Grave find from Attica (private collection)

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A late Neolithic grave find from Attica (around 5000 to 3500 BC) includes sitting idols without children, with two children or with one child on their backs, a deep, rectangular bowl and a four-legged friend.

The complex of finds was in the Swiss private collection of Charles Gillet and Marion Schuster in Lausanne in 1976 and was shown in the exhibition Art and Culture of the Cyclades Islands in the 3rd millennium BC. At the Baden State Museum in Karlsruhe . The find comes from a robbery excavation and ended up in the art trade; Attika was specified as the location in the first publication . The New York collector couple Leon Levy and Shelby White later acquired the pieces. Now the site was given as "allegedly from Euboia or the opposite east coast of Attica near Porto Rafti ".

According to Thimme, material ( marble ), weathering and sintering speak for a find from attic from the late Neolithic period. If you blast off the hard sinter, it leaves a healthy, but by no means fresh, surface. The x-ray examination revealed authentic, typical sintering features for all pieces. As unique as these idols are with the children, the surface observation and scientific analysis speak for the authenticity of the pieces.

Description and classification of the pieces

The idol with crossed legs (height 13.1 cm) corresponds in type to those seated idols that Saul S. Weinberg put together in 1951. A standing idol from the Henri Smeets collection is related in its head and upper body design. The somewhat slimmer shape of the specimen from the grave find suggests that it was made a little later.

The idol with the two children (height 15.4 cm), close to nature and moving beyond all known Neolithic idols of Greece, shows a remnant of Neolithic abundance in the leg design. Other features, such as the suggestion of the ribs, recur in idols of the Grotta-Pelos phase .

The further developed third idol (height 12 cm) has given up neolithic obesity and, despite the similarities with the figure above, seems to have been created by another master. The connection between late Neolithic features and the Grotta-Pelos phase is also convincing here.

Animal and bowl could be combined with sacrifices that were supposed to bring about the regeneration of the dead.

context

The closest parallels to Neolithic depictions of female figures with children (on their lap or on their side) come from Anatolia , where they are about 2000 years older; they cannot have been known to the sculptors of these figures. Clay neolithic depictions of mother and child from Thessaly look very different. Also a missing mother-child depiction from Tegea , around the same time . does not offer a good comparison option. However, these statuettes show that the theme of mother and child in the Neolithic and the beginning of the Early Bronze Age was rare, but known.

The question of who the characters represent with one or two children on their backs is just as unsolved as the question of contemporary role models. A seated posture is usually a divine attribute, Thimme thinks of divine nurses . On the other hand, the assignment of two children to one goddess is unique.

literature

  • Jürgen Thimme : Excursus 1: Grave find from Attica, late Neolithic . In: Jürgen Thimme (Hrsg.): Art and culture of the Cyclades islands in the 3rd millennium BC BC Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe, exhibition in the Karlsruhe Palace from June 25th - October 10th 1976 . CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1976, ISBN 3-7880-9568-7 , pp. 568-569 Fig. 189.
  • Joan R. Mertens: Some Long Thoughts on Early Cycladic Sculpture . In: Metropolitan Museum Journal 33, 1998, pp. 13-14 Fig. 10.

Individual evidence

  1. Jürgen Thimme (ed.): Art and culture of the Cyclades islands in the 3rd millennium BC Chr. CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1976, ISBN 3-7880-9568-7 , No. 4. 24. 25. 283. 429.
  2. Pat Getz-Preziosi, in: Dietrich von Bothmer (Ed.): Glories of the past. Ancient art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection . The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1990, ISBN 0-8109-6400-7 , pp. 13-15.
  3. ^ Saul S. Weinberg: Neolithic figurines and Aegean interrelations . In: American Journal of Archeology 55, 1951, pp. 121-133.
  4. Jürgen Thimme (ed.): Art and culture of the Cyclades islands in the 3rd millennium BC Chr. CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1976, ISBN 3-7880-9568-7 , p. 211, 419 No. 3.
  5. ^ Helmuth Theodor Bossert : Old Crete . Wasmuth, Berlin 1937, fig. 424.