Vase-hog

thanks photographer m-l nguyen via wikimedia commons. PD:US

Between 3300 and 3100 years ago, a craftsman in what's now Iran decided to fashion an alabaster vase.  The page for this artifact at the Louvre identifies it as a piglet or hedgehog, but it's clearly the latter to me.  Hedgehogs were sacred animals to the people of ancient Iran, because they ate ants and other troublesome bugs; the Zoroastrians believed hedgehogs were good beings combating the bug manifestations of evil.  Here is what their scriptures (the Zend-Avesta) say about these creatures, which they mistakenly considered a
type of dog:
* * *
Holiness of the dog Vanghapara ('the hedgehog '). . .
1. Which is the good creature among the creatures of the Good Spirit that from midnight till the sun is up goes and kills thousands of the creatures of the Evil Spirit?
2. Ahura Mazda answered : 'The dog with the prickly back, with the long and thin muzzle, the dog Vanghapara, which evil-speaking people call the Duzaka; this is the good creature among the creatures of the Good Spirit that from midnight till the sun is up goes and kills thousands of the creatures of the Evil Spirit.
3. 'And whosoever, O Zarathustra! shall kill the dog with the prickly back, with the long and thin muzzle, the dog Vanghipara . .  .kills his own soul for nine generations, nor shall he find a way over the Kmvzid bridge, unless he has, while alive, atoned for his sin.