Head of a Terracotta Bull Figurine

Cypro-Archaic, probably c. 750–480 BCE · Terracotta · Handmade

A small head broken from a handmade terracotta bull. The clay is a pale buff with a dry, slightly granular surface and faint pinkish patches. The skull is compact and rounded, widening across the brow. One horn survives almost complete, rising steeply and curving slightly outward, with a small pinched lobe at its root that probably stands for the ear. The other horn has broken to a short stump. A round hole was pushed into each side of the head with a pointed tool before firing, marking the eyes. At the front, a flat, circular reddish scar sits above a short downward projection. The fresh-looking colour of this disc suggests a break surface rather than an applied pellet, most likely where a longer muzzle once projected. The neck is broken away behind.

Commentary

The head belongs to the large family of handmade solid bull figurines that Cypriots dedicated in their sanctuaries through the Early Iron Age and above all in the Cypro-Archaic period. Modelling is summary: horns pulled from the mass of the head, eyes punched rather than applied, no painted detail now visible. The pale fabric distinguishes it from the dark, burnished Base Ring bulls of the Late Bronze Age, and nothing in the modelling points to the mould-made animals of later centuries. A date between the 8th and the 6th century BCE is the safest bracket, with the Cypro-Archaic period the most likely.

The bull was the commonest animal offering in Cypriot sanctuaries, and the choice reflects its standing as the principal sacrificial animal from the Late Bronze Age onward. At the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion bulls were by far the most frequent votive animal among the terracottas [1]. Detached heads like this one are a normal result of the way such deposits were formed: figurines were cleared from the sanctuary and buried in pits, and the thin neck is the weakest point of a solid figure. The class is surveyed in the sixth volume of Karageorghis's corpus of Cypriot coroplastic art [2].

A close comparison in treatment is a Cypro-Archaic terracotta bull head in the Louvre, AO 32414, whose muzzle has broken away in much the same manner [3]. A second possibility should be kept open. The Metropolitan Museum holds a Cypro-Archaic II handmade bull's-head mask, 74.51.1807 (Cesnola cat. 241), pierced with three holes for suspension, one at the top and one on each side of the head [4], and the Louvre has a Cypro-Archaic II bull protome, AM 1181, with three suspension holes of the same kind [5]. The side holes on this piece sit where the eyes would be, and the object is small, so the figurine reading is preferred. Examination of the break at the back will settle whether the head is solid, as a figurine should be, or hollow, as a mask or a vessel protome would be.

We know of no find-spot for the piece. Its export from Cyprus in 1969 under a numbered licence makes it the best documented of this group of terracottas.