Female idol with jewelry and costume. From Ludus, Serbia, Dubovac Culture. Terracotta (15th BCE). © lessing-photo.com. Height 20 cm. Inv. 10.439. From the Narodni Muzej, Belgrade, Slovenia.
Gustav Klimt would have loved the “skirt”.
I tag this as Big Eyes because it is very similar to other figurines which indeed have those strange eyes:
Terracotta statuette of woman with bird face. OASC The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Date: ca. 1450–1200 B.C. Culture: Cypriot. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 173. This figurine is typical of Cypriot coroplastic art of the Late Cypriot II and III periods. The type, with the pubic triangle accentuated and the breasts clearly shown, is likely of Syrian origin, but Cypriot sculptors created their own variations. Handmade and hollow, it has a shaved surface. Her eyes are pellets surrounded by rings. In each large flat ear are two perforations, each containing an earring; the lower ones have overlapping terminals. The infant stretches out its arms and has depressed circles for its eyes.
Three Syrian terracotta idols circa 2nd Millenium B.C. © christies.com
One with long cylindrical body, hands held up to chest, the bird-like face with applied disc eyes; one with flat body, arms outstretched, with dotted lines around waist and on necklace, and incised lines on high headdress; and one with flat outstretched arms, headdress and pierced ears
5½ in. (14 cm.) high max. (3)
Goddess | Pakistan (Quetta area) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Eye Figurines from Tell Brak, Syria, 4th millennium BC. Via eternalsymbols.com.
These figurines were excavated in the 30s of the former century, at Tell Brak, now North-East Syria, it used to be the ancient city of Nagar. Once, a temple was situated at the site and it appears that these “eye idols” were given as offerings, as thousands of them have been found. Hence the temple is called “the Eye Temple”.
Cucuteni Figurines (Romania). © Marius Amarie via archaeology.org. They, and many other figurines like them—such as the one pictured at right—were made by a people we know today as the Cucuteni culture, which lasted from 4800 to 3000 B.C. in what is now Romania and Ukraine. Some scholars have interpreted these lines as representations of body modification. “They could be tattoos,” says San Francisco State University archaeologist Douglass W. Bailey. “Some say they are clothes, or they could represent something else we don’t understand. We will never know for sure, but in a sense, that’s unimportant. What’s important is that they were using the surface of their bodies to communicate ideas, whether they related to membership in a group or individual identity.”
Female figurine with movable legs. Handmade. Bell-shaped body with modeled breasts, tall neck ending in a bird-like face. From Thebes. Early 7th c. BC. © National Archaeological Museum of Greece.
Four Astarte figurines. Clay (around 1000 BCE) Iron Age I. © Erich Lessing.
According to the source, they are from the Israel Museum.
Terracotta figurine recovered from a site at Charsadda Shaikhan Dheri, Gandhara, Pakistan. Made circa 2nd century BCE. Museum number: IS.20A-195. © Victoria and Albert Museum. Location: Ceramics Study Galleries, Asia & Europe, room 137, case R, shelf 3.
Pottery figurine from the Middle Euphrates EBIV 2400-2000 BCE. Photographed at The British Museum in London, United Kingdom. CC BY-NC-SA by Mary Harrsch via flickr.
