Large-footed cup with decoration of wild goats

Creatures resembling goats and ibexes form the principal decoration of this large, stemmed drinking cup. The ibex's most prominent attribute is a pair of impossibly long horns that extend to the cup's rim. The goat's horns curl backwards and are counterbalanced by the downward pull of a long beard. The goats have been compared to the wild bezoar goats of the Iranian highlands. Their bodies are taut and agile, and with their erect heads these animals seem ready for action.

This large-footed cup was made during a peak period of prehistoric pottery production in Persia in the fourth millennium BCE. During this time potters included animal designs more frequently than previously and combined them creatively with geometric motifs on a range of vessel shapes, including jars, bowls, and footed cups. This drinking cup, which was likely used for social occasions, resembles similar ones excavated at Tepe Sialk near Kashan, a western Iranian city famous for its ceramics production much later during the medieval Islamic period. Tepe Sialk is an important site for archaeologists, since it was occupied for several millennia (from the sixth through the first millennia BCE). Cups from Tepe Sialk usually depict animals in silhouette and geometric frames. The animals are either stacked vertically or arranged in a row along a ground line, as seen here. Simple geometric designs, like the cross-hatched columns here, frame the animal motifs and direct the viewer's eye toward them. The potter has concentrated the panel-styled decoration on the straight-walled upper part of the cup, while leaving the slightly convex lower part undecorated. The concave foot has stippled motifs, leading the eye upward and also counterbalancing the fullness of the decoration above.