- Museum number
- 1910,0620.3
- Description
-
Terracotta head from a statue of an almost life-size warrior with conical helmet, in Neo-Cypriot style; hollow, hand-made with modelled details; full face with a pointed nose and slight chin; eye-sockets defined by ridges, painted black; the slightly raised eye-balls are also emphasised with black paint; featherered eye-brows; the lips are painted red and show no expression; the ears stand out from the line of the face, the lobes are clearly indicated; the right ear is damaged, but the left preserved the remains of spiral earring; below the line of the helmet on the forehead is a row of curls with incised chevrons; at the back of the head on each side are two thick strands of hair with incised details, the black panel in between may be hair or a back-flap of the helmet; the helmet is painted red with side-flaps edged in the same colour; the knob-like point on the top of the head may indicate that the helmet was metal; the head is broken from the body at the level of the shoulder, but a raised ridge on one side represent, trimmed in red, is part of a garment or else a shoulder guard of some sort; the skin is painted in a buff-red colour.
- Production date
- 625 BC-600 BC
- Dimensions
-
Height: 33.02 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Masson 1964, 221ff and Buchholz 1991 summarise the excavations at Tamassos-Phraggissa in 1885 (also Ohnefalsch-Richter 1993 passim for a first-hand account), while Buchholz and Untiedt survey the city-kingdom as a whole. See Karageorghis Coroplastic III passim for further examples of large-scale teracotta sculpture on Cyprus. Also Hermary 1991 (see pl. XXXVIII, d-e) for the broader issues of the development of large-scale terracotta sculpture on Cyprus and inter-regional influences.
Bibliography:
Buchholz H.-G. 1991, 'Tamassos-Frangissa (1885)', CCEC 16 (1991/2), 3-15.
Buccholz H.-G. and Untiedt K. 1996, Tamassos. Ein antikes Königreich auf Zypern. SIMA Pocket-Book 136 (Jonsered).
Hermary A. 1991, 'Les débuts de la grande plastique chypriote en terre cuite', in eds F. Vandenabeele and R. Laffineur, Cypriote terracottas. Proceedings of the First International Conference of Cypriote Studies (Brussels-Liège), 139-48.
Masson O. 1964, 'Kypriaka I. Recherches sur les antiquités de Tamassos', BCH 88, 188-238.
Ohnefalsch-Richter M. 1893, Kypros, the Bible and Homer (London).
- Location
- On display (G72/dc5)
- Acquisition date
- 1910 (group)
- Acquisition notes
- The registration group GR 1910,6-20.1-23 was originally deposited on loan at the BM in 1886, part of the collection of antiquities loaned by Warren to the Cyprus Court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London the same year (see Lang 1886, 36-8). Following his death in Canada in 1910, his executors sold the deposited material to the Trustees for £15 (see GR Trustees Reports, 3 May, 1910; information also in the GR Register for this group). A terracotta figurine, registered as 1910,6-20.22, was returned to the Cyprus Museum a few years later as it had been mistakenly sent to the British Museum with Warren's material. Not everything in the group purchased in 1910 was registered by the British Museum: the duplicate items from Tamassos donated to museum/college collections in the United Kingdom (in Aberystwyth, Dublin, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath and possibly other places) also appear to have come from the original group of items loaned by Warren.
Bibliography:
Lang R.H. 1886, Colonial and Indian Exhibition 1886. Handbook to Cyprus (with map of island) and catalogue of the exhibits (London).
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1910,0620.3
