Furniture element: human head

Unknown

ca. 18th century BCE · Ivory (hippoptamus) · Ancient Near Eastern Art

This fragment belongs to a group of carved ivories, mostly furniture elements, probably found at the site of a palace at Acemhöyük in central Anatolia. Carved in the round, the piece shows a beardless human head with short but voluminous hair. The eyebrows meet in the middle above large, wide-open eyes, in which the pupils have been drilled to receive inlays in another material, now missing. The nose is prominent and the mouth is small and tight-lipped. The top of the head is flattened and drilled with a vertical hole, probably for attachment to another element. The pink staining of this piece indicates that iron oxides are present on the surface, although it is not known whether this was a deliberate decorative treatment, or a result of contact with the soil in which this and other pieces of carved ivory from Acemhöyük were buried.

Artist

Unknown

Date

ca. 18th century BCE

Medium

Ivory (hippoptamus)

Culture

Old Assyrian Trading Colony

Department

Ancient Near Eastern Art

Credit line

Gift of Mrs. George D. Pratt, in memory of George D. Pratt, 1936