Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (16.2004(2005))

TELL LARAMA

EGYPT

factured around the first half of the 2nd
century AD.5 A fragment of a Tanagra-type
figurine, preserving only the lower part of
a draped garment with a shoe, can be
regarded as the oldest piece discovered in
the theatre. It could go back to the end of
the 3rd or the 2nd century BC.6 7
Apart from other fragments represent-
ing human or human-like figures, like Satyr
(?), young boy dancing (?), sitting person
with round object held on the knee, or
bared female buttocks, one finds also pieces
of animal representations. A horse head is
doubtless among the finest and best

preserved terracotta fragments from the last
two seasons [Fig. 2}. Another fragment,
a cock's wing and legs [Fig. 3], should be
dated to the Roman period.
Dating remains the most problematic is-
sue. Contextually, the terracottas come large-
ly from mixed deposits that could be de-
scribed as either rubbish heaps of Late Hel-
lenistic date or later accumulations inside the
abandoned ruin.8 However, stylistic analysis
would rather point to a chronological range
from the end of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC
to the 2nd century AD, in similarity to most
of the pottery from the theatre.



Fig. 2. Terracotta horse head Fig. 3. T'erracotta cock's wing and legs
(Photo K. Jakuhiak) (Photo K. Jakuhiak)
5 Cf. E. Breccia, Terracotte figurate greche et greco-egizie di Museo di Alessandria, Monuments de l'Egypte greco-
romaine, vol. II, fasc. II (Bergamo 1934), 52, PI. LVIII, no. 341 (8036), and Fischer, op. cit., 381, PI. 104, no. 977.
6 Cf. Fischer, op. cit., 125-126, PI. 6, nos. 40-41; P.G. Leyenaar-Plaisier, Les terres cuites grecques et romaines. Catalogue
de la Collection du Musee National des Antiquites a Leiden, vol. I-III (Leiden 1979), 107, PI. 37, no. 215.
7 Cf. Weber, op. cit., 247, PI. 40, no. 454; Leyenaar-Plaisier, op. cit., 548, PI. 208, no. 1588.
8 Cf. Gawlikowski, PAM XV, op. cit., 70-71; Jakubiak, PAM XV, op. cit., 74; also excavation report in this volume.

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