Limestone Head of a Beardless Votary in a Conical Helmet

Cypro-Archaic II, c. 600–500 BCE · Limestone · Carved

A small head of a beardless man, broken at the neck, carved in soft pale limestone that has weathered to a fine, granular surface. He wears a tall conical helmet ending in a blunt knob. A raised band runs across the brow, and two low ribs climb the sides of the cone toward the tip. The ears are cut in relief outside the helmet and stand away from the head, and a smooth mass of hair drops behind them to the nape.

The face is a broad oval. The eyes are almond-shaped with swollen lids, the nose short and straight, and the lips are drawn up at the corners into a clear smile that lifts the cheeks. The back is summarily worked. There is orange iron staining at the neck break and a small spot of the same on the chin.

Commentary

The head comes from a votive statuette of a male worshipper, the commonest subject in Cypriot sanctuary sculpture of the 6th century BCE. Such figures stood in open-air sanctuaries as permanent stand-ins for the men who dedicated them. The complete type is known from larger statues: the Metropolitan Museum's lifesize votary 74.51.2474 wears the same conical helmet with a long, plain garment, its right arm wrapped in a cloak, and has the hair gathered in a smooth mass at the back [1]. Heads survive far more often than bodies, because the neck is the weakest point of a soft-stone figure.

The helmet, often called the Assyrian cap, belongs to a phase when Cypriot votive dress drew on Near Eastern models. Ulbrich places beardless and bearded votaries in this conical helmet with top-knob from the late 7th into the 6th century BCE, before Greek hairstyles and dress took over from the middle of the 6th century [2]. Stone statuettes of this kind hardly occur before about 600 BCE. The lively smile and the fuller modelling of cheeks and chin fit the 6th century rather than the late 7th, and the closest dated museum heads all fall in that century. A date of c. 600–500 BCE, probably around the middle of the century, is the most defensible.

The nearest parallel in scale and detail is a head in the Fitzwilliam Museum from Salamis (GR.3c.1891), H. 12.6 cm, with a ribbed cap, projecting ears and hair at the sides, dated 600–501 BCE [3]. A head in the Royal Ontario Museum (958.61.217), probably from Tamassos-Frangissa and dated about 600–550 BCE, shows the same helmet [4]. A still smaller head in Stockholm (K. 461), found by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition in the Kition sculpture deposit, combines a smiling mouth, myrtle-leaf eyes, a short conical cap and side locks at the back of the neck [5]. Two heads from Golgoi in the Metropolitan Museum carry the type to larger scale: 74.51.2543, of the first half of the 6th century, where cheekpieces cover the ears [1], and 74.51.2557, of the middle or third quarter of the century, with a smiling face and schematic ears [6]. On this head the ears are left free of the helmet, as on the Fitzwilliam piece.

Workshops at Golgoi, Idalion, Tamassos, Salamis and Kition all produced the type, and the head carries no feature that ties it firmly to one of them. The helmet is sometimes read as military, but the same headgear is worn by votaries in sanctuary contexts, and whether it marked a rank or office for the dedicant remains open.