Terracotta Head of a Bearded Votary in a Pointed Cap

Cypro-Archaic, c. 650–500 BCE · Terracotta · Mould-pressed face on a hand-modelled head

A narrow, elongated head of a bearded man, broken below the beard. He wears a tall cap that rises smoothly to a rounded point, its lower edge marked by a raised band laid straight across the brow. The face, pressed from a mould, is long and grave: almond eyes set within heavy, sharply ridged lids, arched brows meeting the bridge of a long straight nose, and a small, tight mouth. The beard begins at the cheeks and draws down into a long wedge that juts forward below the chin, so that the lower face takes up almost half the head.

The buff to pale orange clay has a slightly granular surface with pale encrustation in the hollows. A patch of dark burial deposit covers the lower right side of the beard and the break. No paint survives.

Commentary

The combination of a tall pointed cap and a long pointed beard places this head in the Cypro-Archaic repertoire of male votaries. From the late 7th into the 6th century BCE, bearded and beardless worshippers in Cypriot sanctuaries are shown in a conical cap or helmet derived from Assyrian models, usually with a long plain tunic and cloak [1]. Heads of this kind come from small figurines as well as from lifesize terracotta and limestone statues, and they represent the dedicant standing before the god.

The technique is the one described for many small Cypriot terracottas of the period: a solid head is shaped by hand, and a face pressed from a mould is added to its front. The Metropolitan Museum's charioteer from a tomb at Idalion, dated to the end of the 7th century BCE, is made the same way, with a mould-made face, a pointed beard, a short moustache and a conical helmet on a handmade solid figure [2]. Here the cap and the back of the head have the rounded, slightly uneven profile of hand modelling, while the face has the crisper, repeated forms of the mould, especially around the eyes.

The closest published match is a head in the Louvre from Aradippou, a bearded man in a pointed cap dated to Cypro-Archaic I (c. 650–600 BCE) (H. 8.9 cm), with the same ridged eyes and pointed beard [3]. A beardless mould-made head in a conical helmet in the Metropolitan Museum, said to be from Idalion and dated Cypro-Archaic II, shows the type continuing into the 6th century [2]. The standard classification of these small male figures is Karageorghis's corpus of Cypro-Archaic male figurines [4]. On this evidence a date of c. 650–500 BCE is appropriate; the heavy ridged lids and the long, severe face would suit the earlier half of that range, but a single head without context cannot be pinned more closely.

Because the head is broken at the beard, its original body is unknown. Heads of this type belong to standing votaries, and also to riders and charioteers, as the Idalion group shows [2], so the safest description is "from a figurine". Which Cypriot workshop made it cannot be told from the face alone, though the Aradippou head is the nearest match.