Rapid facts
Name: Kneeling
What is: A silver human hybrid statuette
Where he comes from: Ancient Elam, Southwestern Iran
When it was done: 3100 to 2900 BC
This 5,000 -year -old silver figurine represents a killing bull in a human pose and holding a shipped ship. It was made in the south Mesopotamia By someone from the proto-Élamite culture, the oldest civilization in Iran, and was probably used in a ritual or a ceremony.
The bull is in the collection of Museum of Metropolitan Art in New York. It measures 6.4 inches (16.3 centimeters) in height and was made at 98.5% pure money, according to a 1970 study By the conservative of the then, Kate Lefferts. Inside the hollow figurine, Leffets found five limestone pebbles, which were probably included by the artist to create a rattling sound. The fibers respected at the statue were made from animal wire.
In a 1970 studyDonald Hansen, then professor of fine arts at New York University, described the figurine as a remarkable mixture of partial and partial characteristics of animals. The beef head, with curved horns, rests at the top of the human shoulders, and the creature is dressed in a decorated dress that covers her kneeling legs. The tight arms of the bull are human but end with hooves which contain a ship. The figurine has no flat base, noted Hansen, which means that he could not have been held alone on a hard surface.
In relation: Haniwa Dancers: 1,500 -year -old ghostly figurines thought they were the souls of the dead
More amazing artifacts
The figurine was manufactured in Elam, an ancient region which corresponds to the southwest of modern Iran. This area was the seat of the proto -lamite, a civilization near the Middle East at the age of copper. Proto-Elamites have invented cylinder joints – cylinders that have been engraved with extras and have been used for administrative purposes – many of which represent animals in human -type poses. The kneeling bull has probably been made in this proto-election tradition of creating mythical but realistic-humans-Yeah animals.
We do not know why someone decided to do the kneeling bull five millennia. But the limestone pebbles inside the statuette and the adhering fabric suggest that it was used in a ritual or a ceremony, according to Hansen. It was even a “foundation figurine”. These articles were intentionally buried during the construction of proto-evil temples to symbolically mark the sacred soil. If the knee bull was created as a foundation figurine, it has never been supposed to be revised.
