A History Of The World In A 100 Objects: No. 8

A History Of The World In A 100 Objects
Egyptian Clay Model of Cattle
Painted model, found at Abydos (near Luxor), Egypt
3500 bc

This item is a slightly crumbly clay model of four cows, it doesn't sound very relevant but cows were the first animals that were domesticated as a food source & the Egyptians greatly valued them as a commodity. They could use most of the cow & a man with a cow was considered the Rolls Royce owner of his day.
The cows were found around 1900 after an excavation of a grave/tomb in Southern Egypt not far from what is now Sudan & would likely have been buried with a high ranking official. Like the other things found in the grave they were put there deliberately & would have been intended to be useful in an afterlife. The cows were once painted as they are over 5,000 years old & were buried in a desert they've long since lost their colour & are now rather eroded. The statue/model isn't big & could fit into the palm of a hand of someone with quite big hands & the cows are only a few centimetres tall.
Egyptians took their burial rituals very seriously & when a body was entombed he would have been disembowelled, but then have his organs pickled & replaced, he would have been wrapped & laid out on a reed mat. The tomb would also have contained things that the spirit of the body could use in the afterlife, inc' plates, goblets, offerings for the Gods & a dagger or short sword so the cows, although they seem unusual that they would be put in a grave to us show the relevance that the Egyptians placed on them.