DOI Artikel:
Edgar, Campbell Cowan: Greek sculpture from Tell Timal
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9427#0014
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The nostrils and the dimples in the lips are drilled, and there is a lightly
incised line along each eyebrow.
Broken off short below; top and back of head broken; face almost perfect.
3. Male head, height o m. 175 miU. (pl. II, fig. 1).
Head of a young god, beardless and with short hair, possibly a Hermès.
Behind the front part of the hair is a groove for a hair-band, but the top of the
head is left rough. There is a mark across the middle of forehead, and the lower
part is prominent. The head is turned a little towards the left. The hair is
treated sketchily, without détail, and the eyelids are indistinctly defined. There
are four rather obtrusive drill-marks between the lips. Underneath the neck is a
dowel-hole.
The back of the head is split clean off, the surface looking as if it had been
worked. Worn and chipped.
h. Head of Isis (?), height o m. 10, cent. (pl. II, fig. 2).
Her face is turned very slightly to her left. The hair is drawn to each side of
forehead and hangs over the shoulders in two rows of rope-shaped tresses. The
top of the head, which is left rough, is surrounded by a band, and there is a
hole above for the attachment of some attribute. The chin is long and promi-
nent. There are drill-marks between the hair and the neck.
Broken below ; nose and mouth chipped, surface weathered and stained.
This peculiar coiffure, which we find very often on Grseco-Egyptian mummy-
masks and which occurs also on the coin-portraits of Ptolemaic queens, was
used by Alexandrian art to characterise Isis and other Egvptian divinities. It pro-
bably was a real African fashion, and we find something like it in realistic Egvp-
tian sculpture. The Greeks did not borrow it, as might be thought, from Egvp-
tian représentations of Isis : the truth seems rather to be that they assigned it
to Isis as a sort of compromise, being somewhat like the klaftw, her ordinary
headdress in Egvptian art, but at the same time more in harmony with Greek
style. The head from Tell Timai is a rather early example of the type. If it is an
Isis, as seems most probable, we must imagine it to have been originally
crowned with the horns and disk, fastened into the hole on the top of her
head.
(1) See Daressy, Statues de Divinités, p. 3o,8. M. Daressy distiaguishes the klaft from the royal
hood to which the name has usually heen applied.
The nostrils and the dimples in the lips are drilled, and there is a lightly
incised line along each eyebrow.
Broken off short below; top and back of head broken; face almost perfect.
3. Male head, height o m. 175 miU. (pl. II, fig. 1).
Head of a young god, beardless and with short hair, possibly a Hermès.
Behind the front part of the hair is a groove for a hair-band, but the top of the
head is left rough. There is a mark across the middle of forehead, and the lower
part is prominent. The head is turned a little towards the left. The hair is
treated sketchily, without détail, and the eyelids are indistinctly defined. There
are four rather obtrusive drill-marks between the lips. Underneath the neck is a
dowel-hole.
The back of the head is split clean off, the surface looking as if it had been
worked. Worn and chipped.
h. Head of Isis (?), height o m. 10, cent. (pl. II, fig. 2).
Her face is turned very slightly to her left. The hair is drawn to each side of
forehead and hangs over the shoulders in two rows of rope-shaped tresses. The
top of the head, which is left rough, is surrounded by a band, and there is a
hole above for the attachment of some attribute. The chin is long and promi-
nent. There are drill-marks between the hair and the neck.
Broken below ; nose and mouth chipped, surface weathered and stained.
This peculiar coiffure, which we find very often on Grseco-Egyptian mummy-
masks and which occurs also on the coin-portraits of Ptolemaic queens, was
used by Alexandrian art to characterise Isis and other Egvptian divinities. It pro-
bably was a real African fashion, and we find something like it in realistic Egvp-
tian sculpture. The Greeks did not borrow it, as might be thought, from Egvp-
tian représentations of Isis : the truth seems rather to be that they assigned it
to Isis as a sort of compromise, being somewhat like the klaftw, her ordinary
headdress in Egvptian art, but at the same time more in harmony with Greek
style. The head from Tell Timai is a rather early example of the type. If it is an
Isis, as seems most probable, we must imagine it to have been originally
crowned with the horns and disk, fastened into the hole on the top of her
head.
(1) See Daressy, Statues de Divinités, p. 3o,8. M. Daressy distiaguishes the klaft from the royal
hood to which the name has usually heen applied.