The scarcity of attestations to the presence of monkeys in Mesopotamia in general, and during the third millennium BCE in particular, is due to the fact that they were not native to Mesopotamia but brought from the Indus Valley (Harappan culture) or western-central Asia. These monkeys have been identified as the rhesus macaque of northern India or western-central Asia, although other monkeys from the India subcontient might have been known during the third millennium BCE. The first references to monkeys in Mesopotamia during the third millennium BCE are found in artistic representations from the Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–2340 BCE) while the earliest mentions in the written sources are documented in the Ur III period (c. 2100–2000 BCE). In both sources, art and texts, monkeys are depicted as having a ludic character and were kept mainly as pets for entertainment. The monkey was therefore used in the written sources to ridicule the enemies that attacked Sumer, who in the third millennium BCE came fundamentally from the eastern mountains (Zagros), initiating a long tradition of the word “monkey” as a humorous or derogative qualification in the history that has survived to the present day.