ibex

"We used to have 40 to 50 sheep, now we've only got four or five, and the reason is the threat from snow leopards and from ibex eating the grass," he says.

Among the rock drawings are many of ibexes, but also some that have been interpreted as depicting the tablets of the commandments or other references from the Bible.

An extraordinary silver vase for holy offerings is incised with line drawings of a lion-headed eagle, attribute of a rainstorm god, with two reclining ibexes and two lions clutched helplessly in its talons.

Beneath the philosophical welter, a new world glitters with prelapsarian strangeness: Gangs of plump cats raid administrative lobbies, chamois goats prance along train tracks, ibexes graze hotel lawns.

This summer, it opened a vistors’ center to view Alpine ibex, a species of wild goat with curved horns that lives in the Alps, one of the first attractions unrelated to skiing.