Seated Female Statuette of the Tell Halaf Type
Seated Female Statuette of the Tell Halaf Type
This hand-modeled statuette represents a seated woman characterized by generous, although stylized shapes. Her bent legs are drawn back towards the body, her long arms frame huge breasts.
5th millenium B.C., 6th millenium B.C.
H: 7.2 cm
Out of stock
Product Description
This hand-modeled statuette represents a seated woman characterized by generous, although stylized shapes. Her bent legs are drawn back towards the body, her long arms frame huge breasts, the neck is surmounted by a small head, which was modeled by simply pinching the clay between two fingers.
The decoration is composed of thick horizontal and vertical lines of reddish brown color, which highlight a number of anatomical details and/or suggest the presence of tattoos.
This statuette belongs to the so-called Tell Halaf culture (from the name of a famous site in northern Syria, excavated in the 1930s). The frequency of female representations with generous shapes attests of the importance that the agro-pastoral communities of the time gave to fertility and fecundity as principles of survival. Established before the beginnings of agriculture and the development of urbanism, this female symbolism, associated with the male counterpart represented by the bull, spread all throughout the East and the Mediterranean.
