ASSOCIATED OBJECTS

Luristan finial representing the 'master of animals'

Iranian, Iron Age II

900 - 700 BCE

LFRD 3044

This Luristan bronze finial is a Janus style object, which may have been a talisman or totem. In Totem and Taboo, Freud had suggested that the totem animal represented the murdered primal father of the clan. Once a year, the clan would symbolically re-create the original murder by killing and eating the totem animal, thus incorporating the father’s strength.