Hands on the reins, a bronze rider sits poised on a crouching camel, prepared to lurch into motion. Domesticated camels have been known in the Middle East at least since the late second millennium B.C., when they helped expand trade across the desert lands. The earliest Near Eastern texts describing domesticated camels are inscriptions of the Assyrian king Assur-bel-kala (1074–1057 B.C.), which mention herds of camels as a sort of oddity. The oldest undisputed representation of an Aramean camel-rider—dating to the tenth century B.C.—was found at Tell el-Halaf in Mesopotamia. Although archaeologists discovered this sculpted dromedary, or one-humped camel, […]
