Nineteen Holy Land Pottery Heads/Figures

Near East, Southern Levant, Holy Land, Assyrian to Roman period. A collection of nineteen pottery figural fragments from the Holy Land, dating from the Assyrian to Roman period, including one or two unknown. Terracotta figurines are among the most abundant and least monumental survivals of Levantine antiquity, pressed in single-valve molds by the hundreds and discarded or buried once their purpose was served. The Iron Age II pillar figurines of Judah, the Persian- and Hellenistic-period "Astarte" plaques, and the later Roman mold-made types form a continuous, overlapping tradition in which a single workshop mold could be slowly degraded until the features blurred into the generic masks seen on several fragments here. Because the heads break cleanly at the neck, detached examples circulated widely in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as study material, and grouped assemblages like this one preserve a useful cross-section of fabric, mold sharpness, and stylistic drift across many centuries. Item # 204593

Estimate:$350

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorPorcelain & Pottery