BIBLICAL BEAST OF BURDEN. This small bronze figurine, recovered from the island of Rhodes and now on display at the British Museum, depicts a bearded man seated firmly atop a kneeling camel. Both the camel and its Mesopotamian-style rider would certainly have been foreign to Iron Age Greece and it is therefore likely that the figurine was brought from the east, perhaps from Assyria. Despite its small size (it stands only 3 inches tall), the figurine offers clear evidence of the growing importance of the dromedary (one-humped) camel in the Iron Age Near East (1200–586 B.C.). As a beast […]
