Terracotta Equid Figurines from Tell Arbid. New Evidence on Equids, Their Equipment and Exploitation in North Mesopotamia during Third and First Half of Second Millennium BC

Terracotta figurines are one of the few iconographical sources available for the study of equids, their breeding and exploitation in Northern Mesopotamia in the third and first half of the second millennium BC. However, the insights offered by this category of artifacts have largely been unrecognized by scholars, what is particularly conspicuous in the Khabur River basin, where equid figurines are very common finds. A detailed analysis of this type of figured documents, especially of the hitherto unpublished assemblage from Tell Arbid, shows that among details marked on the figurines were characteristics of the separate equid species, elements of their equipment and details pointing to certain breeding practices. What makes the equid figurines from the Khabur region even more interesting is the fact that that some of the details were not represented on Near Eastern equid depictions in other media (dorsal and shoulder stripes, strapping of genitalia), have been attested for much later periods (trappers) or have been known solely from written documents (saddle bags, marking of animals).