This imposing ceramic sculpture is a votive figure from the middle of the first millennium BC, and represents a deity in the Phoenician pantheon. It is an unusual form for the genre, and would seem to be a good example of the stylistic debt owed by the Phoenicians to the Egyptians of the Late Period. The piece comprises a bald man standing towards the back of an elongated oblong/oval tiered base, with his feet together and raised on a slight eminence. The figure is comparatively undifferentiated, with little surface detail. The mass is comprised of a long tunic that reaches down to the knees and to the wrists. The hands are damaged, but one seems to have been raised in what is usually assumed to be benediction, while the other rests on the hip/side. The neck is long, supporting a rounded head with a strong face, an angular nose, closed eyes and slightly pursed lips. The general “look” of the piece is unlike most other Phoenician shrine figures that we have seen. The rather austere, bald head, the knee-length tunic and the vertical pose on the elongated base are all Egyptian in origin; it is rare to find a Phoenician piece with such an overt debt to Egyptian styles, for while they are known to have borrowed from the Egyptians, their artworks usually have more in common with the Archaic Period Greek statues that their work indirectly inspired. The back of the piece is almost completely plain, implying that it was always meant to be viewed .from the front rather than in the round, which is appropriate for figures destined for shrines. The piece has attracted some calcareous encrustation from its long immersion in the Mediterranean.

Antiquities
Ancient Near East