Statue National Museum Karachi 50,852
The statue National Museum Karachi 50852 , often called priest-king called, was in Mohenjo-Daro found. It is 17.5 cm high and about 11 cm wide. The movement is made of steatite . The lower part of the statue is missing, so today it is just a bust. The figure is considered to be the main work of art of the Indus culture (2800–1800 BC) and is repeatedly depicted in the context of this culture.
The statue shows a bearded man with his upper lip shaved. The lips are wide. The eyes are narrow, the nose is long and partly broken away. The ears are reminiscent of shells. There is a hole on each side of the neck that may have had a chain attached to it. The forehead is unnaturally narrow and decorated with a headband. The sitter is wearing a cloak decorated with a cloverleaf pattern. The ornaments on the robe were once filled with a red paste. The now empty eyes were once inlaid with shell inlays. When it was found, there was still a shell inlay in one eye. The back of the head is cleanly polished and beveled. Perhaps a headgear made of other material was appropriate here.
The statue was found in 1927 by KN Diskshit in the lower town of Mohenjo-Daro, in Chamber 1, in Block 2 in a context that points to the late phase of the Indus culture. The figure belongs to a group of six other sculptures from the city, each of which shows a kneeling man. The right, uncovered arm lies on the right leg, while the left hand is partially covered by the cloak and encompasses the knee. All statues come from a late context. The Priest-King will certainly once have been shown in the same pose. Various men can be seen in almost the same pose on a silver cup that was seized from the art market in Kabul . On the cup there are also depictions of agriculture, which in turn indicates that the men are at a kind of harvest festival.
The shamrock pattern is also used in other parts of the Indus culture, especially on pearls. It is also known from Mesopotamia , Egypt and Crete and had a religious meaning in all countries. Wheeler therefore suspects that a god or priest king is depicted here. The interpretation as a priest-king is very speculative and cannot be proven by any facts. Other interpretations are also possible. It could be a statue of a person praying or figures that were used in an ancestral cult.
Individual evidence
- ^ Mortimer Wheeler : The Indus Civilization , Third Edition. Cambridge 1968, pp. 86-87
- ↑ Alexandra Ardeleanu-Jansen: Aspects of the platischen art of the Harappa culture , in: Günter Urban (Hrsg.): Forgotten cities on the Indus. Early cultures in Pakistan from the 8th to the 2nd millennium BC Chr. Von Zabern, Mainz am Rhein 1987, ISBN 3-8053-0957-0 , p. 177
- ^ John Marshall : Mohenjo Daro and the Indus Civilization , Volume I, London 1931, pp. 356-357 online
- ↑ Ardeleanu-Jansen, in: Günter Urban (ed.): Forgotten cities on the Indus , pp. 175–177
- ^ Wheeler: The Indus Civilization , pp. 86-87
- ↑ Massimo Vidale: A “Priest King” at Shahr-i Sokhta? , in: Archaeological Research in Asia 15 (2018), p. 112