The staff carried by the Archbishop of Canterbury appears to be carved into the shape of a small animal resembling a guinea pig. It was presented to the future Archbishop by his former congregation in Liverpool Cathedral as a leaving gift – to remind him of the day he lost his composure and collapsed into a fit of giggles after he stumbled over a little-read passage from the Old Testament involving the creature.
The animal is a “Rock Badger” - or Rock Hyrax as zoologists prefer to say – which as Biblical scholars will know, features in some of the more obscure passages of Leviticus.