A 4300-year-old silver goblet discovered in the Palestinian West Bank features what researchers believe is the earliest known visual depiction of the universe emerging from chaos. The artifact, unearthed 55 years ago near Ramallah, illustrates a transition from disorder to cosmic order through two engraved scenes. Experts debate its ties to ancient myths, with some linking it to stories predating Babylonian texts.
The ˁAin Samiya goblet, standing about 8 centimetres tall, was found in an ancient tomb a few miles north-east of Ramallah at the western tip of the Fertile Crescent, a cradle of early civilisations. Discovered 55 years ago, its hammered silver surfaces depict two key scenes that archaeologists interpret as a creation narrative.
In the first scene, a large snake rears up facing a chimera—a figure with a human torso and animal legs—standing over a small flower-like circle. The second shows a snake lying on the ground beneath a larger, smiling flower-like circle held aloft, likely by two humanoid figures, though the goblet is broken and only one is visible today.
Researchers in the 1970s linked these images to the Babylonian creation myth Enūma Eliš, where the god Marduk defeats the primordial entity Tiamat to form the heavens and Earth. However, Eberhard Zangger at the Luwian Studies Foundation in Switzerland notes flaws: there is no battle depicted, and the goblet predates the myth's written form by about 1000 years. Alternative views suggest it symbolizes the new year's birth and the old one's death.
Zangger, along with Daniel Sarlo and Fabienne Haas Dantes, argues the scenes represent an older creation story. The first illustrates chaos, with the chimera as a weak, fused god and the small circle as a powerless sun ruled by a monstrous snake. The second shows order: gods separated into humanoid forms, holding a powerful sun in a 'celestial boat' above the defeated serpent, separating heavens from Earth.
Supporting this, cuneiform texts from the Fertile Crescent of similar age describe gods dividing the cosmos. “The incredible thing about the goblet is that we now have a picture of what they imagined this creation to have looked like,” Zangger says. “I think it’s an ingenious design. With very few lines, it tells a very complex story.”
Not all agree. Jan Lisman, an independent researcher in the Netherlands, suggests it depicts the sun's daily movement, not origins or chaos. Silvia Schroer at the University of Bern accepts a creation theme but questions claims of deep connections across regional myths, such as similarities to an 11,500-year-old celestial boat carving at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. “Even if there are similarities, there is not always a demonstrable influence,” she says.
The analysis appears in the Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society “Ex Oriente Lux” (DOI: in press).