A MESOPOTAMIAN STEATITE BULL EARLY DYNASTIC III, CIRCA 2500 B.C.

拍品描述

A MESOPOTAMIAN STEATITE BULL, EARLY DYNASTIC III, CIRCA 2500 B.C. Carved in the round from a mottled grey-green steatite, the recumbent bull is rendered as a compact, block-like mass with legs folded beneath the body and the head held forward. The muzzle is squared and projects slightly beyond the plane of the chest, the eyes indicated as raised discs set high on the skull, and the ears emerge as short rounded lugs at either side of the crown. The horns are broken or worn to stubs. The flanks are left largely undifferentiated, the anatomy suggested by broad planes rather than incised musculature, and the underside is worked flat to allow the figure to sit stably. The surface retains a granular matte finish with lighter mineral inclusions visible across the body, and the whole carries the softened contours characteristic of prolonged burial. The recumbent posture, the frontal disposition of the head, and the disproportionate scale of the eyes are conventions of Early Dynastic Sumerian animal sculpture, in which the bull is presented not as a naturalistic study but as a distilled emblem of the beast. Figures of this type were deposited in temples of the mid-third millennium B.C., often as votive offerings placed in the cellae of shrines at Nippur, Khafajah, Tell Asmar, and related sites in the Diyala region and southern Mesopotamia. The bull carried associations with divine strength and with the storm and moon gods of the Sumerian pantheon, and small stone images of cattle recur in temple assemblages alongside worshipper figures and inlaid furniture fittings. Steatite was a favoured medium for such small votive and amuletic sculpture in Mesopotamia and across the wider third-millennium trade sphere that extended to the Iranian plateau and the Gulf. Soft enough to be worked with copper tools and abrasives yet sufficiently dense to take a smoothed finish, it was the stone of choice for chlorite-schist vessels of the Intercultural Style, for cylinder seals, and for figural amulets. Its use here, in preference to the limestone and gypsum favoured for larger temple statuary, points to the scale and portable, personal-devotional character of the object. This figure exemplifies the reductive, emblematic mode of Early Dynastic Sumerian animal carving, where the bull is compressed into essential volumes and legibility of type takes precedence over anatomical detail. It belongs to a modest class of temple-deposited votives whose survival attests to the domestic and cultic presence of cattle imagery in the shrines of the third millennium. Dimensions: 5.5 cm

图片