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Ancient Near East, Tell Brak, Late Uruk Period, ca. 3300 to 3000 BCE. A very fine and characteristically abstract eye idol, hand-carved from creamy white stone with surface deposits creating attractive areas of white, sienna brown, and rosy beige. One of the most famous types of early Mesopotamia, this form has a bell-shaped body surmounted by two conjoined circles with drilled loops which form the "eyes." Eye idols were named in the 1930s by the British archaeologist Max Mallowan when he was excavating at the mound called Tell Brak and found hundreds of small anthropomorphic items of similar form to this one - some kind of simplified body topped by huge discs for eyes and no other discernible facial features. He named the place where he found them "The Temple of the Eyes." Size: 1.875" in diameter around the widest area x 2.625" H (4.8 cm x 6.7 cm)

More recently, items like this one have been found beyond the Temple of the Eyes, leading French archaeologist Catherine Breniquet to speculate that examples like this one could have also been used for separating wool while spinning. This piece would have been placed in front of a seated person who used the holes to separate two or three strands and then twist them together. Artwork on cylinder seals from Uruk seems to support this hypothesis. Still other scholars have suggested that such they might have been lids for slender vessels or elements of a firedog.

Provenance: ex-Estate of Eldert Bontekoe, Pegasi Numismatics, Ann Arbor, Michigan USA acquired before 2000

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#182290

Expected surface wear with minute nicks to peripheries of "eyes", base, and areas of the body commensurate with age. Otherwise, intact and very nice. Surface graced with deposits as shown.