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Headless Female Worshipper Statuette

2700 BC - 2600 BC
Gypsum
Khafajah
17 cm x 10 cm x 5.0 cm
A12334

Oriental Institute Museum

Artifact Description

Headless Female Worshipper Statuette

Scholars believe that worshipper statuettes were placed in temples to stand in perpetual prayer while their owners went about their daily lives. This headless female worshipper statuette is the earliest of its type to possess characteristics of what archaeologists refer to as the "abstract" style. The figure wears a garment with small triangular tufts. She holds a goblet in her right hand and dates in her left. She wears a bracelet on her left wrist.

Collected by

Henri Frankfort, Field Director of the Iraq Expedition
Excavated by The Oriental Institute 1933-1934

Multimedia

A Worshipper Statue
What is a worshipper statue and why did the ancient Mesopotamians use them? Learn the answer to this question and more with this interactive.

What is Conservation?
Ever wonder what a conservator does? Oriental Institute Museum conservator Laura Laura D'Alessandro tells you all about her job in this video.

Suggested Readings

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994.

Frankfort, H. and H.A., John A. Wilson, and Thorkild Jacobsen. Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1946.

Van Der Toorn, Karel. From Her Cradle to Her Grave. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.

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