Proto-Hittite Oxen and Cart
I was researching information about some of the objects I photographed at the Dallas Museum of Art and came across a picture of this elegant Proto-Hittite oxen-drawn cart, 2000-1800 BCE. When I first photographed the piece back in 2006 it was still quite corroded but I see the museum has since conserved it beautifully. Writing in a guide to the museum's collection, Anne Bromberg observes, "This bronze cart drawn by a pair of long-horned oxen is one of many examples of an artistic type well known from the early second millennium B.C.E. Such models were probably votive offerings, to be left in shrines, sacred caches, or tombs. They reflect the distinctive moment when men first used domesticated horses or cattle to draw wheeled vehicles, creating the beginning of powered transport on land. Although drawings of wheeled vehicles occur all over Eurasia, this seminal development in human culture probably originated in Mesopotamia or the Russian Steppes in the late third millennium B...