- Museum number
- 1880.183
- Title
- Object: Atlas
- Description
-
Atlas. The youthful atlas has his right leg vertical and turned outwards, the left almost horizontal, sloping below the knee; the tops of the boots curve downwards from the back and there are bands round the ankles. The wings extend to the legs, forming a backplate, and have two rows of short triangular coverts pointing inwards above the shoulders, while the longer flight feathers, resembling drapery, run mainly outwards to end in points. The arms extend from the body, the right forearm undercut, and the rather flat hands rest on the right knee and left thigh. The head is turned to its left, the broad and powerful chest with clear breasts is modelled down to the waist and large navel where the body slightly turns to the right. A garment with low terraced folds, revealing pubic hair, lies on both thighs and on the ground in a wide semicircle, while pleats from a knot behind hang behind the left knee. The thick wavy hair runs back behind the small projecting ears and, where the turn of the head exposes the neck, to the right shoulder. The prominent and rounded open eyes are set back below the eyebrows, the nose is chipped and the mouth, as if with compressed lips, droops at the corners; the features appear sharper and more angular than those of the similar BM 1880.179. The flattened top of the head must have rested under an architectural member.
- Production date
- 2ndC-3rdC
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 7 centimetres
-
Height: 22.90 centimetres
-
Width: 17.80 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Zwalf 1996:
Surviving stupas at Taxila and Hadda show registers with atlantes still in position. Stone atlas figures may also occur in groups (BM 1914.0502.2) as parts of a continuous horizontal alignment beneath and between architectural elements, or in compartment friezes with intervening pilasters and as figures in single small compartments.
Foucher, 1905-51: I, 208, 11, 45-6, calls the atlas, like the classicising amorino, a yakṣa and refers the winged variety to the classical genius and Victory figure, and like him Combaz explains it as a formal intrusion into an independent sculptural and religious tradition. For a discussion of the atlantes in Gandhāra and of the Jamalgarhi examples in particular see Errington and Cribb, 1992: 122.
- Location
- On display (G33/dc50b/s1)
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
Exhibition: "Alexander the Great: East-West Cultural Contacts from Greece to Japan", Tokyo National Museum, 5 Aug-5 Oct 2003; Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Kobe, 18 Oct-21 Dec 2003
- Condition
- 1.Light grey schist, broken, chipped and with soil incrustation.
2.Right foot and bottom left corner damaged; base partly flat and with short shallow chisel grooves.
3.Back with horizontal mason's grooves.
4.Smooth front of base with mason's mark.
- Acquisition notes
- From the Archaeological Survey of India, according to an old British Museum stand.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1880.183
