residence within ritual precincts.
Representations of children in ritual settings do not appear in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom, and more clearly in the New Kingdom. At that point, young musicians and singers appear in temple processions, trainees are attached to priestly households, and child figures associated with gods such as Harpocrates (Horus the Child) enter formal divine iconography.
Crucially, these developments postdate the Predynastic period by over a millennium and coincide with fully institutionalized temples, formal priesthoods, and state-sponsored ritual economies.
This contrasts sharply with Mesopotamia, where children’s objects appear in both temple and domestic religious contexts by the Early Dynastic period.
This modest clay ram also reflects a technological difference: Mesopotamia’s early adoption of the wheel, and its integration into both ritual and play, produced a distinctly different material expression of childhood and belief. It is therefore more than a toy. It is a material expression of parental hope—shaped by hand, rolled across a household floor, and entrusted, day after day, with the protection of a child in an uncertain world.
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