sculpture

This exceptional sculpture is carved from a fine calcite-alabaster; the hair on the top of the head has been roughly chiselled and the rounded face is dominated by a long prominent nose. The eye sockets were inlaid with shell and presumably stone for the pupils, and highlighted with a vivid blue eye-liner. This presumably reflects a common use of an eye-liner such as kohl, which continued to be popular even amongst men as a means of not only enhancing facial appearance but also reducing the effect of solar glare on the eyes. The composition of the eye-liner on this piece has been analysed and proven to be purpose-made strips of glass coloured with cobalt. Several other sculpted heads of this type are known from Southern Arabia, all of which were apparently found at Hayd ibn Aqil, the cemetery of the Qatabanian capital at Timna. The most famous and widely-reproduced of these is the so-called “head of Miriam” which was discovered in Tomb 10 at this cemetery in 1950 by an expedition from the American Foundation for the Study of Man. The blue inlays around the eyes on this head are reported to be of lapis lazuli, and thus presumed to be imported from the Badakhshan region of north- east Afghanistan as this was the only source of this material to be used in the ancient Near East. However, it is clear from anexamination of other examples from the collection of the National Museum in Sanaa and elsewhere that coloured glass was the normal form of coloured inlay in ancient Southern Arabia, and other excavated evidence for the use of lapis in this particular region is lacking.