basis of the form of their decoration alone. Unlike some other types of objects, very few of this group have been found by the archaeological explorations. They may also have been used with perishable elements that have not survived, either as additional decoration or to hold the ensemble together. Many ideas for their function have been suggested, without any general consensus being reached; one persistent suggestion is that leafy or flowering branches were inserted to top them. The numbers surviving suggest that the objects were not rare, and may have been affordable by most families. Taking the groups in what is now generally considered to be their broad chronological sequence, the first are the "animal finials", with two rampant confronted animals, generally a pair of large-horned ibex (or goats or mouflon sheep) or felines, facing each other with a central tube or open rings (formed at the junctions of their front and hind feet) between them. The bezoar ibex (capra aegagrus aegagrusis), the local wild species of goat or ibex, was already domesticated millennia before; it has large curved horns with knobbly ribs. Compared to later types, the animals are more naturalistic, especially the ibex group, though not so much that their precise species can be very confidently determined. In some examples the figures are "demons", with human features except for their large horns. The next group is a less common type, often called the "idol standard". Here the feline "animal finial" type has in addition a detached human head in between the two heads of the animals, held by their front paws. The designs have become openwork, with enclosed spaces formed by the human head and the head and neck of each feline, and others by their hind legs. The meaning, if any, of this group is unclear, but they seem if anything to reverse the meaning of the next, much more common group, called the "master of animals standards". These have a fuller figure, now seen down to the waist with an essentially human shape (including what may be divine and "demonic" figures) in between the two animals, grasping them to form the Master of Animals motif, already over 2000 years old at this point, and a mainstay of iconography in the art of Mesopotamia. Now the arms of the human usually extend to grasp the necks of the animals. All the figures are highly stylized, and often