This intriguing ceramic sculpture is a votive figure from the middle of the first millennium BC, and represents a deity in the Phoenician pantheon. It has been heavily encrusted with calcareous deposits following its long immersion in the Mediterranean, but the general form is visible, and is also highly unusual. The piece is unusually short and slender, and is elongated from front to back by the extraordinary base. The figure is seemingly female, wearing a long garment of some sort and with her hands flexed up into her body (perhaps in the standard Phoenician gesture of benediction). It is the base and the pose of the figure upon it that is especially unusual, however. The base is oblong, with ornate tapered edges and excised semicircles cut into the inferior borders. The figure is standing right at the back of the base, in the style of Egyptian figures on oblong blocks, a resemblance which is heightened by the fact that the figure’s feet are in the traditional profile stance – one behind and slightly ahead of the other when viewed from the side. 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 high degree of encrustation adds rather than detracts from the piece’s presence.

Antiquities
Ancient Near East