Unknown
Funerary Head from Palmyra3rd century

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Unknown
Title: Funerary Head from Palmyra
Place Made: Syria, Palmyra
Date Made: 3rd century
Medium: Limestone and glass
Dimensions: 10 3/4 × 7 × 5 in. (27.31 × 17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Robert Blaugrund
Accession Number: M.82.77.2
Classification: Sculpture
Collecting Area: European Painting and Sculpture: Greek and Roman
Curatorial Notes: The ancient oasis city of Palmyra in Syria was an important waypoint along caravan trade routes between the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea. As the wealth of the city grew during the first and second centuries, local citizens built four major necropolises to commemorate the dead, which included communal burial towers with stacked burial niches (loculi). These loculi were often decorated with high-relief portraits of the deceased and a short dedicatory inscription. This head once belonged to a larger panel that showed the deceased from the waist up (see M.76.174.249). The details of the woman’s dress, including a turbanlike headdress with two strings of descending jewelry and a richly patterned diadem, hint at the finery that would have adorned the rest of her body. Despite its fragmentary state, this sculpture retains an important and rare detail: inlaid black glass eyes, a common original feature of such funerary sculptures.

2024

Not on view

Artist or Maker: Unknown
Title: Funerary Head from Palmyra
Place Made: Syria, Palmyra
Date Made: 3rd century
Medium: Limestone and glass
Dimensions: 10 3/4 × 7 × 5 in. (27.31 × 17.78 × 12.7 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Robert Blaugrund
Accession Number: M.82.77.2
Classification: Sculpture
Collecting Area: European Painting and Sculpture: Greek and Roman
Curatorial Notes: The ancient oasis city of Palmyra in Syria was an important waypoint along caravan trade routes between the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea. As the wealth of the city grew during the first and second centuries, local citizens built four major necropolises to commemorate the dead, which included communal burial towers with stacked burial niches (loculi). These loculi were often decorated with high-relief portraits of the deceased and a short dedicatory inscription. This head once belonged to a larger panel that showed the deceased from the waist up (see M.76.174.249). The details of the woman’s dress, including a turbanlike headdress with two strings of descending jewelry and a richly patterned diadem, hint at the finery that would have adorned the rest of her body. Despite its fragmentary state, this sculpture retains an important and rare detail: inlaid black glass eyes, a common original feature of such funerary sculptures.

2024