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A Crowned Head and a Statue of a Child from Mesopotamia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Extract

The Assyrian Room of the British Museum contains several cases of objects (almost all unpublished) that throw light on the Hellenism of Mesopotamia: the bronzes are chiefly statuettes of Olympian deities, perhaps imported from Egypt or elsewhere, but the stone sculptures and terracottas, however Greek in style, are as often of Asiatic as Greek subjects. Of those that are purely Hellenic in subject a terracotta statue of a male child and a marble head (both in Wall-case 20) are the most striking, though aesthetically among the least successful members of the collection.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1926

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References

page 113 note 1 I am publishing some of these in Later Greek Sculpture, Pl. cv.

page 113 note 2 I have to thank Dr. H. R. Hall and Mr. Sidney Smith for leave to publish these objects and for discussing them with me.

page 113 note 3 In Greece the crown of olive was ‘given chiefly at Athens, and then by small civic corporations and by religious associations, rarely by the boule and demos, unless to inferior personages or for trifling services’ (Hussey, , Papers of the American School at Athens, v. 18861890, p. 135).Google Scholar

page 114 note 1 The coins illustrated belong to the British Museum and are photographed from casts supplied through the courtesy of Mr. E. S. G. Robinson.

page 114 note 2 I am treating the monument of Antiochus of Commagene as typically Parthian, and its ‘snow-man’ heads in the round as fair specimens of the school's ambitious work (Hamdy-Osgan, Tumulus de Nemroud-Dagh, have better views of the heads than Humann-Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien).

page 114 note 3 Cumont, Cat. No. 36.

page 116 note 1 No. 91837; now placed next the other boy. Preserved from neck to thighs; the surface is much worn, and it is hard to decide whether the cord across the breast bore a suspension. Coarse, sandy clay of the greenish hue common in well-baked Babylonian pottery.

page 116 note 2 Myres, , Handbook of the Cesnola Collection, pp. 128, 185, 259, 361Google Scholar; illustrations on pp. 185–7. 259.

page 116 note 3 Ibid., pp. 305, 529.

page 117 note 1 B.C.H., xlvi., 1922, Figs, on pp. 224–31, 237, 245–7.

page 117 note 2 Bulle, , Schöne Mensch 2, Pl. 191 r.Google Scholar; Collignon, Statues funéraires, Fig. 122.

page 117 note 3 Thera, iii. p. 58, Fig. 43.

page 117 note 4 National Museum, Athens, Nos. 693–6; Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1917, pls. Ia, II; Jahresh., iv., 1901, p. 211, Figs. 227, 228, tail-piece; Collignon, op. cit., Figs. 119–22.

page 117 note 5 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1917, p. 241, Fig. 3.

page 117 note 6 Syria, v., 1924, p. 47, Pl. XVII; Contenau, , Civilisation Phénicienne, p. 111.Google Scholar

page 117 note 7 Helbig, Führer, i., Nos. 439, 681, 702; Hausenstein, , Bildnerei der Etrusker, Pls. XLIII–XLV.Google Scholar

page 117 note 8 In Constantinople Museum. Rev. Arch. 3, xxxv., 1899, 2, p. 206, Pl. XIX.

page 117 note 9 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1909, p. 165, Fig. 14 (Epidauros), Fig. 15 (unknown).

page 118 note 1 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1917, p. 78.

page 118 note 2 Conze, , Attische Grabreliefs, Pls. CLVI, CLVII, CLXI, CLXVIIGoogle Scholar; cf. a fifth-century stela at Park, Brocklesby, Waldmann, , Gr. Originale, Pl. LXXVIII.Google Scholar

page 118 note 3 An epigram (Anth. Pal., vii. 564) that recounts the restoration of a statue of one of Priam's daughters to her tumulus can be set aside on the ground that the girl had become heroised, whilst another epigram (vii. 649) to be placed on the sepulchral statue of a girl who died unmarried does not state her age, though Greek custom renders it probable that she was immature.

page 118 note 4 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1917, p. 85, Fig. 12.

page 118 note 5 Cougny, , Anth. Pal. Appendix, p. 37, No. 82.Google Scholar

page 118 note 6 Herodas, iv. 6; I.G. iii., Add., 171b; Bergk, , Carm. Pop., 47Google Scholar; Jayne, , Healing Gods, p. 247.Google Scholar

page 118 note 7 Podaleirios and Machaon are mentioned as ῾Ελλήνων ἄκρα λόγης, or as Λεωμέδοντος οἰκίην τε καὶ τείχη πέρσαντες, ἰητη̑ρες ἀγρίων νούσων.

