The Tell Brak Head is an important
prehistoric Middle Eastern sculpture found at the ancient site of
Tell Brak
Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city' ...
in Syria. It has been part of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
's collection since 1939. Dated by archaeologists to before 3300 BC, it is considered to be one of the oldest portrait busts from the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
.
Discovery
The sculpture was discovered during excavations in the late 1930s carried out by the eminent British archaeologist Sir
Max Mallowan at Tell Brak, north eastern
Syria. It was found in the so-called ''Eye Temple'', where a large number of offerings to the gods had accumulated over time. The temple, built around 3500–3300 BC, was named for the hundreds of small alabaster ''eye idol'' figurines, which were incorporated into the mortar with which the mud-brick temple was constructed. Many of the more important idols had been robbed in antiquity, but this stone head was uncovered inside a tunnel underneath the remains of earlier
temples, that had been used by robbers in ancient times.
Description
The Tell Brak Head is carved from
gypsum
Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywal ...
(
alabaster
Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that include ...
) and appears to wear a head-dress.
Statue - British Museum number 126460
britishmuseum.org The face is elongated with large almond shaped eyes, circular ears and a small, smiling mouth. It has been difficult to determine whether the figure represents a deity or worshipper. A thin vertical depression at the back of the head, with holes either side for nails, suggests that it was once fixed to a pole and used during religious ceremonies
A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion.
The word may be of Etruscan origin, via the Latin '' caerimonia''.
Church and civil (secular ...
. No other similar sculptures were found at the site, and there are few other representations comparable to the head from this period in the region.
References
{{reflist
Further reading
*D. Collon, Ancient Near Eastern art (London, The British Museum Press, 1995)
*M.E.L. Mallowan, 'Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar, Syria', Iraq-1, 9 (1947)
*C. Trümpler (ed.), Agatha Christie and archaeology (London, The British Museum Press, 2001)
External links
Statue - British Museum number 126460
britishmuseum.org
Tell Brak
Middle Eastern objects in the British Museum
Sculpture of the Ancient Near East
Archaeological discoveries in Syria
4th-millennium BC works