A MARBLE FIGURE OF A COW CIRCA EARLY 3RD MILLENNIUM B.C.

拍品描述

A MARBLE FIGURE OF A RECUMBENT COW, CIRCA EARLY 3RD MILLENNIUM B.C. Carved in the round from a warm cream-toned marble, the animal is shown recumbent, its legs folded beneath the body and the hooves emerging in low relief along the flat base. The head is held upright and turned slightly, with a broad muzzle, closed mouth indicated by a single incised line, and almond-shaped eyes rendered by shallow drilled depressions within lightly carved lids. Small ears sit close to the crown, and a subtle ridge runs from between the ears down the length of the spine. The flanks are smoothly modelled, with soft creases at the shoulder and haunch suggesting the folded weight of the resting body. The surface retains a matte, weathered patina with scattered pitting and traces of earthen encrustation. The pose, compact and self-contained, belongs to a wider vocabulary of miniature stone animals produced across the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean in the earlier third millennium B.C. Such figures are typically found in temple deposits and burials, where they served as votive offerings, amuletic charges, or components of ritual furniture such as inlay panels and cosmetic vessels. The cow in particular carried strong associations with fertility, milk-yield, and the pastoral economy on which early urban societies depended, and appears in the iconography of several regional cults as an attribute of goddesses linked to nourishment and abundance. Marble was a considered choice of material in this period. Unlike the softer limestones and gypsum alabasters more commonly worked at smaller scale, marble required greater labour to shape and polish, and its use signals a commission of some quality. The stone's pale, dense body also gave the finished figure a tactile presence appropriate to its role as a dedicatory object, capable of surviving intact within a foundation deposit or grave for millennia. The restrained treatment seen here, in which the sculptor reduces the animal to its essential planes rather than pursuing anatomical detail, is characteristic of the period's approach to small-scale animal sculpture. This figure exemplifies the concentrated, planar naturalism of early third-millennium B.C. animal carving, in which the recumbent posture and generalised modelling produce an image that is at once recognisable and abstracted. It belongs to a tradition of votive animal sculpture that stands at the beginning of the long history of monumental animal imagery in the ancient Near East. Measurements: Length 10.5 cm

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