page 119 note 1 Kenyon and Murray sought a parallel on the Assteas vase, where a girl looks up at an apple on the serpent-guarded tree of the Hesperides, but any connection of this scene with Asklepios could only be symbolical.

page 119 note 2 Apart from the mention of Batale's manner of walking (a recognised test of virtue among the ancients), the women have informative names, as quotations from Hesychios will show: for Batale cf. Βάταλος—καταπύγων καὶ ἀνδρόγυνος, κίναιδος, ἔκλυτος for Myttes cf. Μύτις—ὁ πρὸς τὰ ᾿Αφροδίσια ἐκλεκυμένος, and Μύττυες—οἱ ἔκλυτοι καὶ παρειμένοι and Μυττὸς—τὸ γυναικεȋον μόριον. One of the visitors is called Phila and the other Κυννώ a hypocoristic form of Κύννα, which was originally the name of an Amazon, but is explained by both Hesychios and Photios as ὄνομα πόρνης (Headlam-Knox edn. of Herodas, p. 186). Batale's statue was an expensive gift, doubtless vowed for recovery from a disease.

page 119 note 3 Another child by Boethos was preserved in the Heraion at Olympia (Pausanias, v. 17, 4); the fact that it sat naked before an Aphrodite suggests an Eros Apteros.

page 119 note 4 Svoronos states (Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1917, p. 88) that this name cannot have been that of a mortal woman, ignoring the inscriptions, C.I.G. i., Nos. 781, 946, 1021.

page 120 note 1 Cougny, , Anth. Pal. Appendix, i. 55.Google Scholar The stone is reported to have come from the Peloponnese.

page 121 note 1 Such practices as are recorded of Tiberius (Suetonius, Tib. xliv.) were not unusual in the Levant, but would scarcely have been feasible with children of more than a few weeks old.

page 121 note 2 Typical stelae are those of Kephisodotos at Argos, (J.H.S. xi. 1890, p. 101)Google Scholar, Poseidippos at Piraeus (Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1910, p. 75, No. 4), Plangon at Munich (No. 199; Conze, Pl. CLVI; Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1909, p. 124, Fig. 2), Philokrates at Palermo, (Einzelaufnahmen, 564)Google Scholar, Kleitomachos at Constantinople (Mendel, Cat. 17); cf. Praxiteles' child at Olympia and the Athens stela from the Ilissos with funerary group.

page 122 note 1 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1913, p. 202, Fig. 11.

page 122 note 2 No. 380; Einzelaufnahmen, 66.

page 122 note 3 No. 505; Furtwängler, , Sammlung Sabouroff, Pl. XXXV.Google Scholar

page 122 note 4 Ἀρχ. Ἐφ., 1909, p. 133, Pl. V; Collignon, , Statues funéraires, p. 196, Fig. 123Google Scholar; Krahmer dates early third century, Röm. Mitt. xxxviii–ix., 1923–4, p. 159.

page 122 note 5 Cat. Silver Plate, 7; Krahmer dates circa 240, op. cit., p. 161, note 1.

page 122 note 6 J.H.S., ix., 1888, p. 72, Pl. X.

page 122 note 7 Bulle, op. cit., Pl. 191 r.; Collignon, op. cit., Fig. 122.

page 122 note 8 No. 490; Einzelaufnahmen, 1992; Lawrence, , Later Greek Sculpture, Pl. XXI.Google Scholar

page 122 note 9 Exhibition of Greek Art, Burlington Club, p. 23, Pls. I, XXIX; Walters, , Art of the Greeks, Pl. LVII, 2.Google Scholar

page 122 note 10 Helbig, 681; Hausenstein, , Bildnerei der Etrusker, Pl. XLIV.Google Scholar

page 122 note 11 Helbig, 702; Hausenstein, op. cit., Pl. XLIII.

page 122 note 12 Lawrence, , Later Greek Sculpture, p. 17, Pl. XXII a.Google Scholar

page 122 note 13 Alinari, 28070.

page 122 note 14 No. 450; Lawrence, op. cit., p. 110, Pl. XXII b.

page 122 note 15 J.H.S., xxix., 1909, p. 157, Fig. 9.

page 122 note 16 Lawrence, op. cit., p. 111, Pl. 1.

page 123 note 1 Hausenstein, op. cit., Pl. XLV.